Quick, someone make a reply claiming they don't suffer from this type of thing, but then pretending to get distracted by something else part way through typing it! It will be hilarious, and not at all obvious!
(I wonder how long until someone replies point out that my post is also a rather unoriginal thing to say...)
I've always found Virgin to be a really good ISP... right up until something does go wrong, at which point prepare to get contradictory explanations from everyone you talk to. OK, just my experience, but that's all I have to give!
Except that my point (at least, the one we're now discussing) was that he was focusing on the issue of the installation whilst ignoring the issue of the rights of those being photographed. So by claiming by bringing this up that I'm missing the point, you're missing the point.
Besides, I did go over my thoughts on that aspect in my second point. Which, funnily enough, you also missed.
But people aren't, by using those computers, giving their permission for their photos to be taken and put online.
Besides, what are you saying; that I should be legally free to do anything I want online, as long as I'm using a public computer?
Agreed on the social aspects, but on the technical ones I don't understand quite why the tech is, as you put it, pretty shaky. For one of these you just need a small screen that looks OK, enough battery to keep it going for a while, a way to get the video to it, and a way to attach it to your head. You can walk into any phone shop and get something that does the first three for a hundred pounds or so, and I don't really see any trouble with the fourth. So why does it cost three times as much to get something that does a fraction of the job at a fraction of the quality?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I don't understand it. I'm missing something. I know I must be. Because right now, I have an old Windows Mobile phone lying round, and I'm trying to figure out what exactly would stop someone more handy than me from putting the screen and circuitry into an eyepatch and using it to do whatever.
Funnily enough, I've been looking at this recently. I still don't get quite there don't seem to be many low-cost monocular wearable displays out there, even if tethered to a desktop. I personally would love to be able to read on my phone on the way to work without worrying about walking into traffic, or to free up monitor at home for a messenger by placing it up on one eye. Surely the explosion of mobile devices out there mean low-cost small displays are common enough to do this now?
About the only wearable displays I can find that are anywhere close to sensibly priced are the Vuzix displays, but by covering both eyes they're only really usable sat on a sofa. I've honestly been considering buying one just to cut it in half and build a mount for one eyepiece. And all of this is without going into AR devices, as clearly the issue here is as much coming up with the functionality and controls to make it happen.
Well, from the ways he's spoken about it before I get the impression that's what this next update is meant to be about. You might get what you want before you know it...
Notch is "prolonging the inevitable" in not declaring the game finished because the game isn't finished. Features are nice, and he's been passing out things as they come up with them, but when it boils down to it the core game itself is not yet complete and so the focus has to be on getting the game to be stable, with features being a secondary consideration. While it's true some of his patches tend to add new bugs, overall the number and severity of bugs are reducing... And given some of the previous bugs were things like the entire alternate nether world not being available in multiplayer, the fixes are in some cases practically a new feature anyway.
Also, consider for the moment that Notch has to be more conservative than a modder. For example, Millenaire's NPCs and generated villages may be very cool, but they're not necessarily something every Minecraft owner would like to play with, and the mod also has a performance hit. If Notch put something like that in as a standard gameplay element in single player, there'd be a backlash. As it stands, the whole point is that with all these mods available that add so much stuff, there's all this impressive stuff out there if you want it. Meanwhile, Notch can focus on finishing the core game as it stands, whilst adding in new features that are unobtrusive enough to fit for everyone.
Since late October we've had the introduction of the redstone system (with all that that's brought to the game), working monsters and inventory in multiplayer (hell, lets just say working multiplayer and have done with), different "biomes" so the landscape changes, the weather/stat/achievement systems added, beds that let you set a new spawn, the improved file format, dyes for wool, the Nether with all that that entails (new mobs, new blocks, portals, fast transit...) and a new world on the way, tameable pets, music blocks, maps (not just a minimap, the way they've been implemented is very cool), new railroad components, trapdoors, dispensers (allowing for automatic turrets), and a whole flurry of performance increases, bug fixes, graphical updates and other minor things.
So yeah, I think he's done just one or two things that could be described as "functional".
Seriously, how long until Sony head office just tells every department to yank their network cables until a full security audit is done? This is just embarrassing at this point.
