Bullcrap. While being able to muck around with all that crap is certainly useful, I don't think anybody would deny that, the *real* problem is that the vast majority of video applications don't have sensible defaults.
That is to say, if you put in a DVD and hit "rip", it'll either spit out a useless file (all-black video, no video only audio, no audio only video, video and audio out-of-sync) or, even worse, you can't even hit "rip" until you've already fiddled with 3 dozen options you don't give a flying shit about.
Look, all iPods are the fucking same. All Zunes are the fucking same. Just have ONE BUTTON that says "Rip to iPod". Period. The reason Handbrake is popular is because that's what it did back when it was a Mac program: you put in your DVD, you hit "Rip", and it worked every time, with every disk.
It's obviously possible, Handbrake *did it*! Years ago!
(Stupidly, Handbrake now almost never works, especially on Windows. They got their working program and made it into shit. Meaning there's now *no* simple way to just insert a disk, and hit a button that says "put this on my iPod.")
That's the reason most people in this thread are recommending Handbrake, because at least they *slightly* understand the KISS principle. Sadly, the newer versions of it are an order of magnitude more complex than the older ones-- I still keep Handbrake 0.8 on my media server Mac G5, just because it fucking works, the first try, every time.
The newer versions are a lot more complicated on all platforms, and the Windows version is just crummy over-all. It's actually tragic that the only DVD ripper that didn't suck is actually sucking more as time goes on-- I agree with you, what's up with this particular software ecosystem? It's not just poor usability, it's closer to user hostility.
Converting a.AVI file into a.MP4 file using, say, VLC is an exercise in trial-and-error frustration, and moronic UI bugs. (Also related to having a space in the filename-- WTF, developers? Do you even bother to even slightly QA your products at all?) Why does VLC bother to let me mix audio and video formats that won't work? Why does it write out an entire obviously-wrong file instead of telling me in the first 10 seconds, "hey this file has only audio and no video, it's probably wrong!"
Or put a slightly different way: if your GUI ripping application includes the word "mux" *anywhere* in the UI, you've failed.
Uh, he's asking about ripping the DVDs *TO PUT ON A MEDIA PLAYER*.
Last I checked, no media players play ISO formats. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and they added ISO support to iPods-- although it's a lot more likely you didn't read the question before popping off your smug, useless, CLI answer.
To be fair, the American Red Dwarf pilot had some pretty damned good jokes in it. For example, when Lister finds Kryten's head, still activated, on a shelf after 3 million years, and he asked, "What have you been doing all this time?" and Kryten replies, "I've been reading that 'exit' sign!"
Windows has tools to do that. We used one when I was testing Xbox 360 Live games for MS that ran on Windows 2000 over ICS, and could inject any amount of latency or packet-loss you wanted.
This is just some guy going with "what he knows" instead of bothering to look for another solution. To suggest it's some kind of deficiency with Windows is stupid.
Back In The Day (tm) Apple made OS 6.0.8-7.5 available for free on their FTP site after 8.6 came out. (Or around that time, I don't know exactly when.) Looks like System 7.5.3 is still available: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA48312?viewlocale=en_US Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_7.5_Version_7.5.3/System_7.5.3_01of19.smi.bin
Next thing you know, some doctor's going to cut off his girlfriend's head and keep it alive in a pan while he goes to strip clubs. Meanwhile, his assistant will get his arms pulled off by a telepathically controlled monster in the closet.
Once again science fiction flawlessly predicts science fact!
The thing is, I've been hearing "any day now" in these Slashdot posts for months and months. Meanwhile, Atom has grown to dominate the market. Believe me, I'd actually *like* to see alternatives to Intel machines out there in the wild, but the fact is that a lot of people on Slashdot are delusional on this issue.
Google News actually pays for AP and Reuters, like a print newspaper would.
Sadly, I kind of see the AP's point here: there are tons of sites that will copy entire AP articles and republish them, and I really have no problem with them going after those sites with legal means. (Legislative, on the other hand...)
