My guess it's the simple fact that one program still can't really interact with another program's data.
The likelihood of Apple ever really changing this is probably next to zero, and it's the main reason I have no interest in the iPhone. What use is a computer in my pocket when I either need to use one program that is complex enough to handle every task I could possible need, or I need to make my tasks so simple that no data need ever be shared between two tools?
If I go to the movies and watch something, I can't then resell the ticket for someone else to watch it.
If I go to a concert, the same is true.
Same with theatre.
At least with episodic content *I* can reconsume the content as much as I like.
Sure there's something to be said for reselling things, especially when they're as expensive as a $60 game. But there's been a history of entertainment you can't resell since before the internet even existed.
The misconception that you have a "right" to resell anything is kinda silly. I can resell the disk it's one. I can't resell the experience unless that which provides the experience (be it a person or a piece of software) consents to providing that experience a second time (such as accepting ticket stubs from an old performance for a free repeat performance for loyal fans, or some such promotion).
Honestly, I don't resell disk based games anyway most of the time. If a game's only worth $40 to me, I don't buy it for $60 then hope to resell it before its value drops below $20, I just wait until it costs $40.
I also don't resell my clothes when styles change. Or my food when it goes bad.
I don't understand what the fixation with reselling videogames is when so much else in our lives is one-way consumption, or could be resold (such as clothes) but few people care to.
Even before hardware accelerated PhysX was on CUDA and you only got it with the standalone card, I always thought PhysX looked a bet nicer than Havok in action.
I've been wishing more games used PhysX for a while, but it seems that if a game is going to be cross-target to the consoles as well, Havok is just a lot more likely.
It may just be my own perceptions, but things seem to have a bit more consistent behaviour in regard to momentum and mass in PhysX whereas Havok seems a bit "floaty" a lot of the time. This may just be a result of constants designers pick, or something, I don't really know the details. But I personally just like PhysX better, from a player standpoint, hardware accelerated or not.
Honestly, I've long felt Episodic content was almost a better answer.
Give me a $10 game that's 1/6 the content of a normal game. Give it the ability to download the next 'episode' as I go and I can pay $10 for each new sixth of the game I want to play.
If I don't enjoy a game enough to beat it, I can only pay the $30 for the half of it I played.
I'd probably spend more on games if I knew I was mostly going to only be playing for the bits I used, since I'd be more willing to take gambles.
If you pirate the game you say "I wanted to play this game badly enough to track down a pirated copy." I guarantee there's someone out there who sees that and says "so if we just made the DRM better, they'd be FORCED to play us."
The only way to win is to just skip the game, and give your money to the devs who don't put DRM on their games in the first place. Pirating games, for ideological reasons as much as for financial ones, just reinforces the horrible cycle. There's no game out there so good that you can't just skip it.
The sad thing is, though, that some developers have noted that releasing a game DRM free doesn't really decrease the rate of piracy. Plenty of people who are stealing the game are doing it because that's what they do, rather than for ideological reasons. The idea is often to prevent casual sharing, such as one person burning copies of the disk for his friends, and almost any DRM does that. Heck, even DVD CSS pretty much does that. Most nontechnical people can't copy DVDs but still use them, and that's "good enough."
I know you guys all think it's some big ideological thing to hate DRM, but there's two bad guys in this war. Hate both of them. You can't seriously expect companies to regularly say "hey, steal our work all you want." They're going to put in any protective measures they can come up with that they think will help their profit margin, and as long as it's profitable to do so (as long as piracy is so rampant) they're going to keep doing it no matter how long you shout "it's hurting your customers" at them - if it were really, really hurting their customers as much as you try to make it sound, it would also be hurting their bottom line enough for them to see the point.
You never had to stop the song. I imagine you haven't read the manual, and keep hitting the Power(stop) button to leave the WPS, rather than the select button (leave WPS but continue playing).
See the BuyersGuide page on the wiki but popular hardware are the e200 (there's a website called Froobi that sells ones they make sure are the v1 hardware for the e200 series, since the v2 is not yet compatible) or the Gigabeat F or S.
All of these can generally be had for USD100 or less.
Now that we have 3.0 out the door, one thing I want to try to do is get in contact with devs from Amarok, Mediamonkey, and other similar projects.
