I've been a Linux user, pretty much continuously, since 1993. I use it constantly, and have become deeply familiar with Gnome/KDE environments since both were < V1.0. (prior to those I was an fvwm guy, although I'll always hold a soft spot for twm).
As a server OS, Linux is great. But I'm flabbergasted (hey, this is/., where the ignorant roam free) by the ostritch-like, "there ain't no problem here" posts that seem to have mushroomed as per usual.
They are all wrong.
Sound under linux sucks. Big time. It always has.
If it's not drivers, it's sound daemons. Yes, it's possible to get everything working just fine providing you don't want to use more than one. Mandrake linux is the only distro that works sensibly with sound. And believe you me, I've pretty much tried them all.
So it's piss poor. But as linux is primarily a server OS, what more can we realistically expect? Sound is utterly unnecessary in this capacity, for the most part.
The best unix desktop by a country marathon is Mac OS X. By some considerable margin. Anyone denying this simple fact is kidding themselves. Really.
So, Hitchikers and Python are unlikely to be released? Series with the potential to be the biggest drain in terms of bandwidth? Surely not!
Seriously, sarcasm aside - until bandwidth is free (or as close to free as possible) why should we expect an unexpurgated feed? Not only that, but why should US citizens (for example) expect to be able to freely download programme archives paid for by the British taxpayer at no cost to themselves?
Whilst I hope and pray this project comes to fruition (don't vote tory!), there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before such a service might be considered practical...
It's a specialist, niche device. Hence the high $$$ - economies of scale and all that.
In the world of RSI keyboards, it's not an uncompetitive price, and whilst the learning curve is high, if it enables you to work then surely it'll pay for itself in no time?
I don't think the transportation is an issue. Who carries a keyboard around with them anyway? (not withstanding the foldable palm types).
It seems to me that the biggest problem behind copyright extension is that it is handled in a one-size fits all system that means that if one piece of work falls into the public domain after a certain amount of time, all pieces of work fall into the public domain after a certain amount of time. It is a non-negotiable proposition, unless you happen to be Disney and can pay off the appropriate people to increase its duration.
Obviously, this is detrimental to the amount of material entering the public domain, especially when you consider quite how much material that encompasses.
Yet, the grasp of copyright is only being increased to protect certain, individual pieces of material from ever entering the public domain.
Which is really short-sighted, as I'm sure most people would agree.
If you applied a system such that all pieces of work fall into the public domain after say, 50 years, but the copyright owner is granted the ability to extend the copyright license based on a scheme of graduated taxation (or some other significant fee, for example) for a period of time on an individual property then, in my opinion, a better system emerges.
In the case of "The Mouse", Disney Corporation would pay a fee that guarantees protection beyond the standard copyright terms, but other, less high-profile (and uneconomic) works get released into the wild. As time goes on, it may become uneconomical to continue to extend the license, and so that property would enter the public domain.
I realise that in an ideal world, copyrights would expire and that would be that. But this isn't the world we live in. Any taxation raised in doing this could be fed back into restoring/preserving original work that has expired. As well as buying bombs and votes and suchlike, but I digress.;-)
It's a compromise and a kludge, but it might just work?
It's been on extensive previewing in the UK, since last Friday - it's amazing it took till Monday for it to become downloadable, really.
In my opinion, the quality of downloadable films in general is sufficiently poor such that the fact a downloadable version is available won't affect revenues in the slightest. Those most inclined to see the movie will go and see it on the big screen anyway.
The only reason I can think of to download a movie like this would be as a stop-gap till the DVD came out...
Please mod the parent up, almost everything else I've read above +2 is either hearsay, speculation, or downright rubbish. Like most/. comments, really 8)
As a UK Tivo owner myself (for 1.5 years now) I'm more than happy with the service. I didn't get the program myself, as the Mrs was watching something else so Tivo didn't record it. At worst, it was a "forced suggestion", and nothing more than that.
