An aside: --aps is of course still supported, but in modern lame, the "alt presets" have become the defaults, so `lame --preset standard` will give you the normal idea of pretty transparent encoding.
Personally, I find that much easier to deal with and locate in the docs.
At times I have had found source material which could benefit from --preset extreme.
Well, assuming your crime isn't a scarlet letter everywhere, have you considered moving to another country? If it's as bad as you say (I have felony convicted friends who get decent employement, but their situation may be very different), then it's worth looking into. Especially if you're considering leaving the US anyway.
I use my foe list to block out users that other people think are smart (and get moderated up) but who have a tendency to post factually incorrect and/or unpleasantly inflammatory material.
I don't care about liking them not liking them, but I'd like to be able to read slashdot posts with less stupid. If only slashdot had a bottomless blocklist, it would be much more tolerable.
While I can respect the idea of wanting the basic stuff to work, I can't respect JWZ's combination of choices.
Software mixing at the/dev/dsp level has been available for quite some time and is included by default in the user friendly distributions for some releases already. He's complaining about a problem that has already been solved.
What I find pretty objectionable is that he chooses to complain about something that isn't solved, chooses not to run a friendly distribution that handles this stuff for him, and chooses to whinge about the problem without even knowing that it's been fixed.
If you're going to run a distribution where you have to set this stuff up by hand, you've _signed up_ for this kind of pain. And he signed up for it some 8 years ago. This same rat trap has been biting his hand for 8 years and hasn't decided to move on, or put up with it? It seems dimwitted. But he isn't a dumb guy. He's just so fed up because after making the same mistake for 8 years he's finally noticed he can get out of it. Not much fun to blame yourself. Blame linux.
Seriously, Linux does have flaws like this. But when you sign up for the flaws, and then bitch when they happen, you're saying a lot more about your own shitty reasoning than the tool you criticise. He's a big baby, and I'm sad that slashdot (correctly described by him) chose to pedastalize his whining while simultaneously harassing him. Lose, Lose, Lose. All around.
As for us gamers buying niche and creative games. Of course, I do. I don't have a single EA title on my shelf and plenty of unusual imports. I recently sought out a copy of The Incredible Crisis despite the high pricetag for a very aged game. Katamari Damacy was bought in the opening week. And so on.
But interested, discriminating players like me are not enough. You folks in the game industry need to work out alternate funding models. Your current practices of effectively being entirely funded by publishers is frankly outmoded if you ever want to produce something besides the Same Old Crap. I can't make that happen just by being choosy in the games I buy. Sure, you, the individual developer can't make this happen on your own, but remain interested in alternate funding models. Talk to your peers. Find interested parties. If you get an opportunity, take it seriously.
As for the crunchtime, this is really no excuse. You're saying that the reason your industry produces flawed products is because you have flawed labor practices and especially flawed project planning. I know many of the reasons that games are very difficult (always doing something new, content has to integrate with new code, code has to integrate with new content, etc). It's not easy to make quality stuff or make it rapidly. But why do the vast majority of game houses insist on embarking on unrealistic projects every single time. Weeks of "crunch time" with around the clock hours? This is no way to produce a quality product. I think it's our responsibility as buyers to reject the crap this creates, but it's also YOUR responsibility as a worker in this madness to push against it as hard as you can. _Please_ do your part. My friends in the industry will thank you for it.
Re:Gamers never know what's good for them
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 1
Amen to that. A pox on games which don't provide this option.
But in this case, the data is a set of property lists. Generically reusable libraries which parse and present this data have been availble since the early 90s. Providing generally resusable accessors for use within os x is something I'm sure has already been done. XML is really a red herring in this case. Yes it makes the basic parsing tools more generic, but the higher order parsing tools, which already understand and know what to do with all the semantic data in the format (which isn't much) predate XML itself by 8 years ore more.
Stuffing the data into XML therefore gains no real advantage, since XML software trying to read this will either have to still use a library to regain the tag menings, or will have to implement it themselves, leading to redundant code. Meanwhile, the format is harder to visually inspect and/or modify.
So it makes busy work changing formats. It makes busy work for people who think they should just pull it as xml since the original library provided more functionality. And it makes it harder for people to use plain editors when there is need/troubleshooting.