We don't invade North Korea because they have enough rockets and artillery aimed at Seoul to level the city and kill all its residents in a couple hours. The same reason nobody else does anything about North Korea.
I had heard of an HP product based on Linux and Java getting canned because the HP marketing department said they'd lose money on the entire product line if the new Linux product shipped because Microsoft would cut off the payments for putting Windows on the systems.
Dude, an HP product using Java?!
Have you ever used any HP software? Or Java GUI software? Or, hell, most Linux GUI software?
It was probably canned because it was an unusable, bloated piece of shit. You don't need conspiracy theories to explain that one.
I find it hilarious that the *only* ARM netbook on the market, the device that's going to save netbooks from being ruled by Microsoft software and make Linux popular with the mainstream computer user, is running a Microsoft OS.
Which changes the question somewhat: let's assume ARM hardware *does* completely take off. What makes you think that it will take off with Linux and not Windows? (And don't give me that cost crap, cost was the reason that Linux was going to take-over Intel Atom netbooks-- obviously that argument is bunk.)
Wow, one *does* exist. And it's obviously taking the Intel Atom world by storm since it only took like 20 replies to my original post for someone to think/Google it up.
(Although it's nowhere close to the miracle hardware the anonymous coward presented in his little fantasy-world... 40 hours, 4 hours, what's the difference? And then your fantasy world kicks in and says the "disappointing" battery life can't possibly be the ARM's fault! Must... find... way... to... irrationally... blame... on... Microsoft... product...)
Fair enough, ARM netbooks do exist. Now let's see how long until I see one in the real world.
Every netbook article on Slashdot, somebody brings up the ARM chip. Fine. ARM.
Here's a challenge: link me to an ARM netbook I can buy right now. Not a "development platform" not some in-development idea, but an actual physical piece of hardware I can walk into Fry's right now and buy off the shelf. Sure you can find AMD netbooks, but ARM netbooks? Nah. Far and away, it's Atom.
This weird Slashdot hallucination that ARM matters in the netbook market gets sadder and sadder as Intel Atom CPUs dominate more and more. ARM netbooks only exist in Slashdot mythology, not in the real world. They're not going to take over the market, because *they don't exist*.
How does this differ from me just keeping my access point unencrypted and available to the public? Is the only difference that Foneras get dots put on a online map somewhere?
It also doesn't work on an iPhone. (The right-hand summary pane overlaps the post titles and hides the moderation score-- I don't know about everybody else, but the *only* reason I ever visit the user page is to see moderation scores.)
I reported a ton of bugs related to it, including the iPhone one, all ignored. As all my Slashdot bugs are.
Last time you heard, the site probably worked correctly on IE. Now it doesn't at all, unless you turn on the "old" commenting system. (And even then the User page is all screwy.)
There's not a lot of significance in reporting that a site that doesn't work in IE isn't used by IE.
It doesn't help that, when you do spend a long time polishing and proofreading your post and making it perfect, the Slashdot "editors" will move links around, randomly delete half of your sentences, and generally make your submission much worse than it would have been if they'd just copied it verbatim.
One of my submissions, the "editor" changed an accurate link to an inaccurate one-- the link was something like "in this report about a new study on corporate desktops" and they changed it to, "in this report about a new study on corporate desktop" implying that the link went directly to the study and not the summary article.
Yes, but those are *new* games. We've already seen Quake like 15 times. We don't need more Quake, but if you're going to make more Quake, you have to make it *damned* good to compete against all the other Quake out there. (Much if which is also free, in the sense that matters.)
How exactly do you innovate a competitive first person shooter?
Well, you could *play* some made in the last 10 years and figure it out based on example.
Give it some weird play mechanic which never ends up being fun at all?
You could be, say, Red Faction and give it a game play mechanic that's no fun at all. Or you could be, say, Battlefield 2142, Half-Life 2, Portal, Halo 2, etc and give it game play mechanics that are fun.
Give it realistic weapons and a reload button?
It doesn't have a reload button? Criminy.
That said, lots of games have gotten lots of mileage with the exact approach you recommend-- look at the Call of Duty series and how many titles they've sold based on realistic weapons.
