That still doesn't mean it equates 1:1 to *lost ticket sales*, especially as TBP and other mainstream *rrent sites are a global audience.
As someone who works in the content industries (I am a musician and 3D animator & VFX guy) I care less about the 'poor unwashed masses' consuming movies and music early in release schedule via *rrents for ticket sales reasons, and care more about people being able to experience creative works with some kind of quality control in place. Which imo is the same reason people care about cel phones going off in a theatre. As a content producer though cams and crappy mp3's are only going to worsen the experience regardless of how good or poor a script or composition may be. Quality control is paramount...
Thus it follows that MPAA is trying to insure that only HIGH QUALITY cams are created, none of that horribly low res head-shake-vomit-inducing cams for the proletariat thank you very much! (/sarcasm)
Maxtor had so many QA issues in their latter days that it contributed greatly towards the purchasing price that Seagate got when they bought them. Of course the CEO Bill Watkins promptly moved a huge bulk of the Seagate drive ops to the same plant (as a cost cutting measure it was presumed) that had issues for Maxtor and denied the 'bricking' issues that resulted for AS and ES series drives for at least 9 months... until the Seagate Board of Directors fired him and replaced him with the former CEO from 2004 (and subsequently addressed the firmware issues too.)
I flashed all 3 of my ES.2's to SN06 'just in case' while all of this was underway, and though it was denied that they had issues in my serial # range quite a few reports cropped up down the line of ES.2's outside the reported serial range having problems also so I'm happy I did, they still run fine in an array to this day.
My favorite quote from the article: “We continue to strengthen our cyber defenses, using the latest anti-virus software and other methods to protect Air Force resources and assure our ability to execute Air Force missions,” Cook said in a statement. “Continued education and training of all users will also help reduce the threat of malware to Department of Defense systems.”
Why do I get the feeling that Norton/McAffee are offering their 'latest anti-virus software" to "strengthen our cyber defenses"...which will inevitably lead to a 2-4 year staged upgrade of all systems to bring them back up to their 'speeds' before they were "strengthened"..while software from ESET, VIPRE & AVAST are only found on the laptops of off duty personnel that have a clue. Given that DARPA sort of kickstarted this whole thing we're using these days you might think there'd be some military-grade software in use but I've yet to see any hint of that in any of the 'cybersecurity' discussions that find their way into our shared discussions on the 'tubes'.
Which would be why I said I'm not sure I can wait =]
On the flipside, TDP for SB-e isn't looking peachy for Intel either, so maybe I'll just reinvest in last gen hardware at the price drop when SB-e launches and tide things over until Ivy/22nm.
Well now I know for sure why SB-E (sandybridge-e) is not arriving until Q1 2012... Intel is just going to continue to milk SB parts for the time being.
Sad because I really wanted to get an Ivy Xeon rig to replace my current dual proc mobo, but I'm not sure I can wait until 2013!
You're right the Hiibel case (moortak also identified it in a reply above) is the actual case that stands on the books but the Nevada Supreme court referenced a 1979 Texas case Brown v. Texas noting that the Supreme Court declined to address the issue of identification and decided that being asked to identify yourself didn't incriminate you if it wasn't specifically in reference to a crime. So I was perhaps overstating things a bit in my formerly caffeinated state, but the inaccuracy was misremembering the Nevada case stemmed from the Texas case and not the other way around. It's only been 7 years since I read the articles on that you'll have to forgive me =]
Well the supreme court decision that has directly led to "papers please" in the US took place in Texas, a man on his own property with his truck (NOT on public land or a public road) was asked for ID by a police officer and declined, was arrested and subsequently courts sided with 'the law' that you must provide identification at all times including on your own property....so yep Texas isn't exempt from police state status. Incidentally how are the speed traps in rural TX these days?
Woops meant to post that under my account, didn't realize this machine wasn't logged in...wish I knew how to delete a posting made accidentally under AC status. Any mods able to check ip/post time?
Not only that but it equates things like interfering with the Comcast+NBC merger to stopping someone sitting in their bedroom with the 'next big idea'. I'm not sure the author intended for that level of poetic irony...
I remember when most Comcast networks were ATTBI, and ATTBI decided 'not to renew' their @home contract, subsequently putting @home out of business. 3 months later AT&T was authorized to buy said network?? And kept most of the network @home built out (for the future) dark while letting people stay on the constricted backbone they erected for that 3 month duration for years in some areas? Ah yes good for the consumer & investor that was (of course Excite played a role there too...)
