Sorry for the late reply, but I use iTunes and I think it does a great job of letting you organize music.
Why do you want your music files organized a certain way? The point of iTunes and such software is that you shouldn't need to care how it's organized- you should be able to focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) Find specific music. 2) Play said music. 3) Put a subset of your music on an mp3 player. 4) Burn cds of subsets of your music.
You kind of contradicted yourself there. First you said, "you shouldn't need to care how it's organized" and then you said "focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) find specific music...". Organizing your collection and being able to find specific music go hand in hand. If your music library is horribly organized, you won't be able to easily find music and actually play said music (especially when you have an 80 gigabyte music library like myself). Sure, it would be nice if every track magically sorted itself, but everyone has different ways of doing things, so I doubt that will ever happen. You will probably always need to organize your collections, whether you like it or not (and this doesn't just apply to music collections or itunes). Some people might organize their music by albums, some might organize their music by genre, etc...
Having to organize files is a problem, not part of a solution to a problem- you should simply be able to perform the above tasks without needing to worry about the details. That's the philosophy of software design with systems like iTunes.
I wouldn't say organization is a problem, it just can be very time consuming. When you have different mp3 tags, some of which are improperly labelled, you have to organize whether you like it or not. The end result is worth it as you have a much easier to navigate music library.
Here are some of the things I do in iTunes to organize my music:
Proper labels (or id3tags): This is probably the most important organization step, this is also the most time consuming (especially if you have a huge library). But really, you want your mp3 tags to be easily readable so that you can easily find specific tracks. It's also pretty important since those are the details that you see on the ipods creen while listening to a track.
Browse pane: I use the Browse feature so that I can see all the various genres, artists and albums in my library. I always have the browse pane open so that I can switch between genres, artists or albums instantly. If I want to listen to Alternative songs, I click on the Alternative genre and then I only see alternative tracks. It's really quite simple and works very well. Of course this only works if your tracks are properly labelled (see proper labels step above).
Rating system: I use the rating system and rate my songs between 0 to 5 stars. This helps me find my favourites, especially with smart playlists which I describe below.
Smart playlists: I use smart playlists almost exclusively (no regular playlists). I prefer smart playlists because they auto update and add new songs that match the criteria I set in smart playlist. I keep smart playlists of various genres containing my favourite tracks. For example, my "Alternative Favourites" smart playlist would be "Genre is Alternative" and "My Rating is 5 Stars". If I want a playlist with all my favourite Carl Cox sets, I would just create a smart playlist with "Artist is Carl Cox" and "My Rating is 5 Stars". It's really quite simple, yet extremely flexible and powerful. It's also nice to create playlists based on the star rating as when you change the rating, the playlist automatically updates and removes or adds a track with the rating that matches the smart playlist settings.
Search bar: If I want to search for some specific keyword, I use the search bar at the top right of the window and it instantly finds what I'm looking for. There's no search times, it's all instant results.
Several hundred million people seem to disagree. The interface is amazing, the capacity is amazing, etc..
I have a sandisk sansa express (3gb after adding in the microSD) and the wife has a creative zen stone 3gb. Both were cheap and show up as USB drives on our respective Debian Linux 2.6.x boxen.
A 3gb mp3 player...are you joking? I hate the fact that my 30gb mp3 player can only hold one third of my 90gb music collection and I can only put my very favourite tunes on it. I can't even imagine trying to squeeze my favourite playlists on an 3gb mp3 player...
The only positive thing you mentioned was the fact that your mp3 player you can just plug into Debian and I'm guessing it acts just like a usb key where you can upload songs. Well that's fine with a small 3gb mp3 player, but when you have a 30 to 80gb mp3 player, you really want software where you can organize your favourite tracks and playlists and select which ones you want to be updated/put on your ipod. It would drive me crazy if I had to manually delete and copy over files like it was a regular storage device. Of course I'm just guessing this is how your mp3 player works... My very first mp3 player was a 128mb sansa and that's how it worked.
Can you select playlists on your mp3 player or does it just play whatever random mp3s are on the device? Can you create playlists on the fly or change the rating of songs on the fly? There are literally dozens and dozens of reasons why ipods are superior, and if you've owned one, I can see why you don't understand. Also, itunes is probably the best mp3 player software that I've ever used. It's very well designed and has all the features you need (aside from being able to transcode videos if you want to watch them on your ipod video). The only downside is the fact that you need Windows or a Mac to use itunes. I'm still waiting for Apple to release a linux client, but I'm not holding my breath.
When you said "Give up". If the kid is going to have access to the internet, he'll have access to pr0n, period.
Any sufficiently motivated teen will circumvent even the best system. You can try to fight human nature, but in the end you will lose.