Rockbox has its own database format, but as it's open and our code for interacting with it is GPL many of these projects should be able to add support for syncing to Rockbox AND updating our database from host-side.
What this means, in theory, is that there could be several library-management programs users could pick from, and those would support all Rockbox devices and a library could be migrated from one to the next easily if you bought a new one, and so on.
No, if it said I would have to give them everything I own, I wouldn't click accept.
Seriously, you have no "right" to play the game. If you don't like their terms, stand up and walk away, or convince them to change it, but don't talk about rights.
If you don't agree to let them do this to you, don't click 'I agree' to the EULA.
Seriously, it's that simple: You, as the player, give thim that right by agreeing to the EULA. You have no right to play the game, and your various rights only protect you if you do not voluntarily waive them. That's why you have the right to remain silent but if you don't they get to use what you say. And that's why Blizzard gets to protect their software if you create and use an account.
Wikipedia articles are supposed to in turn cite THEIR sources. If you're going to use Wikipedia, then track down the original sources of the Wikipedia article and cite those instead.
Judge those sources on their merits, rather than trusting wikieditors to judge your sources for you. It doesn't really add much work, and you at least have a better chance of guessing if you're spouting gibberish. If you can't be bothered to do old fashioned book research, at least you can do that much.
Actually, among my users I'm considered preferred among the users because I don't show disdain toward the user. I just explain things. I'm not sure how "being literal" disqualifies me from interacting with users.
As well, the user interface changes I've recommended are often among the most popular for solving the users' problems in an effective way that doesn't break a rather complicated list of requirements on the developer side (this is in regards to a separate open source project I'm involved in) so I'm not sure what you're basing your recommendations on.
While I'll be the first to admit that if an argument begins, an asperger's sufferer is truly a problem (we have a tendency to be incredibly stubborn and not back down ever) I'm not sure what you're basing your generalizations on, and I'd suggest that maybe you aren't as familiar with the disorder and real (read: diagnosed) sufferers of it as you might think you are. Many people think they they would qualify as having it, but many of these are just contentious people who don't really fit the actual medical definition of the disorder.
I'm actually diagnosed with Asperger's and I find it fairly offensive that you think that it's either an excuse or an explanation.
Asperger's makes interpersonal relationships different, but in interacting in a technical standpoint it means that we're *less* likely to be directly offensive, and more likely to be simply very literal and very specific. You'll often hear things like "He was very knowledgeable but not very personable" but it also means that there's a tendency not to make personal statements, as that's not the job you're there for, such as saying things directly or indirectly insulting.
Any insult taken would likely be from the person over explaining and seeming to be condescending, often out of a desire for thoroughness rather than actual condescension.
Notice the use of the word "Had."
I'm sorry, but responding to a problem like that with that sort of language is somewhat ridiculous. Paypal is supposedly following their own policy. You can respond to it by acting professionally, writing it up for the public, and then returning to PayPal and trying to get access to someone higher up the command chain, or you can do what they've done, and mouth off about it. Considering the way they reacted in text, I have a hard time believing that they acted professionally enough on the phone to make the PayPal representitive honestly feel they were there in good faith. As well, their request that people assault PayPal with phonecalls and other contacts is somewhat petty.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of PayPal in the slightest, but this isn't the way to react to such things.
It works well. Surprisingly well. In fact *some* games will play at any native resolution, it seems. For example, DOA4 and Prey both seem quite happy at a nice 4:3 1024x768 (I have mine hooked up to a rather pathetic, ancient LCD monitor that cost far too much, many years back).
Anyway, the point being that while there aren't that many people with 1080p HDTVs, I'm sure there's a lot of people who will be happy that they can hook up their monitors, and pick 1080p-scale resolutions (not that they couldn't already, according to the resolution selection screen). I have a 720p TV but find that even on a 1024x768 monitor, games that display letterboxed on it look far better than they do on the TV (text is much more readable in Dead Rising, for example).
The interesting thing is that the Sandisk e200 line is PortalPlayer based. In fact, a decent bit of existing Rockbox code can be used in the port if it does ensue.
