While I wish I didn't have to downsample dvd's to play on the touch, it is "good enough" which seems to be the trend in computing nowadays, with netbooks and "good enough" computing taking the fore.
As for my eyesight, I have my eyes corrected to 20/10 vision and, if asked, can tell you whether any given program on the TV is 1080, 720, or 480, or DVD, After a year, I just don't care. I'd rather watch an episode of colbert report in standard def (only available) than an episode of grays anatomy or whatever it is my wife watches in crystal clear 1080p. If a movie is good enough to keep my attention on a plane flight, as long as I can tell the chicks from the dudes and hear the audio, I'm good to go.
I think that being a google alternative is like being an ipod killer, and we've all seen how successful companies have been in that endeavor. Good on them for not trying to play follow the leader or at least claim not to, I haven't actually USED the service or anything to tell if they are or are not imitating/trying to replace google.
I think that the bsods came about because people were just installing and installing and ATI didn't have a good cleanup for driver upgrades. On the systems (i created a server with leftover parts from an upgrade), running the old 9700pro with semi-recent drivers, there were very few, if ever bsods that weren't me created. So my anecdote negates yours, but I realize that i tend to have better luck with hardware because i run my systems leaner (less resident processes) and do research into what I'm installing.
Surprisingly, no. I've had very few bsods, probably because I would only upgrade every year or so. If a new game didn't work unless it took a bad set of drivers, i'd wait a few revisions until there was one set that was accepted by the community. In fact, in the 5, count em 5, years I ran my 9700pro, the only, ONLY blue screens of death I'd get was when I plugged in an svideo cable when the computer was on. And that was NEVER fixed, to this day, the system will bsod if you plug the cable in while windows is running. I think that if you upgraded your drives monthly, there would be issues, but I'm not certain that ATI drivers were as bad as the nvidia fans made them seem.
Kind of ironic title when you take into consideration that on black friday, October 15, 2002, 3dfx's assets were purchased by nvidia. The geforceFX was built using a lot of ex-3dfx engineers, so there was a very literal translation from voodoo to 3dfx. PS, I used to LOVE 3dfx cards, still would, but I've been running radeons since the 9700pro beat the living snot out of the entire geforcefx line.
an ipod touch held with my elbows on the arm rests gives just about the same apparent screen size of my toshiba satellite wide screen laptop on my lap (with the screen sticking up from about my knees). The laptop is sufficient for watching videos in just about any resolution, as is the ipod touch running at its scaled resolution. I think that the primary use of head mounted displays was that when the were "The future", hand held movie devices were the size of the shrunk down playstation 1s. So the "Travel with a display in your pocket" is sort of moot because a pair of reading glasses and an ipod touch/iphone is "good enough" for anybody for movie watching on the go.
I've thought about this but since radio waves tend to pass through most materials, you'd probably be very aware of sources of radio waves (towers). It might be akin to living in a glass house where you don't have any light bulbs in the house. Radio waves tend to reflect off of hard surfaces, which results in a special form of interference known as multi-path, so there would be some reflections, but you'd probably find yourself not seeing anything transparent to radio waves.
That and due to the inverse square law, the amount of radio waves a safe distance away from radio towers would be very hard to detect and all in all, everything would be very very dark...
Have you tried? The easy part is writing it. Granted I haven't been published yet, but the knack of it is sitting down and putting words onto pages. If you don't do that, then it is hard. I was hinting at an engine and tool set that was so easy to use that it would be near trivial to create a model/texture that matched your mental image of it. Perhaps you could scribble and tweak using general language, perhaps someone will perfect mind-reading, whatever. This is the future I'm talking about! I want my flying car!
PS, judging by your registration number, chances are you may have written the 100,000 words required for a novel in your time posting at slashdot. Granted they're sporadic, unrelated posts, but if you had directed all of that energy towards a single story, you *might* be published by now. Once I realized how many words I was putting on the internets, I decided to take some of my free time and see if I couldn't tell a story I had in the back of my head for a few years.
Ah, I agree with you about movement speed, but every time I fire up q3 or even quake live, it feels like the movement speed of q3 is faster than ut2k4. UT2K4 just has what seem like smaller targets because the maps tend to be bigger to make room for double jumps and sprints. I've played on Q3 conversion maps where the map was scaled to match the player character size (in ut2k3, the PC size was decreased by 25% compared to the maps that were remade from UT to allow for the double jump), and the feeling was far less twitchy than the original Q3 maps.