Exactly, and let's not forget that you can still pleasure yourself without porn. I know when I was a horny little 13 year old, I could get off while watching women dressed in spandex doing those aerobic workouts on TV... Or I could just close my eyes and use my imagination...
No parental software that blocks porn is possibly going to be able to block a kid from looking at pictures of his or her favourite (fully clothed) celebrity... All a kid needs is a little imagination and about 2 minutes... So go ahead and block porn, the kid will find other ways to meet his or her needs.
I don't know how many of you have ever kept a bird/parrot, but I find the lessons in bird training to be instructive. Rule #1 is that you NEVER, not for any reason, should hit a bird. No matter what the bird has done. All you will teach them is that you are the enemy. Not believing it I had occasionally hit a bird. It turned out they were right. The animal learned nothing except to fear and despise whoever did it. For those of you who don't want your children to hate you for the rest of your life, you might want to think about that. While teaching your children the consequences of their actions, you might want to imagine a few of your own.
Exactly. It's just common sense really. This not only applies to birds, but all humans and animals aswell. By beating a person or animal, you create a fear. It is only natural for a creature to develop a fear of someone or something which they perceive to be a threat to their very survival. This is what helps keeps humans and animals out of harms way, you learn to avoid things that may cause you harm. This is also known as the fight or flight response.
I have a lot of experience with this as I was abused by my father when I was between the ages of 5 and 13. I was also bullied in public and high school. This had a profound negative effect on me as person. I tried to kill myself when I was 13 and I started taking drugs shortly after that. I was also jumped or physically attacked by groups of complete strangers on seperate occasions during my teenage years. This basically cemented my fear that all men are a threat to me. Now, anytime I come into contact with a complete stranger who looks indimidating, violent ot angry, my fight or flight response kicks in and I also get a panic attack. Obviously this is a false response as most strangers mean no harm to me, but this is a behaviour that I've developed as a self defense mechanism whether I like it or not.
For a long time, I dreamed of getting revenge on my father and my bullies. I used to dream about beating them and sometimes I'd dream about actually killing them. Luckily, I never acted out any of these urges. This just goes to show how much hitting someone can affect them, especially repeated and prolonged forms of abuse. There's been many documented cases of children killing an abusive parent or parents. I'm not saying it's right, but it is a fact of life. When people are driven to a certain point, they can snap and redirect that anger towards their tormentor(s).
So all you abusive parents out there, be warned, you might be causing your child irreparable harm and they may take issue with that someday when they're older and bigger than you. Physically abusing someone doesn't usually leave long lasting physical scars, but the emotional and mental damage can be permament.
(Sorry for replying so late, I only just discovered this article and I felt that I should reply and share my experience).
While I know you were being funny, CTRL+ALT+DEL has more uses than just killing (non-responsive) processes or rebooting the OS. You can view a list of processes, look at cpu and memory usage, network usage, etc.. You can also view detailed information on individual processes such as base priority, memory usage, vm memory usage, cpu time, handles, threads, IO read/writes, etc..
I think SysInternal's Process Explorer is a better program for this task, but for times when you just want to quickly look at some system or process stats, the built in Windows Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del shortcut) works just fine.
Obviously the story, characters and villians are different... the graphics are no doubt different too.
Check this video review of BioShock to see why it's like System Shock 2. Also, that video is good for a laugh or two.
When Half-Life 2: The Orange Box ships later this year, it promises to deliver an impressively wide range of gameplay. First, there's Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the second part of the trilogy follow-up to 2004's blockbuster Half-Life 2. (The Orange Box will also include Half-Life 2 as well as Episode One to get newcomers up to speed.) Next is Team Fortress 2, the stylized, team-based multiplayer action game that's been in development off and on over the past decade. Finally, The Orange Box will also include Portal, the innovative first-person action puzzle game.
The Orange Box is a menagerie of Valve Software's most recent and forthcoming titles, including Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal.
Also, the official site... It's going to be the best selling game bundle ever, in my opinion. If all goes according to plan, it'll be released on October 10th (less than a month to go).
Re:Yes, its a great game
on
BioShock Review
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· Score: 2, Interesting
the big guys that protect the little girls would be impossible.
Are you serious? The Big Daddies were a joke. Sure they had lots of hit points, but their fighting technique was easy to figure out and exploit. Once you get the freezing plasmid, you can keep Big Daddies frozen indefinitely while you shoot at them or hack away at them with your wrench.
Even though the game was easy, like walk in the park easy, it was still really fun and I'm glad I bought the PC version. The story is awesome and it's one of the best first person shooters I've played in years. I never played the original System Shock series, but from what I've read, Bioshock is basically a clone of System Shock 2.
I recently finished the game and I'm glad I bought it. Even though there are numerous flaws, the art direction, theme, etc.. was very well done.
