Three makers of video games sued a Missouri company marketing software that enables consumers to make backup copies of computer games.
Very well then, if I cant make a backup or bypass the copy protection, then they should be legally required to issue refunds for software if that backup protection renders the software defective.
From my own personal experience, I bought KOTOR the first day it came out for PC. For some reason, when doing the cd check when launching, the game would hang about half of the time requiring a hard reset. After a couple weeks I got fed up and downloaded a no CD-crack and havent had a problem since.
My PC met all the requirements on the box, yet when it doesnt work properly because of stupid copy-protection schemes the publisher has no accountability to the consumer, yet *I'm* the one breaking the law (DMCA) when I take steps to make the damn thing usable?
If I bought a toaster and it only toasted half the time, I'd return it to the store and get a new one with an apology. Yet if it's software, why does consumer protection go right out the window?
When will the music companies realise that $1 per track is far too expensive, and their profits would probably increase if they acutally decreased the prices. And they'd have much happier customers as a result.
If tracks were 10c each, I would quite happily buy whole albums...
Could you sell anything $0.10 at a time while accepting credit card payments and hope to break even?
How much does it cost to maintain a professional looking website hosting terabytes of data? How much does it cost to serve up a 3 mb of bandwidth per track?
How low of a royalty could you expect the RIAA label to accept per track? $0.50? $0.10? To be able to sell music at 10 cents a track, you'd need to convince music labels to accept negligible royalties (ie. pennies per track).
Of course I'd buy lots of albums if they only cost a dollar each. Who wouldnt? I think your sentiment about cheaper prices is right on, but $0.75 a track might be achievable (thats still a 25% savings). $0.10 is just wishful thinking.
dammit. I dont mean to reply to my own post, but I hit submit instead of preview by mistake...
to continue my thought...
An 81% game isnt likely to be perceptibly better than a 78% game, but you get a ballpark sense of how the game was received overall. Of course you are going to select individual reviews to see the details of that particular score.
Because reviewers can be so different numbers dont tell the whole story for the average game. I find it particularly useful to pick pick great, average, and poor reviews of the same game to see what people liked about it. You'd be surprised at the common themes that run through them.
ie. say an rpg has many lengthy cutscenes (cough *xenosaga* cough). Reviewer A loves the story development they bring so that doesnt affect his score much. Reviewer B hates the 40 minute interuptions so that aspect knocks his rating down several notches. Both reviewers acknowledge the cutscenes in thier reviews because they are so dominant and you can decide how much that will affect your buying decision.
Generally I find the total ranking to be a good metric of the overall quality ('buyability', if you will) of a game and individual reviews to assess personal suitability...
I think numbers are a valuable method of ranking games when taken as an average. Look at gamerankings.com which uses the rottentomatoes.com approach for scoring.
You take every the game review and convert the score as a percentile (4/5 stars = 80%; 9/10 = 90% etc), then average all the available scores.
If a game can get 150 reviews and can average >95% then you know it's probably a pretty damn good title. Only about a dozen games have achieved 95% average ratings since the website started: Zelda:OOT, Halo, MGS2, GTA III, Metroid Prime are some examples and they represent some of the best titles those platforms have to offer.
Generally
>90% = excellent
>80% = good
>70% = mediocre
anything else is probably pretty poor.
No single reviewer with a bone to pickhas undue influence to the overall ranking
While it is theoretically possible to write a new game that uses ScummVM it is not advisable. ScummVM has many hacks to support older games and no tools geared towards creating content usable by ScummVM. Potential game authors are encouraged to look at open source technologies such as libSDL for a cross platform DirectX like library, and the Lua and Python scripting languages for game logic.
Coincidentally I just installed SCUMMVM two weeks ago so I could revisit Sam & Max and Day of the Tentacle without having to mess around with boot floppies or other shenanigans.
