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Invisible wrote:
> BTW, any ideas about *good* DVD authoring software? My drive came with
> some freebie that works, but it doesn't work fantastically well...
When I looked around for DVD authoring software for turning camcorder
stuff into DVDs, I found ULead to be the only version that actually
didn't compress everything so poorly it was unwatchable. ULead "fair"
quality was better than anyone else's "best" quality. I suspect ULead is
the only one that actually implemented b-frames at the time.
If that's what you're doing, I'd suggest getting a clip with lots of
motion and another with lots of flat area, then trying out all the free
trial versions of stuff to see what the quality is like. I used a video
of sun sparkling off an open tank of water, and then looking into the
tank of water to see the turtles and such swimming. Gave a good pair of
images, with lots of random motion and lots of subtle contrast
differences, both of which are hard for mpeg to compress.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> Wouldn't scrolling the file take more than the linetime of the universe?
Errr, no? If you turn off the syntax highlighting, it takes about 90
seconds to load and maybe 2 minutes to save. Much less time then trying
to get the head/tail arguments correct, even assuming they support the
kind of trimming you're trying to do. (I forget which, but there's one
combination out of the obvious four that isn't supported.)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:31:13 -0400, SharkD wrote:
> On the subject of licensed software and the tight grip the license
> holders have on them, I wish ATRAC were an open standard and prevalent
> instead of MP3. It's a much better algortihm, but Sony wants to keep it
> all to itself.
MP3 isn't actually an open standard either. It's a de facto standard,
but Frauenhoffer (sp?) expect software developers writing encoders (and
possibly decoders, don't recall the specifics offhand) to pay license
fees.
Jim
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:52:22 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> 2. Last time I checked, 1 GB is about £180. That's not my idea of
> "cheap".
Depends on the memory technology used. I upgraded a machine here from 1
GB to 2 GB for about US$55 - about 25 GBP IIRC.
Jim
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:03:29 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> Other than audio and video data (which is inherantly large), I can't
> think of anything you can do with a computer that actually uses much
> memory. Playing games involves audio and video data, but I'm
> hard-pressed to think of anything else...
Virtualization of multiple OSes. Lots of people use VMware for testbeds
and such, that takes a good amount of memory.
Jim
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
> MP3 isn't actually an open standard either. It's a de facto standard,
> but Frauenhoffer (sp?) expect software developers writing encoders (and
> possibly decoders, don't recall the specifics offhand) to pay license
> fees.
That's the reason why many small software houses prefer using the ogg
format, as it's completely free.
--
- Warp
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In article <48737522$1@news.povray.org>, voi### [at] devnull says...
> >> Other than audio and video data (which is inherantly large), I can't t
hink
> >> of anything you can do with a computer that actually uses much memory.
> >
> > At least, having a lot of memory lets you open many RAM-hungry apps at
the
> > same time. I can have FinalRender gobbling memory to render a huge scen
e and
> > still be able to edit images with Photoshop while having Firefox opened
with
> > lots of tabs etc. Also, there are many professional applications where
more
> > RAM = bigger whatever is the goal of the application. I'm working wit
h
> > linear programming for instance, and more RAM = larger models.
>
> OK, but all of what you've described is pretty unusual for home use.
>
> Sure, I run flam3, which eats RAM like candy. But that's because I'm a
> nerd. Normal humans don't do things like that.
>
> At any rate, none of this explains why *Vista*, by itself, requires
> multiple gigabytes of RAM. (And therefore, presumably, if you want to
> run *real applications* that require gigs of RAM, you have to add even
> more RAM to your system to accomodate them!)
>
Well. How about something slightly normal, like having Firefox open with
tabs for information sites, while also running the game engine, and
running a program that tracks you combat kills, to tell you how much
damage you are doing, while storing that data for later use in a MySQL
file. Or are 99.9% of the people playing EQ2 "not normal" by your
standard?
And that doesn't even go into people running something like Second Life,
where the only people not trying to design things (i.e. having graphics
editors, Photo Shop, etc., open are either a) using free acounts and
can't afford the software, or b) bots designed to up the traffic stats
on sims.
