Not synthesized music, but sampled. Big difference. A well-sequenced song can be almost indistinguishable to a low quality recording of an actual instrumental performance.
Most game soundtracks nowdays are produced in this way, and then put on the disc as audio files. There are a few exceptions when the sound is stored "MIDI"-like, for example when the composer wants to vary the tempo depending on the game situation.
It can also be a lot easier for the composer to get the song to sound exactly how he wants it to. Just letting an orchestra play the soundtrack of the game and slapping it on the disc won't work very well.
There is however a move towards live soundtracks, and I know that at least a few in Final Fantasy X were recordings.
The point is that this is a "toy" and not the "real thing" and, by definition, that's pretty much what a toy is. Try remembering what it was like to be a kid with an imagination, and from that perspective it doesn't seem like such a horrible concept.
So they can pretend to be playing a game where they can pretend to be doing something? No, that isn't entertaining, and someone must have surprisingly low expectations of their child if they think they will. Even very young children will be able to tell that what they got isn't what they wanted, but a ingeniously boring piece of crap. Nothing against parents who can't afford to buy their children a Wii, but this thing is probably the most extreme caricature of a disappointing gift.
Sure, I remember what it was like to be a kid and play round with cheap toys and reap countless hours of entertainment, but I also remember being bored like shit over cheap LCD games that gave me a headache. And no, I couldn't use them as a sword/Frisbee/house.
Well, drag racing on a deserted road isn't going to cause much damage even in a worse case scenario, the most you can do is kill yourself or wreck your own car. And none of that is covered by the required third-party insurance anyway.
Apart from the fact that what you said is plainly false (local laws obviously differ in various European states, but I know of many where I'm sure you can contest a ticket), the joint liability of the car owner and driver is important. If you loaned you car to a friend, and he accepts responsibility, nothing will happen. It's just that the excuse "I let somebody else drive that day, and can't remember who it was" is just too old and pathetic to be taken seriously.
Government only mandates liability insurance. You can still decide to take the risk of not insuring your own car. And Manufacturing errors are covered by warranty.
That's funny, cause googeling "Uplink SIP" or "Uplink Skype" both give first-page results for the aforementioned software.
I want a server-side solution that can forward Skype calls to SIP, so that you can Skype my desk phone, or so that I can use my desk phone to call Skype contacts without each contact needing additional software.
You just use the software to forward the incoming Skype calls to your SIP phone and vice versa. The Server you wanted would be a Windows box running Skype in your server room.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if Skype would just allow people to negotiate sessions with SIP devices. They do this because it's basically the last thing that makes them worth a damn, not because it isn't a trivially easy thing to implement, so I personally don't understand why you seem so willing to pay them for it.
Mosaiq'd images are evry similar to blurred images - they're basically just portions of blurred, with square borders. The key thing about reconstructing numbers is that you have a fairly limited pool of possible images, say an ASCII font. And with both processes, one must remember that it is probably possible to reconstruct a lot more than might seem possible at first glance. The twirl effect is the other extreme, where a large amount of the original data was preserved. If he had changed the parameters a bit more to do say a hundred spins, it would be unlikely that they would have been able to make these reconstructed images, but then again they'd just look like a blur.
The best and easiest way to do it is to just black out the pieces.
I used to think like you and then I heard of an old guy bragging about double-clutching an old truck. The I thought "this is what's retarded", so now I'm glad to use anything that helps with driving. ABS hasn't got anything to do with predicting you're intentions, it just stops you from skidding.
BTW, if you talk to anyone in automotive R&D, you'll hear that regulations are so severe about things that might, just possibly change the way a car reacts to a user, that it's dang near impossible to do any innovation where it's long overdue, and that's the reason why we're stuck with a very unintuitive mechanical control system.
You're only obliged to have liability insurance, and the reason for that is because of the huge amount of damage you can do with a motor vehicle. If they don't have insurance and not a penny in their pocket, where do you expect to get the money from when they smash your car?
