Oh, come on. You never brought an imported DVD, fine. Like i said, i know a lot of people who do, and frankly, it's not so hard to imagine happening. Nothing gets more on ones' nerves than popping in a DVD and witnessing a screen saying "Oh, sorry, can't play this DVD - only for players purchased in Europe / Japan / whatever". Yeah, that's surely going to stop piracy...
As for Apple, is debatable, but it's "done right" in the sense it never gets too much in your way. Of course, it's a vendor lock-in tool to sell iPods, but you can burn your tracks to CDs with relative ease or play them somewhere else.
Personally, i don't want DRM of any kind, but if it HAS to be there, i'll take the Apple approach any day.
It's a fact. Most people are sheep and will go along with anything forced to them, but DRM acceptance has it's limits. I know a lot of people who asked me for help on making their DVD players zone-free, for instance.
If you restrict usage too much, people will seek for alternatives. For DRM done (arguably) right, check Apple and iTunes.
Actually, that's the easy part. The tricky part are efectively downloading all that data to a hard drive and aligning the frames, since every camera shoots in a sligtly different direction. The paper in the site is very detailed on the last issue, but the recording part is barely mentioned - perhaps they used low resolution sensors?
In any case, 1560fps at 320x240 is about 114MB/S of raw data - even a 10k rpm SCSI hard drive would have a hard time with that.
I think this might found a niche in scientific measurements / recordings: IIRC, regular high speed cameras use a lot of film (which is eaten by it EXTREMELY fast) and required a lot of previous setup and manteinence. With this, you can fire a high speed shot, and if you don't like it, the system is set for a second take almost instantly.
It wouldn't matter if it's very "clean", as long as it's faithful to the event (no blurry artifacts and so).
It would be much appealing if it wasn't $500 (sans motherboard). The performance it's impresive indeed, but AMD still runs faster (and all of this in 32-bit software, which is half of what the Athlon-64 CPUs can do). For desktops, it doesn't make much sense, even considering the (marginal) power savings - i want to see what Intel comes up with next, their "next-gen" CPU architecture. Things will get interesting then.
As it is, it's a terrific processor for portables, and maybe blade servers. There're better offerings for a desktop, IMHO.
...here - it's dated and it's not meant to be taken so seriously, but it does adress some specific UNIX issues that had been carried along since it's earlier days. Ah, and it's hillarious to boot:)
I completely agree with the lack of an undelete option - no, the wastebasket on your desktop is not enough. There should be some sort of undelete option avaiable at kernel level - i once thought of moving files to ~/.trash (only browseable by owner), with a ~/.trash/.trashbin file stating their original path. The kernel then only needs to ensure that folder never exceeds a preset amount. The rest should be fairly easy.
Wandering off here, but i recall the futuristic bikes in Akira were supposed to work exactly like that: a very powerful engine feeding a generator, which stored energy for individual electric motors on both wheels.
It's a very good idea, and with modern batteries/motors can be made awfully efficient.
Turbines are interesting designs and have been tried in cars before IIRC (i remember seeing a documentary on History Channel about this), was it Ford? They had a car that basically ran on anything that burned; they even tried common isopropyl alcohol on it. Worked just fine.
I wonder how efficient this engine is. Also, how quiet - that was one of the main issues with the car i mentioned before, it sounded like a small jet plane.
Re:Halo 2 severely overrated...
on
More GOTY Awards
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· Score: 1
Well, i also think it's wildly overrated, but i'll say this much: for a console FPS, it's very fun and easy to dig into; which i beleive explains it's appeal to a lot of people that wouldn't normally play FPSs. I still hate gamepads for FPSs, but Halo is the only one that i found bearable to play with them. I've played it, and enjoyed it. Same with Halo 2. It's a nice console game in a genre which usually doesn't translate well to consoles.
But, come on, that game has been done before (and after), and MUCH better IMHO. UT2k4 for PC dances circles arround Halo as a multiplayer game, which, let's face it, it's what people get wet over. Goldeneye had a much better single player experience, and a great multiplayer one. Been there, done that.
It's not a bad game IMHO, by any measure - it's just that there's nothing meriting a GOTY award in it. There were a crapload of much better games in the genre this year (for other platforms). Guess they weren't as hyped.
Agreed about the ending. I'd venture to say it's the worst ending in a game ever: i mean, what the fuck was the rest of the game about? You just wandered arround random locations shooting things, with no explanation of why whatosever. I thought the ending would explain this, but no.
As for the game, i played half of it, but it was overall pretty good. The parts evading snipers, Ravenholm, or the battle in the city under siege were great, while others were downright boring - it's not the most fun i've had with an FPS but when you look at the whole picture, it's a damn fine game. The only reason i didn't purchase it was because of Steam.