And when hulu was a relatively 'new' thing I remember how sluggish it sometimes was on comcast, even though a trace showed that there weren't an ungodly number of hops things would still get somehow 'congested' (not visible to a trace) and hulu would sit there rebuffering...and at the time I still paid for *all* of comcast's channels (including HD) and still preferred to sit online where I could choose what I wanted when I wanted without having to navigate a menu structure that was intentionally slowed down over the stock code to improve 'ad impressions' for their own services (which is what comcast has done with each UI i've seen...) Netflix had buffering issues as well, and with 6-7 machines here to test general connectivity there didn't seem to be *any* other issues. I sat there with their techs (and with some clearchannel techs in relation to an audio program I was having issues with that I subscribe to) and the routing itself seemed fine.
Then came the news about sandvine routers affecting p2p, but there was little talk about the issues with sustained streaming content (3-4 hour movies or continuous audio/video streams were often stalled just the same as p2p apps.) I have in fact upgraded my net to the top tiers available at every step of my comcast contract for the last decade, and while I can generally find ways to 'steer around' issues with open source & p2p software, fixing issues with endpoint services like netflix & premiereradio networks proved to be more difficult (because the lack of acknowledgement on the part of Comcast made it impossible for the responsible party to fix things!) Of course once the p2p throttling came out and comcast 'promised' to stop throttling those issues went away as well (curious that, though I still can't "prove" anything.)
I don't usually have issues with netflix now either (even though comcast is apparently doing 'network management' again), but Hulu--as my wife has observed a few times over the last few years without knowing 'why' she 'likes it now'--seems to work better than ever in terms of speed. Part of this of course is flash gaining video accelleration during the intervening time (so the UI feels 'better' to her and video can do HD with ease) but we don't get the rebuffering we used to either. So I explained to my wife the day Hulu was bought why we should still support netflix too, and I wondered what backdoor relation NBC & the other investors had with Comcast to magically get such good service (did they change to better edge hosting perhaps like netflix did with akamai back then or something simple on a technical level--a reasonable explanation?) Low & behold more time passes and now Comcast & NBC are merging...
Meanwhile my choices since 2002 have dwindled to Comcast & high speed or DSL with Qwest on an MSN backbone that still gives 768kbit as an entry level pricepoint, and 7MBit if I want to spend the same amount I'm spending for the 30mbit tier on comcast. In any case anecdotal evidence doesn't = data (oft repeated here) and I'm sure tl;dnr; in terms of a post length but I don't have high hopes for allowing companies to have 'managed services' and 'managed mergers' of monopolistic dimensions is going to benefit me much at all. I certainly fail to see how it's going to enable the next garage business to turn into a multimillion/billion dollar affair as the article seems to imply.
Every time I've seen the 'suits' attempt to create 'channels' in an attempt to market something on top of a layer of tech, the technology underneath it moves so quickly that any attempt at a static, controlled form of it winds up being obsolesced rather quickly. Remember having screensavers with feeds pre-rss as if we'd all been waiting for CNN to enter every idle second we had? And apps you could run at the top of your screen (which were early forms of spyware in some cases, logging basic user metrics before anyone care about such things.)
Actually my guess is that this is how they're going to finally 'open up' about the ACTA. They need justification to pollute the airwaves/media outlets with false claims that there is no hard data on 'how bad this problem is' since we can't yet track the statistics via beurocracy, so therefore we need mechanisms like 3-strikes so that we can begin to collect info on 'how bad things really are'.
This issue is related to automatic fan control not working due to improper registry keys, and so GPU's that run warm (9800 series for instance) can quickly overheat and potentially suffer damage. I'm having no issues with mine, but I set fan profiles manually as I'm using a machine that has a very hot MCH & fb-dimms (2008 Xeon) and don't want the gpu contributing more. However for anyone interested (and using a GT200 or at least G80/G92 on up) here's the fix: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161767
I do seem to recall that Quest kept falling under scrutiny during the years around this issue, though I would have to do some research to recall exactly what was at issue (soimething with their CEO or Board President?)
I would say the album was an outgrowth of singles not only because it was more convenient for consumers & because pressing technology had matured to where you could reliably fit 45-60 minutes on a 12", but also because of the appeal it had for artists to tell a fuller 'story' for a while. 2-3 decades later it was used as a way to push as much music as possible in a format that was simple to mass produce and incredibly cheap (vinyl isn't as simple and certainly isn't as cheap to make/ship/stock.) As albums turned into more & more filler, people started turning to programmable CD changers and the like to have more ability to pick & choose just the material they wanted to hear, or in the order they want to hear etc.
Now that I can get get to that 30% that I want to hear without accepting the rest, and can carry around hundreds/thousands times more than I could with a CD book (and catalogue even vaster amounts at home) it doesn't follow that I'm only going to buy 30% of the music I used to. That's something these fat cat major labels have yet to figure out. I'm consuming more music than I ever have (and producing more as well!) but the money and attention is going to the people who can deliver what I'm looking for as quickly as possible, with reliable quality to me in a selection that suits my interests. Interestingly enough I DO still buy albums, though often in mp3/flac/mp4 format (and rarely of major label backed work), and I also buy more vinyl these days, both as a result of the my musical exploration in digital singles & online streaming music.
