You really have to wonder what they're trying to achieve by having a "value pack" - that doesn't include a game! I know Sony is trying to market the movie-playing features of the PSP, but having users gameless after forking out money for the unit seems a bit excessive.
I doubt many users will watch Spiderman 2 more than once on their machines, and probably then more for novelty than anything. It's two hours of entertainment... for $300+. It's kind of difficult to see the "value" in that.
Apple was never really the "friend" of independents. Macs are designed to be closed systems, not particularly open towards user-implemented modifications. This is one of the reasons the systems are so polished, secure and easy to use. The fact that Apple is willing to sue to protect said secrets doesn't make them the new MS... they're just doing the same thing they've always done - protect their products.
ThinkSecret infringed on that, and it could very well have been detrimental - look at how quickly Intel has designed a Mac-mini clone. Redmond doesn't have to worry about that - most of their software is a clone of Mac ideas anyway.
Oh it certainly will, suprnova.org has already proved that. But BT isn't based off a centralized hub. As long as you have google, you can find torrents, and they're likely to be more secure and non-corrupt.
The RIAA and MPAA will keep hunting, and the pirates and filesharers will keep on evading and moving further into anonymous and untrackable uploading on the dark side of the 'net. Just like how it took the **AA a year or two to catch on to BT, they're going to have to play catch up with whatever next generation secure P2P apps that come out.
Remember the days when they were targeting warez groups, and taking down a group like CLASS or MYTH was a feather in the anti-piracy cap? Well the anti-pirates have moved on to fry bigger and more user-popular fish, but the warez groups still operate in the largely unmonitored Usenet and IRC communities... protected by their obscurity.
So the faster they track, the faster people run. Eventually they'll all come full circle.
The beginning of the end for Kazaa came when Cohen released the first Bit Torrent client. The program has gone dangerously downhill since then, with ever-increasing corrupted or misnamed files being uploaded by corporations, a smaller user base with a smaller variety of files, and increased fear by the public of getting sued for downloading illegal MP3s - not to mention slower download speeds and an adware-riddled client.
Hopefully this is closer to the end of the end for Kazaa.
Stop being a troll, troll. As a "true" artist, I use nearly all of the tools available to me, to make the best possible art that I can. GIMP itself is a hindrance, the workflow is horrible.
As an artist, you want as few obstacles (like a poor interface) as possible between you and what you want to design. I cannot think of any worthwhile artists anywhere who use GIMP for digital pictures or painting, however I'd love to see some links if you have any. Mullins, Feng, Anry - all of them use Painter/Photshop. Only on/. do you see GIMP advocates, they don't show up anywhere in art communities, like the sijun forums or digitalart.org.
Re:How about a cheap, non-disposable phone?
on
Cell Phone On A Chip
·
· Score: 1
The new iPod shuffle qualifies for that one, I think. Same with the Mac Mini.
How about a cheap, non-disposable phone?
on
Cell Phone On A Chip
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think there's a growing population who just wants a plain cell phone now.
You know, for talking on - instead of having bluetooth, a built in camera, FM-Tuner, an internet service that costs $10/1 megabyte, pager and orchestrated ringtones.
If I could buy a new (possibly smaller, lighter, more battery-efficent) cell phone I would - but stores don't carry anything that basic. You have to spend at least $100 (CDN) for anything wihout a plan, and I'm sure the lion's share of that is going towards a colour screen and features I don't want.
Almost makes me yearn for an Apple iPhone. Does what it should, elgantly and without any extra "fluff".
They shouldn't have their games banned, they should just get specially made versions of the games already out there.
Is there really anything more punitive than waiting in line for World of Warcraft? Having a queue system that's been modified so that you'll join the server... in 10-20 years? After which you'll time out and have to rejoing WoW 2. Give them all 28.8 modems to play CS:Source with. Ball mice. Nokia N-gages (the side-talkin' versions). The entire Deer Hunter collection.
I don't think the developers should ever have to be more business-like, at least not in the ideal situation. There's is supposed to be a creative job, akin to being the director of a film. Yes, there's a ton of technical aspects involved, but the main purpose of the game should be to make it as creative and fun as possible. It is the place of the producers/publishers to worry about the actual costs.
It's pretty obvious that given some freedom and a large amount of financial support, a talented team will produce a fun product, like Valve with Half-Life 2. Of course, not eveyone will have these resources, but canning games into a business-like cost-benefit ration will stifle creativity.