I loved how when you light guys on fire and there was water nearby, they'd sometimes jump in it to douse the flames. As soon as they jumped in the water, I'd pull out the electric plasmid and electrocute them, fun times...
You should check out this hilarious video review of Bioshock. He starts off by showing how BioShock isn't like System Shock 2, it *IS* System Shock 2. He then proceeds to tear the game to shreds by pointing out the numerous flaws. He still said it's the probably the best game of the year, and I'd tend to agree. But that isn't saying much considering the (lack of) competition.
I thought the theme, sound, story and art direction were fantastic. The only downside I noticed was how repetitive and how horribly easy it was. I still enjoyed the game and would give it atleast an 8.5/10. It was definitely worth the purchase, even aside from all the flaws.
If you found that review funny, check out his other reviews here and here.
PC version is horribly unstable even after installing the NVidia drivers that where Hot Fixed for the game.
I think the problem is your PC is horribly unstable, not the game. Your issues could be any combination of faulty hardware, bad drivers or overheating hardware. So far I've gotten alteast 30 hours of gameplay out of Bioshock and I've yet to have a single crash. Obviously each person has a different experience, but I really don't think you can lay all the blame on BioShock. From my experience, Nvidia drivers which were once the best, are now getting worse and worse with each release. Also, it could be other issues like sound card drivers. I remember one time I tried to enable EAX in F.E.A.R with my cheap $33 Sound Blaster Audigy 1 and I'd get blue screens of death every time. I think that's the only game in recent memory thats ever given me a BSOD. Have you run temperature monitoring software and checked if your cpu, or more likely your video card overheats?
What are your system specs? Does your case have proper ventilation and cooling? There are so many variables that could cause issues, I think it's a bit premature to lay the blame solely on BioShock.
SSD is up there with those holographic drives we keep hearing about that are only 2 years away...
How can you even compare the two? Solid State Drives are already on the market. Sure it's expensive, but it's actually on the market, unlike holographic storage.
One thing I always liked about the GTA series was the relative lack of loading screens. In GTA 3 I believe you only ever saw loading screens when switching between the 3 main islands. Vice City was similar, only there was 2 main islands and 1 loading screen between them. I don't remember seeing any loading screens in San Andreas. I always found the world more immersive in GTA for that reason (aside from minior issues like cars and pedestrians disappearing when they went out of view and you turned around and they were gone). Hopefully GTA IV continues the trend of a seamless world with streaming content. GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas all used the RenderWare engine, while I think GTA IV they had to build their own engine since RenderWare got sold off to EA.
And on that topic... one thing that always pissed me off was the fact that RenderWare got sold to EA and killed. EA refused to license RenderWare to any other developers and it basically ended up getting killed off by EA internally. It's yet another reason why I hate EA...
RenderWare is no longer available for purchase, although EA are honouring old contracts, meaning that other developer's games after the Criterion acquisition may still use the technology. What was RW4 has dissolved among the rest of EA internal tech.
Not to mention The Orange Box includes the original Half-Life 2 aswell as Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal AND Team Fortress 2. I think I'll get atleast 100-200 hours of play out of the orange box, well worth the purchase. I've been waiting for this for ages, and it's almost finally out... I've got it marked on my calender: October 10, 2007 (assuming there's no delays).
I only ever bought Half-Life 2 and for the longest time I wanted to get Episode 1 (I even went to a local store a couple times but they never had any copies in stock). Now I'm glad that I didn't end up buying Episode 1 since I can now get it as part of the orange box.
On a side note, I think FPS gamers are going to be busy for a while, here's whats currently marked on my calender:
Talk about a huge holiday lineup.... (And of course Halo 3 for those console gamers...not for me, but worth mentioning). I'll be picking up Episode 2, Crysis and Unreal for sure, Enemy Territory most likely not at release, maybe some point next year after I've played out those other 3...
Knowing how EA likes to screw up PS3 ports (see the Madden 360/PS3 fiasco), I wouldn't touch an EA PS3 port with a 50 foot pole. I tend to avoid EA at all costs anyway (they really butchered Command & Conquer 3 in my opinion). I'm guessing with 99% certainty that the PS3 version isn't going to be as good as the PC/360 version, since it isn't being done by Valve themselves.
Besides, I don't see why people would want to play Half-life 2 on anything other than a PC anyway. Of course I'm biased towards PC first person shooters, all the best shooters are on PC: starting with the original Wolfenstein, through Doom 1-3, Quake 1-3, Halflife 1-2, Unreal Tournament, etc..
I own a PS3 and a Wii, and the only time I've ever actually enjoyed a shooter on a console was with the Wii (thanks to the wiimote). Well, GoldenEye for N64 was pretty good too actually...