As long as it doesn't interfere with the operation of the device (it didn't), as long as it doesn't take up any of my paid-for recording time (it doesn't) who cares? Some people have far too much time on their hands.
PS. If they're getting upset about this now, they probably didn't read the "conditions of service" contract when they signed up. Idiots. 8)
Re:Reformat...now what?
on
iPod on Windows
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· Score: 2, Insightful
XPlay has shipped with the "iPod Restore Wizard" since about preview release 2, which means you can restore your iPod to full working order (probably) under Windows if anything goes horribly wrong.
But yes, you may need a Mac owning friend to bail you out if things go *really* pear-shaped... not ideal, but better than ending up with a $400 paperweight.
XPlay Observations
on
iPod on Windows
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· Score: 5, Informative
The initial preview releases of XPlay were very basic and somewhat flaky, and could do little more than copy mp3s to the iPod. You couldn't even delete anything, let alone manage any playlists.
But Mediafour have been gradually adding functionality over the last few months, and the last release (preview 5) is easily the best yet - it's the first release that actually delivers most of the functionality you'd have on a Mac, albeit with a "Windows" spin.
I suspect the biggest problem currently delaying the full release of XPlay is the dreaded "write behind" error rather than any legal wranglings by Apple.
Basically there appears to be a bug in some (but not all) IEEE 1394 chipsets commonly used in notebook PCs/firewire cards which occasionally causes the trashing of the database containing the mp3 data. The upshot used to be that your iPod was rendered useless until a reformat - wiping all data from the device and requiring you to retransfer your music (hoping another "write behind" didn't happen again in the process).
Preview 5 handles these "write behinds" by providing a facility to rebuild the database, so you don't have to re-transfer your music. It's not pretty but hey, it works 8).
But overall, the product is shaping up to be pretty good. Whilst it's not quite as easy to use as iTunes (well, it *is* PC software!), it certainly fulfills its purpose when it comes to accessing the device under Windows, and I'll definitely be buying the release version when it arrives.
I've been using the Crossover plugin for about three months now, and it never ceases to amaze me quite how well it works.
One of the things that was not mentioned in the review was that the 1.1 version of the plugin also officially supports Chime - a plugin for viewing proteins and molecular structures - perfectly. (version 1.0 could run chime after a bit of hacking, but did occasionally crash).
For people working in Bio/Cheminformatics, this is a genuine boon, as the plugin traditionally only supports Windows and Mac. All of a sudden, you don't need to use citrix (or whatever!) to view molecules in mozilla on your linux box! It's the best $25 I've spent in a long time. 8)
The "Heart of Darkness" DVD (another old BBC series, from approximately the same era as the H2G2 show - around the early 80s) is region 0.
I've not checked my other BBC DVDs to see if this is an exception or not. 8)
Anyway, if it is a Region 2, why not buy a multi region DVD player like we have to in Europe to watch Region 1 DVDs?
On a slightly different note, I've recently noticed a significant increase in the number of region 0 DVDs being released, so maybe there is (at least) a little hope for the future.
Sort of. The graphics processor (part of "Tom") had a hybrid 32/64 bit architecture, but the majority of the system was indeed the full 64 bits (including the object processor, blitter and memory controller). The DSP was 32 bit though.
Saying it was a 32bit+32bit system is a bit disingenuous, although I remember it's what people used to say at the time. 8)
Also, I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was a 16 bit controller chip somewhere in the mix, so by your logic they should have called it an 80 bit system!
The PSX was 32 bits. However, the Atari Jaguar (listed further up) was 64 bits, and not 32 bits as reported. It was actually the first 64 bit console ever, although optimised for 2d rather than 3d. Oh, and I recall that the Dreamcast was initially touted as being the first 128 bit console - not 64 bits as listed.
The number of factual errors and omissions in this article was quite incredible, although some bizarre little factoids made the cut - "Cornerstone" from Infocom (*NOT* "Infocomm") was mentioned for instance. And then there was the weird speculation of how much ATI and Nvidia would earn on their chipsets. The list goes on and on...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
PS. And when Benjamin Franklin said "Games lubricate the body and the mind", I don't think he was talking about Quake, do you?
