I bought a nice HDTV and I will only invest in a new system if it has both DVI/HDMI and HDDVD/BluRay. When CD's came out, I stopped buying cassettes. When DVD came out, I stopped buying VHS. I've already stopped buying DVD's and am saving my money for HD disks of any kind. I am a technophile, I can't help it.
Last generation I would only buy a system that could play DVD's out of the box, so I only bought a PS2. I never saw one of those fancy DVD GC's in the stores. The generation before that I would only buy a system that could play CD's out of the box, so I ended up buying both the Saturn and the PS1. With the exception of the Saturn, this algorithm has served me well.
That in mind, if the Xbox360 really does produce a system with HDMI and HDDVD out of the box (and they also keep on working on their Xbox backwards compatibility) then I will most certainly buy one. But so far MS has decided they don't want my technophile money.
On the other hand, quantum mechanics explains gravity about as well as epicycles did.
Quantum Mechanics doesn't even try to explain gravity. (And ordinary Quantum Mechanics can couple with gravity via the Wheeler-De-Witt equation, though that isn't fundamental like the Standard Model. Quantum Field Theory can work with classical GR. It is GR that can't be made into a renormalizable Quantum Field Theory.)
How else were you planning on merging relativety with quantum mechanics? Until there is anything else resembling relativistic QCD, it would probably be wise to study string theory if for no other reason than to know which mistakes to avoid should it prove unworkable.
I have no idea, but I'd like to see a broader spectrum of guess research. I don't like the sense of idea fads and idea marketing in physics.
Q "Look, the orbits aren't exactly circular" A "Try adding more circles"
Q "..." A "Try adding more dimensions"
I don't mean to say that the true answer is simpler in a sense. I honestly have no idea.
I came to this conclusion after sitting through dozens of talks and realizing that so many physicists were using extra dimensions like a tool in their toolbox (like renormalization or something), but that tool has never actually fixed anything yet. It's their hammer and everything looks like a nail. Only no nails are proven to exist.
I am a theoretical physicist. I am educated in Supersymmetry, Riemannian geometry, and the original Kaluza-Klein theory. I am educated in field theory in curved space time, but not Supergravity, nor do I care to be.
I have only one thing to say about all of this. Everytime I sit in a talk on strings or branes all I can think is one thing.
Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics
That's all I have to say. If you understand this, it is profound.
The only place where I see a remarkable difference with HD sets is in stores when they are being set to play "demos" usually videos of landscapes and such... Probably when all movies are released with this resolution Ill switch, but thats probably still a couple of years away...
I have HBOHD and ShowtimeHD. All movies are released at that resolution. Hockey games, ~1/2 of american football games, NASCAR games are all at that resolution too. Not sure why the world cup isn't.
If a movie that I like is scheduled. I set it to record. Transfer it via firewire from my cable box to my computer. Reencode it to MPEG-4. And burn it to a DVD. I can fit 2hrs at almost 1080p (~960) on a single DVD.
I guess you never worked in a mixed version windows environment. Samba is a fucking miracle worker. Across generations Windows boxes will not talk to each other if they don't want to and there's not a god damn thing you can do about it.
As for slower I disagree in my experience. Samba file transfers were always sooo much faster than windows2windows.
As for permission and authentication, you probably should have configured it to how you wanted it.
My wife wants to play Sims2 badly. But the complication frustrates her. Instead she plays the washed out Sims clone known as Playboy: The Mansion. (She like PB for some reason, has a subscription) Sims2 really is too complicated for her.
She also wanted to play Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, but the FPS aspect was just waaaaay to much for her SMB1 level skills. The only other things I notice she plays are snowboarding/jetski/4 wheeler games, DDR, and regular NES games.
Games really are frustrating for her. But she does have a lot of fun playing games iff they do not frustrate her. Her favorite system is probably the GBA and I don't know if we are gonna get the Wii.
The PS2 has been out for about six years and has from day one been the least capable console in terms of graphics (even the Dreamcast was better, IMO).