Opera really is a great browser, though the only version I've ever actually used is the one on my Wii. I've never tried the PC version since I can't seem to live without some Firefox extensions (NoScript, Adblock, ImageZoom, DownThemAll and ForecastFox to name a few).
ImageZoom and DownThemAll are key for porn browsing/collecting...
Here are my benchmarks for comparison. System specs are: Athlon64 X2 3800+ (2.0ghz dual core) running Windows XP SP2
Firefox (2.0.0.6) with NoScript disabled in the Add-on window:
MD5 Benchmark took 3.906 seconds for 3000 hashes (768 hashes/second) MD4 Benchmark took 2.875 seconds for 2700 hashes (939 hashes/second) SHA1 Benchmark took 4.281 seconds for 1900 hashes (444 hashes/second)
Firefox (2.0.0.6) with NoScript enabled and pentestmonkey.net whitelisted:
MD5 Benchmark took 4.687 seconds for 3000 hashes (640 hashes/second) MD4 Benchmark took 3.438 seconds for 2700 hashes (785 hashes/second) SHA1 Benchmark took 5.156 seconds for 1900 hashes (369 hashes/second)
IE (6.0):
MD5 Benchmark took 3.781 seconds for 3000 hashes (793 hashes/second) MD4 Benchmark took 3.812 seconds for 2700 hashes (708 hashes/second) SHA1 Benchmark took 4.016 seconds for 1900 hashes (473 hashes/second)
I thought it would be interesting to see if the NoScript extension had any effect on performance, and sure enough it did. The real surprise was that IE 6.0 performed better than Firefox 2.0.0.6 in 2 of the 3 benchmarks.
Correction. I meant playback not transcode, big difference...
Also, you need a multithreaded decoder if you want to fully utilize a dual or quad core cpu.
I use VLC media player, but the H264 decoder is currently only single threaded. Also, there is no hardware acceleration support so it's practically impossible to play 1080p H264 content in VLC at the moment. Developers are working on a multithreaded H264 decoder, but that could take a while. From my understanding, VLC uses the libavcodec library which is also used by ffmpeg, ffdshow and mplayer.
Here's a thread about the lack of multithreading and hardware acceleration on the VLC forums (j-b is one of the developers).
While multithreaded support is being worked on, it seems like hardware acceleration may not happen unless Nvidia and ATI provide implementation details.
I can't seem to find the link, but I remember reading a site that claimed you needed a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2ghz in order to transcode h264 at 1080p without relying on video card offloading.
but it just seems to me like Nintendo keeps pumping them out assuming that the games will be purchased by the faithful
There's no assumption involved. The faithful WILL purchase them.
I resent Nintendo for expecting me to continually buy the same type of games over and over.
You don't have to buy them. The thing that other people like about Nintendo are these key franchises. Without Mario, without Zelda, without Metroid Prime, I wouldn't have purchased a Wii. First party titles are what people want, even if they are rehashes. That's the main reason I also own a PS3, for when Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo come out...
Exclusive franchises are important to any game console, look at Nintendo with Mario, Sony with Metal Gear Solid or Xbox with Halo... These are considered system sellers for a reason.
#1 is the Mario franchise with 193 million games sold #4 is the Final Fantasy franchise with 75 million games sold #7 is the Zelda franchise with 52 million games sold #8 is the Grand Theft Auto franchise with 50 million games sold
Nintendo would be crazy to not make any more Mario games when they still have a ton of devoted fans who will continue to purchase them (I know I'll be picking up a copy of Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy).
On a side note, a lot of the GBA/DS games I own are ports of old games like Mario 2, Mario 3, Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my favourite game). I owned all these games many years ago, but I bought them again so I could play them on my DS Lite and they are still extremely fun, even 10-20 years later.
It's a violation of the Terms of Service of most ISPs to degrade the service of other subscribers. I'm surprised your ISP hasn't done anything to stop "Jolly Roger". Have you complained to the ISP?
Note: Comcast reserves the right to immediately terminate the Service and the Subscriber Agreement if you engage in any of the prohibited activities listed in this AUP or if you use the Comcast Equipment or Service in a way which is contrary to any Comcast policies or any of Comcast's suppliers' policies. You must strictly adhere to any policy set forth by another service provider accessed through the Service.
Here are a couple of the "Prohibted Uses and Activities":
vii. restrict, inhibit, or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to use or enjoy the Service, including, without limitation, posting or transmitting any information or software which contains a worm, virus, or other harmful feature, or generating levels of traffic sufficient to impede others' ability to send or retrieve information;
viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;
Also note (emphasis mine):
xiv. run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;
Read their Terms of Use/Service. You are not allowed to mess with their network (in a harmful manner). They will probably cancel your service pretty fast...