How is it a threat to anything? Rockbox goes on your DAP, and it gets new features... pretty simple. In fact, Rockbox has influenced more than a few people to buy iPods now that they get wider format support, and don't have to use iTunes. Of course, if you want iTunes, that's fine. And if you want the original retail operating system that's fine too. There's a handy saying "If it aint broke, don't fix it." If what you have does what you need, there's absolutely no argument for you to use our software.
Rockbox has its own database formwat. You put music on there however you want, it scans in the background, indexes by tags. Right now the features been disabled (due to the move to a new database created on-DAP instead of solely on computer) but Rockbox had features very similar to iPods smart playlists, and they'll most likely improve beyond them once they're reintegrated.
All Rockbox'ed players so far are able to be used as USB mass storage devices, and of course since our database format is open source plugins can always be readibly adapted for various media management tools to allow integration if they want to.
I love the fact that what we've got here is someone who judges a software by "screenshots." It's designed to add FEATURES. What one *should* be asking for is "How does this play my music better?" but instead we get "What does it look like?"
Rockbox gives you: A variety of codecs (including AAC, and soon WMA), a full parametric equalizer, the ability to create and store playlists on your unit, gapless playback, crossfade, crossfeed, the ability to search the database of songs on the player, both the ability to have Database and File Tree based browsing, gapless playback, and replaygain.
Instead someone judges it simply by the fact that sound has only been working on iPod since January, clearly demonstrating they have no real knowledge of the project. A very large portion of the code is not hardware dependent. That's like saying "They only released a driver for my videocard last week, so I shall judge my entire operating system's potential performance as if it were a week old operating system." That statement is clearly bunk, and if the original poster here new anything about how Rockbox worked, it'd be clear to him that his statement is bunk too.
There are laser pistols, as seen in at least two episodes. But bullets are "good enough" to kill a man, and low-tech handgun is both cheaper and probably easier to maintain yourself. Perhaps also more reliable because of the simplicity.
There's a few facts mentioned in this article that unfortunately lead me to believe the reviewer didn't complete the game. While I'll admit that's not *necessary* for a review, it generally leads to a more whole and balanced one. As well, it generally makes it less likely you'll make statements that are untrue such as "You cannot destroy buildings."
You can. You're just limited to certain ones. There are many buildings throughout the city you can destroy, but it's still a very small percentage. I *think* they're buildings that are supposed to belong to the "bad guys" or something. But the reason is irrelevant.
As well, if he's still fighting tanks and helicopters, he's not particularly far in the game, as the enemies advance technologically to small men in battlesuits (think Elementals from Mechwarrior/etc) and larger battlesuits / mecha. In fact, as *soon* as these become available they become standard issue for the "strike teams."
I don't know if there's more, as I myself haven't completed the game, but just as the repitition started setting in for me, the new enemies came into play, and I found myself needing new tactics to fight them (relative to tanks and helicopters, which by this point were less threatening than gnats.)
Thanks. I saw the post, figured since it'd shown up back on the front page mentioning the writeup at Groklaw early on would help sidestep some argument, then forgot to include the link apparently.
I remember reading this quite some time ago, actually during the development of HL1 if I recall. It could just be the fact that I just woke up, but I'm fairly certain about reading that they switched engines in the development of HL from Q1 to Q2. I'd imagine that some of the already developed code was portable enough that what you ended up with was a sort of 1.5 hybrid engine.:shrugs:
Just going off what I remember maybe reading 7ish+ years ago, but yeah.
I mean, what next, a tax for using a remote control to change channels as opposed to standing up and doing it physically? The law may be in place, but they can't honestly expect it to stay so... If it's to tax businesses who put a network in place on their own instead of using telcos, they could just define it as "between multiple sites" or something like that... anything that leaves the building, basically. *shrugs* I certainly hope common sense wins the day. If it applies to network data transfer, is it wired or wireless only? Floppys and CDs are data transfer to... how specific is the method? Bah.
Most people who use winamp use it primarily for MP3s. I honestly can't suggest it for video playback. It's never worked well for me.
What I will suggest for media playback in general is "Media Player Classic" available at sourceforge. I don't know what the general consensus is here, but for me, it has done what I've asked it to do, and that's good enough for me.