The fact that I easily found rpms to run under Linux was just a bonus. I have experienced a few crashes in Sam & Max (all occuring in the same room), but the gameplay is intact. One mini-game doesnt work properly but the game should be playable from beginning to end.
But I havent heard mention of one of the best reasons to use SCUMMVM: save states. With a point and click adventure, it may not be as critical as save states in say, a SNES emulator, but it's still be a convienence, and only costs 100k/save
To see how well your favorite LucasArts SCUMM game is supported, check out the compatability chart
I haven't bought a new album from a retail record store in years and years. Whenever I desire a peice of plastic (which is frequent enough) I'll pick it up at a used store, earning the artist and label no money anyway. How long until second hand shops are shut down by CRIA?
I'm not sure upon what basis you are suggesting they could be shut down. Even if the original owner burns a copy and sells the original (which is currently legal BTW), he has paid a levy on the blank which is supposed to compensate the artists.
If you are suggesting that you should not be able to acquire a copy of a cd without the artist and (mostly) publisher getting a royalty, then perhaps libraries should be shut down too...
So, basically how it works is that your friend can buy a new computer game and you can copy it legally, however they can't copy it for you legally.
This is not true. The 1998 ammendment to the Canadian Copyright act specifically covers private copying of sound recordings of musical works. As a result we pay a levy on recordable media like CR-Rs. Here's what the Copyright Board of Canada has to say about it
Your friend's games, dvds, software etc are NOT covered and copying those things for your personal use are illegal. I hope you havent been doing that under the assumption that it's legal...
The most intriguing thing to me is how the two screens will be arranged and utilized.
According to the second article, it has two screens of 256x192 pixels each (which is slightly higher resolution than the GBA screen)
So will it two equal sized screens? Will they go with a clamshell device like the GBA with a smaller screen in the base (between the controls) and a larger screen in the flip-top part?
And I'm also wondering what compromises they'll have to make on the physical dimensions and battery life in implementing dual screens in a portable.
I've never owned a handheld gaming system before (blackjack on my cell phone doesnt count), but if the dual screens leads to be a real gameplay innovation and not just a novelty that many games fail to take full advantage of, then I could be convinced to buy one of these...
I imagine that a copies of Chrono Trigger or Ocarina of Time "Mint In Box" will be quite collectible and go for astronomical values on Ebay in 10 years time.
But many people with a sense of nostalgia will just want to play the old games, and some documentation would be nice. I recently had an urge to play Ultima IV again (which was released as freeware some years back). Luckily a little googling uncovered numerous Ultima documentation projects that archive complete documentation for all the Ultima games. Some had scans of the originals, others had them transcribed into doc or ascii.
Another case is when I go and rent the odd game and the docs always seem to be missing. Again, its google to the rescue. I'm a little more hesitant about this though, as unauthorized online copies of instructions for new games may promote piracy (or at least make it more convienent). But for a game that's way past it's peak sales window, getting instructions on the internet can be a godsend.
One final option is www.gamefaqs.com which have walkthroughs and FAQs for just about every game imaginable. They dont make the full documentation available, but the FAQs will often have basic gameplay instructions to at least get you started.
From the article:
But under the Copyright Act, it remains illegal to give or sell a CD copy to a friend, since it's not for personal use. In the same vein, distributing copies to friends online is prohibited.
I'm in Canada and I've sampled a number of songs from the binary newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* as the law allows me to (for now)
That's not a P2P service, obviously, but from the ISPs own newservers. So wouldnt the ISP make a better target? After all, arent they distributing content to 900,000+ subscribers (according to the article)?? Think of the damages one could claim against an ISP if they were found guilty of copyright infringement on that scale.
Why pick out 29 individuals to pursue legal recourse? Because it's about fear and publicity. These 29 people are not likely to have the inclination, resources, or will to fight an expensive legal battle. Like the RIAA cases, they will settle for a couple thousand $ and a press conference where they tearfully apologize for thier wrongdoings. Fellow canadians who do not follow the legal aspect of such issues closely will simply hear 'file sharers get sued' and freak out and think the downloading music is wrong: mission accomplished. Will the press make the point that personal copying in Canada is LEGAL when reporting these stories? Possibly, but I'm not betting on it.
