The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
computer industry slapfights are awesome. Reading the ArsTechnica piece basically felt like revisiting my thoughts while reading Jobs' musings on Flash.
I also truly enjoyed Jobs' paternalistic smugness over Adobe in the beginning of the article, a-la "I remember them when they were wee young in their diapers".
Jobs is a smug *******, and it is not surprising that he surves as a guru for his herd of pretentious artsy ******. It is cool, though, some of my best friends are pretentious artsy ******.
Steve Jobs continues to douche it up. Apple is the reason there's no standard video codec for HTML 5 (Mozilla was pushing to get the royalty-free, open-sourced Ogg Theora codec the baseline standard all browsers must support), and now he's taken it a step farther.
His point here is either a veiled threat (Apple may be going after Theora), or blatant fearmongering ("someone may go after it"). Either way, douche move.
What ****ing pisses me off most is all known patents pertaining to Theora are public domain. All known patents pertaining to h264 are assigned to a group of companies to collect royalties.
There's a possibility BOTH codecs violate OTHER patents ("submarine patents"), because software patents are ridiculously implemented right now.
The only difference, legally, is h264 is only royalty-free through 2016. Ogg is forever free.
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
Steve Jobs continues to douche it up. Apple is the reason there's no standard video codec for HTML 5 (Mozilla was pushing to get the royalty-free, open-sourced Ogg Theora codec the baseline standard all browsers must support), and now he's taken it a step farther.
Theora has no hardware support, so you can hardly blame Apple for not wanting it as a standard. In addition Theora's compression is less than 264, a major concern for mobile devices.
The only real advantage Theora has is being genuinely free and open-sourced. That is an important advantage, but it does not trump everything else. H.264 is better in every other way and the licensing in no more expensive than, say, Flash.
There's a possibility BOTH codecs violate OTHER patents ("submarine patents"), because software patents are ridiculously implemented right now.
Agreed. Software patents are currently ridiculous. There is no way to tell whether something is patented or not until a judge randomly assigns ownership to one group or another.
Personally I don't think there is any way to improve the situation. Patents should be abolished.
Theora has no hardware support, so you can hardly blame Apple for not wanting it as a standard. In addition Theora's compression is less than 264, a major concern for mobile devices.
Theora can very easily be added to HW, in a matter of months, if it becomes adopted.
The only real advantage Theora has is being genuinely free and open-sourced. That is an important advantage, but it does not trump everything else. H.264 is better in every other way and the licensing in no more expensive than, say, Flash.
Flash is not a codec so I don't know why you're even talking about it. FLV is, but no one cares.
The problem is simple: h.264 is temporarily free. Once it's ubiquitous (and it's almost there now), MPEG-LA will start demanding royalties like they have with every other codec they've ever owned. That means Apple + Microsoft make lots of money from it, and they actually GAIN from having it being widely used. No surprise Apple + Microsoft are in the h264-only camp, while everyone else is supporting Theora.
Because a proprietary codec cannot be mandatory in an open standard, there WILL BE no standard codec for HTML5 video. This is a nightmare -- I know this first hand because I am currently implementing a video site. We need to maintain TWO codecs -- Ogg Theora and H264 because of Apple's bull****, so we can hit every browser. This is NOT good.
The free & open is key. I don't care if you do support h264 in a browser (it is technically superior, more power to you), but REFUSING to support a free, open source codec is both evil and retarded. Because of Apple, there's no minimum baseline, guaranteed video codec for all visitors.
There's no excuse for this.
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
Theora can very easily be added to HW, in a matter of months, if it becomes adopted.
Because a proprietary codec cannot be mandatory in an open standard, there WILL BE no standard codec for HTML5 video. This is a nightmare -- I know this first hand because I am currently implementing a video site. We need to maintain TWO codecs -- Ogg Theora and H264 because of Apple's bull****, so we can hit every browser. This is NOT good.
The free & open is key. I don't care if you do support h264 in a browser (it is technically superior, more power to you), but REFUSING to support a free, open source codec is both evil and retarded. Because of Apple, there's no minimum baseline, guaranteed video codec for all visitors.
There's no excuse for this.
I will concede this argument. There is nothing wrong with Theora that Apple and Microsoft couldn't fix between them. If they wanted to.
Jesus ****ing Christ, am I the only one who is infuriated by how stupid he is being here?
No. Finally got around to reading about this and god damn this feels so much like listening Obama talk about how his healthcare bill will decrease the deficit
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
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Word on the street is that the FTC and the Department of Justice are …
US Department of Justice & FTC are considering an anti-trust probe into Apple's iPhoneOS practices.
Apple iPhone OS compiler policy may lead to antitrust probe
By Jacqui Cheng | Last updated about an hour ago
The US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission may be considering an investigation into Apple's decision to block iPhone OS apps created by many third-party compilers. According to insiders speaking to the New York Post, the two organizations are "locked in negotiations" over which one will launch the antitrust inquiry, and the decision is mere "days away."
Apple started blocking third-party compilers less than a month ago when it updated the license agreement that came with the latest iPhone OS SDK. Previously, the agreement specified that applications must only use documented APIs; Apple modified it to say that apps must also be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript and that only this code could link against the documented APIs. This essentially blocked the use of numerous non-Apple compilers, such as Novell's MonoTouch, Unity3D, or Ansca's Corona, not to mention Adobe's cross-platform Flash compiler that was to come with CS5.
Regulators are now reportedly looking into the matter, though (as the Post points out) an inquiry doesn't always translate into a full-blown investigation. When the FTC typically begins an inquiry (as it did recently over Google's attempt to acquire mobile advertising firm AdMob), it usually sends letters to both parties with a list of questions and asks competitors for comment on the impact of the decision. The answers are then reviewed and the FTC decides whether the issue warrants further investigation.
Neither the FTC nor DoJ have confirmed the existence of an inquiry and Apple did not respond to our request for comment by publication time.
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
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