Isn't this a photo of George Dubya on the phone to Cheney? 8)
Very sad news indeed
on
LWN in Trouble
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· Score: 2, Informative
I've been a regular reader of LWN for years - it's the only site I *always* remember to visit on a Thursday. The quality of the editorials are generally excellent, and thought-provoking at the very least.
On a personal level, I would happily subscribe to the publication if I could - $5 per month would probably be about right - about the same as a subscription to a monthly magazine.
It would be a genuine loss to the Linux community to see it go away.
There have been lots of attempts at gesture recognition in the past, but they never seem to have taken off in a big way. This is a shame, since when they work they tend to work really well.
I love the way gestures are implemented in Opera - the actions become completely natural and I tend to find myself trying to use them in other browsers - to little effect. Now at least I'll be able to use them in Mozilla... Only Konquerer and IE left to go, and they'll be in *all* the browsers I regularly use 8)
Can anyone remember what the company was called that did the "glicks" software? I used to use it years ago but stopped after the later versions got worse rather than better... That software recognised 4 additional gestures - clockwise, anti-clockwise, jiggle left-right and jiggle up-down. I remember mapping 3 of them to cut, copy and paste... those were the days. 8)
Unlikely it's Kasparov, seeing as Short drew 6-6 against him last time they played Blitz. According to Short, the anonymous player was a lot stronger, although sometimes inclined to make mistakes that a computer program wouldn't.
I read the full article this morning (unfortunately I don't think it's online - but there are quite a few articles *about* the article), and it's really rather convincing - if not conclusive - but then he claims only to be 99% certain.
Short even went so far as to speak about it with Spassky:
"When I said that, contrary to popular perception, he didn't sound mad, at all, Boris replied 'Of course he isn't'".
Here is another quote from the article, to add a little more perspective:
"I have discovered three or four others with a similar story to tell - although the reliability of some people's evidence is complicated by the fact that, according to one of the ICC's administrators there are at least three Fischer hoaxers (two amateurs using computers and one grandmaster)"
In all, I think that Short makes a good, if not entirely convincing case. If only he'd recorded the games... I'd have loved to have seen that eight-pawns by one-square game... 8)
Currently, most PS2 titles are insanely dull. MOR crap - if that's what you mean by "mature" then I'd have to agree.
I've collected about 10 games so far for my PS2 and to be honest, with the exception of GT3, none of them have been that much fun to play. The only original PS2 title I'm looking forward to is Hurdy Gurdy, but I'll reserve final judgement for that until it comes out!
Contrast this situation with my GBA. I have a few titles, but I play them all the time. F Zero, Tony Hawk 2, Mario Kart (the japanese version) - are all utterly compulsive. Maybe they appeal to my "inner child", but to be honest if I'm not having fun with a game then I'm not going to want to play it for very long. No matter how good it looks on-screen.
Unfortunately, the gaming industry is in crisis at the moment. There is very little originality, but worse of all, even less fun. The GBA and the GC are the only rays of light in an otherwise dismal (for the hard-core gamer) market.
I have great hopes for the GC, more so than any other platform. Nintendo make fun games, and regardless of their appeal to children, I say that's going to be key in the upcoming battle for console supremecy.
The wildcard here is Sega - I thought the Dreamcast was a great platform, and that the Sega produced titles were generally pretty good (I loved Space Channel 5 for its silliness, and Crazy Taxi for it's pick-up-and-play fun). It will be interesting to see how their relationship with other console makers develops, and which platform they end up focusing their triple-A titles on (although I am sure they will continue to hedge their bets for the time being).
Game complexity is misleading - Mario 64 was *incredibly* complex, yet my (then) 6 year-old son mastered the controls and had a great time playing it. Ditto Banjo Kazooie, a bit later on.
"Resident Evil" is a mature title, but the controls are simple and the gameplay repetitive. OK, it has zombies and guns and some of the sequences are cool, but it's not in the same league as much of Nintendo's "kids" stuff.