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My guess it's the simple fact that one program still can't really interact with another program's data.
The likelihood of Apple ever really changing this is probably next to zero, and it's the main reason I have no interest in the iPhone. What use is a computer in my pocket when I either need to use one program that is complex enough to handle every task I could possible need, or I need to make my tasks so simple that no data need ever be shared between two tools?
If I go to the movies and watch something, I can't then resell the ticket for someone else to watch it. If I go to a concert, the same is true. Same with theatre. At least with episodic content *I* can reconsume the content as much as I like. Sure there's something to be said for reselling things, especially when they're as expensive as a $60 game. But there's been a history of entertainment you can't resell since before the internet even existed. The misconception that you have a "right" to resell anything is kinda silly. I can resell the disk it's one. I can't resell the experience unless that which provides the experience (be it a person or a piece of software) consents to providing that experience a second time (such as accepting ticket stubs from an old performance for a free repeat performance for loyal fans, or some such promotion). Honestly, I don't resell disk based games anyway most of the time. If a game's only worth $40 to me, I don't buy it for $60 then hope to resell it before its value drops below $20, I just wait until it costs $40. I also don't resell my clothes when styles change. Or my food when it goes bad. I don't understand what the fixation with reselling videogames is when so much else in our lives is one-way consumption, or could be resold (such as clothes) but few people care to.
Even before hardware accelerated PhysX was on CUDA and you only got it with the standalone card, I always thought PhysX looked a bet nicer than Havok in action. I've been wishing more games used PhysX for a while, but it seems that if a game is going to be cross-target to the consoles as well, Havok is just a lot more likely. It may just be my own perceptions, but things seem to have a bit more consistent behaviour in regard to momentum and mass in PhysX whereas Havok seems a bit "floaty" a lot of the time. This may just be a result of constants designers pick, or something, I don't really know the details. But I personally just like PhysX better, from a player standpoint, hardware accelerated or not.
Honestly, I've long felt Episodic content was almost a better answer. Give me a $10 game that's 1/6 the content of a normal game. Give it the ability to download the next 'episode' as I go and I can pay $10 for each new sixth of the game I want to play. If I don't enjoy a game enough to beat it, I can only pay the $30 for the half of it I played. I'd probably spend more on games if I knew I was mostly going to only be playing for the bits I used, since I'd be more willing to take gambles.
If you pirate the game you say "I wanted to play this game badly enough to track down a pirated copy." I guarantee there's someone out there who sees that and says "so if we just made the DRM better, they'd be FORCED to play us." The only way to win is to just skip the game, and give your money to the devs who don't put DRM on their games in the first place. Pirating games, for ideological reasons as much as for financial ones, just reinforces the horrible cycle. There's no game out there so good that you can't just skip it. The sad thing is, though, that some developers have noted that releasing a game DRM free doesn't really decrease the rate of piracy. Plenty of people who are stealing the game are doing it because that's what they do, rather than for ideological reasons. The idea is often to prevent casual sharing, such as one person burning copies of the disk for his friends, and almost any DRM does that. Heck, even DVD CSS pretty much does that. Most nontechnical people can't copy DVDs but still use them, and that's "good enough." I know you guys all think it's some big ideological thing to hate DRM, but there's two bad guys in this war. Hate both of them. You can't seriously expect companies to regularly say "hey, steal our work all you want." They're going to put in any protective measures they can come up with that they think will help their profit margin, and as long as it's profitable to do so (as long as piracy is so rampant) they're going to keep doing it no matter how long you shout "it's hurting your customers" at them - if it were really, really hurting their customers as much as you try to make it sound, it would also be hurting their bottom line enough for them to see the point.
You never had to stop the song. I imagine you haven't read the manual, and keep hitting the Power(stop) button to leave the WPS, rather than the select button (leave WPS but continue playing).
See the BuyersGuide page on the wiki but popular hardware are the e200 (there's a website called Froobi that sells ones they make sure are the v1 hardware for the e200 series, since the v2 is not yet compatible) or the Gigabeat F or S. All of these can generally be had for USD100 or less.
