Actaully, if you look at the wavelength of Red, Green, and Blue you will notice something interesting.
Red is a greater distance higher than green than green is to blue, meaning that a wavelength between Green and Red would in fact be an altogether fourth colour, which is exactly what the Tetrachromat would see.
How their brains interpret this data however is totally beyond explaination to those of us who have "normal" three colour vision.
You can't say it's like another shade of red, because saying that is like saying green is another shade of blue. It is not.
The fact is, there is no language to explain colours to someone who can not see them. It just can't be done.
Pigs are smarter than dogs, it's pretty much a proven fact.
Luckily for that dog YOU seem to love so much, it doesn't taste as good as the pig.
...
Cats often treat their owners (and their owner's property) with the disdain you mention because Cats, unlike dogs, learn through very basic problem solving skills typical of an independent nature, while dogs learn through repetitive conditioning typical of pack mentality.
There is safty in numbers, which protect the dog's pack mentality.
As an individual, it's a damn good thing cats really aren't very choice meat.
...
I for one eat almost no meat at all, limiting myself to almost no red meat, a lot of fish and VERY LITTLE turkey or chicken.
It's not a moral issue, really. Them dumb animals are just so bad for you.
...
And, really, when I play games, the underlying OS is merely a commodity...I don't care what it is so long as it gets the job done.
The problem with this logic is it makes so much sense that the fanatical Linux user won't accept it.
They can't understand that some people actually DO like playing games. In fact, some people are more fanatical about games than then Linux dorks are about Operating Systems.
I once explained to a friend that it didn't matter that my main game machine ran Windows ME and there was no way in hell I was putting BSD on it. He continued to bash the fact that my machine is "wasted" becaues it's not running Linux.
I explained to him that my tower is running BSD, and my game machine runs Windows, as does my Laptop and my image scanning/e-mail/internet/blahblah machine.
He said he didn't understand how I could accept the fact that I was playing my game on a machine that as he put it "Crashed all the time."
Then, he called me a liar when I told him that not only does my Windows machine almost never crash, I literally don't get ANY problems out of it. Not a single blue screen, no lock ups, not even illegal operations unless I run some crappy little program, and even then they don't take down the whole machine. Those proggies exit quitly and life goes on.
He said there was no way I was getting that functionality out of this machine. I insisted that he did.
I guess he doesn't believe that I've literally played Homeworld Cataclysm for 4 days straight without shutting down or resetting, only pausing it seldom to take a shit, get grub, and to drink Tea.
I've been doing the same thing with Black & White since it came out.
The fact is -- The Zealots who hate Windows the most have less and less TECHNICAL reasons to hate it every day, but their MORAL reasons conflict so they're very quick to spout technically inaccurate reasons to justify the fact that they just don't like Microsoft. They have the right not to like Microsoft or use their products.
But in the end, what it comes down to is that any die-hard gamer is going to run Windows. At this point, that doesn't have a chancy ball of snow's hell of changing anytime soon.
And don't bother trying to convince gamers of idiotic political, moral, or inaccurate technical reasons as to why they should "Switch", because at the end of the day if it doesn't play the coolest, newest game, a gamer isn't going to care.
If you can manage to find some old crappy 2x CD-ROM or something that WILL play one of these, just rip in analog with your sound card and then encode to MP3.
Either that, or don't encode to MP3 at all, just burn it to another CD.
It's hardly an issue, more sound quality is lost to MP3 encoding than analog ripping anyway (Supposing you have a good sound-card with built in "Save what you Play" software... the Sound Blaster Live comes with such features.) Must be sure that you disable all system sounds and don't tax your machine. There are good ways to do this, and I would know -- I've had CDs so scratched up ripping digitally just wasn't working, but for some reason I was able to rip in analog. And as I said, the analog ripping didn't effect the sound quality any more so than the transition to MP3, in fact, probably much less.
I've love to buy a copy of this CD, burn a copy onto a very generic, unmarked (no branding information) blank CD, and then take it back to Wal-mart and claim that it's defective as it had no disk face printed on it. Get a replacement. Repeat.
So they stopped making the machines? They slashed the price, injected a few hundreds of thousands of more machines into the userbase, and have now set them up to sell more copies of Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure 2, and (with any luck) a future version of NiGHTS.