Remember, whatever choices we make apply only to what we choose to support as a group. Our choices don't cause the alternatives to be removed from Debian, they don't constrain what a service provider can support to their own customers...
IOW, if you want to use KDE, go ahead and use it, no one is stopping you. If they were making changes that made it impossible for KDE to run properly, then there may be a good basis for petition. Not having KDE included in distro XYZ in no way invalidates all the great work they've done to date. (I'm a happy KDE user)
Also the white paper suggests supporting MySQL as the database, Python as interpretive language, and Mozilla as the browser. I dont see postgreSQL, PERL, and Thunderbird development teams getting thier panties in a wad.
Now, just as a quick check, isnt reverse engineering any M$ product against the EULA? I seriously expect a lawsuit about this.
While I dont think any reverse engineering took place here, I dont think it would be illegal.
EULAS are not contracts, you did not sign anything and EULAS cannot override the laws of that country. If reverse engineering is legal, then no amount of draconian wording or clicking on "I Agree" can change that. So if the EULA prohibits me from backing up my copy of Windows (as an example), yet the copyright laws of the country (Canada, in my case) specifically permit me one backup copy, then I am allowed: 1 backup copy
Some types reverse engineering are prohibited. Like hacking copy protection (as it's covered by the lovely DMCA). But there are efforts to reverse engineer other MS products, like the MSWord format or NTFS and I dont think those are coming under fire. (MS might try to obfuscate or change the formats rapidly, but the very process of RE is not illegal)
IANALBISLTPOOT (I am not a lawyer but I'd sure like to play one on TV!)
I took my first serious foray into Linux about a year age with MDK9.0 on it's reputation as a 'newbie' distro. It has a LARGE and friendly user base and that (IMHO) must be taken into consideration when you are getting into Linux
Let's face it. People who are trying to learn Linux are going to run into difficulty at some point, period. Sometimes people need to ask simple questions that would get scornful "RTFM n00b!" replies on any other group, but someone in an MDK forum will at least point you in the right direction without ripping your head off.
Linux requires you to know stuff about your OS, and part of the learning curve is learning *how* to help yourself. Snooty attitudes from ubergurus are about as counterproductive as can be.
alt.os.linux.mandrake is an AMAZING resource. Some issues are distro specific and because the MDK user base is so large, chances are someone else had already had that problem and someone else has offered a solution. As a resource for troubleshooting, having access to a large friendly newsgroup (which is fully archived by groups.google.com to boot) that uses your specific distro cannot be understimated.
Now that MDK is the only commercial distro that 1) targets ease of use for the consumer desktop 2) has a significant sized friendly community and 3) allows full ISO downloads for free*, it's a no brainer for anyone wanting to get into linux
*it obviously costs them money to develop or distribute it. Feel free to download the ISOs to try it out, but consider supporting them by buying a retail pack or syearly subscription if you continue to use it.
The lens is the most important thing if you want sharp pics. Bodies are just glorified cases to hold film in the dark until its time to expose them. Yes, I'm oversimplifying things, but in the hands of a skilled photographer, an old battered body coupled with a high quality lens will kick ass.
Some camera shops rent lenses and the ones around here all rent Nikon lenses with a smattering of Canons. Any other brand just isnt represented. If you want to rent a lens for a special occasion that you aren't necessarily interested in buying, then having a Nikon will afford you the best selection.
Same goes for used lenses on Ebay and at camera swap meets. It seems to me that the selection of used Nikon lenses practically surpasses all other manfacturers combined.
If you want the greatest selection of new AND used lenses, Nikon deserves a serious look.
Keep in mind that while AMD is immensely popular for lower cost boxes, the real profit margins are made at the high end. The new 64-bit AMD chips could go a long ways towards making AMD profitable and it's no surprise they want to push high end parts as soon as possible.