When graphics and framerate are deemed more important than gameplay, the market will suffer. People quickly get bored with the same old tripe repackaged and reconstituted time after time.
And that's why I hope that the new Zelda, like it's platform will be a great success. It looks different. It'll play differently. And with Miyamoto behind it, you can be *certain* it's going to be fun. 8)
Just because it's old doesn't necessarily mean it's any good! Nostalgia is all well and good for a few minutes here and there, but let's face it - the majority of games were (and still are) utter dross!
Throughout the history of gaming, genuinely excellent titles are few and far between. For every "Pac-Man", there's at least a dozen "Time Traveller"s.
The trouble with games today is that most of the simple, fun ideas were used up years ago, and so complexity has rather taken its place. Complexity can be fun too, but the number of "pick up and play" games has dwindled to a pathetic number these days... or at least, it seems to have. Maybe the ratio is now a "Doom" to every dozen2 "Daikatana"s...
Going back a bit, consider the game "Lemmings". Utterly brilliant game. Amusing. Fun. Then came the sequels. The trouble was, the original game had to be "extended". It was more complex. Your abilities changed. And the "fun" evaporated. This scenario is repeated again and again and again ad infinitum, the "fun" slowly boiled out of the original concept.
Take a concept like "Tetris". How do you improve that!? Which version of Tetris are you thinking about? Almost certainly, the original Gameboy implementation. Out of all of the hundreds/thousands of different versions, written over the past 15 years, we like the original Gameboy version best. Gameboy Tetris wasn't the first (by a long chalk!) of the game but had the best 'balance' by far. And the only feature of note they added to the GBC version (10 years later) was that your high scores were saved... They *didn't* mess with the basic game, although for some reason they made the music worse.
So, in my roundabout kind of a way, I agree with you 100%. Just felt like adding to the conversation 8). In AOLSpeak, "me too!".
PS. The game I've had most fun with of late is "Serious Sam" by Croteam. It's like Doom, but with a modern 3D engine attached. Believe you me, Doom 3's aquired the benchmark against which it will be judged in this game...)
Rather than code your USA/Canadian disc as R1, you encode it as R0 (all regions). You then write a piece of software as part of the DVD loading routine (eg. when it loads the menu) that *then* checks to see if it's playing on an R1 player. If your player returns anything other than "R1" then the DVD refuses to play.
This scheme is (of course) defeated if your player has a region switch (so you can select the region manually) rather than simply reporting itself as "R0".
From the article, it seems that this isn't law doesn't specifically have Joe Consumer in mind, it's intended to target the commercial pirate.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea that people who flout copyright law (in the generic sense, not it's DMCA guise) should be punished - after all, the GPL relies on copyright law to keep people honest.
What bothers me is that it fails to take into consideration that chipping doesn't necessarily mean somebody is going to be playing pirated games. What about those "grey imports", games shipped in from other countries like the US or Japan where a release of a game in Australia may never see the light of day? A chipped playstation might *never* be used to play a pirated game.
Although Joe Consumer isn't targeted this time round, it doesn't take a great leap to see how a law such as this might be misapplied in the future.
This story once again boils down to enabling corporate control through a government sanctioned law. A disturbing trend, and one which seems to be applied to more and more situations these days.
Unfortunately, I believe things are going to get worse before they get better. Chipping a DVD player is another classic example. I chipped my DVD player in order to be able to play the new "R1E" format DVDs on my R2 player. I don't have *any* pirated movies, and don't intend to buy any. I just want to be able to watch movies. And don't even get me *started* on DeCSS. Boycotting DVDs is not the answer, if it fails as a format we'll only end up with something worse.
There is one possible glimmer of light, however. And that is that every one of these laws is a house of straw. Legal precedents have yet to be made. I'm not giving up hope yet. People can still be educated. Let us hope we can get there in time.
Slashdot Mirror
"Just imagine the synergy between these titans of reliability!"