Now that we have 3.0 out the door, one thing I want to try to do is get in contact with devs from Amarok, Mediamonkey, and other similar projects. Rockbox has its own database format, but as it's open and our code for interacting with it is GPL many of these projects should be able to add support for syncing to Rockbox AND updating our database from host-side. What this means, in theory, is that there could be several library-management programs users could pick from, and those would support all Rockbox devices and a library could be migrated from one to the next easily if you bought a new one, and so on.
No, if it said I would have to give them everything I own, I wouldn't click accept. Seriously, you have no "right" to play the game. If you don't like their terms, stand up and walk away, or convince them to change it, but don't talk about rights.
If you don't agree to let them do this to you, don't click 'I agree' to the EULA. Seriously, it's that simple: You, as the player, give thim that right by agreeing to the EULA. You have no right to play the game, and your various rights only protect you if you do not voluntarily waive them. That's why you have the right to remain silent but if you don't they get to use what you say. And that's why Blizzard gets to protect their software if you create and use an account.
Wikipedia articles are supposed to in turn cite THEIR sources. If you're going to use Wikipedia, then track down the original sources of the Wikipedia article and cite those instead. Judge those sources on their merits, rather than trusting wikieditors to judge your sources for you. It doesn't really add much work, and you at least have a better chance of guessing if you're spouting gibberish. If you can't be bothered to do old fashioned book research, at least you can do that much.
Actually, among my users I'm considered preferred among the users because I don't show disdain toward the user. I just explain things. I'm not sure how "being literal" disqualifies me from interacting with users.
As well, the user interface changes I've recommended are often among the most popular for solving the users' problems in an effective way that doesn't break a rather complicated list of requirements on the developer side (this is in regards to a separate open source project I'm involved in) so I'm not sure what you're basing your recommendations on.
While I'll be the first to admit that if an argument begins, an asperger's sufferer is truly a problem (we have a tendency to be incredibly stubborn and not back down ever) I'm not sure what you're basing your generalizations on, and I'd suggest that maybe you aren't as familiar with the disorder and real (read: diagnosed) sufferers of it as you might think you are. Many people think they they would qualify as having it, but many of these are just contentious people who don't really fit the actual medical definition of the disorder.
I'm actually diagnosed with Asperger's and I find it fairly offensive that you think that it's either an excuse or an explanation. Asperger's makes interpersonal relationships different, but in interacting in a technical standpoint it means that we're *less* likely to be directly offensive, and more likely to be simply very literal and very specific. You'll often hear things like "He was very knowledgeable but not very personable" but it also means that there's a tendency not to make personal statements, as that's not the job you're there for, such as saying things directly or indirectly insulting. Any insult taken would likely be from the person over explaining and seeming to be condescending, often out of a desire for thoroughness rather than actual condescension.
Notice the use of the word "Had." I'm sorry, but responding to a problem like that with that sort of language is somewhat ridiculous. Paypal is supposedly following their own policy. You can respond to it by acting professionally, writing it up for the public, and then returning to PayPal and trying to get access to someone higher up the command chain, or you can do what they've done, and mouth off about it. Considering the way they reacted in text, I have a hard time believing that they acted professionally enough on the phone to make the PayPal representitive honestly feel they were there in good faith. As well, their request that people assault PayPal with phonecalls and other contacts is somewhat petty. Honestly, I'm not a fan of PayPal in the slightest, but this isn't the way to react to such things.
It works well. Surprisingly well. In fact *some* games will play at any native resolution, it seems. For example, DOA4 and Prey both seem quite happy at a nice 4:3 1024x768 (I have mine hooked up to a rather pathetic, ancient LCD monitor that cost far too much, many years back). Anyway, the point being that while there aren't that many people with 1080p HDTVs, I'm sure there's a lot of people who will be happy that they can hook up their monitors, and pick 1080p-scale resolutions (not that they couldn't already, according to the resolution selection screen). I have a 720p TV but find that even on a 1024x768 monitor, games that display letterboxed on it look far better than they do on the TV (text is much more readable in Dead Rising, for example).
The interesting thing is that the Sandisk e200 line is PortalPlayer based. In fact, a decent bit of existing Rockbox code can be used in the port if it does ensue.