But seriously, *all* games have a reload button now.
Come up with some uber-complicated gametype that nobody will play anyway because it's too complicated and doesn't play well?
Most games being played online today are popular because they have a game type more complicated than Deathmatch which does play well. Even Unreal Tournament, the spiritual successor to the Quake series, has more "complicated" game types than deathmatch game types. Battlefield 2142's* "Titan" mode is super-complicated, and pretty much the most fun you can have playing that particular title.
Hell, Starseige: Tribes had, by far and away, the most complicated gameplay for a game of its era, and it's also pretty much still the best FPS ever made by a long stretch. Even the Deathmatch modes in Tribes were awe-inspiringly good.
Add vehicles and turn it into a bad version of Battlefield 1942 instead of a bad version of Quake?
Has it occurred to you to turn it into a *good* version of something? If you're resigned to making a bad version, then yah do the least amount of effort possible. I guess I can't argue with that strategy.
Years later, I'm still waiting for something to out-Doom Doom 2 or out-quake Quake 3 Arena/Quake Live.
The Unreal Tournament series already out-Quaked Quake 3, years ago. Doom 2 has been out-Doomed by pretty much every single player title from Marathon to Aliens vs. Predators to Serious Sam...
* (Not to bring it up a lot because it's necessarily a great game, I just know a lot about it.)
Fortunately, the article summary contains the phrase "Details about the Nexuiz project are available at SourceForge," which is code for "it sucks, don't even bother."
BTW, why is the open source community so obsessed with Quake (generally, and deathmatch specifically) when the wider gaming community has almost universally moved on to more complicated games? Deathmatch simply isn't fun for the majority of the people on the server, I'd much rather play something like a Battlefield game where even if you suck, you're clearly contributing.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullcrap. While being able to muck around with all that crap is certainly useful, I don't think anybody would deny that, the *real* problem is that the vast majority of video applications don't have sensible defaults.
That is to say, if you put in a DVD and hit "rip", it'll either spit out a useless file (all-black video, no video only audio, no audio only video, video and audio out-of-sync) or, even worse, you can't even hit "rip" until you've already fiddled with 3 dozen options you don't give a flying shit about.
Look, all iPods are the fucking same. All Zunes are the fucking same. Just have ONE BUTTON that says "Rip to iPod". Period. The reason Handbrake is popular is because that's what it did back when it was a Mac program: you put in your DVD, you hit "Rip", and it worked every time, with every disk.
It's obviously possible, Handbrake *did it*! Years ago!
(Stupidly, Handbrake now almost never works, especially on Windows. They got their working program and made it into shit. Meaning there's now *no* simple way to just insert a disk, and hit a button that says "put this on my iPod.")
That's the reason most people in this thread are recommending Handbrake, because at least they *slightly* understand the KISS principle. Sadly, the newer versions of it are an order of magnitude more complex than the older ones-- I still keep Handbrake 0.8 on my media server Mac G5, just because it fucking works, the first try, every time.
The newer versions are a lot more complicated on all platforms, and the Windows version is just crummy over-all. It's actually tragic that the only DVD ripper that didn't suck is actually sucking more as time goes on-- I agree with you, what's up with this particular software ecosystem? It's not just poor usability, it's closer to user hostility.
Converting a .AVI file into a .MP4 file using, say, VLC is an exercise in trial-and-error frustration, and moronic UI bugs. (Also related to having a space in the filename-- WTF, developers? Do you even bother to even slightly QA your products at all?) Why does VLC bother to let me mix audio and video formats that won't work? Why does it write out an entire obviously-wrong file instead of telling me in the first 10 seconds, "hey this file has only audio and no video, it's probably wrong!"
Or put a slightly different way: if your GUI ripping application includes the word "mux" *anywhere* in the UI, you've failed.
Uh, he's asking about ripping the DVDs *TO PUT ON A MEDIA PLAYER*.
Last I checked, no media players play ISO formats. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and they added ISO support to iPods-- although it's a lot more likely you didn't read the question before popping off your smug, useless, CLI answer.