This is what a Java developer thinks. They think: XML: this will provide flexibility. Python developers think: XML this will drag me down with inflexibility, bloat, and general annoyance.
The basic issue is that Java, C++, et al are horribly inflexible languages that love to externalized their data/logic so as to escape the confines of the language. Python is so flexible, that tying your program to some XML monstrosity is just counterproductive.
That said, these property lists are okay datastructures. They're simple and comprehensible. It's just a real shame that they decided to represent them in text as such an unpleasant and difficult to work with data representation as XML. Hello? Libproplist? Hello? That was the right way to do it. Approximately. You could probably come up with 20 other variations on the theme that would have been fine, but the XML representation is just needlessly difficult to read and deal with, without offering any actual advantages over simpler methods. Heck, S-expressions would be a HUGE improvement and I'm no Lisp fan.
Yeah, I'd _much_ rather pay a legitimate service to get access to a healthy library of games than have to scrape the internet to build my own waste-of-time library illegally.
Unfortunately, I suspect this service will not have very good depth, and won't run on Linux. But here's hoping.
Good job failing to notice that the modern Republican party doesn't actually follow traditional american "conservative" values. Let me know when you're getting a bit warm this summer, I've been meaning to knit another sweater.
I will deviate off topic here and say that I am proud that my ancestors testified in Salem, Mass that Rabecca Nurse was not in fact a witch, and that there were in fact no actual witches.
I am glad that I inhereted their ability to see through the shibboleths. I am sad that I did not inheret their bravery.
What are you doing in this nutjob thread? Don't feed the "Patriots".;-)
Even still one attempted revolution in 200 years isn't bad. And given some recent reading I've been doing on the topic, it doesn't really smack of a populist revolution. More an orchestrated schism. Though perhaps that's what most of them are in reality.
Well Larry specifically updated/changed/clarified the license to define "while you are using bitkeeper" to be "within a few weeks of your last use of bitkeeper". As a result, it had the effective meaning that you claim it does not mean.
Yes, that is the meaning of that term in IRC parlance. Typically people keep hundreds to thousands of lines in memory per window, often reaching back several days.
There are ways to validate a SSN but it's kind of clunky. Basically people check the SSN against other databases which are also keyed by SSN. But they're all nonauthoritative. The Government's tax collection can actually authoritatively check although I don't know if they do. I suppose credit agencies by hook or crook may have managed to gain access to this data. However, their databases do contain errors. I was refused to be sold a cellphone because my "SSN was wrong". It turned out to be a credit monitoring agency's database error.
So basically the fact that you have to use the same number consistently allows them to clumsily match it to itself from database to database.
You can make up a random set of numbers and eventually have to propogate from DB to DB, and illegal foreign workers use this technique regularly. There's some tricks to getting the process started that I don't know.
So in some ways, to make your life non-stressful, you end up having to give out the same number to everyone, and for the few times where the network of number use actually links back to tax information, you mostly have to give the valid one.
It's clumsy and sucks. But it's what we're using right now.
My experience with arch (unfortunately) it that it's a _huge_ PITA to use. The interface is pretty unpleasant. I really like the idea of the command line client, with its nuances and the ability to do things most any way you could think of, but somehow it became a bloated monster where it's very difficult to figure out / remember how to get things done.
I understand bazaar is attempting to rememdy this.
Or, if you look at another way, a filesystem with versioning is a lot of stuff. git is a little bit of stuff. git works after a week or two of hacking. A full filesystem with versioning would not.
What's wrong with Freeciv specifically is it's far less balanced than the original games it's based on. Sure it has more features and configurability, etc, but it provides a far inferior game experience for those who do not invest endless playtime in the game.
After so many years of development, FreeCiv is still less fun than the original products. That seems like a shame to me.
No, what will actually happen is they will deploy products to mitigate the problem much more effectively without pissing off their users (like they are already doing): http://www.sandvine.com
Slashdot Mirror
An aside: --aps is of course still supported, but in modern lame, the "alt presets" have become the defaults, so `lame --preset standard` will give you the normal idea of pretty transparent encoding.