After i posted, i realized i didn't properly define strategic encounter. Essentially, in Q3, unless your target had extra armor or health, a railgun was an instant kill. They also had what seemed like an eternity while the rail-gun cycled shots, so if you missed someone, you were pretty much dead, so it had to be the first shot and accurate. The lightening gun or sniper rifle were only fatal with a headshot, but the sniper rifle cycled fast enough that you could get off the required torso shots with proper dodging. The lightning gun is similar and I think that at the highest echelons of UT2k3/4 go for headshots and that could be the dynamic. I can't come up with a clear definition that excludes counter strike, cod, and bf2, all of which I consider to be more strategic in their encounters than twitch based.
While you will disagree with me, twitch game play = 1 shot per encounter between a 2 sided match if executed well (i.e. whoever gets the first shot gets a kill, instantly), and a strategic match requires having to cycle through multiple shots before one side falls. There were more strategic fights in ut2k3 at the higher levels than there were in q3. I think that a few dynamics in ut2k3 extended life expectancy in a fire fight from Q3 and those dynamics weren't terribly diminished in ut2k4. For example, a well timed jump would prevent the lightning gun or sniper rifle from being a 1 shot kill, but the railgun didn't need a headshot.
I'm not quite sure what to make of instagib as I've always found it far easier than traditional gameplay modes.
I dunno. It was my impression that ut2k3/4 was a mix of the strategic encounter of UT with the twitch of Q3. UT2k4 has too many effective spam weapons to be as twitchy as q3. In my mind, the pinnacle of Twitch was running around with the q3 railgun. It was also my impression that ut2k3 was more twitch than ut2k4.
I absolutely believe that the developers are abandoning the twitch gameplay for something more "accessible". Its a real minority that is willing to tune their reflexes and system to such a degree that they would bring themselves into what I would classify as Twitch. Combine that with the illusion of pc piracy (the scape goat for developers switching over to the massive base of consoles and the $60 price point), and developers switch to console dynamics, which are very unfavorable to twitch games.
That also explains why there aren't as many twitch gamers in u3, they stayed with ut2k4.
Haha, wow, I guess I made all kinds of crazy statements without clarification. While the flash game market has been around for a while, a large amount of the memorable flash games were created by people with graphic based artistic ability and an understanding of unique and compelling game mechanics. What I was thinking was more along the lines of being able to create/use advanced graphics and elements to convey a story that is both compelling and entertaining. What I was thinking was a toolset so powerful that a single person can create a 3d game like morrowind in under a year. Currently, an author uses a text editor or word processor to create a world inhabited by characters with motives and personality. I was thinking that a future author will be able to use a toolset that makes it so easy to create 3d models and textures, levels and dialogue, that the only limit is the authors imagination, not skill set, man hour limits, and budget that we see in today's games. Essentially, creating a game would be as easy as writing a novel. It's easy if you have the vision and persistence.
This would be a world where best selling authors have to share the lime light with a NY times best-selling game designer on a list that is updated weekly.
By the way, in my post I made a few assumptions that should be cleared out. I ignored single player games because I have no clue if they'll be around in 40 years. Yes, there will be a demand for them, but they're also the easiest to pirate and have less replay value than multiplayer games. So while there may be a market for them, developers may stop making them in favor of MMO's or as tutorial modes for multiplayer. They may also finally find a voice and become as established as novels and graphics and authoring tools may become so advanced that a single author can purchase something titled gameshop pro and start whipping out a game that will be marketable in a year and the single player game market may be just as expansive as a borders book store, and just as affordable due to the competition.
I have no clue what is held for the SP market, but I did focus on the multiplayer dynamics, which is also what the summary focuses on. (I refuse to RTFA).
By the way, what I talk about in bf2 sounds similar to map control in q3, but map control is half of victory in q3, the rest is skill, reflexes, and winning fire fights. In bf2, winning an encounter is often an instance of spotting someone first, lining them up, and killing them first, less dodging, jumping, and fast reflexes. Its a fine difference but I could imagine a 64 year old Me doing just as well as a 24 year old Me in BF2. I can't say the same of q3. I also view Q3 to be the pinnacle of twitch gaming, almost everything after that was made more "accessible" to the "casual" gamer.
It wasn't too long ago that I realized that in 2050 and 2060, old folks homes will be blasting metal so loud that their hard of hearing residents can hear it. By then, heavy metal will be what grandpa listens to and the young'ns will be listening to something equally infuriating and weird as linkin park is to our parents.