You could have bought a brand new eMac for less than that. But then, you probably already knew that.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
I've been a Linux user, pretty much continuously, since 1993. I use it constantly, and have become deeply familiar with Gnome/KDE environments since both were < V1.0. (prior to those I was an fvwm guy, although I'll always hold a soft spot for twm).
/., where the ignorant roam free) by the ostritch-like, "there ain't no problem here" posts that seem to have mushroomed as per usual.
As a server OS, Linux is great. But I'm flabbergasted (hey, this is
They are all wrong.
Sound under linux sucks. Big time. It always has.
If it's not drivers, it's sound daemons. Yes, it's possible to get everything working just fine providing you don't want to use more than one. Mandrake linux is the only distro that works sensibly with sound. And believe you me, I've pretty much tried them all.
So it's piss poor. But as linux is primarily a server OS, what more can we realistically expect? Sound is utterly unnecessary in this capacity, for the most part.
The best unix desktop by a country marathon is Mac OS X. By some considerable margin. Anyone denying this simple fact is kidding themselves. Really.
So, Hitchikers and Python are unlikely to be released? Series with the potential to be the biggest drain in terms of bandwidth? Surely not!
Seriously, sarcasm aside - until bandwidth is free (or as close to free as possible) why should we expect an unexpurgated feed? Not only that, but why should US citizens (for example) expect to be able to freely download programme archives paid for by the British taxpayer at no cost to themselves?
Whilst I hope and pray this project comes to fruition (don't vote tory!), there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before such a service might be considered practical...
then again, MSN isn't even in the top 10... ;-)
It's a specialist, niche device. Hence the high $$$ - economies of scale and all that.
In the world of RSI keyboards, it's not an uncompetitive price, and whilst the learning curve is high, if it enables you to work then surely it'll pay for itself in no time?
I don't think the transportation is an issue. Who carries a keyboard around with them anyway? (not withstanding the foldable palm types).
It seems to me that the biggest problem behind copyright extension is that it is handled in a one-size fits all system that means that if one piece of work falls into the public domain after a certain amount of time, all pieces of work fall into the public domain after a certain amount of time. It is a non-negotiable proposition, unless you happen to be Disney and can pay off the appropriate people to increase its duration.
;-)
Obviously, this is detrimental to the amount of material entering the public domain, especially when you consider quite how much material that encompasses.
Yet, the grasp of copyright is only being increased to protect certain, individual pieces of material from ever entering the public domain.
Which is really short-sighted, as I'm sure most people would agree.
If you applied a system such that all pieces of work fall into the public domain after say, 50 years, but the copyright owner is granted the ability to extend the copyright license based on a scheme of graduated taxation (or some other significant fee, for example) for a period of time on an individual property then, in my opinion, a better system emerges.
In the case of "The Mouse", Disney Corporation would pay a fee that guarantees protection beyond the standard copyright terms, but other, less high-profile (and uneconomic) works get released into the wild. As time goes on, it may become uneconomical to continue to extend the license, and so that property would enter the public domain.
I realise that in an ideal world, copyrights would expire and that would be that. But this isn't the world we live in. Any taxation raised in doing this could be fed back into restoring/preserving original work that has expired. As well as buying bombs and votes and suchlike, but I digress.
It's a compromise and a kludge, but it might just work?
It's been on extensive previewing in the UK, since last Friday - it's amazing it took till Monday for it to become downloadable, really.
In my opinion, the quality of downloadable films in general is sufficiently poor such that the fact a downloadable version is available won't affect revenues in the slightest. Those most inclined to see the movie will go and see it on the big screen anyway.
The only reason I can think of to download a movie like this would be as a stop-gap till the DVD came out...
Please mod the parent up, almost everything else I've read above +2 is either hearsay, speculation, or downright rubbish. Like most /. comments, really 8)
As a UK Tivo owner myself (for 1.5 years now) I'm more than happy with the service. I didn't get the program myself, as the Mrs was watching something else so Tivo didn't record it. At worst, it was a "forced suggestion", and nothing more than that.