The best thing that could happen to the platform now is for Hitachi or NEC to decide to pick up production of a 3rd party machine with DVD capabilities and a groovy form factor. (I love my Dreamcast to death, but the machine does look a bit too much like a toy for my taste.)
The rubber ducky is someone's own self selected (I assume) ICON, much like the log-in screens of many multi-user desktop environments. It's not just a mirror image of the one used by Apple, as one might immediately think. Close examination will reveal that.
As for the O/I power icon. As far as I know a 1 inside of a 0 has been a universally accepted power-button indicator since Ugh first chisled his first power button out of stone and showed it to the rest of the tribe.
This is small stuff, but big business, and the only sure thing right now is that Sony, the industry leader, is in trouble.
The article doesn't really explain why this guy thinks the new Gamecube will do so well.
If it's purely those breath-taking graphics he speaks of, that's hardly a factor anymore.
In the end, the visiual differences between a Gamecube, a Playstation 2, and an X-Box will almost certainly be hard to determine by most poeple (yeah, die-hard gamers may know what to look for... but even they might have trouble).
I agree that the Playstation 2 IS in trouble; but Sony is very foolishly pissing off their third parties...
However, until the Game Cube and X-Box make a real showing it's hard to tell if there will even be a clear winner.
Some people say the video game market is setting it's self up for a serious crash. How can we be sure that they won't all do poorly?
As I've mentioned many times in the past, my guess is that the Gamecube will dominate followed by the X-Box, but it's still too early to write any of these three systems off as "doomed" yet. Not even Sony's monster. Sony has money, they aren't going anywhere.
I could use crappy free alternatives, or I could make a mistake and buy crappy commercial. But in the end some of the best software for any given task could be on either side of that line, but what you'll normally find is that anything worth paying for has a price tag on it.
I don't complain when I have to shell out some cash for good software, nor do I complain when free software blows. I just don't use it.
...but it would be EVEN BETTER with some of the additional breadth and quality of closed apps out there.
I don't know if that was a cleverly hidden flaimbait or not, but I'll assume it wasn't because for the most part agree.
One of my biggest problems with much of the "Free" software that everybody seems to love so much is that the greater majority of it is worth every penny of the price.
This is esspecially true of games. While there might be one or two high quality free games that accidently slips out once in a while, there aren't a lot of really interesting free projects going about. A handful at best.
Every now and then something really cool does pop up -- but progress on such projects moves really slowly and you sometimes wish those free projects would get funding and go commercial just so you'd have a better chance of seeing the project completed.
Once again, I'm not saying free software is bad -- I LOVE free things -- but I'll pay $50 for a good solid game before I'll even think about wasting time downloading 5 stupid Tetris or Boulderdash clones.
This is insane. DirectX games currently run by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin, can you imagine the horror when yet *another* abstraction layer is added? And can you imagine the dark clouds over the game companies' tech support when they read "Yeah I'm running under Win 98.. i mean.. well, Linux, really..."
Actually -- In case you haven't noticed, that apraisal of DirectX hasn't applied since DirectX 5, maybe even as far back as DirectX 3.
Most recently, games for DirectX really make one wonder why everything else about Windows is so bad.
DirectX is probably the single best thing about Windows, and it's actually one damned good game developement API.
Actually, crappy, complicated installation is one of the reasons I don't buy so many PC games anymore. I just don't have time to futz with video drivers, patches, etc. People used to rag DOS games for being incompatible with hardware... have you checked out the README for a Windows game lately?
Yes. And I can't remember the last time I had something that wouldn't run on my fairly typical system (GeForce 2 GTS, Sound Blaster Live, Pentium III 800).
I realize some people have "Less than Optimal" systems for gaming, and some hardware has some pretty bad support for DirectX, but any decent hardware is going to have good DirectX support, and if someone says they constantly have trouble in DirectX games I'd have to question their hardware purchasing decisions more-so than the quality of the API or the games they are buying.
Having a DirectX implimentation for Linux could generally be a GOOD THING. There are many people who only keep Windows around for games.
I'm wondering if Microsoft will try to put a stop to this before it gets too far. But they've yet to (as far as I know) take action against Wine, so maybe they know fighting the beast head on will only make it stronger.