Each check and related effect added magnifies the chance of causing an issue for genuine users, if not in terms of false positives, then simple by introducing unintended bugs. Apart from this, it also eliminates the main reason for doing it, that of having an effect which seems like an error to the person experiencing it, but easily identifying the pirate to the staff (and, in this case, the public). How do you distinguish between save corrupted by your routine, and one corrupted by a buggy save routine? (Admittedly, in this case I suppose you could have the game write an identifiable text string to the save file it's corrupting, but it seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth to scan every corrupt save you get sent just to go "hah, caught you!"). How do you distinguish between a memory leak caused by a pirate game, and one caused by the game just having a memory leak (possibly introduced while adding one of the myriad glitch effects)?
Leaving aside the moral arguments of whether DRM is a good thing, and whether this type of DRM is a good way of doing it, you want it to be small scale and obvious.
If a pirate saw a "stop being a douche" message, their first reaction wouldn't be to go and buy the game, it would be to find an updated pirate version that got around that anti-piracy system. By using something that masquerades as an error, their first stop is much more likely to be to go to the forums to try and fix the "error"... thus outing themselves publically.
Mod parent up.
To the GP; there is a subtle irony in your post, when you think about it. In the same way the Vista Australis devs were accusing people of being pirates without properly investigating and getting the full story, so you've accused the dev of GMod of "over-estimating his cleverness and acting like an ass" without getting the full story. And now someone can explain to me about the incorrect assumption I've made about your post, and so the cycle wil continue.
Look, an atheist telling a theist "Your belief is bullshit" is about as reasonable, useful, and likely to work as a theist telling an atheist the same. Ultimately, both boil down to one basic belief: that there is or is not a supernatural entity or entities "in charge" of everything.* It can't be disproved because this theoretical entity could simply control the test results, and can't be proven because the entity being described inevitably won't display itself in any provable form. There's simply no point in trying to fight that battle, from either side.
Therefore, when a particular aspect of a belief causes conflict with yours, theistic or atheistic, you are *far* more like to have an informed, progressive debate by accepting the opposing parties belief, and working to change their view on *that aspect* within their own existing framework. If you have no interest in that or lack the specific knowledge to do so, that's fine; stay out of the debate. Like you said; believe whatever you want, that's your right.
* (OK, this isn't necessarily the case for *all* religions, but the basic conflict is the same... faith, or lack of, in something which falls outside of something directly provable.)
You say you don't understand my point, but your very first line here *is* my point. You say people here are talking about their own behaviour... well, back up there two posts ago, that's what I was doing. I tried going the route of having FLAC files and encoding/transcoding for portables, and it turned out to be hassle. At which point you started talking about how there are other solutions available for other people using different software who already have FLAC files available, and frankly I'm not convinced I understood your point any more than you understand mine. Let me take this from the top, and if you're already aware of some/all of this (in fact I'm sure you are), please understand that I'm simply framing the choices available.
If you're already doing all this, then there's no argument, glad you have something that works for you, enjoy. If not, and you want to do this right now, to start you need lossless sources, which most people (and you can take that as most of the public, or just most of us, it really doesn't make a difference) don't have, and in most cases can't get. Assuming you can, and further assuming you want to make the effort, then you then have to choose between transcoding to portables, or keeping two version of the files. If you're going the two versions of files route, I think the issues are clear and I don't believe you've argued them, so I'll move on.
If you're going the transcode route (and this far in my little logic tree here we've already established that you're not already doing this), you need to at best change your settings to move to transcoding, and more likely switch your media player to something that supports it... which also likely includes populating the new player's media library. And, while I daresay my and your computers probably can handle transcoding with no issues (and assuming the player is intelligent enough to be transcoding ahead of syncing rather than on demand, and ignoring the tiny amount of extra time at the start which is simply unavoidable), this isn't the case for everyone... Older computers still exist, after all. So you may be adding the choice at this stage of either putting up with delays (however minor) for transcoding, or upgrading your machine.
So my point at the end of all this is that, no matter how you look at it, unless you are already doing all this it simply isn't worth the hassle. You're trading the initial time taken to get lossless source files, several times the storage space to hold it, potentially extra time to install/learn new software, and a chunk of CPU time (and potentially real time) every time you sync your player, for an increase in fidelity that's practically unnoticeable.