As long as it doesn't interfere with the operation of the device (it didn't), as long as it doesn't take up any of my paid-for recording time (it doesn't) who cares? Some people have far too much time on their hands.
PS. If they're getting upset about this now, they probably didn't read the "conditions of service" contract when they signed up. Idiots. 8)
XPlay has shipped with the "iPod Restore Wizard" since about preview release 2, which means you can restore your iPod to full working order (probably) under Windows if anything goes horribly wrong.
But yes, you may need a Mac owning friend to bail you out if things go *really* pear-shaped... not ideal, but better than ending up with a $400 paperweight.
The initial preview releases of XPlay were very basic and somewhat flaky, and could do little more than copy mp3s to the iPod. You couldn't even delete anything, let alone manage any playlists.
But Mediafour have been gradually adding functionality over the last few months, and the last release (preview 5) is easily the best yet - it's the first release that actually delivers most of the functionality you'd have on a Mac, albeit with a "Windows" spin.
I suspect the biggest problem currently delaying the full release of XPlay is the dreaded "write behind" error rather than any legal wranglings by Apple.
Basically there appears to be a bug in some (but not all) IEEE 1394 chipsets commonly used in notebook PCs/firewire cards which occasionally causes the trashing of the database containing the mp3 data. The upshot used to be that your iPod was rendered useless until a reformat - wiping all data from the device and requiring you to retransfer your music (hoping another "write behind" didn't happen again in the process).
Preview 5 handles these "write behinds" by providing a facility to rebuild the database, so you don't have to re-transfer your music. It's not pretty but hey, it works 8).
But overall, the product is shaping up to be pretty good. Whilst it's not quite as easy to use as iTunes (well, it *is* PC software!), it certainly fulfills its purpose when it comes to accessing the device under Windows, and I'll definitely be buying the release version when it arrives.
I've been using the Crossover plugin for about three months now, and it never ceases to amaze me quite how well it works.
One of the things that was not mentioned in the review was that the 1.1 version of the plugin also officially supports Chime - a plugin for viewing proteins and molecular structures - perfectly. (version 1.0 could run chime after a bit of hacking, but did occasionally crash).
For people working in Bio/Cheminformatics, this is a genuine boon, as the plugin traditionally only supports Windows and Mac. All of a sudden, you don't need to use citrix (or whatever!) to view molecules in mozilla on your linux box! It's the best $25 I've spent in a long time. 8)
Another director's cut? But I want the *original* theatrical release on DVD! Complete with voiceover!
If for no other reason than to confirm my suspicions that the original was better than the later cut.
Of course, I'm probably wrong, but it'd be nice to find out for sure...
The "Heart of Darkness" DVD (another old BBC series, from approximately the same era as the H2G2 show - around the early 80s) is region 0.
I've not checked my other BBC DVDs to see if this is an exception or not. 8)
Anyway, if it is a Region 2, why not buy a multi region DVD player like we have to in Europe to watch Region 1 DVDs?
On a slightly different note, I've recently noticed a significant increase in the number of region 0 DVDs being released, so maybe there is (at least) a little hope for the future.
Not that this helps here, of course!
Sort of. The graphics processor (part of "Tom") had a hybrid 32/64 bit architecture, but the majority of the system was indeed the full 64 bits (including the object processor, blitter and memory controller). The DSP was 32 bit though.
Saying it was a 32bit+32bit system is a bit disingenuous, although I remember it's what people used to say at the time. 8)
Also, I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was a 16 bit controller chip somewhere in the mix, so by your logic they should have called it an 80 bit system!
The PSX was 32 bits. However, the Atari Jaguar (listed further up) was 64 bits, and not 32 bits as reported. It was actually the first 64 bit console ever, although optimised for 2d rather than 3d. Oh, and I recall that the Dreamcast was initially touted as being the first 128 bit console - not 64 bits as listed.