I have pretty undeniable proof that AIM taps into the MIC and listens to conversations, then encodes them using some proprietary format and sends it off to the NSA.
Then, all of the most vile and evil things said by users who don't know they are actually being listened to through their microphones are force-fed back into the minds of the general public (via thought-controlling microwaves) and this is what's contributing to the downfall of America's Youth (see recent school shootings), not to mention global warming, the spread of AIDS, Bush as US President, and the California Energy Crisis. fnord
I beg of you, my fellow slashdotters! UNINSTALL your AIM clients and wrap aluminum foil around your heads!
It's the only way we can survive as a race of multicellular-semi-humanoid-bipedal-lifeforms!
As it happens, I'v used a few Jabber clients and I'm not impressed. I'll admit the newest version of JabberIM isn't too bad, and it has potential -- but somehow I can't help but feel the fact that (as of right now) I have to use jabber.com's server puts me in the same boat as I'm in just sticking with ICQ or AIM. On that note, if it didn't support the other networks it would be useless to me since nobody else I know uses Jabber. For that reason, I simply stick with ICQ and AIM.
It's a vicious circle.
Oh yeah, and if you don't support the existing system and can't push the system onto all your customers, how do you get market share?
Offer a superior service with all of the best features in an opened standard. Push it hard. Convince ISP's that investing in Message servers along side their Mail servers is a service that they will need to seriously consider because if it starts to get popular their competition might already be there and winning customers.
I will commend Jabber for coming this far, and it does look like it could go places.
But in order for Jabber to get where I think a message system needs to be it should be AS OPENED AS E-MAIL and it's not quiet there yet.
If it were, I wouldn't be using JABBER.COM as the server I have to log into unless there were some good reason for me to do so, and not having a choice isn't a good reason.
I've used Jabber, and it doesn't quite do what I'm suggesting, at least, it didn't appear to.
Besides, support for the other networks only insures it will never become the standard.
The idea I'm suggesting would work like a hybrid of both current day e-mail and Instant-Crap software.
In a perfect situation...
* Each ISP hosts a server for their customers (and other servers would of course exist, much as it does with E-mail).
* Messaging would of course Peer to Peer, not requiring the servers after Login has taken place. (Login is only there to validate online status and present requesting clients with the last known IP of the user).
* And it WOULDN'T NEED TO SUPPORT OTHER NETWORKS.
* Anti-Spam, Encrytion, and other such features could be designed in from the ground up, rather than horribly shoehorned in later on.
But unfortunately, I know this vision will never be realized.
The next course of action is to surplant it with a single standard that everybody can agree on.
A standard to be run by the ISPs in much the same way that E-mail is run.
A standard which is opened, and indisputable (yeah, right), and which no one body can control.
A standard which uses an address convention that is universal to the net, in much the same way email@domain.com is universal.
Perhaps an OLM* standard could pop up that operated similar to current software... had built in anti-spam measures... was opened and free... and was operated at the expense of ISPs (A value added service that would form by it's self if the software was available.)
Just think... maybe name*domain.com or some-such address. The replacement for e-mail.
Someone writes a bunch of opened sourced servers for it, someone writes a bunch of opened sourced clients, and boom... The OLM's replace the IM's with a free alternative that nobody can control.
This is an idea I've been going over in my head for ages -- and I've even considered working on it myself but I'm not sure where to begin.
(OLM = On-Line Message. I hate the term IM... it's stupid AOL induced crap. BBS users remember the term OLM from years back. Even ICQ windows clearly state along the top "online message". It's time we replace the IM's with OLMs I say!)
many of the officers and NCO's (as opposed to rank&file soldiers) have been among the most clueful customers I've ever dealt with...
Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are more clueful because the ranking system works somewhat like the Moderation System here at Slashdot.
All of the really Intelligent and Insightful people earn promotions, and all of the idiots stay at the bottom.
It's a wonderful system that works as well to ensure that there are high quality officers in the Army as the Slashdot Moderation system ensures that there are high quality... uh... nevermind.
The Indrema, for better or worse, really only had the interest of the Linux community anyway.
If developers started bashing X-Box bits around with Linux instead of the Windows 2000 Kernal, the Indrema's only selling point would be lost. (And that could happen anyway).
The worst part is, that history shows that people tend to focus on Duality. A single pair of opposing forces. This Yin-Yang tendecy is reflected everywhere in most cultures, and it's been ever apparent in the video game market.
