I live in Indiana...The FOP thing is really bad. They call you and they have a list of the people that live in the house and will address the caller by their first name. The telemarketers stance themselves so it sounds like they're the actual cops rather than the FOP. They state they're with the and blah blah blah. It's real close to extorsion.
they resized the movies to fit the dvd9 iso on a dvd5. they don't ever hash check files on run time due to the fact that it'd take way too much time. at most they do a checksum on the executable which is non-existant in this iso...
Aftetr the whole incident occured I looked closer at the box and noticed the box originally had a square clear sticker sealing the case but there was a circulr clear sticker on there. Lots of sticky residue around it. The game had been bought previous and returned.
Seeing as the game is so ancient, I had bought the collectors edition because I didn't want to install off 6 cds or whatever it is plus the dvd was more updated which means less patching. I ended up having to get a full refund from the store. All I know is I will never use NCSoft software. I work tech support myself and we definitly don't treat paying customers like the way they treated me.
I bought Lineage 2 a few months back because it was $10 at gamestop and well hey, $10 can't be that bad. Install the game, find out the cd key was actually in use. Wrote in a support ticket stating I had just purchased the title and that the key was in use, provided the key as well as my contact information. I knew I would be questioned and they escalated my ticket to which I never heard a response in 2 days from. So I called in and the guy said that the cd key was actually IN USE SUBSCRIBED CURRENTLY! I was like wow, ban that jerk and then he said he'd make a ticket and I'd be in contact with someone who would provide me a new key soon. So this is day 3 and I only have 14 days to return this game. I then get an email stating I need photographic evidence taken with a digital camera of the box, recipt and key. I don't own a digital camera or a scanner, I have 0 use for either. 2 days later they proclaimed I absolutely needed a picture and so I offered them the phone number of the store I purchased my game at as well as the purchase id, time to the second of purchase and told them the store could verify the cd key. This was not good enough for them and seeing as I live in a rural community, I'm not going to drive an hour to reach a city just so I can scan a case for a game I paid $10 for. So it went back to gamestop. I decided after that no more games from ncsoft due to their awesome support. Oh yeah and if you're wondering, yes the person that stole my cd key got to keep their account.
I consider analysts one gigantic group because their basis are half-backed a great deal of the time and moreover wrong. It's all generalized assumptions made from article reading. I have yet to see any analyst say something intelligible about the game industry with firm backing.
the reason that it is mostly is because when emulating xbox, the games all differ a little bit. the code differs based on which sdk build you compile with. Check out cxbx for more information on this, as it is proof of this since it runs 2 games: turok & panzer dragoon orta and informs you of how to 'emulate' other games. So at HLE to get the "emulator" they're building to work with other games they'll have to make it compatible with multiple SDKs.
Sonic the Hedgehog(tm) Valium? More like Miles "Tales" Prower(tm) Adderal and Sonic the Hedgehog(tm) Ritalin..both marketable and widely abused by kids and parents how could this fail?!
X-Box was found because the key required to decrypt the bios (128 bit key...impossible to guess) was found when it was extracted across the LPC bus by bunnie. After that it was a simple modification of how the bios checked its media.
Playstation 2 runs very similar to PSX, which is how it's able to keep its playstation compatability. The first PS2 chip was actually a modified PSX chip which in time became what everyone knew as Neo 2.0/2.3/2.5. After that hackers finally decrypted the Playstation 2 bios and was able to create a modchip that could have full functionality. (Direct boot, imports, silvers and all region)
Gamecube is very weird because they hide the bios (for a while it was thought the media drive and the gamecube shared both firmware and bios) and also the drive itself runs backwards from conventional drives. It's CAV which is variable speed made so that the further out the data is, the faster the drive will spin so that when the data is read it's always constant. Also the data is burned in the opposite direction from the outside in. Duplicating the media is impossible on conventional hardware so other hacks have to be thought up. (Hence the PSO server release...that login server existed back when PSO was only on DC in US & JP) This new chip has been talked about for months now. It will be exciting to see what can be donee with it.
Uh, if you haven't noticed plasmas are dropping massively. you can get a 50" lg plasma for $4000 right now and they're only getting cheaper...32" sony for $1800. LG(zenith) owns so much of the panel manufacturing business that now they can start dropping the prices...and are...that 50" was $8000 a few months back.
