Domain: jonathanclark.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to jonathanclark.com.
Comments · 15
-
Why do the assets always go to waste?I'd like to see more instances where the teams of cancelled projects either release their assets into the public domain or license them via a system like Turbosquid. This may not be appropriate for all projects -- for example, in many instances, there is no single owner of all of a game's IP -- but I've seen too many cases where gorgeous art assets, (take a look at Wish's, for example) go essentially wasted.
As an independent games developer, this strikes me the same way as a bakery tossing away perfectly good bread one one side of town while someone's hungry on the other side. Remember when Crack-Dot-Com went out of business and released its content to the public?
Around July, Crack first missed payroll. August came and we moved out of the office. September offered no new news, so we decided to call it quits. Rather than letting all that hard work sit around and rot, we released it to the public domain.
There's a special place in Indie Valhalla for the Jonathan Clark and those like him. Why don't we see more of this?
________________________________
Inago Rage - Create and fight in first-person arenas of your own design. -
Re:LINUS COULD CLAIM TO BE JESUS CHRIST
Come on, at least RMS actually looks the part:
RMS -
Golgotha
Its interesting to note, this is not the first time a game company has decided to give the world their unfinished product.
Crack.com opened up 'Golgotha', along with 'Abuse', back in 1998. Everything about this, including the source is located here. -
Re:Crack.com's donatation
-
Re:Crack.com's donatation
-
Hmm.
this page says that the appearance of the flare depends on the kind of camera that produced it. So if you want to simulate a flare the first question should be "what type of camera am I trying to simulate?"
-
Re:This does solve one problem....
-
Re:HTTPS
If you block all traffic to a specific site then SSL doesn't help. Because of the nature of SSL server cannot virtual host SSL so they will never have to worry about blocking multiple sites based on IP.
SSL would prevent them from blocking individual URLs because they can't read the HTTP request. You can always get around any filtering system using a proxy that supports SSL (unless they block all proxies...) but Joe Consumer is probably not going to figure that out.
One interesting aspect of SSL, is that it can be used to tunnel any data, not just HTTP request (see this) so you could use it to access Napster servers.
-
What about big-endian systems?
One issue I haven't seen discussed is that the Elate/Amiga virtual machine always pretends like the machine is little endian (Intel-style). This is accomplished by using some trickery for byte and short pointers. On big endian systems, before a load instruction is executed (for 8 & 16 bit fetches) the pointer values are xor'ed with a mask to make it appear like the cpu is little endian.
Because of this, the result is a larger executable and slower execution times for big endian system (i.e. pretty much any non-intel system). I talked to Chris at Tao about this and he says most of the time is hidden in the pipeline. But I say you are always going to have negative effects. Your instruction cache will get filled faster because of more instructions and in the case where the pipeline doesn't stall on a load you can use that extra slot to do something else. My question is, how much effect does this have? I have yet to see anyone release perfomance numbers Java or otherwise for Amiga on a big endian system. Or maybe no one cares about non-intel anymore??
A have a little more info on this at my homepage.
-- -
Re:A look at C#
I think C# is closer to Amiga/Elate than Java. Java was designed with security as a top priority. i.e. being able to run in a sandbox. This imposed a number of limitations that effect java's speed performance. C# allows you to write "unsafe" code if you like, whereas Java requires you to load some external C library. By unsafe, I mean doing unsafe typecast and accessing memory you probably shouldn't.
Also C# never runs under emulation or interpretation - it is always compiled to native code before it is run. This is similar to how Elate works.
For comparisons based on my limited knowledge see here:
Elate versus .NET
I discuss the IL assembly that c# generates more than the language c# itself.
-- -
Amiga is very similary to MS's .NET platform
I have messed with the Amiga2k SDK and also have been talking to the guys at the Tao Group (the real authors of Amiga2k). Here is an article I wrote comparing it with MS's
.net platform. This article assumes you have some knowedge of both system so read the /. article first.
http://jonathanclark.com/diary/amiga/
-- -
Ideas for anonymous publishing
I wrote a discussion on how one might do anonymous/untraceable publishing on the internet:
http://jonathanclark.com/diary/anonpub/
I wasn't aware of freedom net at the time, but they use many of the same ideas. They do not do publishing (i.e. only outgoing connections) mainly for fear of legal problems.
Another method I've seen tossed around is to use redirecting proxy servers where URLs look like this:
http://site1.com/XXX
where XXX decrypts to -> http://site2.com/YYY and
YYY decrypts to http://site3.com/actual_content.html
The only trouble is getting people to run the proxy servers.
One other idea I have played around with is to use spoofied ping packets to transfer content semi-anonymously. It work by the connecting party somehow requesting the content and the posting their IP address. Then you, the server, send it to some random machine on the internet inside of a ping packet with a spoofed return address to them. This can be used to make the chain of computers between you and them very long - also making it travel through countries that are hard to get search warrents.
The main problem is making the initial request, but that could be done with a Gnutella like network.
The other problem here is the receiving computer needs to somehow specifiy which packets weren't received (because ping is lossy).
food for thought... -
Very dangerous vehicleThe article states that you will have to have an FAA approved license. I assume this means that you will also have to follow FAA regulations, making this much less interesting. i.e. Basically it is just a twist on a helicopter. You will be limited on where you can take of and land from unless you live in the country. As well you will have to file flight plans and stay at reserved altitudes.
Though I have a VFR license, flying a helicopter is a bit scary for me because engine failure means you have to count on auto-rotate to land safely and then your landing choices are very slim pickings. This vehichle looks like it would become unstable if one of the engines failed and I doubt it has any sort of auto-rotate that could significantly slow it's fall, meaning certain death. You would have to be a brave soul to ride in it... probably all flights thus far have been un-maned.
Jonathan
jonathanclark.com -
3COM stock priceHmm. As an investor in 3com for several years, it's interesting to see how the rest of world views their value. The core of business is pretty sounds and has a lot of potential. They also have good mind share because everyone and their dog has a Palm-Pilot, especially investor types. But as of recent they took a sharp plunge on the market. Announcing anything internet related is always good for a healthly boost in stock price. This can be seen today, I expect 3com to be up about 2 points before the market closes. Even though 3com's development efforts in this area have not been secret, it takes the main stream press (such as WSJ) to make people aware of it.
I doubt it is accidental that they chose to first demonstrate PP7 in New York (aka NYSE). I got a demonstration 4-5 months ago, and I thought it was pretty cool - mostly for it's small size. The PP7 sales price is pretty high thus a limited appeal, but I expect the price to be half that within a year. I can imagine a lot of companies using a PP7 as part of an eletronic tracking system such as used by UPS and other delivery services.
-
my heros: Shannon,Huffman,Diffie, Miyamoto,Perlin
for a description and picture of these guys, go to http://jonathanclark.com and click on Heros at the top.