It seems to me that playlists for 'ripped' mp3's are a direct outgrowth of that (a maturing of the random access that CDs began to introduce to listeners), and our modern digital formats have been unencumbered from the 'filler' material used to justify propped up prices. Once you've been able to pick and choose (and for those not ethically opposed, sample things here & there before you buy) it's very hard to go 'back' to just accepting that you may only like a small percentage of the overall music you're buying when you considered purchases not by number of tracks but rather by the the packaging (CD/LP/EP/Tapes etc).
So this particular article (which was brief and had NO technical info about the format) reads as, is the studios said "hey in the early days of vinyl we went from singles to albums and made a bundle, we can't sell albums now but maybe if we turn the file format into an album the good days of old will return!" To the technoliterate it seems to be ignoring the fact that 1. you can easily package things into albums now using a cue file plus single compressed file with embedded artwork in the tagging is the easiest for a fully blended/mixed 'album', or of course just have a bunch of files in directories. But of course this is about PR, marketing and atttempts at restoring 'profit margins' (and if DRM laden, control.)
It seems like the encumbent tends to resist change, constantly trying to adapt existing marketing & formatting decisions by changing thigns as little as possible. The middlemen are disappearing, the amount of inexpensive gear available to your average 'home' artist & enthusiast mean that the bookings in studios are thinning out and fat cats aren't as necessary if you don't need to pay for 40 days of studio lockout time to be able to produce an 'album' anymore. So the whole era of largesse & slow return on investments is gone, fading with the fat cats now that you can put in a minor investment of time and yield incredibly fast delivery/turnaround on getting stuff into the market. Also it seems to me that live music is thriving more due to the variety of music in people's palette these days, although economically depressed there seems to be more activity now that promoting yourself & connecting to fans has the benefit of the online mediums.
Actually I agree, I think the Xbox360 is playing a huge role in this. And I do think Valve is trying to cut a path here that keeps the console & PC versions in parity in terms of new features, which are far easier to introduce on PC+Steam than the 360 when you take the console's DLC requirements into account (especially given MS's pricier harddrive policy). Orange box was Valve's first serious attempt at a 360 title, and it has some well known "issues" versus the PC release. Still a perfectly playable and enjoyable game, but compare it to what PC users get in terms of support & updates...
So Valve responds by giving PC players a 'lobby' when Left4Dead debuts and limiting the amount of DLC released for the PC L4d to what they can match on console. That limits not only availability for expanding the PC version, but also slows down the PC timeline to match the 360 "DLC approval" rate. In fact it seemed for a while as if Valve wasn't even sure if the last DLC for L4D was going to cost money, then somewhere that got 'cleared up'. (That was at least the impression given via the blogs & game/review sites from a layperson's position.)
So this time what I can see is Valve saying "it's going to take ages for MS to 'approve' the DLC (which doesn't even seem to prevent obvious bugs for some reason--see fallout3's repeated issues there) then why not just go whole hog and make some major tweaks we've been wanting to do all at once?"
What was interesting to me is that noone decrying this move from Valve has bothered to note that EVERY major dev for consoles announced almost nothing besides sequels which may or may not even bring 'major changes to the core gameplay' (a big complaint about what's been shown for Left4Dead2 so far.) Also very few people lamented this move from Valve and then took note of Square Enix announcing yet ANOTHER final fantasy when the current one is still only just coming out. Valve would have had to announce Left4Dead 3 immediately after the L4D 2 preview to equal that kind of 'bold' move.
Me? I'm find with buying Left4Dead 2 if it means the game gets more polish than it would have otherwise. And from what I can see it does, though I'm not sure I'll appreciate some of the changes: some of the melee weapons are a bit too 'dumbed down' seeming from the gameplay footage I've seen and the daylight is a big turnoff since half the mood for the previous one comes from the idea that you move in low-light conditions to avoid being seen. Still, with the increase in world detail that I've seen and the improved zombie animations, dismemberment of said zombies and so on I'm willing to bet that there would perhaps be a considerable number of Left4Dead 1 players who would have seen drastically reduced performance (meaning some mechanism for scaling back those features would perhaps be necessary.) I say this because I know a lot of 'poor' gamers that I play the game with whose systems seem to take ages to load a map, and many have shared that they were surprised to be able to play a modern title. There have been 2 or 3 graphics 'fixes' from Valve that addressed various gpu/driver bugs, and each fix unfortunately brought reduced framerates and the accompanying complaining from the userbase. Push out a 'free' DLC that forces people to upgrade their computer....?