I'm here, I tried to make this my behaviour, and those were my conclusions. It was just investing a chunk of time I didn't need to for no real tangible return. A bit like this conversation thread, really.
iTunes is not the only way to put music on iPhones and iPods. Plenty of music players can do it. foobar2000 and MediaMonkey, for two.
Hence why I said there are ways around having to use it. However, as you agree in the next line, most people are using iTunes. So assuming you think transcoding is the better option, which I'm not convinced it always is, you still need to figure out why and how to convince people to do so... right after you've convinced them they should go down the "lossless source" route at all.
I have no idea what you mean by 'the majority of people'. The majority of people using iPhone are probably using iTune to sync...but, OTOH, they're probably using iTune to rip too, which means FLAC is a non-option for them anyway.
Which was rather my point. To go down this route, you need to change the way you rip, store, manage and sync your music collection, and in fact unless you already use lossless codecs will likely have to reacquire most of your music to do it, where it's even possible. The majority of people, myself included, won't do that.
The actual people who know how to rip to FLAC, who actually understand that a media player and ripper and how it rips are things they have a choice over, are probably already using something besides iTunes, which is a pretty limited mp3 player.
Which is why the idea is flawed, because the majority of people (yep, those again) using portable players either 1) don't already know about these things, or 2) already have a system in place that suits them. In either case, you're asking them to do a lot of work on re-ripping, re-downloading, re-encoding and re-syncing files, for an increase in audio fidelity they probably don't care about... Except, as you say, the people who are already doing all this anyway.
And both foobar2000 and MediaMonkey will transcode files into whatever format you want before syncing them with the iPhone.
Which, as I said above, is great as long as you don't mind waiting the extra time for transcoding. And, for that matter, don't mind straying from iTunes. You've admitted the majority of users use iTunes, and then mentioned a set of (otherwise completely acceptable) arguments that only work if they aren't. You have a relative, they have an iPod and use iTunes and they are quite happy. How do you convince them to not only ditch iTunes for another player they've likely never heard of, but also take the time to get the lossless version of their music that would make it worthwhile, all while leaving them still listening to lossy files on the portable player which will now take longer to sync? Because if your answer is "I wouldn't, there'd be no point", we're in complete agreement.
I tried this. Apart from the time needed to re-rip the music you have to FLAC, if your player works in a fashion that transcoding is possible, that still means extra time to recode every file you're copying, every time you're syncing... not something you want if you're just putting a couple of songs on before heading out. Of course, this isn't even possible with all players. iPhones and iPods are the biggest sellers out there, and the only way you're getting files on those is through iTunes which, while it has a setting to transcode to AAC, doesn't support FLAC last time I checked. (OK, sure, there are ways around all those thing, but that's no good for the majority of people out there.)
So if you can't or don't want to transcode, you now you have two sets of files... but where do you put the ones you don't have a high-quality source for? Do you keep them with the PC music, or the portable music? Do you make an identical copy for each folder, just to keep it neat and easy to find? Or do you make a FLAC version of the lossy file for the PC, just to keep everything for it in the one format? Not to mention that a lot of media players used for syncing with portable devices keep a "library" of songs they're managing now, which means you need the player to know to play music from THIS folder, but sync music from THAT folder. Playlists can get around this, but at this point the procedure when you get a new song is 1) put it in the PC folder, hopefully in.flac, 2) re-encode it in a format the portable likes and put this in your other folder, 3) open your media player, and add both copies to your library, and 4) add each copy to it's respective playlist. For *every* song. So that you can have a practically unnoticeable increase in audio quality on the PC.
Just encode your music in a high-quality lossless format that your portable player supports. Your music will still sound great, it's much easier to handle across devices, and you use about 10-20% the HDD space you would otherwise. If you're really that obsessed with sound quality or future proofing, get a portable player that actually supports FLAC and has plenty of storage.
Now if we're talking an ideal world, from-this-point-on thing then, yes, it would be great if music could be sold to us in something like FLAC and have all our devices handle it.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a 1.44mb floppy disc here, and I can fit a copy of every game ever for those systems (except the ones I can't fit) on there too. Amazing!
Dammit, feel bad for ruining that now!
Intentional, I assure you ;)
Quick, someone make a reply claiming they don't suffer from this type of thing, but then pretending to get distracted by something else part way through typing it! It will be hilarious, and not at all obvious!