Personally, I find that much easier to deal with and locate in the docs.
At times I have had found source material which could benefit from --preset extreme.
Well, if we ever move away from mp3, all the replacement technologies are always ABR or VBR effectively. AAC, OGG, windows media, you name it.
Well, assuming your crime isn't a scarlet letter everywhere, have you considered moving to another country? If it's as bad as you say (I have felony convicted friends who get decent employement, but their situation may be very different), then it's worth looking into. Especially if you're considering leaving the US anyway.
I use my foe list to block out users that other people think are smart (and get moderated up) but who have a tendency to post factually incorrect and/or unpleasantly inflammatory material.
I don't care about liking them not liking them, but I'd like to be able to read slashdot posts with less stupid. If only slashdot had a bottomless blocklist, it would be much more tolerable.
Hi Lemmmy.
/dev/dsp level has been available for quite some time and is included by default in the user friendly distributions for some releases already. He's complaining about a problem that has already been solved.
While I can respect the idea of wanting the basic stuff to work, I can't respect JWZ's combination of choices.
Software mixing at the
What I find pretty objectionable is that he chooses to complain about something that isn't solved, chooses not to run a friendly distribution that handles this stuff for him, and chooses to whinge about the problem without even knowing that it's been fixed.
If you're going to run a distribution where you have to set this stuff up by hand, you've _signed up_ for this kind of pain. And he signed up for it some 8 years ago. This same rat trap has been biting his hand for 8 years and hasn't decided to move on, or put up with it? It seems dimwitted. But he isn't a dumb guy. He's just so fed up because after making the same mistake for 8 years he's finally noticed he can get out of it. Not much fun to blame yourself. Blame linux.
Seriously, Linux does have flaws like this. But when you sign up for the flaws, and then bitch when they happen, you're saying a lot more about your own shitty reasoning than the tool you criticise. He's a big baby, and I'm sad that slashdot (correctly described by him) chose to pedastalize his whining while simultaneously harassing him. Lose, Lose, Lose. All around.
As for us gamers buying niche and creative games. Of course, I do. I don't have a single EA title on my shelf and plenty of unusual imports. I recently sought out a copy of The Incredible Crisis despite the high pricetag for a very aged game. Katamari Damacy was bought in the opening week. And so on.
But interested, discriminating players like me are not enough. You folks in the game industry need to work out alternate funding models. Your current practices of effectively being entirely funded by publishers is frankly outmoded if you ever want to produce something besides the Same Old Crap. I can't make that happen just by being choosy in the games I buy. Sure, you, the individual developer can't make this happen on your own, but remain interested in alternate funding models. Talk to your peers. Find interested parties. If you get an opportunity, take it seriously.
As for the crunchtime, this is really no excuse. You're saying that the reason your industry produces flawed products is because you have flawed labor practices and especially flawed project planning. I know many of the reasons that games are very difficult (always doing something new, content has to integrate with new code, code has to integrate with new content, etc). It's not easy to make quality stuff or make it rapidly. But why do the vast majority of game houses insist on embarking on unrealistic projects every single time. Weeks of "crunch time" with around the clock hours? This is no way to produce a quality product. I think it's our responsibility as buyers to reject the crap this creates, but it's also YOUR responsibility as a worker in this madness to push against it as hard as you can. _Please_ do your part. My friends in the industry will thank you for it.
Amen to that. A pox on games which don't provide this option.
But in this case, the data is a set of property lists. Generically reusable libraries which parse and present this data have been availble since the early 90s. Providing generally resusable accessors for use within os x is something I'm sure has already been done. XML is really a red herring in this case. Yes it makes the basic parsing tools more generic, but the higher order parsing tools, which already understand and know what to do with all the semantic data in the format (which isn't much) predate XML itself by 8 years ore more.
Stuffing the data into XML therefore gains no real advantage, since XML software trying to read this will either have to still use a library to regain the tag menings, or will have to implement it themselves, leading to redundant code. Meanwhile, the format is harder to visually inspect and/or modify.
So it makes busy work changing formats. It makes busy work for people who think they should just pull it as xml since the original library provided more functionality. And it makes it harder for people to use plain editors when there is need/troubleshooting.