Note: Comcast reserves the right to immediately terminate the Service and the Subscriber Agreement if you engage in any of the prohibited activities listed in this AUP or if you use the Comcast Equipment or Service in a way which is contrary to any Comcast policies or any of Comcast's suppliers' policies. You must strictly adhere to any policy set forth by another service provider accessed through the Service.
Here's a couple of their "Prohibited Uses and Activities":
vii. restrict, inhibit, or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to use or enjoy the Service, including, without limitation, posting or transmitting any information or software which contains a worm, virus, or other harmful feature, or generating levels of traffic sufficient to impede others' ability to send or retrieve information;
viii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;
xxii. interfere with computer networking or telecommunications service to any user, host or network, including, without limitation, denial of service attacks, flooding of a network, overloading a service, improper seizing and abuse of operator privileges and attempts to "crash" a host;
On a side note, I find xviii somewhat ironic:
xviii. impersonate any person or entity, engage in sender address falsification, forge anyone else's digital or manual signature, or perform any other similar fraudulent activity;
Isn't that similar to what Comcast is doing with your packets when forge RST packets?;)
There are different types of registers on any modern cpu. For example, general purpose registers, floating point registers and SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) registers to name a few. The first two types on a 64 bit CPU are 64 bit registers while SIMD registers are 128 bit.
Here is a brief description of what SIMD is and what it can be used for:
Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) processors are also known as short vector processors. They enable a single instruction to process multiple pieces of data simultaneously. They work by allowing multiple pieces of data to be packed into one data word and enabling the instruction to act on each piece of data. This is useful in processing cases where the same operation has to performed on large amounts of data. For example, take image processing. A common operation found in programs such as Photoshop would be to reduce the amount of red in an image by half. Assuming a 32-bit traditional processor that is Single Instruction, Single Data (SISD) and a 24 bit image, the information for one pixel would be put into one 32-bit word for processing. Each pixel would have to be processed individually. In a 128-bit SIMD processor, four 32-bit pixels could be packed into one 128-bit word and all four pixels could be processed simultaneously. Theoretically, this translates to a four fold improvement in processing time.
If everyone uses ODF, Microsoft loses their Office monopoly. There's no reason to use Office if there are better and cheaper alternatives which can read and write the same open document format. What Microsoft wants is a format that they claim is "open", but actually can only be properly understood by Microsoft Office. Without OOXML, Microsoft could stand to lose millions, maybe billions from companies switching away from Microsoft Office products (no more vendor lock-in).
If ODF succeeds, Microsoft stands to lose a ton of money in the long run, this is unacceptable to Microsoft, so they will do anything they can to push their not-so-open OOXML format.
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You kind of contradicted yourself there. First you said, "you shouldn't need to care how it's organized" and then you said "focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) find specific music...". Organizing your collection and being able to find specific music go hand in hand. If your music library is horribly organized, you won't be able to easily find music and actually play said music (especially when you have an 80 gigabyte music library like myself). Sure, it would be nice if every track magically sorted itself, but everyone has different ways of doing things, so I doubt that will ever happen. You will probably always need to organize your collections, whether you like it or not (and this doesn't just apply to music collections or itunes). Some people might organize their music by albums, some might organize their music by genre, etc...
I wouldn't say organization is a problem, it just can be very time consuming. When you have different mp3 tags, some of which are improperly labelled, you have to organize whether you like it or not. The end result is worth it as you have a much easier to navigate music library.
Here are some of the things I do in iTunes to organize my music:
Proper labels (or id3tags): This is probably the most important organization step, this is also the most time consuming (especially if you have a huge library). But really, you want your mp3 tags to be easily readable so that you can easily find specific tracks. It's also pretty important since those are the details that you see on the ipods creen while listening to a track.
Browse pane: I use the Browse feature so that I can see all the various genres, artists and albums in my library. I always have the browse pane open so that I can switch between genres, artists or albums instantly. If I want to listen to Alternative songs, I click on the Alternative genre and then I only see alternative tracks. It's really quite simple and works very well. Of course this only works if your tracks are properly labelled (see proper labels step above).
Rating system: I use the rating system and rate my songs between 0 to 5 stars. This helps me find my favourites, especially with smart playlists which I describe below.
Smart playlists: I use smart playlists almost exclusively (no regular playlists). I prefer smart playlists because they auto update and add new songs that match the criteria I set in smart playlist. I keep smart playlists of various genres containing my favourite tracks. For example, my "Alternative Favourites" smart playlist would be "Genre is Alternative" and "My Rating is 5 Stars". If I want a playlist with all my favourite Carl Cox sets, I would just create a smart playlist with "Artist is Carl Cox" and "My Rating is 5 Stars". It's really quite simple, yet extremely flexible and powerful. It's also nice to create playlists based on the star rating as when you change the rating, the playlist automatically updates and removes or adds a track with the rating that matches the smart playlist settings.