It's like telling a master painter it would be cheaper to just take a photograph.
ON'T-DAY ENTIONMAY IRATEPAY BAYAY!
Now repeat after me: "With Suprnova gone I don't even know where to go to get my.torrent files. I can't seem to find them after the **AA shut down all my favorite copyright-infringing sites. Instead of downloading Elektra and Ashlee Simpson's new album, I purchased them from a retail store at the manufacturer's suggested retail price. Thank you MPAA and RIAA for making the world a better place. You can rest easy knowing you've stopped piracy forever."
These story-arcs are becoming a lot more common when Krahulik and Holikns know they're going to be busy in real life, so they do a set of ~5 strips that are more-or-less unrelated to gaming. When little Gabe (Krahulik's son) was born, he took a week off work, and used the story arc comic to cover the updates. They're not particularly great, but better than most other webcomics who would simply not update when things got busy.
I challenge you or anyone else to say that because that movie is animated, it is in any way "for children". Here, I'll even get you started. It's an older movie, but the same studio.
A lot of times it's fairly obvious, especially for family memebers - defaults are "What is your Mother's maiden name?" "What was your first pet called?" "What street did you grow up on?"
A sibling or parent should know any of those - which is why you should always make up your own, by the way.
A lot of times it's fairly obvious, especially for family memebers - defaults are "What is your Mother's maiden name?" "What was your first pet called?" "What street did you grow up on?"
A sibling or parent should know any of those - which is why you should always make up your own, by the way
I can just picture it now, the Left Hand of Darkness: The Movie.
A romantic comedy about men and women, trying to find love together in a tropical paridise. Starring Julia Roberts as Estraven and Hugh Grant as the Envoy.
Kilrathi - that's the alien race. You were watching the emperor talk to Prince Thrakkath about the war. He's standing inside Ki'thrak Mang, a space station, and reaching for a planet he can see through one of the many windows left exposed on the ship.
This trailer has been out for about a week now. It's four minutes long, and for fans, you'll get 1/2 second glimpses of Barret, Yuffie and red 13 in here. You'll also get to see Aeris' shoes.
Once the flash interface has loaded up, you want to navigate to the left hexagon.
Wait till the rotating spokes turn to the picture of the face.
Make sure you time it so you get the biggest picture of the face at the apex of the rotation.
Click and wait for it to download.
Yes, I think flash is a horrible invention as well.
It does give some benefit to those who use telephoto lenses, so I suppose most reviewers figure it balances out - especially since telephoto lenses usually eat up the lions' share of the budget for most photographers.
That being said, as someone who does a lot of photography, I've been seriously considering buying a wide-angle fixed lens digital camera for just these purposes - I don't think the dSLR market will be getting there anytime soon
Megapixels: You almost certainly don't need more than 4.
Okay, I have to take teensy-tiny issues with this:
If you want to print your pictures at magazine-quality 300 DPI at 8X10, you're going to need at least an 8 megapixel camera. Almost any inkjet printer is capable of that output and size, and so it remains the big test for most digital cameras - even though the printers (especially the cheap ones) can wind up being the bottleneck, the extra output resolution will yield a higher-quality print.
Secondly, and more importantly, there is a very useful feature that extra megapixels lets you do: Crop. If you have a group picture of your child's soccer team, and want to cut him out, cutting out a 1/5th strip of a 3264 x 2448 (8 mp)picture can give you a 653 pixel wide crop - suitable for emailing to grandma. A 4 megapixel image will resuly in a 450px-wide crop, which will remove a lot of details on faces, clothing, etc./p>
You can try your hand at the Fuji Finepix s3000. It's small, cheap, and has a nice 6x optical zoom. They're about a year old, but still very popular, so you shouldn't have trouble finding one at most major retailers. I think it'll set you back about $200 or so (price from Circuit City).
The main thing to focus on when buying a digital SLR isn't the cost of the camera itself but the lenses.
The camera itself will set you back around $1000, and if you're particularly lucky you'll get a lens in your package, as with the Canon digital rebel kit.
However, unless you already own lenses from your traditional camera days (AND they have the right mount! Canon mounts usually require Canon lenses!), you better be prepared through the nose for a lens that's equivalent to the the 10x (35-350mm)optical zoom on the Nikon 8800, or the 12x (36-432 mm) Panasonic Lumix FZ20. Both of these cameras have vibration reduction systems... and for SLRs, the stabilization is on the lens side, not on the camera side.