Left4Dead is only $29 if you buy from somewhere like Amazon, and it has been on sale on Steam as well. Give it more time and you'll see it for less I'm sure. I got in excess of 100 hours out of the game, and while the last 20-30 hours has been a bit 'easier' due knowing everything about the game including the new game mode inside & out, I can't say that I'm upset about it.
I would like more content but am content with user-generated content & lobby support for 'discovering' that content and playing it with other people in a stable fashion (even with the beta sdk it's a bit of a hit & miss affair right now). But they have been working on the SDK & Lobby support so I would imagine we'll see that in the next month or so.
What the AC next to me is trying to say is that XP Mode does NOT offer improved device support. Virtualization abstracts hardware for the software that is running in the virtual machine, but the OS/hypervisor/etc below it still needs proper driver support for "device compatibility" (to talk to peripherals etc).
Dead space had high enough production values, a 'plot' (and even a cliffhanger of sorts) but I wouldn't say the story actually has any depth. It wasn't excessively long thankfully, and it's not repetitive in the sense that Far Cry 2 is. I did think the ending boss fight was quite nice, although not terribly difficult (Yahtzee's take on that boss was spot on). Overall it was interesting enough, but much like Mirror's Edge, it's not quite as innovative as it was made out to be. I think people were just shocked to see playable titles emerge from EA that weren't the zillionth sequel in the line of some series.
I haven't played MGS4, but if you can stomach the (much discussed) extended cutscenes and know the backstory from the other games, I suspect it's a much better choice. However given the choice between Far Cry 2 and Dead Space, I'd choose the latter.
I preordered it on Steam and am forcing myself to complete it so it's not a total waste of money (it is pretty after all with a modern gpu), but find myself cursing "Grand Theft Africa" as I watch the hours slide by and little progress being made (or apparently going from 18% to 50% completion yields....the same thing that I faced at 10% completion, just with more weapons available?)
Things that bug me:
In firefights having to wait for one of the (how many are there again?) *ultra-realistic* 'healing animations' that are so incredibly immersive, and yet horribly repetitive seems to me one of two sources of difficulty in this game! I know that I can sprint for cover to dig the bullet out real quick, but while taking on an airfield of badguys I can either go 'stealth' and quickload if my cover is blown too early, or face the facts: the inability to actually 'heal' when being sprayed with random AI fire in a firefight is one of 2 things the difficulty setting actually affects. Even on the 'Notorious' setting (or whatever the highest is) the enemy AI isn't very difficult to take on aside from these 2 points. But having to 'heal' yourself, what a challenge!
The other is apparently a 'kamikaze' sensitivity setting, which makes AI drive like tron cycles beelining it straight for me anytime I'm in view and there's a vehicle on hand for them. Turn difficulty down, they take longer to get to the cars but seem to take the same amount of damage and use the same poor tactics against me. Turn difficulty up, yay for suicidal driving! Of course if I can sidestep the car/truck in time taking them down as they exit the vehicle is pretty simple (they are suicidal after all) but that's assuming there isn't a mounted gun. They seem oblivious to the fact that when *I* use the same top-mounted guns they overheat and catch on fire before I can take down 2-3 bad guys. For them it seems to have infinite amounts of wear & tear as well as ammo...
(ok there's more) Its not just them mowing me down or hitting my car with small arms fire, the need to constantly repair your vehicle due to suicidal AI driving is annoying as well. I can shoot their vehicles with a top mounted machine gun, and my gun catches fire before their vehicle is even smoking. Yet small arms fire from them apparently renders my vehicle inoperable within seconds, assuming they didn't sideswipe me at 75kph while I was trying to exit my vehicle.
Lastly, the save system. PC users get the 'concession' of being able to save without going to a 'safe house', but quicksave will litter your save dir with HUNDREDS of save-games, rendering any attempt to view your save/load game screens an exercise in how to make a nice healthy pot of coffee...
Tweakguides has a short Crysis Warhead Tweak Guide though you'd need to refer to the main Crysis tweak guide for most of the info as there are only a few things that have changed.
I use an autoexec.cfg to change several parameters that improve performance without having to turn down overall settings, and set a custom resolution to boot.
I used rockbox YEARS ago on one of the 2nd gen ipods and it was an improvement even then (at least for my usage which isn't itunes centric). I've been using a midrange flash recorder (that has dual mics & mp3 support) but wouldn't mind a dedicated player again.
So what player would have:
- High quality audio conversion (DAC) and op amp/headphone amp
- Excellent Rockbox support (does rockbox do video now?)
- Good processing performance (for games and ?video?)
?
Actually, that doesn't matter. If the RIAA is not doing anything good, then they will fail. They will get no artists, and no customers. They will fail and it will be no skin off your nose. There's no need for intervention on behalf of the artists, and those who enjoy some of the RIAA's music, as we can and will decide what we want for ourselves.