I could go one, but the point is, if you play games, your probably going
to need that 1GB to "run the game", and the second to do anything else
at the same time. If you play games for something that *supports* over
1GB per application, how long do you "really" think its going to be
before you need it to run at all? Since, you know, that drives hardware
requirements "way" more than MS making bloatware.
You might be surprised what "normal" people need on their system. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:22:38 -0400, Warp wrote:
>> MP3 isn't actually an open standard either. It's a de facto standard,
>> but Frauenhoffer (sp?) expect software developers writing encoders (and
>> possibly decoders, don't recall the specifics offhand) to pay license
>> fees.
>
> That's the reason why many small software houses prefer using the ogg
> format, as it's completely free.
Yep.
Jim
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> I could go one, but the point is, if you play games, your probably going
> to need that 1GB to "run the game", and the second to do anything else
> at the same time.
Sure. If you're running an intensive game, you're going to need the
hardware to handle it. (Not sure why you'd be running something else at
the same time as a game, but hey...)
Still doesn't explain why Vista should waste 2 GB of your RAM rather
than let your intensive game use it for itself...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Other than audio and video data (which is inherantly large), I can't
>> think of anything you can do with a computer that actually uses much
>> memory. Playing games involves audio and video data, but I'm
>> hard-pressed to think of anything else...
>
> Virtualization of multiple OSes. Lots of people use VMware for testbeds
> and such, that takes a good amount of memory.
Surely you'd only *attempt* such a thing on an extremely high-end server
though? (Recall that Vista is a desktop OS.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:45:25 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Other than audio and video data (which is inherantly large), I can't
>>> think of anything you can do with a computer that actually uses much
>>> memory. Playing games involves audio and video data, but I'm
>>> hard-pressed to think of anything else...
>>
>> Virtualization of multiple OSes. Lots of people use VMware for
>> testbeds and such, that takes a good amount of memory.
>
> Surely you'd only *attempt* such a thing on an extremely high-end server
> though? (Recall that Vista is a desktop OS.)
Nope. IT classrooms typically buy the cheapest hardware they can
possibly purchase - usually desktop machines - and then run a virtual
server envrionment.
For lab work, high-end hardware is typically also not used unless
hardware duplication needs to be done for testing. Many of the machines
I've used in labs have been discarded desktops for users who upgraded to
better machines. Old Compaq Deskpro machines and the like.
I have a Compaq EVO 600 sitting here on my desk at home that's running
VMware Server, and on my Linux laptops, I have VMware Workstation
installed so I can have access to Windows for the one or two odd
occasions where I absolutely must have it (and I hate having to use it at
all). Without the 2 GB of RAM in my laptop, I wouldn't be able to do
that.
Jim
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:44:21 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Sure. If you're running an intensive game, you're going to need the
> hardware to handle it. (Not sure why you'd be running something else at
> the same time as a game, but hey...)
Lots of people run antivirus, firewall, etc - while playing games.
I know many people who will have docs open for whatever reason while
playing games (taking notes, etc).
It's not uncommon.
Jim
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Not sure why you'd be running something else at the same time as a game
You never played Second Life, have you? ;-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives you
> more than 1 level of undo?
The GIMP. It's in your price range, too :)
> I own a camcorder. It bearly produces SD quality, never mind HD! And it
> was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. (So I'm told anyway. It
> was a gift, so I didn't actually pay for it.) The idea that you could
> buy something capable of taking half-decent video for less than £800
> seems really far-fetched to me.
Sounds like an old cam-corder. Put it this way: 4 years ago, when I
worked at Best Buy (not the cheapest shop, mind you), you could buy an
SD camcorder for <$200 (that's about GBP130). You could buy a really
nice HD one for $800 (GBP500 or so).
>> A quick Google revealed that in 2006 8% of homes had an HD-capable TV.
>
> That's a really tiny percentage.
That's about what Macs have, and they're not exactly rare.
> And let's not forget, you still need an HD source. Those are still
> prohibitively expensive too. (Last I heard, a BluRay player is abour
> £800 or so. Only rich geeks need apply...)
You can get a PS3 for $399 now (GBP 250), or a stand-alone player for
$200 (GBP 130).
