Starting from a decent bitrate MPEG-2 video (say, 2 GB/hour), there should be no problem creating good Theora encodes from them despite already being lossy. And if Theora can't do that without looking like crap, then it fails next to codecs like H.264 that can.
I haven't played either of those, so I wasn't aware of that. On the other hand, reading Spore's EULA, EA is granted "an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services". That's even more restrictive than the Sony terms (as Sony doesn't get exclusive rights to user material).
Sidescrollers with level editors have been done before. It's just that no one before Sony was stupid enough to claim ownership of content that users created, so this issue has never existed before.
As far as I know, nobody's ever had built-in distribution for end users' content before like LBP does. It's much simpler for Sony to do so if they are assigned the copyright; then they know they have the right to distribute it wherever they want to.
I had already assumed Steam forced games to do its saving via its own library calls so they could do this kind of trick more easily, so I'm not sure how they're going to do it other than by updating every single game that will need to support it.
The latter is pretty much how it has to be done (hence why it's rolling out for just one game initially). In theory Steam could just look at the game directories and see what changed, but a) that would also roll in any mods/custom content the user has, which I don't see Valve wanting to sync, and b) assumes games behave incorrectly and write to their own directory instead of Documents and Settings, which has been a no-no for years but is finally being enforced by Vista.
I was raised in a 'village' with a population of about 15,000 who ran off the volunteer model. Their biggest expense was water.
That's very much not what I expected, but if that's the case for fire departments in general (or even if it comes second to salary—as opposed to wasted resources like gas and maintenance parts from excess runs), that makes a pretty good case for their efficiency.:)
They are the one delivery service I have used that hasn't completely mangled a package and then bent over backwards to disclaim all responsibility and deny insurance payout.
That's more or less the complete opposite of my experience: they're the only ones to completely mangle a package, and then bent over backwards to disclaim all responsibility despite only half the box making it to its destination.
As for the idiot who falls asleep with a lit cigarette, would you rather your neighbor's house catch yours on fire just before becoming a burned out permanent eyesore? If your house DOES catch on fire, do you really want to stand out in your front yard trying to remember your credit card details to get the fire department to dispatch someone? (Perhaps because the provider you signed up with conveniently can't seem to find your account now that they might have to actually do something for your monthly payment).
I wasn't trying to deny that the fire department has a place and a purpose, just wondering if things could be handled better. You're right, though, fire is definitely something that can cause collateral damage, hurting someone other than whoever started it.
The postal system (at least in the United States) is bad because it's terribly inefficient and overpriced, and has managed to wrangle a government-enforced monopoly to insure that competitors simply can't exist.
The fire department doesn't seem to be outright bad, but I do have to wonder how much of the money they cost is spent because of idiots prank-calling or being too dumb to put out their cigarette before going to bed.
Even after depeering Cogent, Sprint was still transiting traffic to them via other routes. It's not their fault that Cogent was completely dumping all Sprint traffic from non-peer sources into/dev/null.
I suspect it's software bugs rather than key issues, but many titles have required users to update their firmware before they'll play (including the recent Bond movies released this month, with my original firmware having been from August).
Citation for it not being a true visible-light image: TFA. Yes, you can focus the other wavelengths, but they're not necessarily all emitting in the same shape, so when combined they don't necessarily fit together right. (I think that's poorly explained, for which I apologize.)
As for the drift, I was referring to the physical objects themselves (both Hubble and the galaxies); if they move between when each of the three pictures were taken, they won't line up exactly in the final image where they're combined, resulting in a blurred appearance.
OpenID is great in theory, but has a couple of rather annoying implementation flaws—not the least of which is that there's no way to aggregate existing IDs from multiple providers into one "meta-OpenID".
There's also the problem of providers like LiveJournal not giving full access to outside OpenID users—for example, you can comment with an OpenID, but you can't have a journal associated with that OpenID. Because of this, you're required to have multiple IDs with multiple providers. So not only does the lack of aggregation befoul past accounts, but you have to keep using all of your accounts going forward, and not just one OpenID everywhere you go.
If the software were truly good, it would obey the spec. Yes, it's a shitty spec, but if the developers didn't follow that part, who knows what else they skipped in the implementation?
I would expect that it's being used as a replacement for the traditional ballot rolls, to keep someone from voting twice while not actually being connected with the final vote.
Hell, in Finland that may even be true. With a Diebold machine, I'd be a bit more leery.
On a related note, do you know where I can pick up a copy of Tie Fighter that works on IBM's Extended Firmware Interface (EFI)?
The Windows 95 port ought to work just fine. You lose the MIDI music (as DirectMusic didn't exist at the time of the port) in favor of canned CD audio music edited from Williams' soundtracks. In return, though, you get 640x480 resolution in both TIE Fighter (which may have supported it in DOS?) and X-wing (which definitely didn't).
My understanding was that, at least in the US, it was okay as long as you weren't in the same line of business. For example, you couldn't go start a delivery truck business whose branding was based around the color brown, but you could use it for your plumbing business without worrying about infringement.
If you're trying to benchmark the typical end-user experience, then it's completely fair—arguably expected—that they don't tweak the OS at all and run it as it comes out-of-the-box.
Slashdot Mirror
Starting from a decent bitrate MPEG-2 video (say, 2 GB/hour), there should be no problem creating good Theora encodes from them despite already being lossy. And if Theora can't do that without looking like crap, then it fails next to codecs like H.264 that can.
I haven't played either of those, so I wasn't aware of that. On the other hand, reading Spore's EULA, EA is granted "an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services". That's even more restrictive than the Sony terms (as Sony doesn't get exclusive rights to user material).