I have a Dreamcast and a PS2. I enjoy both systems.
I think you are almost as insane as a person that denies evolution, global warming, or the holocaust.
Are you sure it isn't your cable box or TV settings? TNTHD looks fine at my house on my 50" Panasonic. Most shows seem to be at 720 with bars on the sides.
I don't agree that a DVD - especially a dual layer one - isn't enough for a game. And I'd rather a game came on a few disks - as most PC games already do
Most computer games expand in the transition from the disc to your HD. I don't want to do the same for ALL the console games I buy.
- costing a few pennies more, than have to pony up an extra £100 or whatever to be an early adopter of a pointless new standard.
It's not a pointless standard for my HDTV.
(And I would have bought a 360 if it had HDDVD, so I'm no Sony fanboy.)
It just sickens me that movies look far better on HBOHD than any media that I can buy at the store. I don't even want to buy DVD's anymore unless it's something I don't care about the picture quality.
What's with all the luddites on Slashdot. I want more, more, more. I want better, better, better. And Sony just happens to be the only company that wants to do that this generation. Ghod it's like Sony is a tractor company and Slashdot is the Amish with their horses.
That's something to do if you can load the whole level in before playing.
That's not something you want to do if you need to load while playing because the map is too big to fit in ram all at once, which is the problem Champions of Norrath faced.
Games in the future that are massive and seamless like EQOA, GTA:SA, and Dundgeon Siege will become more and more common. Having more space to waste on a disc will help them be faster.
I'm not talking about regular compression of the individual textures. I am talking about whole maps, levels,...
The first 2-layer DVD game I was aware of on the PS2 was the first Everquest Champions game. It took up that much space because of the way they had the dungeons (which are mostly textures) stored on the disk, which were stored that way to read off quickly, seamlessly.
This is also related to lazy programmer syndrome and development time because in the sequal they did things differently just so they could fit it on one layer, because apparently there are inherent problems with the PS2 and 2-layer DVD loading or something. Maybe they were just really bad programmers, but that extra space meant more/better graphics and faster loading (till you had to switch layers.)
Umm... what games are you talking about? GTA:SA was only a single layer, and I'm pretty sure that's the closest any game got to filling a DVD with textures and code. Now if you include pre-rendered video under that "stuff" then maybe I could see that, but as newer codecs come out the size of those keep going down.
Nope. The first Everquest Champions game was on 2-layers. The sequal was cut back and put on only 1-layer because for some reason making 2-layer games on the PS2 is a PITA with loading or something. This is also the reason lots of other developers stuck with 1-layer on the PS2, when they could have been pushing 2-layers.
1-2-layer DVD's really aren't that big anymore (not that I would say they are small). Look how much space on your hard drive a game like WoW or FFXI takes up.
Re:DnD is NOT a Solo Game
on
DDO Goes Solo
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· Score: 1
When I DMed, as I learned from the great DM's before me, I would try to run a solo (1 DM + 1 player) adventure with every character to flesh them out before the campaign.
Sometimes the we would also 2 DM, and split the party and DM them seperately when their characters were split up in the adventure.
Sorry you never got to play with good groups that did interesting stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought a nice HDTV and I will only invest in a new system if it has both DVI/HDMI and HDDVD/BluRay. When CD's came out, I stopped buying cassettes. When DVD came out, I stopped buying VHS. I've already stopped buying DVD's and am saving my money for HD disks of any kind. I am a technophile, I can't help it.
Last generation I would only buy a system that could play DVD's out of the box, so I only bought a PS2. I never saw one of those fancy DVD GC's in the stores. The generation before that I would only buy a system that could play CD's out of the box, so I ended up buying both the Saturn and the PS1. With the exception of the Saturn, this algorithm has served me well.
That in mind, if the Xbox360 really does produce a system with HDMI and HDDVD out of the box (and they also keep on working on their Xbox backwards compatibility) then I will most certainly buy one. But so far MS has decided they don't want my technophile money.