> This suggests to me that you only need large stacks of RAM if you're
> doing professional video editing work. I mean seriously, I don't even
> *know* anybody else rich enough to afford a video camera, much less
> technically expert enough to attempt to *edit* video beyond what you can
> do with a DVD recorder...
You need to get new friends, the ones you have are affecting your
viewpoint :)
...Chambers
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Invisible wrote:
> Really? That's a rather sudden price drop, don't you think? I mean, the
> format is still brand-spanking-new. Are there even any BluRay titles to
> play yet?
The format was brand new 3 or 4 years ago. You realize that the
Japanese have had HDTV as standard for over a decade, and are currently
discussing the successor to it (3800 horizontal resolution, or something).
...Chambers
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> I remember when Myst first came out on a CD. Wow, over 600 meg on one
> read-only disk. "Well," I thought, "there goes the end of game pirating.
> You'd never be able to copy such a thing onto a hard drive."
Yep I remember that time too, when previous games I had came on up to 10
floppies. Then this CD drive came out and could store 600 meg - the first
few data CDs I got (the entire archive of a certain magazine's cover discs,
and a couple of games) only used about a quarter of the CD. Now we have
games that come on multiple DVDs, surely the step to blu-ray can't be that
far off now.
> And yeah, it's nice to have a 10G text file, wonder how you're going to
> trim lines off the top and bottom conveniently, and then realize you are
> on a 64-bit machine with 16G of RAM, so you just fire up VI.
For me it's just nice that my PC can be chugging away processing a 5GB
simulation, and yet I can carry on working as normal (Outlook, powerpoint,
excel etc) as if it's doing nothing else.
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And lo on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:23:47 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did
spake, saying:
>> OS+applications requires 1 Gb of RAM
>> new OS+same applications requires 2 GB of RAM
>>
>> It's not the point that RAM is cheap the question is why do you need to
>> double your RAM size in order to get similar results as with your
>> previous OS?
>
> Because Vista was designed for new computers? I guess MS saw it as a
> waste of money optimising it for older machines.
A more precise answer would be - because it's doing more then the old OS,
but it's all under the surface where you can't see it.
At which point the question becomes - What stuff and does it make things
better?
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>> Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives you
>> more than 1 level of undo?
>
> The GIMP. It's in your price range, too :)
Uhuh. And who (apart from me) uses that?
>> I own a camcorder. It bearly produces SD quality, never mind HD! And
>> it was not cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
>
> Sounds like an old cam-corder.
It's only about 1 year old.
> Put it this way: 4 years ago, when I
> worked at Best Buy (not the cheapest shop, mind you), you could buy an
> SD camcorder for <$200 (that's about GBP130). You could buy a really
> nice HD one for $800 (GBP500 or so).
Doesn't necessarily mean that you can buy it in the UK for that price.
(E.g., a copy of Acrobat Standard costs $400 in the US, and £400 in the
UK. I'm also told - I don't know if it's true - that CDs are roughly 10x
cheaper in America than here.)
>>> A quick Google revealed that in 2006 8% of homes had an HD-capable TV.
>>
>> That's a really tiny percentage.
>
> That's about what Macs have, and they're not exactly rare.
Rare enough that in my entire life, I've never seen a real Mac. Except
on TV.
>> And let's not forget, you still need an HD source. Those are still
>> prohibitively expensive too. (Last I heard, a BluRay player is abour
>> £800 or so. Only rich geeks need apply...)
>
> You can get a PS3 for $399 now (GBP 250), or a stand-alone player for
> $200 (GBP 130).
Well, I guess that's not *so* steep compared to a £9.99 DVD player...
>> This suggests to me that you only need large stacks of RAM if you're
>> doing professional video editing work. I mean seriously, I don't even
>> *know* anybody else rich enough to afford a video camera, much less
>> technically expert enough to attempt to *edit* video beyond what you
>> can do with a DVD recorder...
>
> You need to get new friends, the ones you have are affecting your
> viewpoint :)
"New" friends? What makes you think I have any to start with?
I said I didn't *know* anybody - nothing about being friends with them. :-P
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Wouldn't scrolling the file take more than the linetime of the universe?
>
> Errr, no? If you turn off the syntax highlighting, it takes about 90
> seconds to load and maybe 2 minutes to save.