You underestimate lawyers & politicians. The RIAA has been around for a lot longer than the history of net radio, and has their finger in suppressing competing business models since at least the era of the phonograph (see: RIAA preamp and how they colluded with certain label owners to control the recording & record pressing industries).
If anything they're MORE successful these days. Between the constant erosion of fair use (the MPAA has a hand in this too), the extension of copyright limits (with the MPAA again), the debtor's prison approach to instilling fear in their audience and their magical ability to be nominated as sole arbiter of all internet radio related profits I think they're quite capable of inserting themselves into the music business regardless of whether that is seen as 'doing anything good'.
And if you're curious how it could be easier in the "choice of being with a big label" then you're obviously not familiar with who has been behind the majority of the big labels for much of the music industry. The lawyers aren't the only side of the coercion and profiteering in the music industry...
Actually it's Windows\System32\drivers\etc (the file is hosts without any extension). On Vista UAC may block your access to the file by default as well, the easiest way to get around this (aside from disabling UAC altogether) is to run your editor with elevated privileges.
Slashdot Mirror
That still doesn't mean it equates 1:1 to *lost ticket sales*, especially as TBP and other mainstream *rrent sites are a global audience.
As someone who works in the content industries (I am a musician and 3D animator & VFX guy) I care less about the 'poor unwashed masses' consuming movies and music early in release schedule via *rrents for ticket sales reasons, and care more about people being able to experience creative works with some kind of quality control in place. Which imo is the same reason people care about cel phones going off in a theatre. As a content producer though cams and crappy mp3's are only going to worsen the experience regardless of how good or poor a script or composition may be. Quality control is paramount...
Thus it follows that MPAA is trying to insure that only HIGH QUALITY cams are created, none of that horribly low res head-shake-vomit-inducing cams for the proletariat thank you very much! (/sarcasm)
Maxtor had so many QA issues in their latter days that it contributed greatly towards the purchasing price that Seagate got when they bought them. Of course the CEO Bill Watkins promptly moved a huge bulk of the Seagate drive ops to the same plant (as a cost cutting measure it was presumed) that had issues for Maxtor and denied the 'bricking' issues that resulted for AS and ES series drives for at least 9 months... until the Seagate Board of Directors fired him and replaced him with the former CEO from 2004 (and subsequently addressed the firmware issues too.)
I flashed all 3 of my ES.2's to SN06 'just in case' while all of this was underway, and though it was denied that they had issues in my serial # range quite a few reports cropped up down the line of ES.2's outside the reported serial range having problems also so I'm happy I did, they still run fine in an array to this day.
My favorite quote from the article: “We continue to strengthen our cyber defenses, using the latest anti-virus software and other methods to protect Air Force resources and assure our ability to execute Air Force missions,” Cook said in a statement. “Continued education and training of all users will also help reduce the threat of malware to Department of Defense systems.” Why do I get the feeling that Norton/McAffee are offering their 'latest anti-virus software" to "strengthen our cyber defenses"...which will inevitably lead to a 2-4 year staged upgrade of all systems to bring them back up to their 'speeds' before they were "strengthened"..while software from ESET, VIPRE & AVAST are only found on the laptops of off duty personnel that have a clue. Given that DARPA sort of kickstarted this whole thing we're using these days you might think there'd be some military-grade software in use but I've yet to see any hint of that in any of the 'cybersecurity' discussions that find their way into our shared discussions on the 'tubes'.
Which would be why I said I'm not sure I can wait =]
On the flipside, TDP for SB-e isn't looking peachy for Intel either, so maybe I'll just reinvest in last gen hardware at the price drop when SB-e launches and tide things over until Ivy/22nm.
Well now I know for sure why SB-E (sandybridge-e) is not arriving until Q1 2012... Intel is just going to continue to milk SB parts for the time being. Sad because I really wanted to get an Ivy Xeon rig to replace my current dual proc mobo, but I'm not sure I can wait until 2013!
You're right the Hiibel case (moortak also identified it in a reply above) is the actual case that stands on the books but the Nevada Supreme court referenced a 1979 Texas case Brown v. Texas noting that the Supreme Court declined to address the issue of identification and decided that being asked to identify yourself didn't incriminate you if it wasn't specifically in reference to a crime. So I was perhaps overstating things a bit in my formerly caffeinated state, but the inaccuracy was misremembering the Nevada case stemmed from the Texas case and not the other way around. It's only been 7 years since I read the articles on that you'll have to forgive me =]
Well the supreme court decision that has directly led to "papers please" in the US took place in Texas, a man on his own property with his truck (NOT on public land or a public road) was asked for ID by a police officer and declined, was arrested and subsequently courts sided with 'the law' that you must provide identification at all times including on your own property....so yep Texas isn't exempt from police state status. Incidentally how are the speed traps in rural TX these days?