As a general rule, the big rewards from spending four years in college plus 2-7 more in grad school are a fantasy.
I see you never took a class in statistics.
I'm going to tell you another secret. Not every person that smokes, gets lung cancer.
In the Spanish speaking world we don't really have these things you call Spelling Bees.
Would you like to make a guess why we don't have these things?
The fact that you have Spelling Bees is proof that English is really fucked up.
Taco is masculine, it ends in an o
On the other hand, quantum mechanics explains gravity about as well as epicycles did.
Quantum Mechanics doesn't even try to explain gravity. (And ordinary Quantum Mechanics can couple with gravity via the Wheeler-De-Witt equation, though that isn't fundamental like the Standard Model. Quantum Field Theory can work with classical GR. It is GR that can't be made into a renormalizable Quantum Field Theory.)
How else were you planning on merging relativety with quantum mechanics? Until there is anything else resembling relativistic QCD, it would probably be wise to study string theory if for no other reason than to know which mistakes to avoid should it prove unworkable.
I have no idea, but I'd like to see a broader spectrum of guess research. I don't like the sense of idea fads and idea marketing in physics.
Wolfram hasn't done anything physics. He has merely described types of possible models for stuff.
Does he even have a published physics paper?
The analogy is thus.
Q "Look, the orbits aren't exactly circular"
A "Try adding more circles"
Q "..."
A "Try adding more dimensions"
I don't mean to say that the true answer is simpler in a sense. I honestly have no idea.
I came to this conclusion after sitting through dozens of talks and realizing that so many physicists were using extra dimensions like a tool in their toolbox (like renormalization or something), but that tool has never actually fixed anything yet. It's their hammer and everything looks like a nail. Only no nails are proven to exist.
I am a theoretical physicist. I am educated in Supersymmetry, Riemannian geometry, and the original Kaluza-Klein theory. I am educated in field theory in curved space time, but not Supergravity, nor do I care to be.
I have only one thing to say about all of this. Everytime I sit in a talk on strings or branes all I can think is one thing.
Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics
That's all I have to say. If you understand this, it is profound.
My PS2 is my only DVD player. (other than my computers) I know alot of people like that. The new slim PS2 even has progressive DVD output.
I think you are weird.
The only place where I see a remarkable difference with HD sets is in stores when they are being set to play "demos" usually videos of landscapes and such... Probably when all movies are released with this resolution Ill switch, but thats probably still a couple of years away...
I have HBOHD and ShowtimeHD. All movies are released at that resolution. Hockey games, ~1/2 of american football games, NASCAR games are all at that resolution too. Not sure why the world cup isn't.
If a movie that I like is scheduled. I set it to record. Transfer it via firewire from my cable box to my computer. Reencode it to MPEG-4. And burn it to a DVD. I can fit 2hrs at almost 1080p (~960) on a single DVD.
I guess you never worked in a mixed version windows environment. Samba is a fucking miracle worker. Across generations Windows boxes will not talk to each other if they don't want to and there's not a god damn thing you can do about it.
As for slower I disagree in my experience. Samba file transfers were always sooo much faster than windows2windows.
As for permission and authentication, you probably should have configured it to how you wanted it.
Why not eat them?
Gates gave almost nothing to charity until he married Melinda, and was publicly ridiculed for being selfish with his money.
I believe Gates intentions were to die leaving almost everything to charity and nothing but a penance to his children.
When you think like that, it doesn't really matter how much you are giving to charity when you are young.
My wife wants to play Sims2 badly. But the complication frustrates her. Instead she plays the washed out Sims clone known as Playboy: The Mansion. (She like PB for some reason, has a subscription) Sims2 really is too complicated for her.
She also wanted to play Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, but the FPS aspect was just waaaaay to much for her SMB1 level skills. The only other things I notice she plays are snowboarding/jetski/4 wheeler games, DDR, and regular NES games.