90 seconds?
If you just wanted to remove the first and last line, wouldn't it take
less than 90 seconds to script it? Even in the most retarded scripting
language imaginable?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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scott wrote:
> Yep I remember that time too, when previous games I had came on up to 10
> floppies. Then this CD drive came out and could store 600 meg - the
> first few data CDs I got (the entire archive of a certain magazine's
> cover discs, and a couple of games) only used about a quarter of the
> CD. Now we have games that come on multiple DVDs, surely the step to
> blu-ray can't be that far off now.
Rise of the Robots: 12 floppies, delicious graphics, LAME gameplay.
Native Instruments Komplete V: 12 DVDs.
I think the step to BluRay has gotta be pretty far away though. You want
a drive that reads and burns CD, DVD-SL, DVD-DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R,
DVD+RW, DVD-RAM and so on? That'll be £20 please. You want something
that can touch BluRay? That'll be £400 please.
Looking along the shelves and seeing that it quite a wakeup call. It's a
bit like that time I was in a jewlery shop, looking at earings at about
£15 each. And then I saw a necklace and thought "hey, that's nice... I
wonder ho- £7,000?!! Oh, wait. It's pure diamond..."
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Not sure why you'd be running something else at the same time as a game
>
> You never played Second Life, have you? ;-)
Played? I've never *heard* of it. Why?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Surely you'd only *attempt* such a thing on an extremely high-end server
>> though? (Recall that Vista is a desktop OS.)
>
> Nope. IT classrooms typically buy the cheapest hardware they can
> possibly purchase - usually desktop machines - and then run a virtual
> server envrionment.
Well... might I suggest that trying to run multiple OSes simultaneously
on hardware that isn't capable of running *one* OS is... a bad idea?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> 90 seconds?
>
> If you just wanted to remove the first and last line, wouldn't it take
> less than 90 seconds to script it? Even in the most retarded scripting
> language imaginable?
Maybe, but then surely the script is going to take *another* 90 seconds + 2
minutes to load and save the file anyway.
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> You want a drive that reads and burns CD, DVD-SL, DVD-DL, DVD-R, DVD-RW,
> DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM and so on? That'll be £20 please. You want
> something that can touch BluRay? That'll be £400 please.
You mean like this one?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145553
Oh you want to burn blu-ray discs too?
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139994
I don't know about you, but my first CD burner was more expensive than that,
and at that point distributing games on CD was common.
Anyway, just wait a year and those drives will be half that price, then it
only needs some "killer" game to be released on blu-ray and people will
charge out to buy them.
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>> You want a drive that reads and burns CD, DVD-SL, DVD-DL, DVD-R,
>> DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM and so on? That'll be £20 please. You
>> want something that can touch BluRay? That'll be £400 please.
>
> You mean like this one?
>
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145553
>
> Oh you want to burn blu-ray discs too?
>
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139994
Hmm. Is this like the fact that Curries want to charge you £80 for an
HDMI lead? (Surely it cannot possibly cost anything approaching that
much from the suppliers.)
> I don't know about you, but my first CD burner was more expensive than
> that, and at that point distributing games on CD was common.
Yeah, but CD-ROM drives were reasonably cheap by the time it become common.
> Anyway, just wait a year and those drives will be half that price.
Yeah. That sounds more like it.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives
>>> you more than 1 level of undo?
>>
>> The GIMP. It's in your price range, too :)
>
> Uhuh. And who (apart from me) uses that?
>
I did, until I could afford Photoshop. The Gimp is a very capable image
manipulation package, although it is missing a few key features. Notably
the inability to edit an image in Lab mode, and 16 bit per channel
editing (Both of which are very nice for restoring old images)
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > The GIMP. It's in your price range, too :)
> Uhuh. And who (apart from me) uses that?
Almost everybody who can't afford (or don't want to) Photoshop and are
too honest to pirate it.
--
- Warp
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives
>>> you more than 1 level of undo?
>>
>> The GIMP. It's in your price range, too :)
>
> Uhuh. And who (apart from me) uses that?