There are at any given time only two real contenders, sometimes 3 with two strong and one sinking fast.
Now we have Dreamcast, Game Cube, Playstation 2, X-Box, and Indrema(pfft).
There will only be two that do well, and I have two sets of answers.
The first is the ones I'm cheering for, which would be the Game Cube and Dreamcast, but I'm kind of a video game purist, so I know this isn't a realistic guess.
The realistic view is the Game Cube and the X-Box, mostly because Sony is really screwing up the Playstation 2 in the same way Sega screwed up the Saturn. Dreamcast has Sega killing it, and even if 3rd party Dreamcast units do start to show up it will be too little too late. That's not to say if you have a Dreamcast already that there won't be some awesome new games for it, there are many to come, but it's days sadly ARE numbered.
With a market this saturated, Indrema never had a chance. Not even if the market were booming. And even if it were booming, there could be as many as three doing really well, and three still may do well, but it would be the first time. It's VERY unrealistic to even hope that the Indrema might be one of those three in that off chance.
It's more realistic to think that the Dreamcast would, esspecially if 3rd parties begin producing DVD Capable Dreamcast boxes (a real possibility, actually.)
This is a long winded post, even for me, but I'll finish it by giving my quick points as to why I think the Playstation 2 will ultimately not do as well as the Playstation 1.
* The PS1 is cheap and plays all Playstation 1 games.
* The PS2's DVD capabilities are disappointing to many and just adequate for the rest. DVD enthusiasts already have a real DVD player, though. So DVD isn't a selling point anymore.
* Sony still relies on 3rd parties for the majority of their best titles (what few outstanding ones there are, anyway). Most of devs are largely displeased with the PS2 for either liscense reasons or technical reasons. Nintendo always has Link, Mario, and Samus, and Microsoft already has potentially every dev who has ever touched DirectX.
* The PS2's high price will come down, but it's not going to get any easier to develope for, not even if Sony upsthe memory specs in a revision of the console as many people seem to suspect they may do.
* Lastly - Let them up the specs. That would piss off the people who already own one. You can divide a market with a new console, but NEVER try to divide a market with the same console. Non-technical people don't buy into "system specs" on a game console.
Ours was one team at America Online, but there are others, monitoring violations in e-mail, on member Web sites, and throughout the company's staple, instant messages.
Is this to lead me to believe that anytime someone uses AIM, that it's being monitor?
I know that ICQ is peer to peer, sending messages directly to the other person's IP, but AIM doesn't seem to do this unless you use Direct Connection.
Until having read that line, I just assumed AOL had better things to do than monitor conversations and e-mail. fnord
It's even more powerful because GBA includes sprite scaling and rotation, which required Super FX acceleration on Super NES.
Rotoscaling did not require the SuperFX chip. The SuperFX was pure marketing hype. Very technically speaking, the SuperFX chip was nothing more than a 4, 8, or 12 mhz Math-Coprocessor which was added to some vector based games such as StarFox, FX Racing, and later, used to aid the Mode 7 hardware to set up the geometry for DOOM. (Bitmap rotoscaling was still handled by the Mode 7, but the vector surfaces were generatd by SuperFX, as best I understand it - a real hack.)
What's worse is that developers often refused to develope using SuperFX because including the hardware on the catridge increased the cost of the game (duh!).
Slashdot Mirror
It's not written anywhere.
When they come, I just hope Humans don't taste very good to them.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Actaully, if you look at the wavelength of Red, Green, and Blue you will notice something interesting.
Red is a greater distance higher than green than green is to blue, meaning that a wavelength between Green and Red would in fact be an altogether fourth colour, which is exactly what the Tetrachromat would see.
How their brains interpret this data however is totally beyond explaination to those of us who have "normal" three colour vision.
You can't say it's like another shade of red, because saying that is like saying green is another shade of blue. It is not.
The fact is, there is no language to explain colours to someone who can not see them. It just can't be done.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
You probably eat Pork.
Pigs are smarter than dogs, it's pretty much a proven fact.
Luckily for that dog YOU seem to love so much, it doesn't taste as good as the pig.
...