Games really are frustrating for her. But she does have a lot of fun playing games iff they do not frustrate her. Her favorite system is probably the GBA and I don't know if we are gonna get the Wii.
It sounds like your wife just grew out of games.
People keep repeating this, but it is not true.
... all existed proir to anything Nintendo made.
The D-pad was earlier seen on the Intellovision and even the Microvision.
Analog sticks, vibration feedback,
Nintendo innovates controllers like Microsoft innovates software: they don't. But they do make obscure things coherent and mainstream.
Yay! Wii will be as fun as boot camp!
Back when Nintendo was number 1, they were more evil then you could imagine.
Whoever modded you troll probably had that in mind.
It's just not true that Nintendo doesn't have any bad karma. They have plenty.
The PS2 has been out for about six years and has from day one been the least capable console in terms of graphics (even the Dreamcast was better, IMO).
I have a Dreamcast and a PS2. I enjoy both systems.
I think you are almost as insane as a person that denies evolution, global warming, or the holocaust.
Only your belief isn't hurting anyone.
Are you sure it isn't your cable box or TV settings? TNTHD looks fine at my house on my 50" Panasonic. Most shows seem to be at 720 with bars on the sides.
Pope admits...
I don't agree that a DVD - especially a dual layer one - isn't enough for a game. And I'd rather a game came on a few disks - as most PC games already do
Most computer games expand in the transition from the disc to your HD. I don't want to do the same for ALL the console games I buy.
- costing a few pennies more, than have to pony up an extra £100 or whatever to be an early adopter of a pointless new standard.
It's not a pointless standard for my HDTV.
(And I would have bought a 360 if it had HDDVD, so I'm no Sony fanboy.)
It just sickens me that movies look far better on HBOHD than any media that I can buy at the store. I don't even want to buy DVD's anymore unless it's something I don't care about the picture quality.
What's with all the luddites on Slashdot. I want more, more, more. I want better, better, better. And Sony just happens to be the only company that wants to do that this generation. Ghod it's like Sony is a tractor company and Slashdot is the Amish with their horses.
That's something to do if you can load the whole level in before playing.
That's not something you want to do if you need to load while playing because the map is too big to fit in ram all at once, which is the problem Champions of Norrath faced.
Games in the future that are massive and seamless like EQOA, GTA:SA, and Dundgeon Siege will become more and more common. Having more space to waste on a disc will help them be faster.
I'm not talking about regular compression of the individual textures. I am talking about whole maps, levels, ...
The first 2-layer DVD game I was aware of on the PS2 was the first Everquest Champions game. It took up that much space because of the way they had the dungeons (which are mostly textures) stored on the disk, which were stored that way to read off quickly, seamlessly.
This is also related to lazy programmer syndrome and development time because in the sequal they did things differently just so they could fit it on one layer, because apparently there are inherent problems with the PS2 and 2-layer DVD loading or something. Maybe they were just really bad programmers, but that extra space meant more/better graphics and faster loading (till you had to switch layers.)
Umm... what games are you talking about? GTA:SA was only a single layer, and I'm pretty sure that's the closest any game got to filling a DVD with textures and code. Now if you include pre-rendered video under that "stuff" then maybe I could see that, but as newer codecs come out the size of those keep going down.
Nope. The first Everquest Champions game was on 2-layers. The sequal was cut back and put on only 1-layer because for some reason making 2-layer games on the PS2 is a PITA with loading or something. This is also the reason lots of other developers stuck with 1-layer on the PS2, when they could have been pushing 2-layers.
1-2-layer DVD's really aren't that big anymore (not that I would say they are small). Look how much space on your hard drive a game like WoW or FFXI takes up.
When I DMed, as I learned from the great DM's before me, I would try to run a solo (1 DM + 1 player) adventure with every character to flesh them out before the campaign.
Sometimes the we would also 2 DM, and split the party and DM them seperately when their characters were split up in the adventure.
Sorry you never got to play with good groups that did interesting stuff.