To be fair, the American Red Dwarf pilot had some pretty damned good jokes in it. For example, when Lister finds Kryten's head, still activated, on a shelf after 3 million years, and he asked, "What have you been doing all this time?" and Kryten replies, "I've been reading that 'exit' sign!"
Windows has tools to do that. We used one when I was testing Xbox 360 Live games for MS that ran on Windows 2000 over ICS, and could inject any amount of latency or packet-loss you wanted.
This is just some guy going with "what he knows" instead of bothering to look for another solution. To suggest it's some kind of deficiency with Windows is stupid.
So what? Why do I care, exactly?
Back In The Day (tm) Apple made OS 6.0.8-7.5 available for free on their FTP site after 8.6 came out. (Or around that time, I don't know exactly when.) Looks like System 7.5.3 is still available: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA48312?viewlocale=en_US Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_7.5_Version_7.5.3/System_7.5.3_01of19.smi.bin
Or "The Brain That Wouldn't Die"!!
Next thing you know, some doctor's going to cut off his girlfriend's head and keep it alive in a pan while he goes to strip clubs. Meanwhile, his assistant will get his arms pulled off by a telepathically controlled monster in the closet.
Once again science fiction flawlessly predicts science fact!
The thing is, I've been hearing "any day now" in these Slashdot posts for months and months. Meanwhile, Atom has grown to dominate the market. Believe me, I'd actually *like* to see alternatives to Intel machines out there in the wild, but the fact is that a lot of people on Slashdot are delusional on this issue.
Google News actually pays for AP and Reuters, like a print newspaper would.
Sadly, I kind of see the AP's point here: there are tons of sites that will copy entire AP articles and republish them, and I really have no problem with them going after those sites with legal means. (Legislative, on the other hand...)
We don't invade North Korea because they have enough rockets and artillery aimed at Seoul to level the city and kill all its residents in a couple hours. The same reason nobody else does anything about North Korea.
I had heard of an HP product based on Linux and Java getting canned because the HP marketing department said they'd lose money on the entire product line if the new Linux product shipped because Microsoft would cut off the payments for putting Windows on the systems.
Dude, an HP product using Java?!
Have you ever used any HP software? Or Java GUI software? Or, hell, most Linux GUI software?
It was probably canned because it was an unusable, bloated piece of shit. You don't need conspiracy theories to explain that one.
I find it hilarious that the *only* ARM netbook on the market, the device that's going to save netbooks from being ruled by Microsoft software and make Linux popular with the mainstream computer user, is running a Microsoft OS.
Which changes the question somewhat: let's assume ARM hardware *does* completely take off. What makes you think that it will take off with Linux and not Windows? (And don't give me that cost crap, cost was the reason that Linux was going to take-over Intel Atom netbooks-- obviously that argument is bunk.)
Wow, one *does* exist. And it's obviously taking the Intel Atom world by storm since it only took like 20 replies to my original post for someone to think/Google it up.
(Although it's nowhere close to the miracle hardware the anonymous coward presented in his little fantasy-world... 40 hours, 4 hours, what's the difference? And then your fantasy world kicks in and says the "disappointing" battery life can't possibly be the ARM's fault! Must... find... way... to... irrationally... blame... on... Microsoft... product...)
Fair enough, ARM netbooks do exist. Now let's see how long until I see one in the real world.
Ok, 40 hour battery life; where do I buy one?
All the impressive stats you can muster don't matter when the product doesn't exist.
Christ.
Every netbook article on Slashdot, somebody brings up the ARM chip. Fine. ARM.
Here's a challenge: link me to an ARM netbook I can buy right now. Not a "development platform" not some in-development idea, but an actual physical piece of hardware I can walk into Fry's right now and buy off the shelf. Sure you can find AMD netbooks, but ARM netbooks? Nah. Far and away, it's Atom.
This weird Slashdot hallucination that ARM matters in the netbook market gets sadder and sadder as Intel Atom CPUs dominate more and more. ARM netbooks only exist in Slashdot mythology, not in the real world. They're not going to take over the market, because *they don't exist*.