Expect both LCD and Plasma to continue going down.
Personally I've never seen much of a future for LCOS..The cabinets are still huge and bulky and doesn't look very nice. Compared to say, rear projection LCD or DLP that's about half the depth and also half the weight and not *that* much more in cost. Plus those technologies are only getting cheaper too!:D
It's most definitly a weak signal. I work at an audio/video store and we have HDTV fed through dishnet, directv & insight cable. The insight cable has been a NIGHTMARE from the start. First, the picture freezes constantly. This is a weak signal problem. The signal is only fed to 3 tvs so it isn't a problem with the building. Every hour or so the picture freezes & audio drops out. Gotta love digital data:)
Also, ODTV(ondemand television) relies on a strong signal too which can be EXTREMELY annoying to toy with considering the weak signal...1 in 5 tries actually gets through and you lose your movie halfway in. The techs have been out numerous times, one time the entire parking lot was full of them. They even ran new wires all throughout the building, a bi-directional amplifier and still we have a weak signal.
Now to at home, we got the same service with the same box (Motorolla something or another) and we too have the same exact crappy signal problem. It's nowhere near as pronouced but it's still annoying to say the least. They had to install all new wiring in our house because we had RJ59 run by the cable company and HD needs RJ6. The install job to say the least was appauling as there are cables hanging from our basement ceiling and they just drilled up through our wooden floor to run the cables. There isn't even a common distribution block, the wire runs into our house and then hits what I have dubbed "splitter hell;" a spaghetti knot of splitters to feed all the tvs in the house.
Overall I'm not very happy with cable HD service. It's still extremely buggy and the cable companies don't want to do anything about it. The tech when installing mentioned to use we couldn't run all our digi boxes we requested because we needed an amplifier and then had left that day. When we called about getting an amplifier, they want to charge $40 just to have a tech come out and screw a metal box inline to our house. Even though it's their fault that we need it and they never provided it.
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I live in Indiana...The FOP thing is really bad. They call you and they have a list of the people that live in the house and will address the caller by their first name. The telemarketers stance themselves so it sounds like they're the actual cops rather than the FOP. They state they're with the and blah blah blah. It's real close to extorsion.
they resized the movies to fit the dvd9 iso on a dvd5. they don't ever hash check files on run time due to the fact that it'd take way too much time. at most they do a checksum on the executable which is non-existant in this iso...
Aftetr the whole incident occured I looked closer at the box and noticed the box originally had a square clear sticker sealing the case but there was a circulr clear sticker on there. Lots of sticky residue around it. The game had been bought previous and returned.
Seeing as the game is so ancient, I had bought the collectors edition because I didn't want to install off 6 cds or whatever it is plus the dvd was more updated which means less patching. I ended up having to get a full refund from the store. All I know is I will never use NCSoft software. I work tech support myself and we definitly don't treat paying customers like the way they treated me.
I bought Lineage 2 a few months back because it was $10 at gamestop and well hey, $10 can't be that bad. Install the game, find out the cd key was actually in use. Wrote in a support ticket stating I had just purchased the title and that the key was in use, provided the key as well as my contact information. I knew I would be questioned and they escalated my ticket to which I never heard a response in 2 days from.
So I called in and the guy said that the cd key was actually IN USE SUBSCRIBED CURRENTLY! I was like wow, ban that jerk and then he said he'd make a ticket and I'd be in contact with someone who would provide me a new key soon. So this is day 3 and I only have 14 days to return this game.
I then get an email stating I need photographic evidence taken with a digital camera of the box, recipt and key. I don't own a digital camera or a scanner, I have 0 use for either. 2 days later they proclaimed I absolutely needed a picture and so I offered them the phone number of the store I purchased my game at as well as the purchase id, time to the second of purchase and told them the store could verify the cd key. This was not good enough for them and seeing as I live in a rural community, I'm not going to drive an hour to reach a city just so I can scan a case for a game I paid $10 for. So it went back to gamestop. I decided after that no more games from ncsoft due to their awesome support. Oh yeah and if you're wondering, yes the person that stole my cd key got to keep their account.