Anywho, instead of bridge or cribbage, there will be virtual dungeon crawls and WoW guild reunions. I think that the direction that games have been taking over the past 10 years has already pushed games to a point that they can be enjoyed by almost everybody with the proper background. While I won't be able to play quake 3 as well in 40 years as I did 8 years ago (when twitch gaming was at its peak and I was in practice), I might be a challange in 40 years in a game like bf2 that is more about resource usage, anticipation, and strategy. Granted there are narrow alley encounters where twitch wins, most of the kills (ignoring air combat) in bf2 came from having a resource (tank or apc), being in the right place, and seeing somebody before they saw you. All of that came from knowing the flow of the map and the more experienced player would most likely kill a rookie who doesn't know what's going on or how to handle the map. The experienced player will track along a hill, not make a silhouette, and watch choke points, they probably won't camp, and I will never equate camping with skill. So knowing how to traverse a map, handle your in game weapon, and not make yourself a target comes with experience and will lead to more kills than being able to whip around and headshot someone. If they can't pick you out, they can't headshot you.
So what I'm saying is that I will probably be playing games with veeery similar mechanics to those that I am playing now. Twitch gaming, a style that favored picking out movement from a sea of chaos, fast reflexes, and precise movements hasn't been in vogue for the past 5 years. I am certain, dead certain, that playing games like COD and bf2 have killed my abilities to be competitive in games like unreal 3, but in every pick up game I drop into in u3 (for the pc), I dominate. I was pretty OK in UT when it was at its peak and was mediocre at q3. I'd say that U3 is far more twitch than UT, but not as much as Q3. The twitch players aren't the majority of the FPS community. By the time i'm old and wrinkly, Twitch will be a long forgotten relic that we will talk about like people talk about terminals and punch cards.
west of vero beach is the stomping grounds of nasa engineers. I was in melbourne (like a 20 minute drive from vero beach) this past weekend and spoke with a few engineers who worked for nasa through contracts. That entire area is known as the "space coast". This was probably taken by an ex-nasa engineer or photographer. About month ago when I was up there was a rocket launch and there were probably 5-10 nasa guys in the street watching it. That area is absolutley saturated with guys who have an interest in nasa's activities and the professional know-how to do such things. While it could still be a hoax, there is nothing physically impossible and the location of origin of the photo only lends credibility.
Correct, people get hit by a side effect of downloading: Uploading. They didn't make new laws that apply to P2P programs (well, they may have), but primarily they're hitting the file sharers with unauthorized distribution charges (counterfeit). You are allowed to buy counterfeit purses, shoes, shirts, dvds, cds, and anything else as a consumer, provided they aren't in sufficient quantities (like you might be in trouble if you buy 500 of a counterfeit purse) and you don't distribute them. You can download anything (well, not ANYTHING, but for this topic, anything) from a web server and as long as you don't upload it, you're free from legal harm.
They grew that way because its so durned easy to hum a tune, write it down, and then expect to make a lifetime income off of that melody you came up with when you were on the crapper. Once people became hooked on a lifetime of income for a few days work, it became expected and their representative groups took up the fight against all threats, legal or otherwise. Seeing as the end consumer doesn't care about where the music comes from, its up to the RIAA and ASCAP and company to make the consumers care.
What was the quote? Evil is what happens when good people do nothing? Well nobody did anything, so evil happened.
Not quite. simply utilizing different frequencies within a single base (i.e. sending 00110011 vs 01010101 and so on) is not the same as utilizing several frequency bands.
Imagine if you could tune to every AM radio station available at once, but instead of music, they were sending information. That is similar to downstream broadband. While your modem is limited in that it can only listen to 1 station and get the audible range of frequencies from 20-15000hz (not sure what the filtering cut off is exactly), but only from one channel at a time. 56k is closer to broadband, but not really, because it could tap both the up and down for speed in either direction.
PS, porn from the power company, that is both shocking and electrifying... I'm sure I'm going to catch some static from that, but I couldn't care watt happens to my current karma because of these charged puns.
Slashdot Mirror
While I wish I didn't have to downsample dvd's to play on the touch, it is "good enough" which seems to be the trend in computing nowadays, with netbooks and "good enough" computing taking the fore.