The number of factual errors and omissions in this article was quite incredible, although some bizarre little factoids made the cut - "Cornerstone" from Infocom (*NOT* "Infocomm") was mentioned for instance. And then there was the weird speculation of how much ATI and Nvidia would earn on their chipsets. The list goes on and on...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
PS. And when Benjamin Franklin said "Games lubricate the body and the mind", I don't think he was talking about Quake, do you?
Isn't this a photo of George Dubya on the phone to Cheney? 8)
I've been a regular reader of LWN for years - it's the only site I *always* remember to visit on a Thursday. The quality of the editorials are generally excellent, and thought-provoking at the very least.
On a personal level, I would happily subscribe to the publication if I could - $5 per month would probably be about right - about the same as a subscription to a monthly magazine.
It would be a genuine loss to the Linux community to see it go away.
There have been lots of attempts at gesture recognition in the past, but they never seem to have taken off in a big way. This is a shame, since when they work they tend to work really well.
I love the way gestures are implemented in Opera - the actions become completely natural and I tend to find myself trying to use them in other browsers - to little effect. Now at least I'll be able to use them in Mozilla... Only Konquerer and IE left to go, and they'll be in *all* the browsers I regularly use 8)
Can anyone remember what the company was called that did the "glicks" software? I used to use it years ago but stopped after the later versions got worse rather than better... That software recognised 4 additional gestures - clockwise, anti-clockwise, jiggle left-right and jiggle up-down. I remember mapping 3 of them to cut, copy and paste... those were the days. 8)
Unlikely it's Kasparov, seeing as Short drew 6-6 against him last time they played Blitz. According to Short, the anonymous player was a lot stronger, although sometimes inclined to make mistakes that a computer program wouldn't.
I read the full article this morning (unfortunately I don't think it's online - but there are quite a few articles *about* the article), and it's really rather convincing - if not conclusive - but then he claims only to be 99% certain.
Short even went so far as to speak about it with Spassky:
Here is another quote from the article, to add a little more perspective:
In all, I think that Short makes a good, if not entirely convincing case. If only he'd recorded the games... I'd have loved to have seen that eight-pawns by one-square game... 8)
Currently, most PS2 titles are insanely dull. MOR crap - if that's what you mean by "mature" then I'd have to agree.
I've collected about 10 games so far for my PS2 and to be honest, with the exception of GT3, none of them have been that much fun to play. The only original PS2 title I'm looking forward to is Hurdy Gurdy, but I'll reserve final judgement for that until it comes out!
Contrast this situation with my GBA. I have a few titles, but I play them all the time. F Zero, Tony Hawk 2, Mario Kart (the japanese version) - are all utterly compulsive. Maybe they appeal to my "inner child", but to be honest if I'm not having fun with a game then I'm not going to want to play it for very long. No matter how good it looks on-screen.
Unfortunately, the gaming industry is in crisis at the moment. There is very little originality, but worse of all, even less fun. The GBA and the GC are the only rays of light in an otherwise dismal (for the hard-core gamer) market.
I have great hopes for the GC, more so than any other platform. Nintendo make fun games, and regardless of their appeal to children, I say that's going to be key in the upcoming battle for console supremecy.
The wildcard here is Sega - I thought the Dreamcast was a great platform, and that the Sega produced titles were generally pretty good (I loved Space Channel 5 for its silliness, and Crazy Taxi for it's pick-up-and-play fun). It will be interesting to see how their relationship with other console makers develops, and which platform they end up focusing their triple-A titles on (although I am sure they will continue to hedge their bets for the time being).
Game complexity is misleading - Mario 64 was *incredibly* complex, yet my (then) 6 year-old son mastered the controls and had a great time playing it. Ditto Banjo Kazooie, a bit later on.
"Resident Evil" is a mature title, but the controls are simple and the gameplay repetitive. OK, it has zombies and guns and some of the sequences are cool, but it's not in the same league as much of Nintendo's "kids" stuff.
When graphics and framerate are deemed more important than gameplay, the market will suffer. People quickly get bored with the same old tripe repackaged and reconstituted time after time.