And even that's an understatement. An experienced driver might be able to adjust his braking about once or twice a second, whereas ABS keeps doing it about 50 times a second. It simply isn't possible for a human to brake as hard as an ABS without locking the tyres.
And unless you're a stunt driver, it's unlikely you've ever had adequate experience with threshold braking to be reliable in an emergency. And many accidents have actually been caused because people have been reluctant to slam the brake down because they've never done it (makes sense - it totally fucks up your tires, unless you do have ABS). With ABS, you can teach full braking to every new driver, and then they won't be scared to slam the brake when they're made to.
The SATA problem is an old joke, and I would have expected a tech guy to know this at least. Any hard drive I've seen has come with a floppy with a driver for exactly this reason.
I don't buy into any of these "OMG Windows is sooo hard to install" comments. Sure, there's going to be a few problems here and there, and I don't want to defend Microsoft for the inexcusable fuck-up of not putting a damn SATA driver on their install CD, but all in all, installing Windows is a fairly easy and straightforward process.
I remember installing SUSE once, and it never got past downloading a certain update, so I had to restart. And it tried to help me configure my printer which wasn't going to work anyway because it doesn't have Linux drivers, and printing out 20 test page isn't something I want do before I've got my system running. Basically, all systems have issues. And I think it's very counter-productive if as soon as someone mentions a shortcoming of a Linux system the response is "but Windows has problems with this and this"
Just to reply to your analogy about the sculptor and the painter:
A painter is in a sense doing the same. He starts off with a white canvas, from which a broad spectrum of white light is reflected, and takes away the reflectiveness for wavelengths he doesn't need. Basically subtractive color.
Well, this undermines the whole idea and advantage behind VOIP, which is P2P communication. The best option is to just ditch Skype, and maybe try to convince others to do the same. Then you wouldn't need to reroute calls. More for less, if you can follow.
"Uplink" is a free (as in beer) and easy to use program that can forward Skype calls to SIP BTW. No need for licensed hardware. As far as their international rates go, Skype are by no means outstanding. There are much better rates to be found with other providers.
1. You can. If you click on sign up you can select practically any country. As far as payment goes, all major credit cards and PayPal are accepted.
2. I presume your setup is probably a SIP system, in which case you can use your existing hardware. You can usually save a number of different SIP accounts, so you just have to press a button before calling (maybe depends on the hardware, some might only allow one account)
3. In which case you should just select your existing VOIP account, just set it as default on the phone.
If you're worried about emergency calls though, it's best to use the Plain Old Telephone Service, as VOIP system won't work too good. All VOIP phones I've seen have a separate POTS connection. (I have a wired POTS phone connected directly to the phone line in case of an emergency. It would truly suck to have an empty battery when you need to make a 911 call, or your router won't work because of a power cut. And I always have my mobile phone for extra redundancy) Anyway, the provider I linked to offers a flatrate service to the US as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do have some e911 implementation.
As the above poster said, you can get cheaper deals with some SIP providers. Also, I would recommend against buying into a Skype Phone, as it's a service lock-in. With a SIP Phone, you can use practically all other providers. I recommend something like the Gigaset c450. It uses the wireless DECT protocol, so it isn't a direct WiFi phone, you do have to have a transceiver plugged to your router. But that makes practically no difference, probably helps the battery life, and it's also a lot cheaper.
My cable company keeps sending me offers for VoIP, but frankly the thing that has kept me from switching is the much higher rate schedule for international calls. I need 5 cents per minute or less to Europe.
Why not just use a SIP service that offers cheap (or flatrate) calls to Europe. Here's one that offers a flatrate for 8,90 a month, and even if you don't subscribe to that the calls are relatively cheap.
Except that these are all just fancy implementations of call forwarding. Plus, you have the same problem as before. Skype Users won't expect to have to pay for it, so they might as well just use a SIP number. The only way it could work is if they hope that Skype users will keep with their lock-in service, and be ready to be ripped off for the privilege.
SIP is not a videoconferencing/white board/instant messaging protocol. It's a glorified internet doorbell.
And that's what you basically need when you're talking P2P communication. You can use whatever protocols you like with it, including IM/Video/Whiteboard.