As for my eyesight, I have my eyes corrected to 20/10 vision and, if asked, can tell you whether any given program on the TV is 1080, 720, or 480, or DVD, After a year, I just don't care. I'd rather watch an episode of colbert report in standard def (only available) than an episode of grays anatomy or whatever it is my wife watches in crystal clear 1080p. If a movie is good enough to keep my attention on a plane flight, as long as I can tell the chicks from the dudes and hear the audio, I'm good to go.
I think that being a google alternative is like being an ipod killer, and we've all seen how successful companies have been in that endeavor. Good on them for not trying to play follow the leader or at least claim not to, I haven't actually USED the service or anything to tell if they are or are not imitating/trying to replace google.
I think that the bsods came about because people were just installing and installing and ATI didn't have a good cleanup for driver upgrades. On the systems (i created a server with leftover parts from an upgrade), running the old 9700pro with semi-recent drivers, there were very few, if ever bsods that weren't me created. So my anecdote negates yours, but I realize that i tend to have better luck with hardware because i run my systems leaner (less resident processes) and do research into what I'm installing.
Surprisingly, no. I've had very few bsods, probably because I would only upgrade every year or so. If a new game didn't work unless it took a bad set of drivers, i'd wait a few revisions until there was one set that was accepted by the community. In fact, in the 5, count em 5, years I ran my 9700pro, the only, ONLY blue screens of death I'd get was when I plugged in an svideo cable when the computer was on. And that was NEVER fixed, to this day, the system will bsod if you plug the cable in while windows is running. I think that if you upgraded your drives monthly, there would be issues, but I'm not certain that ATI drivers were as bad as the nvidia fans made them seem.
Bah, me again, fail. s/voodoo to 3dfx/voodoo to geforce/
Kind of ironic title when you take into consideration that on black friday, October 15, 2002, 3dfx's assets were purchased by nvidia. The geforceFX was built using a lot of ex-3dfx engineers, so there was a very literal translation from voodoo to 3dfx. PS, I used to LOVE 3dfx cards, still would, but I've been running radeons since the 9700pro beat the living snot out of the entire geforcefx line.
an ipod touch held with my elbows on the arm rests gives just about the same apparent screen size of my toshiba satellite wide screen laptop on my lap (with the screen sticking up from about my knees). The laptop is sufficient for watching videos in just about any resolution, as is the ipod touch running at its scaled resolution. I think that the primary use of head mounted displays was that when the were "The future", hand held movie devices were the size of the shrunk down playstation 1s. So the "Travel with a display in your pocket" is sort of moot because a pair of reading glasses and an ipod touch/iphone is "good enough" for anybody for movie watching on the go.
Here I was thinking that tribbles would be fairly evident in the presence of a klingon and wouldn't require a scan to find.
I've thought about this but since radio waves tend to pass through most materials, you'd probably be very aware of sources of radio waves (towers). It might be akin to living in a glass house where you don't have any light bulbs in the house. Radio waves tend to reflect off of hard surfaces, which results in a special form of interference known as multi-path, so there would be some reflections, but you'd probably find yourself not seeing anything transparent to radio waves.
That and due to the inverse square law, the amount of radio waves a safe distance away from radio towers would be very hard to detect and all in all, everything would be very very dark...
yeah, but changing the pov doesn't change the size of the characters relative to the levels or the movement speed.
Have you tried? The easy part is writing it. Granted I haven't been published yet, but the knack of it is sitting down and putting words onto pages. If you don't do that, then it is hard. I was hinting at an engine and tool set that was so easy to use that it would be near trivial to create a model/texture that matched your mental image of it. Perhaps you could scribble and tweak using general language, perhaps someone will perfect mind-reading, whatever. This is the future I'm talking about! I want my flying car!
PS, judging by your registration number, chances are you may have written the 100,000 words required for a novel in your time posting at slashdot. Granted they're sporadic, unrelated posts, but if you had directed all of that energy towards a single story, you *might* be published by now. Once I realized how many words I was putting on the internets, I decided to take some of my free time and see if I couldn't tell a story I had in the back of my head for a few years.
Dolphin diving was removed with a patch IIRC. It was a game glitch, not an intended mechanic.
Ah, I agree with you about movement speed, but every time I fire up q3 or even quake live, it feels like the movement speed of q3 is faster than ut2k4. UT2K4 just has what seem like smaller targets because the maps tend to be bigger to make room for double jumps and sprints. I've played on Q3 conversion maps where the map was scaled to match the player character size (in ut2k3, the PC size was decreased by 25% compared to the maps that were remade from UT to allow for the double jump), and the feeling was far less twitchy than the original Q3 maps.