Cats often treat their owners (and their owner's property) with the disdain you mention because Cats, unlike dogs, learn through very basic problem solving skills typical of an independent nature, while dogs learn through repetitive conditioning typical of pack mentality.
There is safty in numbers, which protect the dog's pack mentality.
As an individual, it's a damn good thing cats really aren't very choice meat.
...
I for one eat almost no meat at all, limiting myself to almost no red meat, a lot of fish and VERY LITTLE turkey or chicken.
It's not a moral issue, really. Them dumb animals are just so bad for you.
...
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
And, really, when I play games, the underlying OS is merely a commodity...I don't care what it is so long as it gets the job done.
The problem with this logic is it makes so much sense that the fanatical Linux user won't accept it.
They can't understand that some people actually DO like playing games. In fact, some people are more fanatical about games than then Linux dorks are about Operating Systems.
I once explained to a friend that it didn't matter that my main game machine ran Windows ME and there was no way in hell I was putting BSD on it. He continued to bash the fact that my machine is "wasted" becaues it's not running Linux.
I explained to him that my tower is running BSD, and my game machine runs Windows, as does my Laptop and my image scanning/e-mail/internet/blahblah machine.
He said he didn't understand how I could accept the fact that I was playing my game on a machine that as he put it "Crashed all the time."
Then, he called me a liar when I told him that not only does my Windows machine almost never crash, I literally don't get ANY problems out of it. Not a single blue screen, no lock ups, not even illegal operations unless I run some crappy little program, and even then they don't take down the whole machine. Those proggies exit quitly and life goes on.
He said there was no way I was getting that functionality out of this machine. I insisted that he did.
I guess he doesn't believe that I've literally played Homeworld Cataclysm for 4 days straight without shutting down or resetting, only pausing it seldom to take a shit, get grub, and to drink Tea.
I've been doing the same thing with Black & White since it came out.
The fact is -- The Zealots who hate Windows the most have less and less TECHNICAL reasons to hate it every day, but their MORAL reasons conflict so they're very quick to spout technically inaccurate reasons to justify the fact that they just don't like Microsoft. They have the right not to like Microsoft or use their products.
But in the end, what it comes down to is that any die-hard gamer is going to run Windows. At this point, that doesn't have a chancy ball of snow's hell of changing anytime soon.
And don't bother trying to convince gamers of idiotic political, moral, or inaccurate technical reasons as to why they should "Switch", because at the end of the day if it doesn't play the coolest, newest game, a gamer isn't going to care.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
By now they have no doubt logged my IP address and sent a complaint to my ISP that I'm a potential pirate, and asking that my account be revoked.
Worse than that, they've sent two hired goons to your house.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
If you can manage to find some old crappy 2x CD-ROM or something that WILL play one of these, just rip in analog with your sound card and then encode to MP3.
Either that, or don't encode to MP3 at all, just burn it to another CD.
It's hardly an issue, more sound quality is lost to MP3 encoding than analog ripping anyway (Supposing you have a good sound-card with built in "Save what you Play" software... the Sound Blaster Live comes with such features.) Must be sure that you disable all system sounds and don't tax your machine. There are good ways to do this, and I would know -- I've had CDs so scratched up ripping digitally just wasn't working, but for some reason I was able to rip in analog. And as I said, the analog ripping didn't effect the sound quality any more so than the transition to MP3, in fact, probably much less.
I've love to buy a copy of this CD, burn a copy onto a very generic, unmarked (no branding information) blank CD, and then take it back to Wal-mart and claim that it's defective as it had no disk face printed on it. Get a replacement. Repeat.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
It's all in the name of business.
...
Sega is a "Software Company" remember?
So they stopped making the machines? They slashed the price, injected a few hundreds of thousands of more machines into the userbase, and have now set them up to sell more copies of Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure 2, and (with any luck) a future version of NiGHTS.
The best thing that could happen to the platform now is for Hitachi or NEC to decide to pick up production of a 3rd party machine with DVD capabilities and a groovy form factor. (I love my Dreamcast to death, but the machine does look a bit too much like a toy for my taste.)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Only then, when we can sway the fence-riders, will we make a stand.
Worst part about fense riders is watching them leap to the other side over a fat stack of cash.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Actually...
The rubber ducky is someone's own self selected (I assume) ICON, much like the log-in screens of many multi-user desktop environments. It's not just a mirror image of the one used by Apple, as one might immediately think. Close examination will reveal that.