<raises hand>
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On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:14:02 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> Surely you'd only *attempt* such a thing on an extremely high-end
>>> server though? (Recall that Vista is a desktop OS.)
>>
>> Nope. IT classrooms typically buy the cheapest hardware they can
>> possibly purchase - usually desktop machines - and then run a virtual
>> server envrionment.
>
> Well... might I suggest that trying to run multiple OSes simultaneously
> on hardware that isn't capable of running *one* OS is... a bad idea?
That's the reason for the additional memory = makes the hardware capable
of running one or more OSes. ;-)
For the training that we develop here, we're specing at least 2 GB of RAM
and suggesting more, I believe. We're also leaning towards a strong
recommendation for VT-enabled processors because we use VMware and XEN
virtualization solutions for the classroom.
Thing is, you can only fit so many machines in a classroom, and if you
get to > 1 PC per student, the training centers don't hold the class
(because they can't enroll enough students to make any money). Single-
box solutions are *highly* desirable, but when you have to have a server
or two and a client to effectively teach networking concepts,
virtualization is the best route to go.
The centers aren't going to spend $20K on individual machines for a
classroom. That's not cost effective.
Jim
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On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:07:27 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> Maybe I've missed something, but what image editing software gives you
>>> more than 1 level of undo?
>>
>> The GIMP. It's in your price range, too
>
> Uhuh. And who (apart from me) uses that?
Um, lots of people. I mean, it's only at version 2.4 and only been
around since 1996. And there's user groups *just* for GIMP users. I
don't think there's user groups of 1 user.
Jim
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On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:28:06 -0500, Mike Raiford wrote:
> inability to edit an image in Lab mode
I think this has been addressed in recent builds. I know you can break
an image down into LAB and recombine it, and after breaking it down the
file is still editable.
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
> If you just wanted to remove the first and last line, wouldn't it take
> less than 90 seconds to script it? Even in the most retarded scripting
> language imaginable?
Probably not, since most of the time is spent waiting for the disk.
And yes, it would also require me knowing how many lines I wanted to
trim, etc. And, as I said, there's some combination of keep/toss
leading/trailing lines that for some reason you can't do with head and
tail under Linux. One of those two is just missing one of the "line
count" arguments, or something.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> You want something that can touch BluRay? That'll be £400 please.
Retail audio CD players were $1200 when they first came out in the USA.
A couple months later, they were something like $800. Give BlueRay about
a year or two, and it'll be down to $50 for a drive.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Not sure why you'd be running something else at the same time as a game
>>
>> You never played Second Life, have you? ;-)
>
> Played? I've never *heard* of it. Why?
Because it's a terribly boring way to play a game, so on the rare
occasions when I played it, I usually had other windows open doing other
things too. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Darren New wrote:
> Retail audio CD players were $1200 when they first came out in the USA.
> A couple months later, they were something like $800. Give BlueRay about
> a year or two, and it'll be down to $50 for a drive.
Yeah - and maybe *then* it will become common-place. Right now, it's
only for rich people who like to have the latest flashy toys.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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In article <4874ee34$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Invisible wrote:
> >>> Not sure why you'd be running something else at the same time as a ga
me
> >>
> >> You never played Second Life, have you? ;-)
> >
> > Played? I've never *heard* of it. Why?
>
> Because it's a terribly boring way to play a game, so on the rare
> occasions when I played it, I usually had other windows open doing other
> things too. :-)
>
I have a post I made yesterday on the exchange forum stating why I think
that is the case. There is no "cohesive" concept for the world, unless
some people get together to buy up sims and link them, and no way to
"find" places to visit unless its listed on a note card, your are
looking to buy something, or its on a mainland, where its "possible" to
wander past it. (Well, unless you do what I did one day when teleporting
was bugged and just started making short hops between disconnected sims
(for some reason long jumps wouldn't work, but short ones would).
In any case, there are exceptions. One exception is people that build
beautiful areas, but provide no factions/groups, RP concepts, or things
to really "do" there, then wonder why, after the first few days of
people showing up to look at the pretty glowing whatevers, its dead
empty. some of those places look like they belong in an MMO or even Myst
Uru (well, almost, in the later case). The second case is ones like CoLA
(City of Lost Angels). Its got:
When I started RPing there: West Gate, CoLA, Aracadia
Has added: North Gate, Cape CoLA (Cape has nothing in it at them moment,
but it doesn't take long to build North Gate, though that is still not
100% finished.)