All give, no take?
After i posted, i realized i didn't properly define strategic encounter. Essentially, in Q3, unless your target had extra armor or health, a railgun was an instant kill. They also had what seemed like an eternity while the rail-gun cycled shots, so if you missed someone, you were pretty much dead, so it had to be the first shot and accurate. The lightening gun or sniper rifle were only fatal with a headshot, but the sniper rifle cycled fast enough that you could get off the required torso shots with proper dodging. The lightning gun is similar and I think that at the highest echelons of UT2k3/4 go for headshots and that could be the dynamic. I can't come up with a clear definition that excludes counter strike, cod, and bf2, all of which I consider to be more strategic in their encounters than twitch based.
While you will disagree with me, twitch game play = 1 shot per encounter between a 2 sided match if executed well (i.e. whoever gets the first shot gets a kill, instantly), and a strategic match requires having to cycle through multiple shots before one side falls. There were more strategic fights in ut2k3 at the higher levels than there were in q3. I think that a few dynamics in ut2k3 extended life expectancy in a fire fight from Q3 and those dynamics weren't terribly diminished in ut2k4. For example, a well timed jump would prevent the lightning gun or sniper rifle from being a 1 shot kill, but the railgun didn't need a headshot.
I'm not quite sure what to make of instagib as I've always found it far easier than traditional gameplay modes.
I dunno. It was my impression that ut2k3/4 was a mix of the strategic encounter of UT with the twitch of Q3. UT2k4 has too many effective spam weapons to be as twitchy as q3. In my mind, the pinnacle of Twitch was running around with the q3 railgun. It was also my impression that ut2k3 was more twitch than ut2k4.
I absolutely believe that the developers are abandoning the twitch gameplay for something more "accessible". Its a real minority that is willing to tune their reflexes and system to such a degree that they would bring themselves into what I would classify as Twitch. Combine that with the illusion of pc piracy (the scape goat for developers switching over to the massive base of consoles and the $60 price point), and developers switch to console dynamics, which are very unfavorable to twitch games.
That also explains why there aren't as many twitch gamers in u3, they stayed with ut2k4.
Haha, wow, I guess I made all kinds of crazy statements without clarification. While the flash game market has been around for a while, a large amount of the memorable flash games were created by people with graphic based artistic ability and an understanding of unique and compelling game mechanics. What I was thinking was more along the lines of being able to create/use advanced graphics and elements to convey a story that is both compelling and entertaining. What I was thinking was a toolset so powerful that a single person can create a 3d game like morrowind in under a year. Currently, an author uses a text editor or word processor to create a world inhabited by characters with motives and personality. I was thinking that a future author will be able to use a toolset that makes it so easy to create 3d models and textures, levels and dialogue, that the only limit is the authors imagination, not skill set, man hour limits, and budget that we see in today's games. Essentially, creating a game would be as easy as writing a novel. It's easy if you have the vision and persistence.
This would be a world where best selling authors have to share the lime light with a NY times best-selling game designer on a list that is updated weekly.
By the way, in my post I made a few assumptions that should be cleared out. I ignored single player games because I have no clue if they'll be around in 40 years. Yes, there will be a demand for them, but they're also the easiest to pirate and have less replay value than multiplayer games. So while there may be a market for them, developers may stop making them in favor of MMO's or as tutorial modes for multiplayer. They may also finally find a voice and become as established as novels and graphics and authoring tools may become so advanced that a single author can purchase something titled gameshop pro and start whipping out a game that will be marketable in a year and the single player game market may be just as expansive as a borders book store, and just as affordable due to the competition.
I have no clue what is held for the SP market, but I did focus on the multiplayer dynamics, which is also what the summary focuses on. (I refuse to RTFA).
By the way, what I talk about in bf2 sounds similar to map control in q3, but map control is half of victory in q3, the rest is skill, reflexes, and winning fire fights. In bf2, winning an encounter is often an instance of spotting someone first, lining them up, and killing them first, less dodging, jumping, and fast reflexes. Its a fine difference but I could imagine a 64 year old Me doing just as well as a 24 year old Me in BF2. I can't say the same of q3. I also view Q3 to be the pinnacle of twitch gaming, almost everything after that was made more "accessible" to the "casual" gamer.