Woops meant to post that under my account, didn't realize this machine wasn't logged in...wish I knew how to delete a posting made accidentally under AC status. Any mods able to check ip/post time?
Not only that but it equates things like interfering with the Comcast+NBC merger to stopping someone sitting in their bedroom with the 'next big idea'. I'm not sure the author intended for that level of poetic irony...
I remember when most Comcast networks were ATTBI, and ATTBI decided 'not to renew' their @home contract, subsequently putting @home out of business. 3 months later AT&T was authorized to buy said network?? And kept most of the network @home built out (for the future) dark while letting people stay on the constricted backbone they erected for that 3 month duration for years in some areas? Ah yes good for the consumer & investor that was (of course Excite played a role there too...)
And when hulu was a relatively 'new' thing I remember how sluggish it sometimes was on comcast, even though a trace showed that there weren't an ungodly number of hops things would still get somehow 'congested' (not visible to a trace) and hulu would sit there rebuffering...and at the time I still paid for *all* of comcast's channels (including HD) and still preferred to sit online where I could choose what I wanted when I wanted without having to navigate a menu structure that was intentionally slowed down over the stock code to improve 'ad impressions' for their own services (which is what comcast has done with each UI i've seen...) Netflix had buffering issues as well, and with 6-7 machines here to test general connectivity there didn't seem to be *any* other issues. I sat there with their techs (and with some clearchannel techs in relation to an audio program I was having issues with that I subscribe to) and the routing itself seemed fine.
Then came the news about sandvine routers affecting p2p, but there was little talk about the issues with sustained streaming content (3-4 hour movies or continuous audio/video streams were often stalled just the same as p2p apps.) I have in fact upgraded my net to the top tiers available at every step of my comcast contract for the last decade, and while I can generally find ways to 'steer around' issues with open source & p2p software, fixing issues with endpoint services like netflix & premiereradio networks proved to be more difficult (because the lack of acknowledgement on the part of Comcast made it impossible for the responsible party to fix things!) Of course once the p2p throttling came out and comcast 'promised' to stop throttling those issues went away as well (curious that, though I still can't "prove" anything.)
I don't usually have issues with netflix now either (even though comcast is apparently doing 'network management' again), but Hulu--as my wife has observed a few times over the last few years without knowing 'why' she 'likes it now'--seems to work better than ever in terms of speed. Part of this of course is flash gaining video accelleration during the intervening time (so the UI feels 'better' to her and video can do HD with ease) but we don't get the rebuffering we used to either. So I explained to my wife the day Hulu was bought why we should still support netflix too, and I wondered what backdoor relation NBC & the other investors had with Comcast to magically get such good service (did they change to better edge hosting perhaps like netflix did with akamai back then or something simple on a technical level--a reasonable explanation?) Low & behold more time passes and now Comcast & NBC are merging...
Meanwhile my choices since 2002 have dwindled to Comcast & high speed or DSL with Qwest on an MSN backbone that still gives 768kbit as an entry level pricepoint, and 7MBit if I want to spend the same amount I'm spending for the 30mbit tier on comcast. In any case anecdotal evidence doesn't = data (oft repeated here) and I'm sure tl;dnr; in terms of a post length but I don't have high hopes for allowing companies to have 'managed services' and 'managed mergers' of monopolistic dimensions is going to benefit me much at all. I certainly fail to see how it's going to enable the next garage business to turn into a multimillion/billion dollar affair as the article seems to imply.
Every time I've seen the 'suits' attempt to create 'channels' in an attempt to market something on top of a layer of tech, the technology underneath it moves so quickly that any attempt at a static, controlled form of it winds up being obsolesced rather quickly. Remember having screensavers with feeds pre-rss as if we'd all been waiting for CNN to enter every idle second we had? And apps you could run at the top of your screen (which were early forms of spyware in some cases, logging basic user metrics before anyone care about such things.)
Actually my guess is that this is how they're going to finally 'open up' about the ACTA. They need justification to pollute the airwaves/media outlets with false claims that there is no hard data on 'how bad this problem is' since we can't yet track the statistics via beurocracy, so therefore we need mechanisms like 3-strikes so that we can begin to collect info on 'how bad things really are'.
Funny, I read the parent post as sarcasm.
This issue is related to automatic fan control not working due to improper registry keys, and so GPU's that run warm (9800 series for instance) can quickly overheat and potentially suffer damage. I'm having no issues with mine, but I set fan profiles manually as I'm using a machine that has a very hot MCH & fb-dimms (2008 Xeon) and don't want the gpu contributing more. However for anyone interested (and using a GT200 or at least G80/G92 on up) here's the fix: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=161767
I do seem to recall that Quest kept falling under scrutiny during the years around this issue, though I would have to do some research to recall exactly what was at issue (soimething with their CEO or Board President?)