Sidescrollers with level editors have been done before. It's just that no one before Sony was stupid enough to claim ownership of content that users created, so this issue has never existed before.
As far as I know, nobody's ever had built-in distribution for end users' content before like LBP does. It's much simpler for Sony to do so if they are assigned the copyright; then they know they have the right to distribute it wherever they want to.
I had already assumed Steam forced games to do its saving via its own library calls so they could do this kind of trick more easily, so I'm not sure how they're going to do it other than by updating every single game that will need to support it.
The latter is pretty much how it has to be done (hence why it's rolling out for just one game initially). In theory Steam could just look at the game directories and see what changed, but a) that would also roll in any mods/custom content the user has, which I don't see Valve wanting to sync, and b) assumes games behave incorrectly and write to their own directory instead of Documents and Settings, which has been a no-no for years but is finally being enforced by Vista.
If it were inefficient and overpriced, wouldn't somebody be doing the same job for less?
No, because they legally can't.
I was raised in a 'village' with a population of about 15,000 who ran off the volunteer model. Their biggest expense was water.
That's very much not what I expected, but if that's the case for fire departments in general (or even if it comes second to salary—as opposed to wasted resources like gas and maintenance parts from excess runs), that makes a pretty good case for their efficiency. :)
They are the one delivery service I have used that hasn't completely mangled a package and then bent over backwards to disclaim all responsibility and deny insurance payout.
That's more or less the complete opposite of my experience: they're the only ones to completely mangle a package, and then bent over backwards to disclaim all responsibility despite only half the box making it to its destination.
As for the idiot who falls asleep with a lit cigarette, would you rather your neighbor's house catch yours on fire just before becoming a burned out permanent eyesore? If your house DOES catch on fire, do you really want to stand out in your front yard trying to remember your credit card details to get the fire department to dispatch someone? (Perhaps because the provider you signed up with conveniently can't seem to find your account now that they might have to actually do something for your monthly payment).
I wasn't trying to deny that the fire department has a place and a purpose, just wondering if things could be handled better. You're right, though, fire is definitely something that can cause collateral damage, hurting someone other than whoever started it.
Not so much "missed the example" as misunderstood it. That explanation makes sense. Thanks!
The postal system (at least in the United States) is bad because it's terribly inefficient and overpriced, and has managed to wrangle a government-enforced monopoly to insure that competitors simply can't exist.
The fire department doesn't seem to be outright bad, but I do have to wonder how much of the money they cost is spent because of idiots prank-calling or being too dumb to put out their cigarette before going to bed.
Even after depeering Cogent, Sprint was still transiting traffic to them via other routes. It's not their fault that Cogent was completely dumping all Sprint traffic from non-peer sources into /dev/null.
If the regional provider only buys transit from Sprint, that's hardly multihoming... just single-homing with an additional possible point of failure.
The desktop versions limit you to two physical CPUs, but you can have as many cores per socket as you want.
I suspect it's software bugs rather than key issues, but many titles have required users to update their firmware before they'll play (including the recent Bond movies released this month, with my original firmware having been from August).
Citation for it not being a true visible-light image: TFA. Yes, you can focus the other wavelengths, but they're not necessarily all emitting in the same shape, so when combined they don't necessarily fit together right. (I think that's poorly explained, for which I apologize.)
As for the drift, I was referring to the physical objects themselves (both Hubble and the galaxies); if they move between when each of the three pictures were taken, they won't line up exactly in the final image where they're combined, resulting in a blurred appearance.
It's unfocused because it's not a true visible-light image, and because it's assembled from three images taken over two days. Drift happens.
OpenID is great in theory, but has a couple of rather annoying implementation flaws—not the least of which is that there's no way to aggregate existing IDs from multiple providers into one "meta-OpenID".
There's also the problem of providers like LiveJournal not giving full access to outside OpenID users—for example, you can comment with an OpenID, but you can't have a journal associated with that OpenID. Because of this, you're required to have multiple IDs with multiple providers. So not only does the lack of aggregation befoul past accounts, but you have to keep using all of your accounts going forward, and not just one OpenID everywhere you go.
If the software were truly good, it would obey the spec. Yes, it's a shitty spec, but if the developers didn't follow that part, who knows what else they skipped in the implementation?
I would expect that it's being used as a replacement for the traditional ballot rolls, to keep someone from voting twice while not actually being connected with the final vote.
Hell, in Finland that may even be true. With a Diebold machine, I'd be a bit more leery.
On a related note, do you know where I can pick up a copy of Tie Fighter that works on IBM's Extended Firmware Interface (EFI)?
The Windows 95 port ought to work just fine. You lose the MIDI music (as DirectMusic didn't exist at the time of the port) in favor of canned CD audio music edited from Williams' soundtracks. In return, though, you get 640x480 resolution in both TIE Fighter (which may have supported it in DOS?) and X-wing (which definitely didn't).
My understanding was that, at least in the US, it was okay as long as you weren't in the same line of business. For example, you couldn't go start a delivery truck business whose branding was based around the color brown, but you could use it for your plumbing business without worrying about infringement.
IANAL, of course.
If you're trying to benchmark the typical end-user experience, then it's completely fair—arguably expected—that they don't tweak the OS at all and run it as it comes out-of-the-box.
In this case, from what I understand, the publisher developed the DRM themselves. So it's not snakeoil—or at least, not meant to be.
Paging Miles Dyson... Paging Miles Dyson...
JFGI and you'll have your answer.
I was referring to that old MacBook that they kept...