It wasn't too long ago that I realized that in 2050 and 2060, old folks homes will be blasting metal so loud that their hard of hearing residents can hear it. By then, heavy metal will be what grandpa listens to and the young'ns will be listening to something equally infuriating and weird as linkin park is to our parents.
Anywho, instead of bridge or cribbage, there will be virtual dungeon crawls and WoW guild reunions. I think that the direction that games have been taking over the past 10 years has already pushed games to a point that they can be enjoyed by almost everybody with the proper background. While I won't be able to play quake 3 as well in 40 years as I did 8 years ago (when twitch gaming was at its peak and I was in practice), I might be a challange in 40 years in a game like bf2 that is more about resource usage, anticipation, and strategy. Granted there are narrow alley encounters where twitch wins, most of the kills (ignoring air combat) in bf2 came from having a resource (tank or apc), being in the right place, and seeing somebody before they saw you. All of that came from knowing the flow of the map and the more experienced player would most likely kill a rookie who doesn't know what's going on or how to handle the map. The experienced player will track along a hill, not make a silhouette, and watch choke points, they probably won't camp, and I will never equate camping with skill. So knowing how to traverse a map, handle your in game weapon, and not make yourself a target comes with experience and will lead to more kills than being able to whip around and headshot someone. If they can't pick you out, they can't headshot you.
So what I'm saying is that I will probably be playing games with veeery similar mechanics to those that I am playing now. Twitch gaming, a style that favored picking out movement from a sea of chaos, fast reflexes, and precise movements hasn't been in vogue for the past 5 years. I am certain, dead certain, that playing games like COD and bf2 have killed my abilities to be competitive in games like unreal 3, but in every pick up game I drop into in u3 (for the pc), I dominate. I was pretty OK in UT when it was at its peak and was mediocre at q3. I'd say that U3 is far more twitch than UT, but not as much as Q3. The twitch players aren't the majority of the FPS community. By the time i'm old and wrinkly, Twitch will be a long forgotten relic that we will talk about like people talk about terminals and punch cards.
That's absolutely ridiculous, if you had eyes at all you'd notice that its really fruit fly on a honeydew.
west of vero beach is the stomping grounds of nasa engineers. I was in melbourne (like a 20 minute drive from vero beach) this past weekend and spoke with a few engineers who worked for nasa through contracts. That entire area is known as the "space coast". This was probably taken by an ex-nasa engineer or photographer. About month ago when I was up there was a rocket launch and there were probably 5-10 nasa guys in the street watching it. That area is absolutley saturated with guys who have an interest in nasa's activities and the professional know-how to do such things. While it could still be a hoax, there is nothing physically impossible and the location of origin of the photo only lends credibility.
Correct, people get hit by a side effect of downloading: Uploading. They didn't make new laws that apply to P2P programs (well, they may have), but primarily they're hitting the file sharers with unauthorized distribution charges (counterfeit). You are allowed to buy counterfeit purses, shoes, shirts, dvds, cds, and anything else as a consumer, provided they aren't in sufficient quantities (like you might be in trouble if you buy 500 of a counterfeit purse) and you don't distribute them. You can download anything (well, not ANYTHING, but for this topic, anything) from a web server and as long as you don't upload it, you're free from legal harm.
They grew that way because its so durned easy to hum a tune, write it down, and then expect to make a lifetime income off of that melody you came up with when you were on the crapper. Once people became hooked on a lifetime of income for a few days work, it became expected and their representative groups took up the fight against all threats, legal or otherwise. Seeing as the end consumer doesn't care about where the music comes from, its up to the RIAA and ASCAP and company to make the consumers care.
What was the quote? Evil is what happens when good people do nothing? Well nobody did anything, so evil happened.
Not quite. simply utilizing different frequencies within a single base (i.e. sending 00110011 vs 01010101 and so on) is not the same as utilizing several frequency bands.
Imagine if you could tune to every AM radio station available at once, but instead of music, they were sending information. That is similar to downstream broadband. While your modem is limited in that it can only listen to 1 station and get the audible range of frequencies from 20-15000hz (not sure what the filtering cut off is exactly), but only from one channel at a time. 56k is closer to broadband, but not really, because it could tap both the up and down for speed in either direction.
PS, porn from the power company, that is both shocking and electrifying... I'm sure I'm going to catch some static from that, but I couldn't care watt happens to my current karma because of these charged puns.