Jingle an SIP both use RTP for Audio/video by the way.
Rumour is that GoogleTalk will implement SIP in their client, and apart from that practically any "softphone" from any provider will be a SIP client, and most hardphones are SIP based too.
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Not synthesized music, but sampled. Big difference. A well-sequenced song can be almost indistinguishable to a low quality recording of an actual instrumental performance.
Most game soundtracks nowdays are produced in this way, and then put on the disc as audio files. There are a few exceptions when the sound is stored "MIDI"-like, for example when the composer wants to vary the tempo depending on the game situation.
It can also be a lot easier for the composer to get the song to sound exactly how he wants it to. Just letting an orchestra play the soundtrack of the game and slapping it on the disc won't work very well.
There is however a move towards live soundtracks, and I know that at least a few in Final Fantasy X were recordings.
So they can pretend to be playing a game where they can pretend to be doing something?
No, that isn't entertaining, and someone must have surprisingly low expectations of their child if they think they will.
Even very young children will be able to tell that what they got isn't what they wanted, but a ingeniously boring piece of crap.
Nothing against parents who can't afford to buy their children a Wii, but this thing is probably the most extreme caricature of a disappointing gift.
Sure, I remember what it was like to be a kid and play round with cheap toys and reap countless hours of entertainment, but I also remember being bored like shit over cheap LCD games that gave me a headache. And no, I couldn't use them as a sword/Frisbee/house.
Well, drag racing on a deserted road isn't going to cause much damage even in a worse case scenario, the most you can do is kill yourself or wreck your own car. And none of that is covered by the required third-party insurance anyway.
Apart from the fact that what you said is plainly false (local laws obviously differ in various European states, but I know of many where I'm sure you can contest a ticket), the joint liability of the car owner and driver is important. If you loaned you car to a friend, and he accepts responsibility, nothing will happen.
It's just that the excuse "I let somebody else drive that day, and can't remember who it was" is just too old and pathetic to be taken seriously.
Good thing this plant wasn't in some banana republic.
Your backups will likely have a much more limited lifespan than your original media itself.
Government only mandates liability insurance. You can still decide to take the risk of not insuring your own car.
And Manufacturing errors are covered by warranty.
Unless you use off-site backup, you're copies are going to be just as screwed as the originals in a worst case scenario such as a flood.
WTF?
You just use the software to forward the incoming Skype calls to your SIP phone and vice versa. The Server you wanted would be a Windows box running Skype in your server room.
Of course, none of this would be necessary if Skype would just allow people to negotiate sessions with SIP devices. They do this because it's basically the last thing that makes them worth a damn, not because it isn't a trivially easy thing to implement, so I personally don't understand why you seem so willing to pay them for it.
Mosaiq'd images are evry similar to blurred images - they're basically just portions of blurred, with square borders.
The key thing about reconstructing numbers is that you have a fairly limited pool of possible images, say an ASCII font.
And with both processes, one must remember that it is probably possible to reconstruct a lot more than might seem possible at first glance. The twirl effect is the other extreme, where a large amount of the original data was preserved. If he had changed the parameters a bit more to do say a hundred spins, it would be unlikely that they would have been able to make these reconstructed images, but then again they'd just look like a blur.
The best and easiest way to do it is to just black out the pieces.
I used to think like you and then I heard of an old guy bragging about double-clutching an old truck. The I thought "this is what's retarded", so now I'm glad to use anything that helps with driving.
ABS hasn't got anything to do with predicting you're intentions, it just stops you from skidding.
BTW, if you talk to anyone in automotive R&D, you'll hear that regulations are so severe about things that might, just possibly change the way a car reacts to a user, that it's dang near impossible to do any innovation where it's long overdue, and that's the reason why we're stuck with a very unintuitive mechanical control system.
You're only obliged to have liability insurance, and the reason for that is because of the huge amount of damage you can do with a motor vehicle. If they don't have insurance and not a penny in their pocket, where do you expect to get the money from when they smash your car?
And unless you're a stunt driver, it's unlikely you've ever had adequate experience with threshold braking to be reliable in an emergency.