Since you have one, maybe you can explain...
How does this differ from me just keeping my access point unencrypted and available to the public? Is the only difference that Foneras get dots put on a online map somewhere?
It also doesn't work on an iPhone. (The right-hand summary pane overlaps the post titles and hides the moderation score-- I don't know about everybody else, but the *only* reason I ever visit the user page is to see moderation scores.)
I reported a ton of bugs related to it, including the iPhone one, all ignored. As all my Slashdot bugs are.
They turned it into a feature long before actual release, but it was originally unintentional. (i.e. not in the game's design documents.)
Last time you heard, the site probably worked correctly on IE. Now it doesn't at all, unless you turn on the "old" commenting system. (And even then the User page is all screwy.)
There's not a lot of significance in reporting that a site that doesn't work in IE isn't used by IE.
It doesn't help that, when you do spend a long time polishing and proofreading your post and making it perfect, the Slashdot "editors" will move links around, randomly delete half of your sentences, and generally make your submission much worse than it would have been if they'd just copied it verbatim.
One of my submissions, the "editor" changed an accurate link to an inaccurate one-- the link was something like "in this report about a new study on corporate desktops" and they changed it to, "in this report about a new study on corporate desktop" implying that the link went directly to the study and not the summary article.
Oh well.
Yes, but those are *new* games. We've already seen Quake like 15 times. We don't need more Quake, but if you're going to make more Quake, you have to make it *damned* good to compete against all the other Quake out there. (Much if which is also free, in the sense that matters.)
How exactly do you innovate a competitive first person shooter?
Well, you could *play* some made in the last 10 years and figure it out based on example.
Give it some weird play mechanic which never ends up being fun at all?
You could be, say, Red Faction and give it a game play mechanic that's no fun at all. Or you could be, say, Battlefield 2142, Half-Life 2, Portal, Halo 2, etc and give it game play mechanics that are fun.
Give it realistic weapons and a reload button?
It doesn't have a reload button? Criminy.
That said, lots of games have gotten lots of mileage with the exact approach you recommend-- look at the Call of Duty series and how many titles they've sold based on realistic weapons.
But seriously, *all* games have a reload button now.
Come up with some uber-complicated gametype that nobody will play anyway because it's too complicated and doesn't play well?
Most games being played online today are popular because they have a game type more complicated than Deathmatch which does play well. Even Unreal Tournament, the spiritual successor to the Quake series, has more "complicated" game types than deathmatch game types. Battlefield 2142's* "Titan" mode is super-complicated, and pretty much the most fun you can have playing that particular title.
Hell, Starseige: Tribes had, by far and away, the most complicated gameplay for a game of its era, and it's also pretty much still the best FPS ever made by a long stretch. Even the Deathmatch modes in Tribes were awe-inspiringly good.
Add vehicles and turn it into a bad version of Battlefield 1942 instead of a bad version of Quake?
Has it occurred to you to turn it into a *good* version of something? If you're resigned to making a bad version, then yah do the least amount of effort possible. I guess I can't argue with that strategy.
Years later, I'm still waiting for something to out-Doom Doom 2 or out-quake Quake 3 Arena/Quake Live.
The Unreal Tournament series already out-Quaked Quake 3, years ago. Doom 2 has been out-Doomed by pretty much every single player title from Marathon to Aliens vs. Predators to Serious Sam...
* (Not to bring it up a lot because it's necessarily a great game, I just know a lot about it.)
Fortunately, the article summary contains the phrase "Details about the Nexuiz project are available at SourceForge," which is code for "it sucks, don't even bother."
So, unlike the last open source Quake-clone game I wasted tons of time on, this one I don't even have to bother.
BTW, why is the open source community so obsessed with Quake (generally, and deathmatch specifically) when the wider gaming community has almost universally moved on to more complicated games? Deathmatch simply isn't fun for the majority of the people on the server, I'd much rather play something like a Battlefield game where even if you suck, you're clearly contributing.
That's ok, I can never tell the real time strategy games from all the fake ones out there, either.