(I wonder how long until someone replies point out that my post is also a rather unoriginal thing to say...)
I've always found Virgin to be a really good ISP... right up until something does go wrong, at which point prepare to get contradictory explanations from everyone you talk to. OK, just my experience, but that's all I have to give!
Except that my point (at least, the one we're now discussing) was that he was focusing on the issue of the installation whilst ignoring the issue of the rights of those being photographed. So by claiming by bringing this up that I'm missing the point, you're missing the point. Besides, I did go over my thoughts on that aspect in my second point. Which, funnily enough, you also missed.
But people aren't, by using those computers, giving their permission for their photos to be taken and put online. Besides, what are you saying; that I should be legally free to do anything I want online, as long as I'm using a public computer?
Agreed on the social aspects, but on the technical ones I don't understand quite why the tech is, as you put it, pretty shaky. For one of these you just need a small screen that looks OK, enough battery to keep it going for a while, a way to get the video to it, and a way to attach it to your head. You can walk into any phone shop and get something that does the first three for a hundred pounds or so, and I don't really see any trouble with the fourth. So why does it cost three times as much to get something that does a fraction of the job at a fraction of the quality?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I don't understand it. I'm missing something. I know I must be. Because right now, I have an old Windows Mobile phone lying round, and I'm trying to figure out what exactly would stop someone more handy than me from putting the screen and circuitry into an eyepatch and using it to do whatever.
Funnily enough, I've been looking at this recently. I still don't get quite there don't seem to be many low-cost monocular wearable displays out there, even if tethered to a desktop. I personally would love to be able to read on my phone on the way to work without worrying about walking into traffic, or to free up monitor at home for a messenger by placing it up on one eye. Surely the explosion of mobile devices out there mean low-cost small displays are common enough to do this now?
About the only wearable displays I can find that are anywhere close to sensibly priced are the Vuzix displays, but by covering both eyes they're only really usable sat on a sofa. I've honestly been considering buying one just to cut it in half and build a mount for one eyepiece. And all of this is without going into AR devices, as clearly the issue here is as much coming up with the functionality and controls to make it happen.
Well, from the ways he's spoken about it before I get the impression that's what this next update is meant to be about. You might get what you want before you know it...
Notch is "prolonging the inevitable" in not declaring the game finished because the game isn't finished. Features are nice, and he's been passing out things as they come up with them, but when it boils down to it the core game itself is not yet complete and so the focus has to be on getting the game to be stable, with features being a secondary consideration. While it's true some of his patches tend to add new bugs, overall the number and severity of bugs are reducing... And given some of the previous bugs were things like the entire alternate nether world not being available in multiplayer, the fixes are in some cases practically a new feature anyway. Also, consider for the moment that Notch has to be more conservative than a modder. For example, Millenaire's NPCs and generated villages may be very cool, but they're not necessarily something every Minecraft owner would like to play with, and the mod also has a performance hit. If Notch put something like that in as a standard gameplay element in single player, there'd be a backlash. As it stands, the whole point is that with all these mods available that add so much stuff, there's all this impressive stuff out there if you want it. Meanwhile, Notch can focus on finishing the core game as it stands, whilst adding in new features that are unobtrusive enough to fit for everyone.
Since late October we've had the introduction of the redstone system (with all that that's brought to the game), working monsters and inventory in multiplayer (hell, lets just say working multiplayer and have done with), different "biomes" so the landscape changes, the weather/stat/achievement systems added, beds that let you set a new spawn, the improved file format, dyes for wool, the Nether with all that that entails (new mobs, new blocks, portals, fast transit...) and a new world on the way, tameable pets, music blocks, maps (not just a minimap, the way they've been implemented is very cool), new railroad components, trapdoors, dispensers (allowing for automatic turrets), and a whole flurry of performance increases, bug fixes, graphical updates and other minor things. So yeah, I think he's done just one or two things that could be described as "functional".
Seriously, how long until Sony head office just tells every department to yank their network cables until a full security audit is done? This is just embarrassing at this point.
See also; anyone who works by a window that gets any sun. While mms3k's exact circumstance might be rare, his complaint certainly isn't.
"How exactly could we know not to allow comments about your injunction if we don't know there is an injunction because of the injunction?"