I consider analysts one gigantic group because their basis are half-backed a great deal of the time and moreover wrong. It's all generalized assumptions made from article reading. I have yet to see any analyst say something intelligible about the game industry with firm backing.
This just in: analysts change their minds yet again
oh wait, who cares what analysts think since they know nothing.
nope, they already have cell processor HDTVs on the market
the reason that it is mostly is because when emulating xbox, the games all differ a little bit. the code differs based on which sdk build you compile with. Check out cxbx for more information on this, as it is proof of this since it runs 2 games: turok & panzer dragoon orta and informs you of how to 'emulate' other games. So at HLE to get the "emulator" they're building to work with other games they'll have to make it compatible with multiple SDKs.
Sonic the Hedgehog(tm) Valium? More like Miles "Tales" Prower(tm) Adderal and Sonic the Hedgehog(tm) Ritalin..both marketable and widely abused by kids and parents how could this fail?!
X-Box was found because the key required to decrypt the bios (128 bit key...impossible to guess) was found when it was extracted across the LPC bus by bunnie. After that it was a simple modification of how the bios checked its media.
Playstation 2 runs very similar to PSX, which is how it's able to keep its playstation compatability. The first PS2 chip was actually a modified PSX chip which in time became what everyone knew as Neo 2.0/2.3/2.5. After that hackers finally decrypted the Playstation 2 bios and was able to create a modchip that could have full functionality. (Direct boot, imports, silvers and all region)
Gamecube is very weird because they hide the bios (for a while it was thought the media drive and the gamecube shared both firmware and bios) and also the drive itself runs backwards from conventional drives. It's CAV which is variable speed made so that the further out the data is, the faster the drive will spin so that when the data is read it's always constant. Also the data is burned in the opposite direction from the outside in. Duplicating the media is impossible on conventional hardware so other hacks have to be thought up. (Hence the PSO server release...that login server existed back when PSO was only on DC in US & JP) This new chip has been talked about for months now. It will be exciting to see what can be donee with it.
Uh, if you haven't noticed plasmas are dropping massively. you can get a 50" lg plasma for $4000 right now and they're only getting cheaper...32" sony for $1800. LG(zenith) owns so much of the panel manufacturing business that now they can start dropping the prices...and are...that 50" was $8000 a few months back.
:D
Expect both LCD and Plasma to continue going down.
Personally I've never seen much of a future for LCOS..The cabinets are still huge and bulky and doesn't look very nice. Compared to say, rear projection LCD or DLP that's about half the depth and also half the weight and not *that* much more in cost. Plus those technologies are only getting cheaper too!
It's most definitly a weak signal. I work at an audio/video store and we have HDTV fed through dishnet, directv & insight cable. The insight cable has been a NIGHTMARE from the start. First, the picture freezes constantly. This is a weak signal problem. The signal is only fed to 3 tvs so it isn't a problem with the building. Every hour or so the picture freezes & audio drops out. Gotta love digital data :)
Also, ODTV(ondemand television) relies on a strong signal too which can be EXTREMELY annoying to toy with considering the weak signal...1 in 5 tries actually gets through and you lose your movie halfway in. The techs have been out numerous times, one time the entire parking lot was full of them. They even ran new wires all throughout the building, a bi-directional amplifier and still we have a weak signal.
Now to at home, we got the same service with the same box (Motorolla something or another) and we too have the same exact crappy signal problem. It's nowhere near as pronouced but it's still annoying to say the least. They had to install all new wiring in our house because we had RJ59 run by the cable company and HD needs RJ6. The install job to say the least was appauling as there are cables hanging from our basement ceiling and they just drilled up through our wooden floor to run the cables. There isn't even a common distribution block, the wire runs into our house and then hits what I have dubbed "splitter hell;" a spaghetti knot of splitters to feed all the tvs in the house.
Overall I'm not very happy with cable HD service. It's still extremely buggy and the cable companies don't want to do anything about it. The tech when installing mentioned to use we couldn't run all our digi boxes we requested because we needed an amplifier and then had left that day. When we called about getting an amplifier, they want to charge $40 just to have a tech come out and screw a metal box inline to our house. Even though it's their fault that we need it and they never provided it.