So you're looking at something like a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8D Autofocus Lens with VR - lists for about $1,500 or so.
Also keep in mind that these aren't really the cameras professionals use. The EOS 20D comes close, but the D70 and Digital Rebel (aka 300D IIRC), are crippled compared to a higher-end ($2000+) pro slr. The amount of shots captured per second, frame buffer, noise are far closer to that prosumer "all-in-one" solution than a Nikon D2X. In fact, a lot of manufacturers will intentionally limit the or reduce some of the features of their cameras, using throttled-down versions of the same memory chips, so as not to have the cheaper line usurp the larger profit margins of the more expensive camera.
Ah, the classics - this was right at the advent of the cd-rom revolution, of course, a time when games had just started to push the big-budget envelope.
They were actually offering a lot more at the time, too - the box not only had the game cds, but separate install and game manuals, which introduced your character to the TCS Victory, as if it were written in the fictional universe. The original games even had fold-out blueprints of the ships, complete with fictional statistics and flight characteristics. It's a level of out-of-the-box immersion that just isn't done anymore with these new-fangled microboxes, consarn it!
Well, now we know why Lucas Arts didn't have the confidence to produce the new Sam and Max.
"We wanted to focus more on our existing properties... like uh... Star Wars sequels... and um... Star Wars product tie ins." -Elder Jedi Profet Mar Gin
I can't wait to play that Hoth sequence one more time or buy those re-re-re-mixed-mastered H -DVDs in sexology format.
Same as the AC - there's nothing in the marriage ceremony that obligates anyone to have children. Impotence is a grounds for divorce, but fertility is not a requirement for marriage! If a woman or man cannot produce a child, or decide not to have children, or desire to adopt, then under your logic their marriages should also be banned. In a world with 6+ billion people, and an estimated 9 billion by 2050, it's really not critical to have every minority group out there follow a definition of marriage that was overly narrow to begin with. There are already exceptions to the "it's only for having children" rule... ask people getting married why they're getting married and I doubt many will say "Because I want to have babies.". They'll say something about love... which seems to traverse even the boundry of sexual orientation, amazingly enough.
Slashdot Mirror
You really have to wonder what they're trying to achieve by having a "value pack" - that doesn't include a game! I know Sony is trying to market the movie-playing features of the PSP, but having users gameless after forking out money for the unit seems a bit excessive.
I doubt many users will watch Spiderman 2 more than once on their machines, and probably then more for novelty than anything. It's two hours of entertainment... for $300+. It's kind of difficult to see the "value" in that.
"No".
Longer answer:
Apple was never really the "friend" of independents. Macs are designed to be closed systems, not particularly open towards user-implemented modifications. This is one of the reasons the systems are so polished, secure and easy to use. The fact that Apple is willing to sue to protect said secrets doesn't make them the new MS... they're just doing the same thing they've always done - protect their products.
ThinkSecret infringed on that, and it could very well have been detrimental - look at how quickly Intel has designed a Mac-mini clone. Redmond doesn't have to worry about that - most of their software is a clone of Mac ideas anyway.
Oh it certainly will, suprnova.org has already proved that. But BT isn't based off a centralized hub. As long as you have google, you can find torrents, and they're likely to be more secure and non-corrupt.
The RIAA and MPAA will keep hunting, and the pirates and filesharers will keep on evading and moving further into anonymous and untrackable uploading on the dark side of the 'net. Just like how it took the **AA a year or two to catch on to BT, they're going to have to play catch up with whatever next generation secure P2P apps that come out.
Remember the days when they were targeting warez groups, and taking down a group like CLASS or MYTH was a feather in the anti-piracy cap? Well the anti-pirates have moved on to fry bigger and more user-popular fish, but the warez groups still operate in the largely unmonitored Usenet and IRC communities... protected by their obscurity.
So the faster they track, the faster people run. Eventually they'll all come full circle.
Is this the beginning of the end for Kazaa?
The beginning of the end for Kazaa came when Cohen released the first Bit Torrent client. The program has gone dangerously downhill since then, with ever-increasing corrupted or misnamed files being uploaded by corporations, a smaller user base with a smaller variety of files, and increased fear by the public of getting sued for downloading illegal MP3s - not to mention slower download speeds and an adware-riddled client.
Hopefully this is closer to the end of the end for Kazaa.
