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The FlightGear flight simulator (GPL) has an ornithopter modeled. It uses wind tunnel data and should be quite accurate. Here's a screenshot (38 kB). Start it like so: $ fgfs --aircraft=ornithopter

Personally, I'm thrilled - I'm a game collector and want to have every Ultima here, and I only have U1-8, UUW1 and SE here.

Of course, I'm pretty much aware that Ultima IX is garbage compared to just about any part of the series. Yet, when browsing the 500+ nitpicks about the game, I suddenly had felt the need to get the game and see how bad things were in Britannia. The site probably had completely the opposite effect to me than what was intended =)

I'm only hoping for a complete remake of the series, possibly with U8 and U9 completely rewritten.

U9 isn't "classic", correct =)

The one with the "thou hast lost an eighth" was U4. Not played much U5 or U6, don't know if they're there.

Personally, I don't like U4 that much, but it's clearly one of the best in the series. It suffers from same problems as the NES-era RPGs, namely, you can't cram that Epic Stuff into such small space. Dialogues are rather... brief. I can only hope the U4 remakes some day flesh out complete (un U7 sense) dialogues for every NPC.

As they say in nitpicking, bugs don't count as nitpicks. U7 is a wonderful game if you get it working. People tend to agree that U9 isn't a wonderful game if you get it working. =)

The (fully patched) U7's only sin is that it's nearly impossible to run these days without external utilities. They can be easily arranged. And once you get going, it's The Best Damn CRPG Ever. It's brilliant, it's beautiful.

I haven't yet played much into U7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, but I can safely say that it's just as rulesome - even though it's far more linear.

Can't say much about U8.

Ammonia????????

WhatRU smoking?

Those things don't run on ammonia AFAIK, and never have.

Ammonia is widely used in industrial-scale compression refrigeration systems. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than fluorine/carbon compounds.

a mouse was discovered on Mars, pics here.

For any Ultima fan, you might find this page interesting... it's a list of all the plot holes and nitpicks in all the Ultima games. Ultima IX is far in the lead with 487 (In comparison, Ultima VII is in second place with 90). Despite the complete dorkiness of actually compiling such a list, and the fact that the guy obviously really hates Ultima IX, it's still kind of fun for a read.

...will it run my Dragon32 code?

Looks like 2003 is going to be a bit less of the kickass-gaming year it looked to be. And if Doom 3 is only out in 2004, some games that will be released meanwhile could make id's design look real old. *cough*

http://members.aon.at/jakovljevic/freetime.htm

Check how it looks on Ginza...

Origin, Inc. screwing over it's user base? That would simply never happen. I mean, just look at Ultima IX!

Besides, what's the further insult? Anyone still there shouldn't care too much about stats any longer. Plus, you can always just start up or join a player-made shard. This would make a very expensive strategy for "grief" players to try and just get a boost with a new character - so you can laugh if anyone uses such a stategy. :^)

Ryan Fenton

OK, to the uninitiated... Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis has influenced everything from Blade Runner's iconography to Madonna's 'Express Yourself' video to virtually every subsequent film rendition of Frankenstein.

So when I read on /. about an anime 'Metrpolis,' my immediate assumption is that we're talking about an anime-version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the world-famous movie by that title.

DVB is more common in Europe I guess.

I have the "biggest" Hauppauge DVB card, the WinTV-DVBs in my box. This is the card for sattelite broadcasts. A WinTV-DVBc exists as well which is for cable.

I use it daily. Linux support is nice !There are several projects around this family of cards (since they are all built on the same reference design, you can even exchange their software and driver on Windows I have been told). The card I am talking has hardware decoding of the media-stream. There exists a smaller one from Hauppauge which does the decoding with the CPU.

• The main site. Hosts the driver, has implemented the MHP (together with NOKIA, opensourced), and has references to the VDR project (see third link)
• the DVB driver for Linux (download page)
• Linux Video Recorder (DVB) (German, very detailed instrctions on setup and build.
• The VDR main-site
• Since the VDR was built to use the TV-Out the picture will go there. However, since they use the V4L interfaces one can use xawtv, KTV (or so) as well as the specialized Kvdr (which brings the complete VDR to the desktop). It is here (as well as an IPoverIEEE1394 and DV backup project)
• Extensions for the VDR
• VDR-NFSroot (also interesting)
• Resource and FAQ site
• Site of general DVB-s interest
• Now this guy has a dish in his garden that has several meters in diameter :-) (WARNING: for freaks)
• On EfNet IRC there is a channel #LinuxDVB. It is in German but since all Germans (well most) talk english they will help out for sure.

All in all I can say, that this is well supported and heavily used, at least in Germany. MPlayer is going to get DVB support soon (they will use its MPEG decoder for MPEG decoding).

I do not use the card for data-services, however, there is a driver for this on the drivers main-site. DVB data is one-way, so one still needs to have a modem connection open for upstream. I have been told that due to the whole continent using two or three providers the resources (bandwidth) on the sattelite is very used and xfer rates drop easily down to ISDN speed). So I would not recommend this (unless your family has rented their own transpoder).

There are people who have two or three of these cards in a small footprint Linux box, that they access over http or ssh and which is hooked to the TV. Along with some big drives they use it solely as VCR with timeshifting and also for DVD and MP3 playback (which is possible). The VDR project is LIRC compatible and has support for the WinTV-DVBs rev 2.1 IR control as well

BBC - Using RDS

Radio data system info (in german I'm afraid, but it seems very informative... maybe this is a case for babelfish?)

RDS forum

Radio data system info (in german I'm afraid, but it seems very informative... maybe this is a case for babelfish?)

RDS forum