Search bar: If I want to search for some specific keyword, I use the search bar at the top right of the window and it instantly finds what I'm looking for. There's no search times, it's all instant results.
Custom mp3 tags: I
Several hundred million people seem to disagree. The interface is amazing, the capacity is amazing, etc..
A 3gb mp3 player...are you joking? I hate the fact that my 30gb mp3 player can only hold one third of my 90gb music collection and I can only put my very favourite tunes on it. I can't even imagine trying to squeeze my favourite playlists on an 3gb mp3 player...
The only positive thing you mentioned was the fact that your mp3 player you can just plug into Debian and I'm guessing it acts just like a usb key where you can upload songs. Well that's fine with a small 3gb mp3 player, but when you have a 30 to 80gb mp3 player, you really want software where you can organize your favourite tracks and playlists and select which ones you want to be updated/put on your ipod. It would drive me crazy if I had to manually delete and copy over files like it was a regular storage device. Of course I'm just guessing this is how your mp3 player works... My very first mp3 player was a 128mb sansa and that's how it worked.
Can you select playlists on your mp3 player or does it just play whatever random mp3s are on the device? Can you create playlists on the fly or change the rating of songs on the fly? There are literally dozens and dozens of reasons why ipods are superior, and if you've owned one, I can see why you don't understand. Also, itunes is probably the best mp3 player software that I've ever used. It's very well designed and has all the features you need (aside from being able to transcode videos if you want to watch them on your ipod video). The only downside is the fact that you need Windows or a Mac to use itunes. I'm still waiting for Apple to release a linux client, but I'm not holding my breath.
Exactly, and let's not forget that you can still pleasure yourself without porn. I know when I was a horny little 13 year old, I could get off while watching women dressed in spandex doing those aerobic workouts on TV... Or I could just close my eyes and use my imagination...
No parental software that blocks porn is possibly going to be able to block a kid from looking at pictures of his or her favourite (fully clothed) celebrity... All a kid needs is a little imagination and about 2 minutes... So go ahead and block porn, the kid will find other ways to meet his or her needs.
Exactly. It's just common sense really. This not only applies to birds, but all humans and animals aswell. By beating a person or animal, you create a fear. It is only natural for a creature to develop a fear of someone or something which they perceive to be a threat to their very survival. This is what helps keeps humans and animals out of harms way, you learn to avoid things that may cause you harm. This is also known as the fight or flight response.
I have a lot of experience with this as I was abused by my father when I was between the ages of 5 and 13. I was also bullied in public and high school. This had a profound negative effect on me as person. I tried to kill myself when I was 13 and I started taking drugs shortly after that. I was also jumped or physically attacked by groups of complete strangers on seperate occasions during my teenage years. This basically cemented my fear that all men are a threat to me. Now, anytime I come into contact with a complete stranger who looks indimidating, violent ot angry, my fight or flight response kicks in and I also get a panic attack. Obviously this is a false response as most strangers mean no harm to me, but this is a behaviour that I've developed as a self defense mechanism whether I like it or not.
For a long time, I dreamed of getting revenge on my father and my bullies. I used to dream about beating them and sometimes I'd dream about actually killing them. Luckily, I never acted out any of these urges. This just goes to show how much hitting someone can affect them, especially repeated and prolonged forms of abuse. There's been many documented cases of children killing an abusive parent or parents. I'm not saying it's right, but it is a fact of life. When people are driven to a certain point, they can snap and redirect that anger towards their tormentor(s).
So all you abusive parents out there, be warned, you might be causing your child irreparable harm and they may take issue with that someday when they're older and bigger than you. Physically abusing someone doesn't usually leave long lasting physical scars, but the emotional and mental damage can be permament.
(Sorry for replying so late, I only just discovered this article and I felt that I should reply and share my experience).
While I know you were being funny, CTRL+ALT+DEL has more uses than just killing (non-responsive) processes or rebooting the OS. You can view a list of processes, look at cpu and memory usage, network usage, etc.. You can also view detailed information on individual processes such as base priority, memory usage, vm memory usage, cpu time, handles, threads, IO read/writes, etc..
I think SysInternal's Process Explorer is a better program for this task, but for times when you just want to quickly look at some system or process stats, the built in Windows Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del shortcut) works just fine.
ps. Sorry for replying to a 3 day old thread...
What codecs did you find TVersity was unable to play? Did you install ffdshow?
I'm curious since I just recently set up TVersity with my PS3.
Obviously the story, characters and villians are different... the graphics are no doubt different too. Check this video review of BioShock to see why it's like System Shock 2. Also, that video is good for a laugh or two.
Quote from IGN:
Also, the official site... It's going to be the best selling game bundle ever, in my opinion. If all goes according to plan, it'll be released on October 10th (less than a month to go).