I've given up on MMORPGs. I tried several times to like them, wanting to like them, but i find they turn themselves into chores instead of games in no time. I've seen little of WOW, i confess, but i'll be trying it soon. But if the game mechanics didn't change drastically from previous MMORPG offerings, i think it will be more of the same, with more polish.
Hope i'm wrong. I really like Blizzard.
The game has it's up and downs, and i hate Steam with passion, but IMHO it's by far the best game released this year, and a worthy sucessor of the original Half-life.
WOW is good in its genre, but MMORPGs have become stagnant lately; theres a dozen of them coming each month and most are pretty much the same with different graphics. Publishers love them for the monthly fee thing though.
You had TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs; they were much like daemons and multiprocessing, only unbearably evil and painful. And evil. Did i mention painful?
As it's the case with other features in Opera, they didn't just did it, they did it right. I also remember some old browser with tabs, but they were nowhere as easy as manage as Operas'. They didn't inventt popup blocking, nor mouse gestures - but they work seamesly with the browser.
That's the important thing here. They're not afterthoughts; they're well implemented in the UI. That was not the case with the ones before.
... but i can't think of another piece of software that adds so much USEFUL, innovative features from version to version. And the browser is excellent to boot - light, fast, stable, with great render and avaiable for several platforms. It's weird to see other browsers implementing as "innovative features" stuff that Opera has been doing since two or three versions ago.
If you haven't tried it, do so - it's my favorite piece of non-OSS software, and well worth the price. Try it, it's free (the first one always is;) )
Then you don't own it. You have the right to do what you want to do something you purchased, even if it's not what the seller intended you to do. If i want to play HL2 and crack it to get the models reskinned to Spongebob Squarepants characters, it's my right, it's mine. Same if i want to apply a no-cd crack. That Valve might not be ok with it should be of little consequence. Yes, i know about the DMCA, but i don't live in the USA.
You're not buying from Valve, it's a lease contract - you're licensing it. If you read Steam's EULA, it clearly says that they can kill your account whenever they see fit, without having to give you any explanation. HL2 is a nice game, but if you have your account banned by mistake, there's little you can do. And account banned means you can't play all the other games you've paid for on Steam as well.
I don't know how someone can see it's fine to give money to these people.
That's a tricky subect. Ultimately, when you "buy" from Steam you buy directly from Valve, which means they can decide to sell you the game or not - as they see fit. They're in their right to do this, i think.
And no, i don't agree with it. I don't agree with Steam either, for a number of reasons - so i don't use it, at all.
Try again. A "No-steam-no-cd" patch was avaiable two days after the release. I should know, i've played half the game at a friends' who downloaded it. Somehow i feel it's a more painless experience for him that for paying customers.
I don't think music can be translated that easy for a deaf to be understood - surely, you can give him an idea, but the important part of it, the emotional impact, would be difficult - if not impossible. I always thought music was the most powerful art form known to man - it's a catalyst for emotions like no other. A bad day can be better with your favorite tune, or be even worst with a wrong one. It works almost instantly. Bah, for me atleast:)
I recall a movie with Richard Dreyfuss which touched this issue - he was a music proffesor who loved music and raised a deaf child. There's a scene where does a version of "Beautiful boy" with audiorythmic color lights and deaf language; that's as far as you can go. It worked in the movie, but i don't know if it would do in real life?
It runs very smooth on my system (XP1800+, 512mb, nVida FX5200) - completely smooth at 800x600 and very playable at 1024x768 (with some hiccups). D3 ran fine too, but at 640x480, 800x600 tops.
Funny, i'm more interested in single player games lately. Don't get me wrong, HL spawned some fine multiplayer games, like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress and so, but i dunno... maybe i'm getting old or something, but i still preffer playing by myself better sometimes. And it's not like i can't enjoy an online fragfest:) it's just different. I don't know if people were that interested in HL2 as a game or as an engine for mods, which, let's face it, was what kept HL going to this day - i serioulsy don't beleive every single CS fan played HL. Mods it's what made Valve what it is now.
Anyway, i did play HL2, more or less half of it until the end (at a friend's), and it's good. Not the second coming of Christ, just good. The ending completely destroys the game IMHO, and while some parts were funny and incredibly dinamic others were plain boring - just like with the original HL. I honestly had more fun with Doom 3 (yeah, yeah, flame me) and Painkiller. I still would've bought it though (definitely, in fact), if it weren't for Steam. I like to be the owner of what i buy.
GTA 3, GTA Vice City and now GTA San Andreas. I can count the differences between them with my toes. GTA 3 was a true original remake of the idea of GTA/GTA2 (i loved the second one), but Rockstar seems to have stalled there.