As for the O/I power icon. As far as I know a 1 inside of a 0 has been a universally accepted power-button indicator since Ugh first chisled his first power button out of stone and showed it to the rest of the tribe.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
This is small stuff, but big business, and the only sure thing right now is that Sony, the industry leader, is in trouble.
... but even they might have trouble).
The article doesn't really explain why this guy thinks the new Gamecube will do so well.
If it's purely those breath-taking graphics he speaks of, that's hardly a factor anymore.
In the end, the visiual differences between a Gamecube, a Playstation 2, and an X-Box will almost certainly be hard to determine by most poeple (yeah, die-hard gamers may know what to look for
I agree that the Playstation 2 IS in trouble; but Sony is very foolishly pissing off their third parties...
However, until the Game Cube and X-Box make a real showing it's hard to tell if there will even be a clear winner.
Some people say the video game market is setting it's self up for a serious crash. How can we be sure that they won't all do poorly?
As I've mentioned many times in the past, my guess is that the Gamecube will dominate followed by the X-Box, but it's still too early to write any of these three systems off as "doomed" yet. Not even Sony's monster. Sony has money, they aren't going anywhere.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Luckily, nobody FORCES me to buy software.
I could use crappy free alternatives, or I could make a mistake and buy crappy commercial. But in the end some of the best software for any given task could be on either side of that line, but what you'll normally find is that anything worth paying for has a price tag on it.
I don't complain when I have to shell out some cash for good software, nor do I complain when free software blows. I just don't use it.
Luckily, in some ways, I still have some choices.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
WINE sure sounds like emulation to me.
Very strictly, yes.
But considering how most traditional emulation is being done, some would argue that WINE better closely compares to a "Wrapper".
Besides, as the title says, "Wine Is Not Emulation".
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
...but it would be EVEN BETTER with some of the additional breadth and quality of closed apps out there.
I don't know if that was a cleverly hidden flaimbait or not, but I'll assume it wasn't because for the most part agree.
One of my biggest problems with much of the "Free" software that everybody seems to love so much is that the greater majority of it is worth every penny of the price.
This is esspecially true of games. While there might be one or two high quality free games that accidently slips out once in a while, there aren't a lot of really interesting free projects going about. A handful at best.
Every now and then something really cool does pop up -- but progress on such projects moves really slowly and you sometimes wish those free projects would get funding and go commercial just so you'd have a better chance of seeing the project completed.
Once again, I'm not saying free software is bad -- I LOVE free things -- but I'll pay $50 for a good solid game before I'll even think about wasting time downloading 5 stupid Tetris or Boulderdash clones.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
This is insane. DirectX games currently run by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin, can you imagine the horror when yet *another* abstraction layer is added? And can you imagine the dark clouds over the game companies' tech support when they read "Yeah I'm running under Win 98.. i mean.. well, Linux, really..."
Actually -- In case you haven't noticed, that apraisal of DirectX hasn't applied since DirectX 5, maybe even as far back as DirectX 3.
Most recently, games for DirectX really make one wonder why everything else about Windows is so bad.
DirectX is probably the single best thing about Windows, and it's actually one damned good game developement API.
Actually, crappy, complicated installation is one of the reasons I don't buy so many PC games anymore. I just don't have time to futz with video drivers, patches, etc. People used to rag DOS games for being incompatible with hardware... have you checked out the README for a Windows game lately?
Yes. And I can't remember the last time I had something that wouldn't run on my fairly typical system (GeForce 2 GTS, Sound Blaster Live, Pentium III 800).
I realize some people have "Less than Optimal" systems for gaming, and some hardware has some pretty bad support for DirectX, but any decent hardware is going to have good DirectX support, and if someone says they constantly have trouble in DirectX games I'd have to question their hardware purchasing decisions more-so than the quality of the API or the games they are buying.
Having a DirectX implimentation for Linux could generally be a GOOD THING. There are many people who only keep Windows around for games.
I'm wondering if Microsoft will try to put a stop to this before it gets too far. But they've yet to (as far as I know) take action against Wine, so maybe they know fighting the beast head on will only make it stronger.
Here's to hope.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I mean -- if a mother doesn't want her 6 year old shooting people, don't give him quarters!
