This story doesn't add up. That one company that reported the other ones could simply have set its prices slightly below the competition's fixed prices and grabbed all market share, hence making huge profits and destroying the cartel.
The economig logic behind collusion laws is completely bogus, it's really just a simple political racket.
Most likely these 9 "guilty" companies didn't play the political game well enough. This game was won by Micron's political team and by european bureaucrats. Well played.
In France, the 'Free' ISP provides a freebox (modem) that can already do that, ie stream content from the computer to the TV. The feature is based on VLC and works with Windows, Linux or MacOS. More information here (in French, but with screenshots).
Of course, that's just one more feature of the free service, on top of TV (100 basic channels + channels you can subscribe to), phone (using VoIP, calls are free to a lot of countries), and internet (ADSL 1 mbit upstream, up to 20 mbits downstream), oh and video on demand too (no TV shows so far, only movies, costing from 2 to 5 euros). All that for 30 euros a month.
How to get into the competitive side of Quake3 and UT2K4: - get the competition mods: OSP for Quake 3, UTComp for Unreal Tournament 2004 - play some public games in the modes enjoy: 1v1, TDM, FFA, CTF... if you haven't played with OSP/UTComp before you've probably only played noobs, so expect to get owned here. - check the demos of the best players, you'll learn a lot from that. - find the IRC channels where pickup games are organized, even if they're not as good as clan games they're still much better than your average public game. It's a good starting point, and if you enjoy the pickup games then you can look for a clan and get more into the community.
About cheating, in all honesty, it is not something you should care about. You shouldn't think about it: in most cases when you think someone is cheating he's probably not, and if he is, well what can you do about it? Stop caring about it, problem solved.
We have free national house-to-house VoIP phone for about a year or so in France. And you don't have to use your computer: just plug your phone in the 'Freebox' given with your Free.fr subscription. You also get broadband internet (up to 15 mbits in some areas) and TV (not everywhere), all for 30 euros/month. For once that France isn't years behind technologically, I thought I'd mention it...
Slashdot Mirror
This story doesn't add up. That one company that reported the other ones could simply have set its prices slightly below the competition's fixed prices and grabbed all market share, hence making huge profits and destroying the cartel.
The economig logic behind collusion laws is completely bogus, it's really just a simple political racket.
Most likely these 9 "guilty" companies didn't play the political game well enough. This game was won by Micron's political team and by european bureaucrats. Well played.
In France, the 'Free' ISP provides a freebox (modem) that can already do that, ie stream content from the computer to the TV. The feature is based on VLC and works with Windows, Linux or MacOS. More information here (in French, but with screenshots).
Of course, that's just one more feature of the free service, on top of TV (100 basic channels + channels you can subscribe to), phone (using VoIP, calls are free to a lot of countries), and internet (ADSL 1 mbit upstream, up to 20 mbits downstream), oh and video on demand too (no TV shows so far, only movies, costing from 2 to 5 euros). All that for 30 euros a month.
So why should I care about Viiv?
There's online competitions, but cheating and latency are big issues. A LAN setting is required when money is at stake.
How to get into the competitive side of Quake3 and UT2K4:
- get the competition mods: OSP for Quake 3, UTComp for Unreal Tournament 2004
- play some public games in the modes enjoy: 1v1, TDM, FFA, CTF... if you haven't played with OSP/UTComp before you've probably only played noobs, so expect to get owned here.
- check the demos of the best players, you'll learn a lot from that.
- find the IRC channels where pickup games are organized, even if they're not as good as clan games they're still much better than your average public game. It's a good starting point, and if you enjoy the pickup games then you can look for a clan and get more into the community.
Some links:
http://www.esreality.com/ - genreal e-sport news/community, some demos
http://www.challenge-tv.com/ - Quake demos
http://www.ggl.com/ - competition in the US
http://www.clanbase.com/ - competition in Europe
http://www.unrealnorth.com/ - Unreal community
This isn't everything of course, there are many more leagues & communities.
About cheating, in all honesty, it is not something you should care about. You shouldn't think about it: in most cases when you think someone is cheating he's probably not, and if he is, well what can you do about it? Stop caring about it, problem solved.
We have free national house-to-house VoIP phone for about a year or so in France. And you don't have to use your computer: just plug your phone in the 'Freebox' given with your Free.fr subscription. You also get broadband internet (up to 15 mbits in some areas) and TV (not everywhere), all for 30 euros/month. For once that France isn't years behind technologically, I thought I'd mention it...