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Oh, come on. You never brought an imported DVD, fine. Like i said, i know a lot of people who do, and frankly, it's not so hard to imagine happening. Nothing gets more on ones' nerves than popping in a DVD and witnessing a screen saying "Oh, sorry, can't play this DVD - only for players purchased in Europe / Japan / whatever". Yeah, that's surely going to stop piracy...
As for Apple, is debatable, but it's "done right" in the sense it never gets too much in your way. Of course, it's a vendor lock-in tool to sell iPods, but you can burn your tracks to CDs with relative ease or play them somewhere else.
Personally, i don't want DRM of any kind, but if it HAS to be there, i'll take the Apple approach any day.
It's a fact. Most people are sheep and will go along with anything forced to them, but DRM acceptance has it's limits. I know a lot of people who asked me for help on making their DVD players zone-free, for instance.
If you restrict usage too much, people will seek for alternatives. For DRM done (arguably) right, check Apple and iTunes.
Actually, that's the easy part. The tricky part are efectively downloading all that data to a hard drive and aligning the frames, since every camera shoots in a sligtly different direction. The paper in the site is very detailed on the last issue, but the recording part is barely mentioned - perhaps they used low resolution sensors? In any case, 1560fps at 320x240 is about 114MB/S of raw data - even a 10k rpm SCSI hard drive would have a hard time with that.
I think this might found a niche in scientific measurements / recordings: IIRC, regular high speed cameras use a lot of film (which is eaten by it EXTREMELY fast) and required a lot of previous setup and manteinence. With this, you can fire a high speed shot, and if you don't like it, the system is set for a second take almost instantly.
It wouldn't matter if it's very "clean", as long as it's faithful to the event (no blurry artifacts and so).
It would be much appealing if it wasn't $500 (sans motherboard). The performance it's impresive indeed, but AMD still runs faster (and all of this in 32-bit software, which is half of what the Athlon-64 CPUs can do). For desktops, it doesn't make much sense, even considering the (marginal) power savings - i want to see what Intel comes up with next, their "next-gen" CPU architecture. Things will get interesting then.
As it is, it's a terrific processor for portables, and maybe blade servers. There're better offerings for a desktop, IMHO.
I completely agree with the lack of an undelete option - no, the wastebasket on your desktop is not enough. There should be some sort of undelete option avaiable at kernel level - i once thought of moving files to ~/.trash (only browseable by owner), with a ~/.trash/.trashbin file stating their original path. The kernel then only needs to ensure that folder never exceeds a preset amount. The rest should be fairly easy.
Wandering off here, but i recall the futuristic bikes in Akira were supposed to work exactly like that: a very powerful engine feeding a generator, which stored energy for individual electric motors on both wheels.
It's a very good idea, and with modern batteries/motors can be made awfully efficient.
Turbines are interesting designs and have been tried in cars before IIRC (i remember seeing a documentary on History Channel about this), was it Ford? They had a car that basically ran on anything that burned; they even tried common isopropyl alcohol on it. Worked just fine.
I wonder how efficient this engine is. Also, how quiet - that was one of the main issues with the car i mentioned before, it sounded like a small jet plane.
Well, i also think it's wildly overrated, but i'll say this much: for a console FPS, it's very fun and easy to dig into; which i beleive explains it's appeal to a lot of people that wouldn't normally play FPSs. I still hate gamepads for FPSs, but Halo is the only one that i found bearable to play with them. I've played it, and enjoyed it. Same with Halo 2. It's a nice console game in a genre which usually doesn't translate well to consoles.
But, come on, that game has been done before (and after), and MUCH better IMHO. UT2k4 for PC dances circles arround Halo as a multiplayer game, which, let's face it, it's what people get wet over. Goldeneye had a much better single player experience, and a great multiplayer one. Been there, done that.
It's not a bad game IMHO, by any measure - it's just that there's nothing meriting a GOTY award in it. There were a crapload of much better games in the genre this year (for other platforms). Guess they weren't as hyped.
Painkiller was a hoot, and the most fun i've had with a FPS since Quake 2. It's a great game, and from what i've seen, sadly unappreciated.
I *DID* love Doom 3, but in a different way. Painkiller is simply more fun to play.
Agreed about the ending. I'd venture to say it's the worst ending in a game ever: i mean, what the fuck was the rest of the game about? You just wandered arround random locations shooting things, with no explanation of why whatosever. I thought the ending would explain this, but no.
As for the game, i played half of it, but it was overall pretty good. The parts evading snipers, Ravenholm, or the battle in the city under siege were great, while others were downright boring - it's not the most fun i've had with an FPS but when you look at the whole picture, it's a damn fine game. The only reason i didn't purchase it was because of Steam.