If a 10 year old wants to shoot people...
...he can mow lawns for Arcade money!
If a 16 year old wants to shoot people...
...it's better off happening in the Arcade at school!
For that matter -- maybe they need to put video games in Highschools.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I have pretty undeniable proof that AIM taps into the MIC and listens to conversations, then encodes them using some proprietary format and sends it off to the NSA.
Then, all of the most vile and evil things said by users who don't know they are actually being listened to through their microphones are force-fed back into the minds of the general public (via thought-controlling microwaves) and this is what's contributing to the downfall of America's Youth (see recent school shootings), not to mention global warming, the spread of AIDS, Bush as US President, and the California Energy Crisis. fnord
I beg of you, my fellow slashdotters! UNINSTALL your AIM clients and wrap aluminum foil around your heads!
It's the only way we can survive as a race of multicellular-semi-humanoid-bipedal-lifeforms!
And I mean it.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
As it happens, I'v used a few Jabber clients and I'm not impressed. I'll admit the newest version of JabberIM isn't too bad, and it has potential -- but somehow I can't help but feel the fact that (as of right now) I have to use jabber.com's server puts me in the same boat as I'm in just sticking with ICQ or AIM. On that note, if it didn't support the other networks it would be useless to me since nobody else I know uses Jabber. For that reason, I simply stick with ICQ and AIM.
It's a vicious circle.
Oh yeah, and if you don't support the existing system and can't push the system onto all your customers, how do you get market share?
Offer a superior service with all of the best features in an opened standard. Push it hard. Convince ISP's that investing in Message servers along side their Mail servers is a service that they will need to seriously consider because if it starts to get popular their competition might already be there and winning customers.
I will commend Jabber for coming this far, and it does look like it could go places.
But in order for Jabber to get where I think a message system needs to be it should be AS OPENED AS E-MAIL and it's not quiet there yet.
If it were, I wouldn't be using JABBER.COM as the server I have to log into unless there were some good reason for me to do so, and not having a choice isn't a good reason.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I've used Jabber, and it doesn't quite do what I'm suggesting, at least, it didn't appear to.
Besides, support for the other networks only insures it will never become the standard.
The idea I'm suggesting would work like a hybrid of both current day e-mail and Instant-Crap software.
In a perfect situation...
* Each ISP hosts a server for their customers (and other servers would of course exist, much as it does with E-mail).
* Messaging would of course Peer to Peer, not requiring the servers after Login has taken place. (Login is only there to validate online status and present requesting clients with the last known IP of the user).
* And it WOULDN'T NEED TO SUPPORT OTHER NETWORKS.
* Anti-Spam, Encrytion, and other such features could be designed in from the ground up, rather than horribly shoehorned in later on.
But unfortunately, I know this vision will never be realized.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
The next course of action is to surplant it with a single standard that everybody can agree on.
A standard to be run by the ISPs in much the same way that E-mail is run.
A standard which is opened, and indisputable (yeah, right), and which no one body can control.
A standard which uses an address convention that is universal to the net, in much the same way email@domain.com is universal.
Perhaps an OLM* standard could pop up that operated similar to current software... had built in anti-spam measures... was opened and free... and was operated at the expense of ISPs (A value added service that would form by it's self if the software was available.)
Just think... maybe name*domain.com or some-such address. The replacement for e-mail.
Someone writes a bunch of opened sourced servers for it, someone writes a bunch of opened sourced clients, and boom... The OLM's replace the IM's with a free alternative that nobody can control.
This is an idea I've been going over in my head for ages -- and I've even considered working on it myself but I'm not sure where to begin.
(OLM = On-Line Message. I hate the term IM... it's stupid AOL induced crap. BBS users remember the term OLM from years back. Even ICQ windows clearly state along the top "online message". It's time we replace the IM's with OLMs I say!)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
So that means that they have discovered something that does nothing? Invisible, has no mass and travel at fantastic speeds?
And they went one mile below the surface of the south pole just to find it.
Maybe they should have set up camp in Washington DC.
No, the device is sensitive to Muons, not Morons.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
many of the officers and NCO's (as opposed to rank&file soldiers) have been among the most clueful customers I've ever dealt with...
Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are more clueful because the ranking system works somewhat like the Moderation System here at Slashdot.