Are you serious? The Big Daddies were a joke. Sure they had lots of hit points, but their fighting technique was easy to figure out and exploit. Once you get the freezing plasmid, you can keep Big Daddies frozen indefinitely while you shoot at them or hack away at them with your wrench.
Even though the game was easy, like walk in the park easy, it was still really fun and I'm glad I bought the PC version. The story is awesome and it's one of the best first person shooters I've played in years. I never played the original System Shock series, but from what I've read, Bioshock is basically a clone of System Shock 2.
I recently finished the game and I'm glad I bought it. Even though there are numerous flaws, the art direction, theme, etc.. was very well done.
I loved how when you light guys on fire and there was water nearby, they'd sometimes jump in it to douse the flames. As soon as they jumped in the water, I'd pull out the electric plasmid and electrocute them, fun times...
You should check out this hilarious video review of Bioshock. He starts off by showing how BioShock isn't like System Shock 2, it *IS* System Shock 2. He then proceeds to tear the game to shreds by pointing out the numerous flaws. He still said it's the probably the best game of the year, and I'd tend to agree. But that isn't saying much considering the (lack of) competition.
I thought the theme, sound, story and art direction were fantastic. The only downside I noticed was how repetitive and how horribly easy it was. I still enjoyed the game and would give it atleast an 8.5/10. It was definitely worth the purchase, even aside from all the flaws.
If you found that review funny, check out his other reviews here and here.
I think the problem is your PC is horribly unstable, not the game. Your issues could be any combination of faulty hardware, bad drivers or overheating hardware. So far I've gotten alteast 30 hours of gameplay out of Bioshock and I've yet to have a single crash. Obviously each person has a different experience, but I really don't think you can lay all the blame on BioShock. From my experience, Nvidia drivers which were once the best, are now getting worse and worse with each release. Also, it could be other issues like sound card drivers. I remember one time I tried to enable EAX in F.E.A.R with my cheap $33 Sound Blaster Audigy 1 and I'd get blue screens of death every time. I think that's the only game in recent memory thats ever given me a BSOD. Have you run temperature monitoring software and checked if your cpu, or more likely your video card overheats?
What are your system specs? Does your case have proper ventilation and cooling? There are so many variables that could cause issues, I think it's a bit premature to lay the blame solely on BioShock.
How can you even compare the two? Solid State Drives are already on the market. Sure it's expensive, but it's actually on the market, unlike holographic storage.
And on that topic... one thing that always pissed me off was the fact that RenderWare got sold to EA and killed. EA refused to license RenderWare to any other developers and it basically ended up getting killed off by EA internally. It's yet another reason why I hate EA...
See the Wikipedia article on RenderWare:
Not to mention The Orange Box includes the original Half-Life 2 aswell as Episode 1, Episode 2, Portal AND Team Fortress 2. I think I'll get atleast 100-200 hours of play out of the orange box, well worth the purchase. I've been waiting for this for ages, and it's almost finally out... I've got it marked on my calender: October 10, 2007 (assuming there's no delays).
I only ever bought Half-Life 2 and for the longest time I wanted to get Episode 1 (I even went to a local store a couple times but they never had any copies in stock). Now I'm glad that I didn't end up buying Episode 1 since I can now get it as part of the orange box.
On a side note, I think FPS gamers are going to be busy for a while, here's whats currently marked on my calender:
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (October 2nd, 2007)
Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (October 10, 2007)
Crysis (November 16, 2007)
Unreal Tournament 3 (Sometime in November 2007)
Talk about a huge holiday lineup.... (And of course Halo 3 for those console gamers...not for me, but worth mentioning). I'll be picking up Episode 2, Crysis and Unreal for sure, Enemy Territory most likely not at release, maybe some point next year after I've played out those other 3...
Knowing how EA likes to screw up PS3 ports (see the Madden 360/PS3 fiasco), I wouldn't touch an EA PS3 port with a 50 foot pole. I tend to avoid EA at all costs anyway (they really butchered Command & Conquer 3 in my opinion). I'm guessing with 99% certainty that the PS3 version isn't going to be as good as the PC/360 version, since it isn't being done by Valve themselves.
Besides, I don't see why people would want to play Half-life 2 on anything other than a PC anyway. Of course I'm biased towards PC first person shooters, all the best shooters are on PC: starting with the original Wolfenstein, through Doom 1-3, Quake 1-3, Halflife 1-2, Unreal Tournament, etc..
I own a PS3 and a Wii, and the only time I've ever actually enjoyed a shooter on a console was with the Wii (thanks to the wiimote). Well, GoldenEye for N64 was pretty good too actually...
A ton of artists beg to differ. Try doing a search for MS Paint on youtube some time.