I've given up on MMORPGs. I tried several times to like them, wanting to like them, but i find they turn themselves into chores instead of games in no time. I've seen little of WOW, i confess, but i'll be trying it soon. But if the game mechanics didn't change drastically from previous MMORPG offerings, i think it will be more of the same, with more polish.
Hope i'm wrong. I really like Blizzard.
The game has it's up and downs, and i hate Steam with passion, but IMHO it's by far the best game released this year, and a worthy sucessor of the original Half-life.
WOW is good in its genre, but MMORPGs have become stagnant lately; theres a dozen of them coming each month and most are pretty much the same with different graphics. Publishers love them for the monthly fee thing though.
Close Random Processes? ... DOS had multitasking?
You had TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs; they were much like daemons and multiprocessing, only unbearably evil and painful. And evil. Did i mention painful?
The one with the "surly artists" with Tool and Hole tees made me laugh hard :) So did the unplanned features one. Funny s*it indeed!
As it's the case with other features in Opera, they didn't just did it, they did it right. I also remember some old browser with tabs, but they were nowhere as easy as manage as Operas'. They didn't inventt popup blocking, nor mouse gestures - but they work seamesly with the browser.
That's the important thing here. They're not afterthoughts; they're well implemented in the UI. That was not the case with the ones before.
If you haven't tried it, do so - it's my favorite piece of non-OSS software, and well worth the price. Try it, it's free (the first one always is
That's fine. In any case, you shouldn't have to worry. Just don't complain if you're one of the (something like) %1 that gets banned unjusifiedly.
Then you don't own it. You have the right to do what you want to do something you purchased, even if it's not what the seller intended you to do. If i want to play HL2 and crack it to get the models reskinned to Spongebob Squarepants characters, it's my right, it's mine. Same if i want to apply a no-cd crack. That Valve might not be ok with it should be of little consequence. Yes, i know about the DMCA, but i don't live in the USA.
You're not buying from Valve, it's a lease contract - you're licensing it. If you read Steam's EULA, it clearly says that they can kill your account whenever they see fit, without having to give you any explanation. HL2 is a nice game, but if you have your account banned by mistake, there's little you can do. And account banned means you can't play all the other games you've paid for on Steam as well.
I don't know how someone can see it's fine to give money to these people.
That's a tricky subect. Ultimately, when you "buy" from Steam you buy directly from Valve, which means they can decide to sell you the game or not - as they see fit. They're in their right to do this, i think.
And no, i don't agree with it. I don't agree with Steam either, for a number of reasons - so i don't use it, at all.
Try again. A "No-steam-no-cd" patch was avaiable two days after the release. I should know, i've played half the game at a friends' who downloaded it. Somehow i feel it's a more painless experience for him that for paying customers.
I don't think music can be translated that easy for a deaf to be understood - surely, you can give him an idea, but the important part of it, the emotional impact, would be difficult - if not impossible. I always thought music was the most powerful art form known to man - it's a catalyst for emotions like no other. A bad day can be better with your favorite tune, or be even worst with a wrong one. It works almost instantly. Bah, for me atleast :)
I recall a movie with Richard Dreyfuss which touched this issue - he was a music proffesor who loved music and raised a deaf child. There's a scene where does a version of "Beautiful boy" with audiorythmic color lights and deaf language; that's as far as you can go. It worked in the movie, but i don't know if it would do in real life?
It runs very smooth on my system (XP1800+, 512mb, nVida FX5200) - completely smooth at 800x600 and very playable at 1024x768 (with some hiccups). D3 ran fine too, but at 640x480, 800x600 tops.
Funny, i'm more interested in single player games lately. Don't get me wrong, HL spawned some fine multiplayer games, like Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress and so, but i dunno... maybe i'm getting old or something, but i still preffer playing by myself better sometimes. And it's not like i can't enjoy an online fragfest :) it's just different. I don't know if people were that interested in HL2 as a game or as an engine for mods, which, let's face it, was what kept HL going to this day - i serioulsy don't beleive every single CS fan played HL. Mods it's what made Valve what it is now.
Anyway, i did play HL2, more or less half of it until the end (at a friend's), and it's good. Not the second coming of Christ, just good. The ending completely destroys the game IMHO, and while some parts were funny and incredibly dinamic others were plain boring - just like with the original HL. I honestly had more fun with Doom 3 (yeah, yeah, flame me) and Painkiller. I still would've bought it though (definitely, in fact), if it weren't for Steam. I like to be the owner of what i buy.
THANK YOU. I thought i was the only one who realized that! Some MMORPG players really treat those games like a job.
GTA 3, GTA Vice City and now GTA San Andreas. I can count the differences between them with my toes. GTA 3 was a true original remake of the idea of GTA/GTA2 (i loved the second one), but Rockstar seems to have stalled there.