Part of the problem was inflicted by AMD themselves and their + performance rating scheme for the XP line of processors.
While AMD stated that the + rating was not meant to directly compare with any Intel processor, some remarkable coincidence always seemed to result in an Athlon XP XXXX+ benchmarking about the same as an XXXXGhz Pentium 4 yet cost ~20% less. Unfortunately, the PR ratings didnt scale linearly (especially at the top end) and they whole scheme now looks contrived. AMD would be wise to put it behind them ASAP.
You'll notice that the new Opterons now use model numbers that have very little basis for comparison with clock speed from either vendor. Only time will tell if this strategy sells any better...
Obviously MMORPGS rely on monthly fees as a stream of revenue so I wonder what sort of staying power this game will have? What will the user base be like in a year from now, when the novelty has worn off for a lot of players?
If Battle.net charged a MMORPG-type $10 monthly fees like SWG, then they would be throwing away $4 million a month in revenue (I realize that the user base for Blizzard games would not be nearly as large with monthly fees). But if a widespread exploit took hold of SWG and started ruining the game for others, would they have the guts to close thousands of accounts and throw away potentially millions of dollars a month to combat it?
Obviously not a theatrical release as the article says it will be DVD based.
From the screenshots, it looks like the CGI FMV type graphics that you saw in every cutscene from FFVII to FFX.
Reminds me of those ebay auctions where someone ripped all the CGI out of the FF games, then converted them to VCD. You could practically get the whole storyline without even playing the game...
Square-Enix should take all the FF remakes (Origins, Anthology, Chronicles), FFVII-FFIX and bundle this movie in some sort of deluxe PS2 edition (all on DVD of course). They'd sell millions of copies...
It shouldnt come as a huge surprise that countries who 1 )generally embrace new technology and 2) feature high population density would tend lead in adoption of broadband (like Japan).
It would be more cost effective on a per capita basis to wire a urban center for broadband compared to huge expanses of suburbia or rural regions.
An interesting statistic would be to compare broadband availability vs subscription rates in major metropolitan areas from various countries.
ie. New York vs LA vs Paris vs London vs Tokyo vs Beijing etc...
I work in the parmaceutical research industry (cancer biochemistry) and it doesn't surprise me that a pharmaceutical company brings up the rear w.r.t. privacy concerns (specifically background checks)
I'm in Canada and a friend got a job in the States for a big pharma a few years back. They did the whole background check and called up all his references etc... I assumed it was because he was Canadian trying to work in the US, but all this was before 9/11. I imagine it's gotten even more stringent since.
One reason for the security is that big pharma have HUGE animal facilities for thier pre-clinical experiments. Not trying to start a flame war here, but it's part of the process that you test potential drugs on animals before you submit an application for a new drug for human trials (IND) to the FDA.
It's quite normal to use thousands of rodents to develop a potential new drug. Not only efficacy, but parameters like maximum tolerated dosage, bioavailability of various formulations, biological half-life, clearance routes, metabolism, etc etc, all have to be characterized in animals before you even think about testing in humans. While appalling to some, it's part of the industry and just a small part of what it takes to get a drug onto the market.
For some companies, the animal facilities are housed in their own massive buildings and secured like a military installation. They probably use hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of animals per year and would make prime targets for animal activists. Probably not a very enticing a target for terrorists, but background checks in this industry are nothing new.
I work for a small company, and we dont do background checks, but during interviews we try and get a sense of a candidates interests and hobbies. Things like volunteering for PETA immediately raises serious red flags.
340+ hours of recorded video is cool and all, but what I could REALLY use is to record two channels at the same time.
It's fine when you're at home and you can watch one show, while recording the other. But when I'm out, there have been many times where I want to record two shows at the same time.
I suppose you could get a VCR (or two) to supplement your recording needs. They are cheap enough, but seeing as one benefit of PVRs is so you dont have to use tapes anymore, it's an inelegant solution...