How is it a threat to anything? Rockbox goes on your DAP, and it gets new features... pretty simple. In fact, Rockbox has influenced more than a few people to buy iPods now that they get wider format support, and don't have to use iTunes. Of course, if you want iTunes, that's fine. And if you want the original retail operating system that's fine too. There's a handy saying "If it aint broke, don't fix it." If what you have does what you need, there's absolutely no argument for you to use our software. Rockbox has its own database formwat. You put music on there however you want, it scans in the background, indexes by tags. Right now the features been disabled (due to the move to a new database created on-DAP instead of solely on computer) but Rockbox had features very similar to iPods smart playlists, and they'll most likely improve beyond them once they're reintegrated. All Rockbox'ed players so far are able to be used as USB mass storage devices, and of course since our database format is open source plugins can always be readibly adapted for various media management tools to allow integration if they want to.
I love the fact that what we've got here is someone who judges a software by "screenshots." It's designed to add FEATURES. What one *should* be asking for is "How does this play my music better?" but instead we get "What does it look like?" Rockbox gives you: A variety of codecs (including AAC, and soon WMA), a full parametric equalizer, the ability to create and store playlists on your unit, gapless playback, crossfade, crossfeed, the ability to search the database of songs on the player, both the ability to have Database and File Tree based browsing, gapless playback, and replaygain. Instead someone judges it simply by the fact that sound has only been working on iPod since January, clearly demonstrating they have no real knowledge of the project. A very large portion of the code is not hardware dependent. That's like saying "They only released a driver for my videocard last week, so I shall judge my entire operating system's potential performance as if it were a week old operating system." That statement is clearly bunk, and if the original poster here new anything about how Rockbox worked, it'd be clear to him that his statement is bunk too.
There are laser pistols, as seen in at least two episodes. But bullets are "good enough" to kill a man, and low-tech handgun is both cheaper and probably easier to maintain yourself. Perhaps also more reliable because of the simplicity.
There's a few facts mentioned in this article that unfortunately lead me to believe the reviewer didn't complete the game. While I'll admit that's not *necessary* for a review, it generally leads to a more whole and balanced one. As well, it generally makes it less likely you'll make statements that are untrue such as "You cannot destroy buildings." You can. You're just limited to certain ones. There are many buildings throughout the city you can destroy, but it's still a very small percentage. I *think* they're buildings that are supposed to belong to the "bad guys" or something. But the reason is irrelevant. As well, if he's still fighting tanks and helicopters, he's not particularly far in the game, as the enemies advance technologically to small men in battlesuits (think Elementals from Mechwarrior/etc) and larger battlesuits / mecha. In fact, as *soon* as these become available they become standard issue for the "strike teams." I don't know if there's more, as I myself haven't completed the game, but just as the repitition started setting in for me, the new enemies came into play, and I found myself needing new tactics to fight them (relative to tanks and helicopters, which by this point were less threatening than gnats.)
Thanks. I saw the post, figured since it'd shown up back on the front page mentioning the writeup at Groklaw early on would help sidestep some argument, then forgot to include the link apparently.
At Groklaw they've got a pretty clear writeup as to everything behind it.
I remember reading this quite some time ago, actually during the development of HL1 if I recall. It could just be the fact that I just woke up, but I'm fairly certain about reading that they switched engines in the development of HL from Q1 to Q2. I'd imagine that some of the already developed code was portable enough that what you ended up with was a sort of 1.5 hybrid engine. :shrugs:
Just going off what I remember maybe reading 7ish+ years ago, but yeah.
I mean, what next, a tax for using a remote control to change channels as opposed to standing up and doing it physically? The law may be in place, but they can't honestly expect it to stay so... If it's to tax businesses who put a network in place on their own instead of using telcos, they could just define it as "between multiple sites" or something like that... anything that leaves the building, basically. *shrugs* I certainly hope common sense wins the day. If it applies to network data transfer, is it wired or wireless only? Floppys and CDs are data transfer to... how specific is the method? Bah.
Most people who use winamp use it primarily for MP3s. I honestly can't suggest it for video playback. It's never worked well for me.
What I will suggest for media playback in general is "Media Player Classic" available at sourceforge. I don't know what the general consensus is here, but for me, it has done what I've asked it to do, and that's good enough for me.