Each check and related effect added magnifies the chance of causing an issue for genuine users, if not in terms of false positives, then simple by introducing unintended bugs. Apart from this, it also eliminates the main reason for doing it, that of having an effect which seems like an error to the person experiencing it, but easily identifying the pirate to the staff (and, in this case, the public). How do you distinguish between save corrupted by your routine, and one corrupted by a buggy save routine? (Admittedly, in this case I suppose you could have the game write an identifiable text string to the save file it's corrupting, but it seems like it would be more trouble than it's worth to scan every corrupt save you get sent just to go "hah, caught you!"). How do you distinguish between a memory leak caused by a pirate game, and one caused by the game just having a memory leak (possibly introduced while adding one of the myriad glitch effects)?
Leaving aside the moral arguments of whether DRM is a good thing, and whether this type of DRM is a good way of doing it, you want it to be small scale and obvious.
Out of interest, what was the program?
If a pirate saw a "stop being a douche" message, their first reaction wouldn't be to go and buy the game, it would be to find an updated pirate version that got around that anti-piracy system. By using something that masquerades as an error, their first stop is much more likely to be to go to the forums to try and fix the "error"... thus outing themselves publically.
It doesn't actually just stop shading, it makes the game crash out whilst giving a fake error message stating which says something about shading.
Mod parent up. To the GP; there is a subtle irony in your post, when you think about it. In the same way the Vista Australis devs were accusing people of being pirates without properly investigating and getting the full story, so you've accused the dev of GMod of "over-estimating his cleverness and acting like an ass" without getting the full story. And now someone can explain to me about the incorrect assumption I've made about your post, and so the cycle wil continue.
Whoa, dude. Ease back there.
Look, an atheist telling a theist "Your belief is bullshit" is about as reasonable, useful, and likely to work as a theist telling an atheist the same. Ultimately, both boil down to one basic belief: that there is or is not a supernatural entity or entities "in charge" of everything.* It can't be disproved because this theoretical entity could simply control the test results, and can't be proven because the entity being described inevitably won't display itself in any provable form. There's simply no point in trying to fight that battle, from either side.
Therefore, when a particular aspect of a belief causes conflict with yours, theistic or atheistic, you are *far* more like to have an informed, progressive debate by accepting the opposing parties belief, and working to change their view on *that aspect* within their own existing framework. If you have no interest in that or lack the specific knowledge to do so, that's fine; stay out of the debate. Like you said; believe whatever you want, that's your right.
* (OK, this isn't necessarily the case for *all* religions, but the basic conflict is the same... faith, or lack of, in something which falls outside of something directly provable.)
You say you don't understand my point, but your very first line here *is* my point. You say people here are talking about their own behaviour... well, back up there two posts ago, that's what I was doing. I tried going the route of having FLAC files and encoding/transcoding for portables, and it turned out to be hassle. At which point you started talking about how there are other solutions available for other people using different software who already have FLAC files available, and frankly I'm not convinced I understood your point any more than you understand mine. Let me take this from the top, and if you're already aware of some/all of this (in fact I'm sure you are), please understand that I'm simply framing the choices available.
If you're already doing all this, then there's no argument, glad you have something that works for you, enjoy. If not, and you want to do this right now, to start you need lossless sources, which most people (and you can take that as most of the public, or just most of us, it really doesn't make a difference) don't have, and in most cases can't get. Assuming you can, and further assuming you want to make the effort, then you then have to choose between transcoding to portables, or keeping two version of the files. If you're going the two versions of files route, I think the issues are clear and I don't believe you've argued them, so I'll move on.
If you're going the transcode route (and this far in my little logic tree here we've already established that you're not already doing this), you need to at best change your settings to move to transcoding, and more likely switch your media player to something that supports it... which also likely includes populating the new player's media library. And, while I daresay my and your computers probably can handle transcoding with no issues (and assuming the player is intelligent enough to be transcoding ahead of syncing rather than on demand, and ignoring the tiny amount of extra time at the start which is simply unavoidable), this isn't the case for everyone... Older computers still exist, after all. So you may be adding the choice at this stage of either putting up with delays (however minor) for transcoding, or upgrading your machine.