Slashdot Mirror
Three makers of video games sued a Missouri company marketing software that enables consumers to make backup copies of computer games.
Very well then, if I cant make a backup or bypass the copy protection, then they should be legally required to issue refunds for software if that backup protection renders the software defective.
From my own personal experience, I bought KOTOR the first day it came out for PC. For some reason, when doing the cd check when launching, the game would hang about half of the time requiring a hard reset. After a couple weeks I got fed up and downloaded a no CD-crack and havent had a problem since.
My PC met all the requirements on the box, yet when it doesnt work properly because of stupid copy-protection schemes the publisher has no accountability to the consumer, yet *I'm* the one breaking the law (DMCA) when I take steps to make the damn thing usable?
If I bought a toaster and it only toasted half the time, I'd return it to the store and get a new one with an apology. Yet if it's software, why does consumer protection go right out the window?
If by "music company" you mean Sony's online music store, or iTMS, then you seem to be ignoring the economics of the situation. Apple currently pays $0.65 per track in royalties and $0.25 per track in credit card and distribution fees.
Could you sell anything $0.10 at a time while accepting credit card payments and hope to break even?
How much does it cost to maintain a professional looking website hosting terabytes of data? How much does it cost to serve up a 3 mb of bandwidth per track?
How low of a royalty could you expect the RIAA label to accept per track? $0.50? $0.10? To be able to sell music at 10 cents a track, you'd need to convince music labels to accept negligible royalties (ie. pennies per track).
Of course I'd buy lots of albums if they only cost a dollar each. Who wouldnt? I think your sentiment about cheaper prices is right on, but $0.75 a track might be achievable (thats still a 25% savings). $0.10 is just wishful thinking.
to continue my thought...
An 81% game isnt likely to be perceptibly better than a 78% game, but you get a ballpark sense of how the game was received overall. Of course you are going to select individual reviews to see the details of that particular score.
Because reviewers can be so different numbers dont tell the whole story for the average game. I find it particularly useful to pick pick great, average, and poor reviews of the same game to see what people liked about it. You'd be surprised at the common themes that run through them.
ie. say an rpg has many lengthy cutscenes (cough *xenosaga* cough). Reviewer A loves the story development they bring so that doesnt affect his score much. Reviewer B hates the 40 minute interuptions so that aspect knocks his rating down several notches. Both reviewers acknowledge the cutscenes in thier reviews because they are so dominant and you can decide how much that will affect your buying decision.
Generally I find the total ranking to be a good metric of the overall quality ('buyability', if you will) of a game and individual reviews to assess personal suitability...
You take every the game review and convert the score as a percentile (4/5 stars = 80%; 9/10 = 90% etc), then average all the available scores.
If a game can get 150 reviews and can average >95% then you know it's probably a pretty damn good title. Only about a dozen games have achieved 95% average ratings since the website started: Zelda:OOT, Halo, MGS2, GTA III, Metroid Prime are some examples and they represent some of the best titles those platforms have to offer.
Generally
>90% = excellent
>80% = good
>70% = mediocre
anything else is probably pretty poor.
No single reviewer with a bone to pickhas undue influence to the overall ranking
An interesting idea but see what the SCUMMVM FAQ has to say about this
Quote:
Can I use ScummVM to make new games?
While it is theoretically possible to write a new game that uses ScummVM it is not advisable. ScummVM has many hacks to support older games and no tools geared towards creating content usable by ScummVM. Potential game authors are encouraged to look at open source technologies such as libSDL for a cross platform DirectX like library, and the Lua and Python scripting languages for game logic.
The fact that I easily found rpms to run under Linux was just a bonus. I have experienced a few crashes in Sam & Max (all occuring in the same room), but the gameplay is intact. One mini-game doesnt work properly but the game should be playable from beginning to end.