I would say the album was an outgrowth of singles not only because it was more convenient for consumers & because pressing technology had matured to where you could reliably fit 45-60 minutes on a 12", but also because of the appeal it had for artists to tell a fuller 'story' for a while. 2-3 decades later it was used as a way to push as much music as possible in a format that was simple to mass produce and incredibly cheap (vinyl isn't as simple and certainly isn't as cheap to make/ship/stock.) As albums turned into more & more filler, people started turning to programmable CD changers and the like to have more ability to pick & choose just the material they wanted to hear, or in the order they want to hear etc.
Now that I can get get to that 30% that I want to hear without accepting the rest, and can carry around hundreds/thousands times more than I could with a CD book (and catalogue even vaster amounts at home) it doesn't follow that I'm only going to buy 30% of the music I used to. That's something these fat cat major labels have yet to figure out. I'm consuming more music than I ever have (and producing more as well!) but the money and attention is going to the people who can deliver what I'm looking for as quickly as possible, with reliable quality to me in a selection that suits my interests. Interestingly enough I DO still buy albums, though often in mp3/flac/mp4 format (and rarely of major label backed work), and I also buy more vinyl these days, both as a result of the my musical exploration in digital singles & online streaming music.
It seems to me that playlists for 'ripped' mp3's are a direct outgrowth of that (a maturing of the random access that CDs began to introduce to listeners), and our modern digital formats have been unencumbered from the 'filler' material used to justify propped up prices. Once you've been able to pick and choose (and for those not ethically opposed, sample things here & there before you buy) it's very hard to go 'back' to just accepting that you may only like a small percentage of the overall music you're buying when you considered purchases not by number of tracks but rather by the the packaging (CD/LP/EP/Tapes etc).
So this particular article (which was brief and had NO technical info about the format) reads as, is the studios said "hey in the early days of vinyl we went from singles to albums and made a bundle, we can't sell albums now but maybe if we turn the file format into an album the good days of old will return!" To the technoliterate it seems to be ignoring the fact that 1. you can easily package things into albums now using a cue file plus single compressed file with embedded artwork in the tagging is the easiest for a fully blended/mixed 'album', or of course just have a bunch of files in directories. But of course this is about PR, marketing and atttempts at restoring 'profit margins' (and if DRM laden, control.)
It seems like the encumbent tends to resist change, constantly trying to adapt existing marketing & formatting decisions by changing thigns as little as possible. The middlemen are disappearing, the amount of inexpensive gear available to your average 'home' artist & enthusiast mean that the bookings in studios are thinning out and fat cats aren't as necessary if you don't need to pay for 40 days of studio lockout time to be able to produce an 'album' anymore. So the whole era of largesse & slow return on investments is gone, fading with the fat cats now that you can put in a minor investment of time and yield incredibly fast delivery/turnaround on getting stuff into the market. Also it seems to me that live music is thriving more due to the variety of music in people's palette these days, although economically depressed there seems to be more activity now that promoting yourself & connecting to fans has the benefit of the online mediums.
Actually I agree, I think the Xbox360 is playing a huge role in this. And I do think Valve is trying to cut a path here that keeps the console & PC versions in parity in terms of new features, which are far easier to introduce on PC+Steam than the 360 when you take the console's DLC requirements into account (especially given MS's pricier harddrive policy). Orange box was Valve's first serious attempt at a 360 title, and it has some well known "issues" versus the PC release. Still a perfectly playable and enjoyable game, but compare it to what PC users get in terms of support & updates...
So Valve responds by giving PC players a 'lobby' when Left4Dead debuts and limiting the amount of DLC released for the PC L4d to what they can match on console. That limits not only availability for expanding the PC version, but also slows down the PC timeline to match the 360 "DLC approval" rate. In fact it seemed for a while as if Valve wasn't even sure if the last DLC for L4D was going to cost money, then somewhere that got 'cleared up'. (That was at least the impression given via the blogs & game/review sites from a layperson's position.)
So this time what I can see is Valve saying "it's going to take ages for MS to 'approve' the DLC (which doesn't even seem to prevent obvious bugs for some reason--see fallout3's repeated issues there) then why not just go whole hog and make some major tweaks we've been wanting to do all at once?"
What was interesting to me is that noone decrying this move from Valve has bothered to note that EVERY major dev for consoles announced almost nothing besides sequels which may or may not even bring 'major changes to the core gameplay' (a big complaint about what's been shown for Left4Dead2 so far.) Also very few people lamented this move from Valve and then took note of Square Enix announcing yet ANOTHER final fantasy when the current one is still only just coming out. Valve would have had to announce Left4Dead 3 immediately after the L4D 2 preview to equal that kind of 'bold' move.