So my point at the end of all this is that, no matter how you look at it, unless you are already doing all this it simply isn't worth the hassle. You're trading the initial time taken to get lossless source files, several times the storage space to hold it, potentially extra time to install/learn new software, and a chunk of CPU time (and potentially real time) every time you sync your player, for an increase in fidelity that's practically unnoticeable.
I'm here, I tried to make this my behaviour, and those were my conclusions. It was just investing a chunk of time I didn't need to for no real tangible return. A bit like this conversation thread, really.
iTunes is not the only way to put music on iPhones and iPods. Plenty of music players can do it. foobar2000 and MediaMonkey, for two.
Hence why I said there are ways around having to use it. However, as you agree in the next line, most people are using iTunes. So assuming you think transcoding is the better option, which I'm not convinced it always is, you still need to figure out why and how to convince people to do so... right after you've convinced them they should go down the "lossless source" route at all.
I have no idea what you mean by 'the majority of people'. The majority of people using iPhone are probably using iTune to sync...but, OTOH, they're probably using iTune to rip too, which means FLAC is a non-option for them anyway.
Which was rather my point. To go down this route, you need to change the way you rip, store, manage and sync your music collection, and in fact unless you already use lossless codecs will likely have to reacquire most of your music to do it, where it's even possible. The majority of people, myself included, won't do that.
The actual people who know how to rip to FLAC, who actually understand that a media player and ripper and how it rips are things they have a choice over, are probably already using something besides iTunes, which is a pretty limited mp3 player.
Which is why the idea is flawed, because the majority of people (yep, those again) using portable players either 1) don't already know about these things, or 2) already have a system in place that suits them. In either case, you're asking them to do a lot of work on re-ripping, re-downloading, re-encoding and re-syncing files, for an increase in audio fidelity they probably don't care about... Except, as you say, the people who are already doing all this anyway.
And both foobar2000 and MediaMonkey will transcode files into whatever format you want before syncing them with the iPhone.
Which, as I said above, is great as long as you don't mind waiting the extra time for transcoding. And, for that matter, don't mind straying from iTunes. You've admitted the majority of users use iTunes, and then mentioned a set of (otherwise completely acceptable) arguments that only work if they aren't. You have a relative, they have an iPod and use iTunes and they are quite happy. How do you convince them to not only ditch iTunes for another player they've likely never heard of, but also take the time to get the lossless version of their music that would make it worthwhile, all while leaving them still listening to lossy files on the portable player which will now take longer to sync? Because if your answer is "I wouldn't, there'd be no point", we're in complete agreement.
I tried this. Apart from the time needed to re-rip the music you have to FLAC, if your player works in a fashion that transcoding is possible, that still means extra time to recode every file you're copying, every time you're syncing... not something you want if you're just putting a couple of songs on before heading out. Of course, this isn't even possible with all players. iPhones and iPods are the biggest sellers out there, and the only way you're getting files on those is through iTunes which, while it has a setting to transcode to AAC, doesn't support FLAC last time I checked. (OK, sure, there are ways around all those thing, but that's no good for the majority of people out there.)
So if you can't or don't want to transcode, you now you have two sets of files... but where do you put the ones you don't have a high-quality source for? Do you keep them with the PC music, or the portable music? Do you make an identical copy for each folder, just to keep it neat and easy to find? Or do you make a FLAC version of the lossy file for the PC, just to keep everything for it in the one format? Not to mention that a lot of media players used for syncing with portable devices keep a "library" of songs they're managing now, which means you need the player to know to play music from THIS folder, but sync music from THAT folder. Playlists can get around this, but at this point the procedure when you get a new song is 1) put it in the PC folder, hopefully in .flac, 2) re-encode it in a format the portable likes and put this in your other folder, 3) open your media player, and add both copies to your library, and 4) add each copy to it's respective playlist. For *every* song. So that you can have a practically unnoticeable increase in audio quality on the PC.
Just encode your music in a high-quality lossless format that your portable player supports. Your music will still sound great, it's much easier to handle across devices, and you use about 10-20% the HDD space you would otherwise. If you're really that obsessed with sound quality or future proofing, get a portable player that actually supports FLAC and has plenty of storage.
Now if we're talking an ideal world, from-this-point-on thing then, yes, it would be great if music could be sold to us in something like FLAC and have all our devices handle it.
Which would be important, it this wasn't a video of a *command prompt*. I think we can spare a few bits.