But I havent heard mention of one of the best reasons to use SCUMMVM: save states. With a point and click adventure, it may not be as critical as save states in say, a SNES emulator, but it's still be a convienence, and only costs 100k/save
To see how well your favorite LucasArts SCUMM game is supported, check out the compatability chart
You might be thinking of a case currently being heard by the Supreme Court regarding potential royalties to be paid by ISPs for music distributed over the internet.
I'm not sure upon what basis you are suggesting they could be shut down. Even if the original owner burns a copy and sells the original (which is currently legal BTW), he has paid a levy on the blank which is supposed to compensate the artists.
If you are suggesting that you should not be able to acquire a copy of a cd without the artist and (mostly) publisher getting a royalty, then perhaps libraries should be shut down too...
This is not true. The 1998 ammendment to the Canadian Copyright act specifically covers private copying of sound recordings of musical works. As a result we pay a levy on recordable media like CR-Rs. Here's what the Copyright Board of Canada has to say about it
Your friend's games, dvds, software etc are NOT covered and copying those things for your personal use are illegal. I hope you havent been doing that under the assumption that it's legal...
The most intriguing thing to me is how the two screens will be arranged and utilized.
According to the second article, it has two screens of 256x192 pixels each (which is slightly higher resolution than the GBA screen)
So will it two equal sized screens? Will they go with a clamshell device like the GBA with a smaller screen in the base (between the controls) and a larger screen in the flip-top part?
And I'm also wondering what compromises they'll have to make on the physical dimensions and battery life in implementing dual screens in a portable.
I've never owned a handheld gaming system before (blackjack on my cell phone doesnt count), but if the dual screens leads to be a real gameplay innovation and not just a novelty that many games fail to take full advantage of, then I could be convinced to buy one of these...
But many people with a sense of nostalgia will just want to play the old games, and some documentation would be nice. I recently had an urge to play Ultima IV again (which was released as freeware some years back). Luckily a little googling uncovered numerous Ultima documentation projects that archive complete documentation for all the Ultima games. Some had scans of the originals, others had them transcribed into doc or ascii.
Another case is when I go and rent the odd game and the docs always seem to be missing. Again, its google to the rescue. I'm a little more hesitant about this though, as unauthorized online copies of instructions for new games may promote piracy (or at least make it more convienent). But for a game that's way past it's peak sales window, getting instructions on the internet can be a godsend.
One final option is www.gamefaqs.com which have walkthroughs and FAQs for just about every game imaginable. They dont make the full documentation available, but the FAQs will often have basic gameplay instructions to at least get you started.
But under the Copyright Act, it remains illegal to give or sell a CD copy to a friend, since it's not for personal use. In the same vein, distributing copies to friends online is prohibited.
and a related article:
Canada deems P2P downloading legal
I'm in Canada and I've sampled a number of songs from the binary newsgroups: alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.* as the law allows me to (for now)
That's not a P2P service, obviously, but from the ISPs own newservers. So wouldnt the ISP make a better target? After all, arent they distributing content to 900,000+ subscribers (according to the article)?? Think of the damages one could claim against an ISP if they were found guilty of copyright infringement on that scale.
Why pick out 29 individuals to pursue legal recourse? Because it's about fear and publicity. These 29 people are not likely to have the inclination, resources, or will to fight an expensive legal battle. Like the RIAA cases, they will settle for a couple thousand $ and a press conference where they tearfully apologize for thier wrongdoings. Fellow canadians who do not follow the legal aspect of such issues closely will simply hear 'file sharers get sued' and freak out and think the downloading music is wrong: mission accomplished. Will the press make the point that personal copying in Canada is LEGAL when reporting these stories? Possibly, but I'm not betting on it.
Remember, whatever choices we make apply only to what we choose to support as a group. Our choices don't cause the alternatives to be removed from Debian, they don't constrain what a service provider can support to their own customers...