And that's why I hope that the new Zelda, like it's platform will be a great success. It looks different. It'll play differently. And with Miyamoto behind it, you can be *certain* it's going to be fun. 8)
Just because it's old doesn't necessarily mean it's any good! Nostalgia is all well and good for a few minutes here and there, but let's face it - the majority of games were (and still are) utter dross!
Throughout the history of gaming, genuinely excellent titles are few and far between. For every "Pac-Man", there's at least a dozen "Time Traveller"s.
The trouble with games today is that most of the simple, fun ideas were used up years ago, and so complexity has rather taken its place. Complexity can be fun too, but the number of "pick up and play" games has dwindled to a pathetic number these days... or at least, it seems to have. Maybe the ratio is now a "Doom" to every dozen2 "Daikatana"s...
Going back a bit, consider the game "Lemmings". Utterly brilliant game. Amusing. Fun. Then came the sequels. The trouble was, the original game had to be "extended". It was more complex. Your abilities changed. And the "fun" evaporated. This scenario is repeated again and again and again ad infinitum, the "fun" slowly boiled out of the original concept.
Take a concept like "Tetris". How do you improve that!? Which version of Tetris are you thinking about? Almost certainly, the original Gameboy implementation. Out of all of the hundreds/thousands of different versions, written over the past 15 years, we like the original Gameboy version best. Gameboy Tetris wasn't the first (by a long chalk!) of the game but had the best 'balance' by far. And the only feature of note they added to the GBC version (10 years later) was that your high scores were saved... They *didn't* mess with the basic game, although for some reason they made the music worse.
So, in my roundabout kind of a way, I agree with you 100%. Just felt like adding to the conversation 8). In AOLSpeak, "me too!".
PS. The game I've had most fun with of late is "Serious Sam" by Croteam. It's like Doom, but with a modern 3D engine attached. Believe you me, Doom 3's aquired the benchmark against which it will be judged in this game...)
R1E is a peach. The "E" stands for "Enhanced".
Rather than code your USA/Canadian disc as R1, you encode it as R0 (all regions). You then write a piece of software as part of the DVD loading routine (eg. when it loads the menu) that *then* checks to see if it's playing on an R1 player. If your player returns anything other than "R1" then the DVD refuses to play.
This scheme is (of course) defeated if your player has a region switch (so you can select the region manually) rather than simply reporting itself as "R0".
R1E, in a nutshell. 8)
From the article, it seems that this isn't law doesn't specifically have Joe Consumer in mind, it's intended to target the commercial pirate.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea that people who flout copyright law (in the generic sense, not it's DMCA guise) should be punished - after all, the GPL relies on copyright law to keep people honest.
What bothers me is that it fails to take into consideration that chipping doesn't necessarily mean somebody is going to be playing pirated games. What about those "grey imports", games shipped in from other countries like the US or Japan where a release of a game in Australia may never see the light of day? A chipped playstation might *never* be used to play a pirated game.
Although Joe Consumer isn't targeted this time round, it doesn't take a great leap to see how a law such as this might be misapplied in the future.
This story once again boils down to enabling corporate control through a government sanctioned law. A disturbing trend, and one which seems to be applied to more and more situations these days.
Unfortunately, I believe things are going to get worse before they get better. Chipping a DVD player is another classic example. I chipped my DVD player in order to be able to play the new "R1E" format DVDs on my R2 player. I don't have *any* pirated movies, and don't intend to buy any. I just want to be able to watch movies. And don't even get me *started* on DeCSS. Boycotting DVDs is not the answer, if it fails as a format we'll only end up with something worse.
There is one possible glimmer of light, however. And that is that every one of these laws is a house of straw. Legal precedents have yet to be made. I'm not giving up hope yet. People can still be educated. Let us hope we can get there in time.
you mean kb, rather than mb, don't you?
I think even *windows* would fit in a 256mb rom! Maybe not the current version, though 8)
Chris