All of the really Intelligent and Insightful people earn promotions, and all of the idiots stay at the bottom.
It's a wonderful system that works as well to ensure that there are high quality officers in the Army as the Slashdot Moderation system ensures that there are high quality... uh... nevermind.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
The Indrema, for better or worse, really only had the interest of the Linux community anyway.
If developers started bashing X-Box bits around with Linux instead of the Windows 2000 Kernal, the Indrema's only selling point would be lost. (And that could happen anyway).
The worst part is, that history shows that people tend to focus on Duality. A single pair of opposing forces. This Yin-Yang tendecy is reflected everywhere in most cultures, and it's been ever apparent in the video game market.
There are at any given time only two real contenders, sometimes 3 with two strong and one sinking fast.
(SNes, Genesis, TG-16)
(Game Boy, Game Gear, Turbo Express)
(N64, Playstation, Saturn)
Now we have Dreamcast, Game Cube, Playstation 2, X-Box, and Indrema(pfft).
There will only be two that do well, and I have two sets of answers.
The first is the ones I'm cheering for, which would be the Game Cube and Dreamcast, but I'm kind of a video game purist, so I know this isn't a realistic guess.
The realistic view is the Game Cube and the X-Box, mostly because Sony is really screwing up the Playstation 2 in the same way Sega screwed up the Saturn. Dreamcast has Sega killing it, and even if 3rd party Dreamcast units do start to show up it will be too little too late. That's not to say if you have a Dreamcast already that there won't be some awesome new games for it, there are many to come, but it's days sadly ARE numbered.
With a market this saturated, Indrema never had a chance. Not even if the market were booming. And even if it were booming, there could be as many as three doing really well, and three still may do well, but it would be the first time. It's VERY unrealistic to even hope that the Indrema might be one of those three in that off chance.
It's more realistic to think that the Dreamcast would, esspecially if 3rd parties begin producing DVD Capable Dreamcast boxes (a real possibility, actually.)
This is a long winded post, even for me, but I'll finish it by giving my quick points as to why I think the Playstation 2 will ultimately not do as well as the Playstation 1.
* The PS1 is cheap and plays all Playstation 1 games.
* The PS2's DVD capabilities are disappointing to many and just adequate for the rest. DVD enthusiasts already have a real DVD player, though. So DVD isn't a selling point anymore.
* Sony still relies on 3rd parties for the majority of their best titles (what few outstanding ones there are, anyway). Most of devs are largely displeased with the PS2 for either liscense reasons or technical reasons. Nintendo always has Link, Mario, and Samus, and Microsoft already has potentially every dev who has ever touched DirectX.
* The PS2's high price will come down, but it's not going to get any easier to develope for, not even if Sony upsthe memory specs in a revision of the console as many people seem to suspect they may do.
* Lastly - Let them up the specs. That would piss off the people who already own one. You can divide a market with a new console, but NEVER try to divide a market with the same console. Non-technical people don't buy into "system specs" on a game console.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
One thing that bothers me, though...
.
Ours was one team at America Online, but there are others, monitoring violations in e-mail, on member Web sites, and throughout the company's staple, instant messages
Is this to lead me to believe that anytime someone uses AIM, that it's being monitor?
I know that ICQ is peer to peer, sending messages directly to the other person's IP, but AIM doesn't seem to do this unless you use Direct Connection.
Until having read that line, I just assumed AOL had better things to do than monitor conversations and e-mail. fnord
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
It's even more powerful because GBA includes sprite scaling and rotation, which required Super FX acceleration on Super NES.
Rotoscaling did not require the SuperFX chip. The SuperFX was pure marketing hype. Very technically speaking, the SuperFX chip was nothing more than a 4, 8, or 12 mhz Math-Coprocessor which was added to some vector based games such as StarFox, FX Racing, and later, used to aid the Mode 7 hardware to set up the geometry for DOOM. (Bitmap rotoscaling was still handled by the Mode 7, but the vector surfaces were generatd by SuperFX, as best I understand it - a real hack.)
What's worse is that developers often refused to develope using SuperFX because including the hardware on the catridge increased the cost of the game (duh!).
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I think Conker's Bad Fur Day proves they've given up on being sweet and innocent.
But then, Rareware were always really warped dispite Nintendo's previous image.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"