IOW, if you want to use KDE, go ahead and use it, no one is stopping you. If they were making changes that made it impossible for KDE to run properly, then there may be a good basis for petition. Not having KDE included in distro XYZ in no way invalidates all the great work they've done to date. (I'm a happy KDE user)
Also the white paper suggests supporting MySQL as the database, Python as interpretive language, and Mozilla as the browser. I dont see postgreSQL, PERL, and Thunderbird development teams getting thier panties in a wad.
While I dont think any reverse engineering took place here, I dont think it would be illegal.
EULAS are not contracts, you did not sign anything and EULAS cannot override the laws of that country. If reverse engineering is legal, then no amount of draconian wording or clicking on "I Agree" can change that. So if the EULA prohibits me from backing up my copy of Windows (as an example), yet the copyright laws of the country (Canada, in my case) specifically permit me one backup copy, then I am allowed: 1 backup copy
Some types reverse engineering are prohibited. Like hacking copy protection (as it's covered by the lovely DMCA). But there are efforts to reverse engineer other MS products, like the MSWord format or NTFS and I dont think those are coming under fire. (MS might try to obfuscate or change the formats rapidly, but the very process of RE is not illegal)
IANALBISLTPOOT (I am not a lawyer but I'd sure like to play one on TV!)
I took my first serious foray into Linux about a year age with MDK9.0 on it's reputation as a 'newbie' distro. It has a LARGE and friendly user base and that (IMHO) must be taken into consideration when you are getting into Linux
Let's face it. People who are trying to learn Linux are going to run into difficulty at some point, period. Sometimes people need to ask simple questions that would get scornful "RTFM n00b!" replies on any other group, but someone in an MDK forum will at least point you in the right direction without ripping your head off.
Linux requires you to know stuff about your OS, and part of the learning curve is learning *how* to help yourself. Snooty attitudes from ubergurus are about as counterproductive as can be.
alt.os.linux.mandrake is an AMAZING resource. Some issues are distro specific and because the MDK user base is so large, chances are someone else had already had that problem and someone else has offered a solution. As a resource for troubleshooting, having access to a large friendly newsgroup (which is fully archived by groups.google.com to boot) that uses your specific distro cannot be understimated.
Now that MDK is the only commercial distro that 1) targets ease of use for the consumer desktop 2) has a significant sized friendly community and 3) allows full ISO downloads for free*, it's a no brainer for anyone wanting to get into linux
*it obviously costs them money to develop or distribute it. Feel free to download the ISOs to try it out, but consider supporting them by buying a retail pack or syearly subscription if you continue to use it.
The lens is the most important thing if you want sharp pics. Bodies are just glorified cases to hold film in the dark until its time to expose them. Yes, I'm oversimplifying things, but in the hands of a skilled photographer, an old battered body coupled with a high quality lens will kick ass.
Some camera shops rent lenses and the ones around here all rent Nikon lenses with a smattering of Canons. Any other brand just isnt represented. If you want to rent a lens for a special occasion that you aren't necessarily interested in buying, then having a Nikon will afford you the best selection.
Same goes for used lenses on Ebay and at camera swap meets. It seems to me that the selection of used Nikon lenses practically surpasses all other manfacturers combined.
If you want the greatest selection of new AND used lenses, Nikon deserves a serious look.
It's a smart decision because the new Opteron CPUs are now performing very well against Intel's fastest 32-bit CPUs and AMD thinks they can continue to compete with Intel in the 64-bit arena.
Keep in mind that while AMD is immensely popular for lower cost boxes, the real profit margins are made at the high end. The new 64-bit AMD chips could go a long ways towards making AMD profitable and it's no surprise they want to push high end parts as soon as possible.
It seems to me that lately AMD has lost some momentum with the high end Athlon XPs not being able to keep pace with a high-end P4.
Part of the problem was inflicted by AMD themselves and their + performance rating scheme for the XP line of processors.