And many accidents have actually been caused because people have been reluctant to slam the brake down because they've never done it (makes sense - it totally fucks up your tires, unless you do have ABS).
With ABS, you can teach full braking to every new driver, and then they won't be scared to slam the brake when they're made to.
The SATA problem is an old joke, and I would have expected a tech guy to know this at least. Any hard drive I've seen has come with a floppy with a driver for exactly this reason.
I don't buy into any of these "OMG Windows is sooo hard to install" comments. Sure, there's going to be a few problems here and there, and I don't want to defend Microsoft for the inexcusable fuck-up of not putting a damn SATA driver on their install CD, but all in all, installing Windows is a fairly easy and straightforward process.
I remember installing SUSE once, and it never got past downloading a certain update, so I had to restart. And it tried to help me configure my printer which wasn't going to work anyway because it doesn't have Linux drivers, and printing out 20 test page isn't something I want do before I've got my system running.
Basically, all systems have issues. And I think it's very counter-productive if as soon as someone mentions a shortcoming of a Linux system the response is "but Windows has problems with this and this"
Just to reply to your analogy about the sculptor and the painter:
A painter is in a sense doing the same. He starts off with a white canvas, from which a broad spectrum of white light is reflected, and takes away the reflectiveness for wavelengths he doesn't need. Basically subtractive color.
But both are quite different than photography.
Well, this undermines the whole idea and advantage behind VOIP, which is P2P communication.
The best option is to just ditch Skype, and maybe try to convince others to do the same. Then you wouldn't need to reroute calls. More for less, if you can follow.
"Uplink" is a free (as in beer) and easy to use program that can forward Skype calls to SIP BTW. No need for licensed hardware.
As far as their international rates go, Skype are by no means outstanding. There are much better rates to be found with other providers.
1. You can. If you click on sign up you can select practically any country. As far as payment goes, all major credit cards and PayPal are accepted.
2. I presume your setup is probably a SIP system, in which case you can use your existing hardware. You can usually save a number of different SIP accounts, so you just have to press a button before calling (maybe depends on the hardware, some might only allow one account)
3. In which case you should just select your existing VOIP account, just set it as default on the phone.
If you're worried about emergency calls though, it's best to use the Plain Old Telephone Service, as VOIP system won't work too good. All VOIP phones I've seen have a separate POTS connection.
(I have a wired POTS phone connected directly to the phone line in case of an emergency. It would truly suck to have an empty battery when you need to make a 911 call, or your router won't work because of a power cut. And I always have my mobile phone for extra redundancy)
Anyway, the provider I linked to offers a flatrate service to the US as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do have some e911 implementation.
You're assuming that average people can understand the difference - they can't.
As the above poster said, you can get cheaper deals with some SIP providers. Also, I would recommend against buying into a Skype Phone, as it's a service lock-in. With a SIP Phone, you can use practically all other providers.
I recommend something like the Gigaset c450. It uses the wireless DECT protocol, so it isn't a direct WiFi phone, you do have to have a transceiver plugged to your router. But that makes practically no difference, probably helps the battery life, and it's also a lot cheaper.
Why not just use a SIP service that offers cheap (or flatrate) calls to Europe. Here's one that offers a flatrate for 8,90 a month, and even if you don't subscribe to that the calls are relatively cheap.
Except that these are all just fancy implementations of call forwarding.
Plus, you have the same problem as before. Skype Users won't expect to have to pay for it, so they might as well just use a SIP number.
The only way it could work is if they hope that Skype users will keep with their lock-in service, and be ready to be ripped off for the privilege.
And that's what you basically need when you're talking P2P communication. You can use whatever protocols you like with it, including IM/Video/Whiteboard.
Jingle an SIP both use RTP for Audio/video by the way.
Rumour is that GoogleTalk will implement SIP in their client, and apart from that practically any "softphone" from any provider will be a SIP client, and most hardphones are SIP based too.
Except that Skype is basically a P2P service, so nobody should be putting up with Ads, even if they're just small banners.