Stop being a troll, troll. As a "true" artist, I use nearly all of the tools available to me, to make the best possible art that I can. GIMP itself is a hindrance, the workflow is horrible.
As an artist, you want as few obstacles (like a poor interface) as possible between you and what you want to design. I cannot think of any worthwhile artists anywhere who use GIMP for digital pictures or painting, however I'd love to see some links if you have any. Mullins, Feng, Anry - all of them use Painter/Photshop. Only on /. do you see GIMP advocates, they don't show up anywhere in art communities, like the sijun forums or digitalart.org.
The new iPod shuffle qualifies for that one, I think. Same with the Mac Mini.
I think there's a growing population who just wants a plain cell phone now.
You know, for talking on - instead of having bluetooth, a built in camera, FM-Tuner, an internet service that costs $10/1 megabyte, pager and orchestrated ringtones.
If I could buy a new (possibly smaller, lighter, more battery-efficent) cell phone I would - but stores don't carry anything that basic. You have to spend at least $100 (CDN) for anything wihout a plan, and I'm sure the lion's share of that is going towards a colour screen and features I don't want.
Almost makes me yearn for an Apple iPhone. Does what it should, elgantly and without any extra "fluff".
They shouldn't have their games banned, they should just get specially made versions of the games already out there.
Is there really anything more punitive than waiting in line for World of Warcraft? Having a queue system that's been modified so that you'll join the server... in 10-20 years? After which you'll time out and have to rejoing WoW 2. Give them all 28.8 modems to play CS:Source with. Ball mice. Nokia N-gages (the side-talkin' versions). The entire Deer Hunter collection.
Those suckers will crack within days!
So in the interest of promoting better versions of firefox/linux, we should all be trolling this article, right? MEXICAN GAY JEW LIZARDS!
I don't think the developers should ever have to be more business-like, at least not in the ideal situation. There's is supposed to be a creative job, akin to being the director of a film. Yes, there's a ton of technical aspects involved, but the main purpose of the game should be to make it as creative and fun as possible. It is the place of the producers/publishers to worry about the actual costs.
It's pretty obvious that given some freedom and a large amount of financial support, a talented team will produce a fun product, like Valve with Half-Life 2. Of course, not eveyone will have these resources, but canning games into a business-like cost-benefit ration will stifle creativity.
It's like telling a master painter it would be cheaper to just take a photograph.
ON'T-DAY ENTIONMAY IRATEPAY BAYAY! Now repeat after me: "With Suprnova gone I don't even know where to go to get my .torrent files. I can't seem to find them after the **AA shut down all my favorite copyright-infringing sites. Instead of downloading Elektra and Ashlee Simpson's new album, I purchased them from a retail store at the manufacturer's suggested retail price. Thank you MPAA and RIAA for making the world a better place. You can rest easy knowing you've stopped piracy forever."
These story-arcs are becoming a lot more common when Krahulik and Holikns know they're going to be busy in real life, so they do a set of ~5 strips that are more-or-less unrelated to gaming. When little Gabe (Krahulik's son) was born, he took a week off work, and used the story arc comic to cover the updates. They're not particularly great, but better than most other webcomics who would simply not update when things got busy.
You.
Watch Grave of the Fireflies .
I challenge you or anyone else to say that because that movie is animated, it is in any way "for children". Here, I'll even get you started. It's an older movie, but the same studio.
A lot of times it's fairly obvious, especially for family memebers - defaults are "What is your Mother's maiden name?" "What was your first pet called?" "What street did you grow up on?"
A sibling or parent should know any of those - which is why you should always make up your own, by the way.
A lot of times it's fairly obvious, especially for family memebers - defaults are "What is your Mother's maiden name?" "What was your first pet called?" "What street did you grow up on?"
A sibling or parent should know any of those - which is why you should always make up your own, by the way
I can just picture it now, the Left Hand of Darkness: The Movie.
A romantic comedy about men and women, trying to find love together in a tropical paridise. Starring Julia Roberts as Estraven and Hugh Grant as the Envoy.
Kilrathi - that's the alien race. You were watching the emperor talk to Prince Thrakkath about the war. He's standing inside Ki'thrak Mang, a space station, and reaching for a planet he can see through one of the many windows left exposed on the ship.
Yeah, I was a little obsessed.
This trailer has been out for about a week now. It's four minutes long, and for fans, you'll get 1/2 second glimpses of Barret, Yuffie and red 13 in here. You'll also get to see Aeris' shoes.