Me? I'm find with buying Left4Dead 2 if it means the game gets more polish than it would have otherwise. And from what I can see it does, though I'm not sure I'll appreciate some of the changes: some of the melee weapons are a bit too 'dumbed down' seeming from the gameplay footage I've seen and the daylight is a big turnoff since half the mood for the previous one comes from the idea that you move in low-light conditions to avoid being seen. Still, with the increase in world detail that I've seen and the improved zombie animations, dismemberment of said zombies and so on I'm willing to bet that there would perhaps be a considerable number of Left4Dead 1 players who would have seen drastically reduced performance (meaning some mechanism for scaling back those features would perhaps be necessary.) I say this because I know a lot of 'poor' gamers that I play the game with whose systems seem to take ages to load a map, and many have shared that they were surprised to be able to play a modern title. There have been 2 or 3 graphics 'fixes' from Valve that addressed various gpu/driver bugs, and each fix unfortunately brought reduced framerates and the accompanying complaining from the userbase. Push out a 'free' DLC that forces people to upgrade their computer....?
Also there's still no news about Ep3...
Left4Dead is only $29 if you buy from somewhere like Amazon, and it has been on sale on Steam as well. Give it more time and you'll see it for less I'm sure. I got in excess of 100 hours out of the game, and while the last 20-30 hours has been a bit 'easier' due knowing everything about the game including the new game mode inside & out, I can't say that I'm upset about it.
I would like more content but am content with user-generated content & lobby support for 'discovering' that content and playing it with other people in a stable fashion (even with the beta sdk it's a bit of a hit & miss affair right now). But they have been working on the SDK & Lobby support so I would imagine we'll see that in the next month or so.
What the AC next to me is trying to say is that XP Mode does NOT offer improved device support. Virtualization abstracts hardware for the software that is running in the virtual machine, but the OS/hypervisor/etc below it still needs proper driver support for "device compatibility" (to talk to peripherals etc).
Dead space had high enough production values, a 'plot' (and even a cliffhanger of sorts) but I wouldn't say the story actually has any depth. It wasn't excessively long thankfully, and it's not repetitive in the sense that Far Cry 2 is. I did think the ending boss fight was quite nice, although not terribly difficult (Yahtzee's take on that boss was spot on). Overall it was interesting enough, but much like Mirror's Edge, it's not quite as innovative as it was made out to be. I think people were just shocked to see playable titles emerge from EA that weren't the zillionth sequel in the line of some series.
I haven't played MGS4, but if you can stomach the (much discussed) extended cutscenes and know the backstory from the other games, I suspect it's a much better choice. However given the choice between Far Cry 2 and Dead Space, I'd choose the latter.
Things that bug me:
open the console and type:
r_displayinfo = 1
then = 0 to turn it off again of course
Tweakguides has a short Crysis Warhead Tweak Guide though you'd need to refer to the main Crysis tweak guide for most of the info as there are only a few things that have changed. I use an autoexec.cfg to change several parameters that improve performance without having to turn down overall settings, and set a custom resolution to boot.
I used rockbox YEARS ago on one of the 2nd gen ipods and it was an improvement even then (at least for my usage which isn't itunes centric). I've been using a midrange flash recorder (that has dual mics & mp3 support) but wouldn't mind a dedicated player again. So what player would have: - High quality audio conversion (DAC) and op amp/headphone amp - Excellent Rockbox support (does rockbox do video now?) - Good processing performance (for games and ?video?) ?
You underestimate lawyers & politicians. The RIAA has been around for a lot longer than the history of net radio, and has their finger in suppressing competing business models since at least the era of the phonograph (see: RIAA preamp and how they colluded with certain label owners to control the recording & record pressing industries).
If anything they're MORE successful these days. Between the constant erosion of fair use (the MPAA has a hand in this too), the extension of copyright limits (with the MPAA again), the debtor's prison approach to instilling fear in their audience and their magical ability to be nominated as sole arbiter of all internet radio related profits I think they're quite capable of inserting themselves into the music business regardless of whether that is seen as 'doing anything good'.
And if you're curious how it could be easier in the "choice of being with a big label" then you're obviously not familiar with who has been behind the majority of the big labels for much of the music industry. The lawyers aren't the only side of the coercion and profiteering in the music industry...
You should try this on a high gamut monitor (samsung 275t here). Ouch!
Actually it's Windows\System32\drivers\etc (the file is hosts without any extension). On Vista UAC may block your access to the file by default as well, the easiest way to get around this (aside from disabling UAC altogether) is to run your editor with elevated privileges.