Will be adding: at least 2 areas dedicated to the local vampires, and
maybe 1-2 others that are around.
Has teleports for - New Gammorah, Opal City, and... probably others.
Its successful because... ***Its gone one single theme!***
Same goes for the furry areas, though those tend to be more of a social
club type thing. There are SG-1/Atlantis areas, including one *huge*
group of 8-9 sims that are at the main center of that group of people,
not including the thousands of gates scattered around the world, with at
least four different networks, which can all interconnect (means you can
have an OpenGate, Pegasus, Alteran and Milkyway gate all on the same
property, if you don't want to have to keep telling the one you have
which network to link to when dialing).
Basically, the people that are **geniuses** at making pretty content,
but couldn't give a reason for people to "stay" there, are dying out.
The shopping malls are succeeding for the same reason all such places
do, and in no small part because, despite the disparity in product
quality, its easier to "find" bad designs at a mall than find the gems
in some out of the way place, which *only* has one or two items. But,
even those are hurting, and partly due to their own stupidity of trying
to make themselves look good using bots to boost "visitor numbers".
But, the key point that Orchid XP and Invisible need to recognize is
that, unlike regular game worlds, this one allows you to "create" things
for it. Which means you need tools made by the other players, who sell
licenses via SL to run them, paint/photo software to do certain kinds of
textures, Blender or Wings3D, etc. to generate certain kinds of things,
including UV maps and displacement maps (which they call sculpties),
maybe a BVH editor to do animation of the character for special poses,
walks, etc., and.. hmm, a sound editor for making those, and who knows
what else in the future. If you had a fast enough connection, a fast
enough machine, and no other hardware to do it, you might even run a
server to track data sent via the script from your items to your DB, to
support RP combat, or who knows what else. Heck, one of the most popular
things in SL right not is 7Sea Fishing, where you buy a pro fishing
pole, some bate, then try to catch every new thing they add to "that"
database. They managed to hook me, and I hate spending money I don't
have to. lol I just wish I had thought of the idea first.
I mean, seriously, unless you have a basic free account, everything you
own is "on" your character, you have no items you make yourself, and all
your time is spent just "playing" the game, at some point you are
probably going to install "something" else on the machine that helps you
design/code script/animate, and so on.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Oh, and just in case you think SL is going to die... You may be 100%
right, but they are also working with IBM to design the Open Grid
Protocol, which means that, at some point, other people will be able to
make grids like SL, with their own content, even specifically catering
to a very precise type of traffic, and interlink them with ever other
grid on the net, including SL. And, if they manage to put effective
"protections" in place for IP... You could take what ever you
made/bought in one to any other as well.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-
announcement/
Going to love to see what sort of Stargate network that is going to
require, since I know damn well Alpha Fox, or one of the others running
such networks in SL will be right there figuring out how to make on
work. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Oh, and just in case you think SL is going to die... You may be 100%
> right, but they are also working with IBM to design the Open Grid
> Protocol, which means that, at some point, other people will be able to
> make grids like SL, with their own content, even specifically catering
> to a very precise type of traffic, and interlink them with ever other
> grid on the net, including SL. And, if they manage to put effective
> "protections" in place for IP... You could take what ever you
> made/bought in one to any other as well.
Funny thing is, I invented something like this about 15 years ago. It
was great fun working out how to handle things like a player's "home"
server crashing when the player was wandering around on some other
server and had bought stuff.
I was a bit visionary for the time, so it never got past the
architectural design level. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> I think this has been addressed in recent builds. I know you can break
> an image down into LAB and recombine it, and after breaking it down the
> file is still editable.
>
> Jim
Yes, but just try to interpret what curves are doing to the grayscale a
and b channels .... :)
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:51:50 -0500, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> I think this has been addressed in recent builds. I know you can break
>> an image down into LAB and recombine it, and after breaking it down the
>> file is still editable.
>>
>> Jim
>
> Yes, but just try to interpret what curves are doing to the grayscale a
> and b channels .... :)
I'm still not completely clear on how LAB editing helps, though...