Once the flash interface has loaded up, you want to navigate to the left hexagon.
Wait till the rotating spokes turn to the picture of the face.
Make sure you time it so you get the biggest picture of the face at the apex of the rotation.
Click and wait for it to download.
Yes, I think flash is a horrible invention as well.
It does give some benefit to those who use telephoto lenses, so I suppose most reviewers figure it balances out - especially since telephoto lenses usually eat up the lions' share of the budget for most photographers.
That being said, as someone who does a lot of photography, I've been seriously considering buying a wide-angle fixed lens digital camera for just these purposes - I don't think the dSLR market will be getting there anytime soon
Megapixels: You almost certainly don't need more than 4.
Okay, I have to take teensy-tiny issues with this: If you want to print your pictures at magazine-quality 300 DPI at 8X10, you're going to need at least an 8 megapixel camera. Almost any inkjet printer is capable of that output and size, and so it remains the big test for most digital cameras - even though the printers (especially the cheap ones) can wind up being the bottleneck, the extra output resolution will yield a higher-quality print.
Secondly, and more importantly, there is a very useful feature that extra megapixels lets you do: Crop. If you have a group picture of your child's soccer team, and want to cut him out, cutting out a 1/5th strip of a 3264 x 2448 (8 mp)picture can give you a 653 pixel wide crop - suitable for emailing to grandma. A 4 megapixel image will resuly in a 450px-wide crop, which will remove a lot of details on faces, clothing, etc. /p>
You can try your hand at the Fuji Finepix s3000. It's small, cheap, and has a nice 6x optical zoom. They're about a year old, but still very popular, so you shouldn't have trouble finding one at most major retailers. I think it'll set you back about $200 or so (price from Circuit City).
The main thing to focus on when buying a digital SLR isn't the cost of the camera itself but the lenses.
The camera itself will set you back around $1000, and if you're particularly lucky you'll get a lens in your package, as with the Canon digital rebel kit.
However, unless you already own lenses from your traditional camera days (AND they have the right mount! Canon mounts usually require Canon lenses!), you better be prepared through the nose for a lens that's equivalent to the the 10x (35-350mm)optical zoom on the Nikon 8800, or the 12x (36-432 mm) Panasonic Lumix FZ20. Both of these cameras have vibration reduction systems... and for SLRs, the stabilization is on the lens side, not on the camera side.
So you're looking at something like a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8D Autofocus Lens with VR - lists for about $1,500 or so.
Also keep in mind that these aren't really the cameras professionals use. The EOS 20D comes close, but the D70 and Digital Rebel (aka 300D IIRC), are crippled compared to a higher-end ($2000+) pro slr. The amount of shots captured per second, frame buffer, noise are far closer to that prosumer "all-in-one" solution than a Nikon D2X. In fact, a lot of manufacturers will intentionally limit the or reduce some of the features of their cameras, using throttled-down versions of the same memory chips, so as not to have the cheaper line usurp the larger profit margins of the more expensive camera.
Ah, the classics - this was right at the advent of the cd-rom revolution, of course, a time when games had just started to push the big-budget envelope.
They were actually offering a lot more at the time, too - the box not only had the game cds, but separate install and game manuals, which introduced your character to the TCS Victory, as if it were written in the fictional universe. The original games even had fold-out blueprints of the ships, complete with fictional statistics and flight characteristics. It's a level of out-of-the-box immersion that just isn't done anymore with these new-fangled microboxes, consarn it!
Well, now we know why Lucas Arts didn't have the confidence to produce the new Sam and Max.
"We wanted to focus more on our existing properties... like uh... Star Wars sequels... and um... Star Wars product tie ins." -Elder Jedi Profet Mar Gin
I can't wait to play that Hoth sequence one more time or buy those re-re-re-mixed-mastered H -DVDs in sexology format.
Same as the AC - there's nothing in the marriage ceremony that obligates anyone to have children. Impotence is a grounds for divorce, but fertility is not a requirement for marriage! If a woman or man cannot produce a child, or decide not to have children, or desire to adopt, then under your logic their marriages should also be banned. In a world with 6+ billion people, and an estimated 9 billion by 2050, it's really not critical to have every minority group out there follow a definition of marriage that was overly narrow to begin with. There are already exceptions to the "it's only for having children" rule... ask people getting married why they're getting married and I doubt many will say "Because I want to have babies.". They'll say something about love... which seems to traverse even the boundry of sexual orientation, amazingly enough.