How to draw a car in MS Paint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElrldD02if0
An even better car done in MS Paint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUWqRhReaZk
John Locke from Lost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K_NQe57C-k&mode=r
And one of the best MS Paint jobs I've ever seen, the Mona Lisa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2sPl_Z7ZU&mode=r
Opera really is a great browser, though the only version I've ever actually used is the one on my Wii. I've never tried the PC version since I can't seem to live without some Firefox extensions (NoScript, Adblock, ImageZoom, DownThemAll and ForecastFox to name a few).
ImageZoom and DownThemAll are key for porn browsing/collecting...
Here are my benchmarks for comparison.
System specs are: Athlon64 X2 3800+ (2.0ghz dual core) running Windows XP SP2
Firefox (2.0.0.6) with NoScript disabled in the Add-on window:
MD5 Benchmark took 3.906 seconds for 3000 hashes (768 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 2.875 seconds for 2700 hashes (939 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 4.281 seconds for 1900 hashes (444 hashes/second)
Firefox (2.0.0.6) with NoScript enabled and pentestmonkey.net whitelisted:
MD5 Benchmark took 4.687 seconds for 3000 hashes (640 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 3.438 seconds for 2700 hashes (785 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 5.156 seconds for 1900 hashes (369 hashes/second)
IE (6.0):
MD5 Benchmark took 3.781 seconds for 3000 hashes (793 hashes/second)
MD4 Benchmark took 3.812 seconds for 2700 hashes (708 hashes/second)
SHA1 Benchmark took 4.016 seconds for 1900 hashes (473 hashes/second)
I thought it would be interesting to see if the NoScript extension had any effect on performance, and sure enough it did. The real surprise was that IE 6.0 performed better than Firefox 2.0.0.6 in 2 of the 3 benchmarks.
Correction. I meant playback not transcode, big difference...
Also, you need a multithreaded decoder if you want to fully utilize a dual or quad core cpu.
I use VLC media player, but the H264 decoder is currently only single threaded. Also, there is no hardware acceleration support so it's practically impossible to play 1080p H264 content in VLC at the moment. Developers are working on a multithreaded H264 decoder, but that could take a while. From my understanding, VLC uses the libavcodec library which is also used by ffmpeg, ffdshow and mplayer.
Here's a thread about the lack of multithreading and hardware acceleration on the VLC forums (j-b is one of the developers).
While multithreaded support is being worked on, it seems like hardware acceleration may not happen unless Nvidia and ATI provide implementation details.
I can't seem to find the link, but I remember reading a site that claimed you needed a Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2ghz in order to transcode h264 at 1080p without relying on video card offloading.
There's no assumption involved. The faithful WILL purchase them.
You don't have to buy them. The thing that other people like about Nintendo are these key franchises. Without Mario, without Zelda, without Metroid Prime, I wouldn't have purchased a Wii. First party titles are what people want, even if they are rehashes. That's the main reason I also own a PS3, for when Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo come out...
Exclusive franchises are important to any game console, look at Nintendo with Mario, Sony with Metal Gear Solid or Xbox with Halo... These are considered system sellers for a reason.
Take a look at this list of Video Game sales by Franchise. Here are couple:
#1 is the Mario franchise with 193 million games sold
#4 is the Final Fantasy franchise with 75 million games sold
#7 is the Zelda franchise with 52 million games sold
#8 is the Grand Theft Auto franchise with 50 million games sold
Nintendo would be crazy to not make any more Mario games when they still have a ton of devoted fans who will continue to purchase them (I know I'll be picking up a copy of Mario Kart Wii and Super Mario Galaxy).
On a side note, a lot of the GBA/DS games I own are ports of old games like Mario 2, Mario 3, Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (my favourite game). I owned all these games many years ago, but I bought them again so I could play them on my DS Lite and they are still extremely fun, even 10-20 years later.
For example, Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy:
Here are a couple of the "Prohibted Uses and Activities":
Also note (emphasis mine):
From their Acceptable Use Policy:
Here's a couple of their "Prohibited Uses and Activities":
On a side note, I find xviii somewhat ironic:
Isn't that similar to what Comcast is doing with your packets when forge RST packets?
Here is a brief description of what SIMD is and what it can be used for:
If everyone uses ODF, Microsoft loses their Office monopoly. There's no reason to use Office if there are better and cheaper alternatives which can read and write the same open document format. What Microsoft wants is a format that they claim is "open", but actually can only be properly understood by Microsoft Office. Without OOXML, Microsoft could stand to lose millions, maybe billions from companies switching away from Microsoft Office products (no more vendor lock-in).
If ODF succeeds, Microsoft stands to lose a ton of money in the long run, this is unacceptable to Microsoft, so they will do anything they can to push their not-so-open OOXML format.