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> I'm still not completely clear on how LAB editing helps, though...
>
> Jim
You can sharpen on the L channel only, and use the a and b channels to
balance shift and saturate colors. There are a few more tricks Lab mode
can get you, but those are the highlights.
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On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:52:33 -0500, Mike Raiford wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> I'm still not completely clear on how LAB editing helps, though...
>>
>> Jim
>
> You can sharpen on the L channel only, and use the a and b channels to
> balance shift and saturate colors. There are a few more tricks Lab mode
> can get you, but those are the highlights.
Cool, thanks for that - that helps a lot, actually.
Time to go find a good tutorial. :-)
Jim
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And lo on Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:03:55 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull>
did spake, saying:
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> Retail audio CD players were $1200 when they first came out in the USA.
>> A couple months later, they were something like $800. Give BlueRay
>> about a year or two, and it'll be down to $50 for a drive.
>
> Yeah - and maybe *then* it will become common-place. Right now, it's
> only for rich people who like to have the latest flashy toys.
"Oy" said the owner of a Playstation 3.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>>> Retail audio CD players were $1200 when they first came out in the
>>> USA. A couple months later, they were something like $800. Give
>>> BlueRay about a year or two, and it'll be down to $50 for a drive.
>>
>> Yeah - and maybe *then* it will become common-place. Right now, it's
>> only for rich people who like to have the latest flashy toys.
>
> "Oy" said the owner of a Playstation 3.
Oh yes. Clearly a PS3 is not, in any sense, a "flashy toy". ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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And lo on Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:44:06 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
spake, saying:
>>>> Retail audio CD players were $1200 when they first came out in the
>>>> USA. A couple months later, they were something like $800. Give
>>>> BlueRay about a year or two, and it'll be down to $50 for a drive.
>>>
>>> Yeah - and maybe *then* it will become common-place. Right now, it's
>>> only for rich people who like to have the latest flashy toys.
>> "Oy" said the owner of a Playstation 3.
>
> Oh yes. Clearly a PS3 is not, in any sense, a "flashy toy". ;-)
Chides the owner of Komplete 5 currently retailing at €999 ;-)
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>>> "Oy" said the owner of a Playstation 3.
>>
>> Oh yes. Clearly a PS3 is not, in any sense, a "flashy toy". ;-)
>
> Chides the owner of Komplete 5 currently retailing at €999 ;-)
Meh. That's "art", darling.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Warp wrote:
> That's the reason why many small software houses prefer using the ogg
> format, as it's completely free.
Somebody told me that ogg technically sucks.
The Vorbis audio codec, however, is quite good.
[yes that's a nitpick on ogg vs vorbis :)]
His recommendation was to live with ogg/vorbis for audio, but if I wanted
video, use something like Matroska for the container, not ogg.
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Somebody told me that ogg technically sucks.
>
> The Vorbis audio codec, however, is quite good.
Any idea what specifically "sucks" about Ogg?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Somebody told me that ogg technically sucks.
>>
>> The Vorbis audio codec, however, is quite good.
>
> Any idea what specifically "sucks" about Ogg?
>
No idea. The one who told me was a ffmpeg developer so it's probably
technicalities that I'd understand only if I had experience with media
container file formats :)
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>> Any idea what specifically "sucks" about Ogg?
>
> No idea. The one who told me was a ffmpeg developer so it's probably
> technicalities that I'd understand only if I had experience with media
> container file formats :)
Ah, OK.
I did read the spec for Ogg once. I don't remember it now, but it seems
a simple enough format without much overhead.
In particular, you're supposed to be able to take any valid Ogg file,
slice it in half at some arbitrary point, and the two halves are ment to
still be playable by any compliant player, even though you just sliced
right through the middle of some data structure.
While we're on the subject, Vorbis is ment to support "bit peeling",
where you can take a Vorbis stream and "easily" strip off parts of it to
yield a valid lower-bitrate version without having to actually transcode
anything. Sort of like progressive JPEG - the data is arranged in such a
way that it's easy to quickly discard low priority data to lower the
bitrate.
How well any of this works in practice? I have no idea! ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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