While AMD stated that the + rating was not meant to directly compare with any Intel processor, some remarkable coincidence always seemed to result in an Athlon XP XXXX+ benchmarking about the same as an XXXXGhz Pentium 4 yet cost ~20% less. Unfortunately, the PR ratings didnt scale linearly (especially at the top end) and they whole scheme now looks contrived. AMD would be wise to put it behind them ASAP.
You'll notice that the new Opterons now use model numbers that have very little basis for comparison with clock speed from either vendor. Only time will tell if this strategy sells any better...
Obviously MMORPGS rely on monthly fees as a stream of revenue so I wonder what sort of staying power this game will have? What will the user base be like in a year from now, when the novelty has worn off for a lot of players?
I also find it interesting that Blizzard recently axed 400,000 battle.net accounts for cheating
If Battle.net charged a MMORPG-type $10 monthly fees like SWG, then they would be throwing away $4 million a month in revenue (I realize that the user base for Blizzard games would not be nearly as large with monthly fees). But if a widespread exploit took hold of SWG and started ruining the game for others, would they have the guts to close thousands of accounts and throw away potentially millions of dollars a month to combat it?
Obviously not a theatrical release as the article says it will be DVD based.
From the screenshots, it looks like the CGI FMV type graphics that you saw in every cutscene from FFVII to FFX.
Reminds me of those ebay auctions where someone ripped all the CGI out of the FF games, then converted them to VCD. You could practically get the whole storyline without even playing the game...
In any case, it doesnt need to cost $130 million to make yet only bring in $32 million like FINAL FANTASY:THE SPIRITS WITHIN.
Square-Enix should take all the FF remakes (Origins, Anthology, Chronicles), FFVII-FFIX and bundle this movie in some sort of deluxe PS2 edition (all on DVD of course). They'd sell millions of copies...
It shouldnt come as a huge surprise that countries who 1 )generally embrace new technology and 2) feature high population density would tend lead in adoption of broadband (like Japan).
It would be more cost effective on a per capita basis to wire a urban center for broadband compared to huge expanses of suburbia or rural regions.
An interesting statistic would be to compare broadband availability vs subscription rates in major metropolitan areas from various countries.
ie. New York vs LA vs Paris vs London vs Tokyo vs Beijing etc...
I work in the parmaceutical research industry (cancer biochemistry) and it doesn't surprise me that a pharmaceutical company brings up the rear w.r.t. privacy concerns (specifically background checks)
I'm in Canada and a friend got a job in the States for a big pharma a few years back. They did the whole background check and called up all his references etc... I assumed it was because he was Canadian trying to work in the US, but all this was before 9/11. I imagine it's gotten even more stringent since.
One reason for the security is that big pharma have HUGE animal facilities for thier pre-clinical experiments. Not trying to start a flame war here, but it's part of the process that you test potential drugs on animals before you submit an application for a new drug for human trials (IND) to the FDA.
It's quite normal to use thousands of rodents to develop a potential new drug. Not only efficacy, but parameters like maximum tolerated dosage, bioavailability of various formulations, biological half-life, clearance routes, metabolism, etc etc, all have to be characterized in animals before you even think about testing in humans. While appalling to some, it's part of the industry and just a small part of what it takes to get a drug onto the market.
For some companies, the animal facilities are housed in their own massive buildings and secured like a military installation. They probably use hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of animals per year and would make prime targets for animal activists. Probably not a very enticing a target for terrorists, but background checks in this industry are nothing new.
I work for a small company, and we dont do background checks, but during interviews we try and get a sense of a candidates interests and hobbies. Things like volunteering for PETA immediately raises serious red flags.
340+ hours of recorded video is cool and all, but what I could REALLY use is to record two channels at the same time.
It's fine when you're at home and you can watch one show, while recording the other. But when I'm out, there have been many times where I want to record two shows at the same time.
I suppose you could get a VCR (or two) to supplement your recording needs. They are cheap enough, but seeing as one benefit of PVRs is so you dont have to use tapes anymore, it's an inelegant solution...