So three points against. Zero for. Go XML!
This is what a Java developer thinks. They think: XML: this will provide flexibility. Python developers think: XML this will drag me down with inflexibility, bloat, and general annoyance.
The basic issue is that Java, C++, et al are horribly inflexible languages that love to externalized their data/logic so as to escape the confines of the language. Python is so flexible, that tying your program to some XML monstrosity is just counterproductive.
That said, these property lists are okay datastructures. They're simple and comprehensible. It's just a real shame that they decided to represent them in text as such an unpleasant and difficult to work with data representation as XML. Hello? Libproplist? Hello? That was the right way to do it. Approximately. You could probably come up with 20 other variations on the theme that would have been fine, but the XML representation is just needlessly difficult to read and deal with, without offering any actual advantages over simpler methods. Heck, S-expressions would be a HUGE improvement and I'm no Lisp fan.
Yeah, I'd _much_ rather pay a legitimate service to get access to a healthy library of games than have to scrape the internet to build my own waste-of-time library illegally.
Unfortunately, I suspect this service will not have very good depth, and won't run on Linux. But here's hoping.
Yes, that much is true.
Good job failing to notice that the modern Republican party doesn't actually follow traditional american "conservative" values. Let me know when you're getting a bit warm this summer, I've been meaning to knit another sweater.
also, inherit.
I will deviate off topic here and say that I am proud that my ancestors testified in Salem, Mass that Rabecca Nurse was not in fact a witch, and that there were in fact no actual witches.
I am glad that I inhereted their ability to see through the shibboleths. I am sad that I did not inheret their bravery.
Jimmy!
;-)
What are you doing in this nutjob thread? Don't feed the "Patriots".
Even still one attempted revolution in 200 years isn't bad. And given some recent reading I've been doing on the topic, it doesn't really smack of a populist revolution. More an orchestrated schism. Though perhaps that's what most of them are in reality.
Well Larry specifically updated/changed/clarified the license to define "while you are using bitkeeper" to be "within a few weeks of your last use of bitkeeper". As a result, it had the effective meaning that you claim it does not mean.
Yes, that is the meaning of that term in IRC parlance. Typically people keep hundreds to thousands of lines in memory per window, often reaching back several days.
There are ways to validate a SSN but it's kind of clunky. Basically people check the SSN against other databases which are also keyed by SSN. But they're all nonauthoritative. The Government's tax collection can actually authoritatively check although I don't know if they do. I suppose credit agencies by hook or crook may have managed to gain access to this data. However, their databases do contain errors. I was refused to be sold a cellphone because my "SSN was wrong". It turned out to be a credit monitoring agency's database error.
So basically the fact that you have to use the same number consistently allows them to clumsily match it to itself from database to database.
You can make up a random set of numbers and eventually have to propogate from DB to DB, and illegal foreign workers use this technique regularly. There's some tricks to getting the process started that I don't know.
So in some ways, to make your life non-stressful, you end up having to give out the same number to everyone, and for the few times where the network of number use actually links back to tax information, you mostly have to give the valid one.
It's clumsy and sucks. But it's what we're using right now.
Or, to look at it yet another way, this is a filesystem with versioning, it just doesn't include all the interface junk that these users don't need.
My experience with arch (unfortunately) it that it's a _huge_ PITA to use. The interface is pretty unpleasant. I really like the idea of the command line client, with its nuances and the ability to do things most any way you could think of, but somehow it became a bloated monster where it's very difficult to figure out / remember how to get things done.
I understand bazaar is attempting to rememdy this.
Because: speed.
Or, if you look at another way, a filesystem with versioning is a lot of stuff. git is a little bit of stuff. git works after a week or two of hacking. A full filesystem with versioning would not.
What's wrong with Freeciv specifically is it's far less balanced than the original games it's based on. Sure it has more features and configurability, etc, but it provides a far inferior game experience for those who do not invest endless playtime in the game.
After so many years of development, FreeCiv is still less fun than the original products. That seems like a shame to me.
A nice thought, but certainly the regions would be redrawn?
No, what will actually happen is they will deploy products to mitigate the problem much more effectively without pissing off their users (like they are already doing): http://www.sandvine.com
Amen.