Domain: passagen.se
Stories and comments across the archive that link to passagen.se.
Comments · 82
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Re:MPEG_LA Isn't the devil
And this is what should happen to Vinny and Guido.....
http://flimmr.passagen.se/movie/robot_chicken_bob_the_builder_vs_the_mafia.action
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Re:That's hardly a benchmark
I see that Frag Island is working still:
* http://hem1.passagen.se/carebear/fragisland.htmAlbeit Java V1.0 not Javascript.
This was originally called jQuake, but Todd Hollenshead of Id Software asked them to change the name.
I believe SUN were going to include the source in the JDK in 1997.
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Re:Windowlicker
Want to try it yourself? Here's a simple image-to-sound conversion program, Win95 but runs under Wine too:
http://hem.passagen.se/rasmuse/Coagula.htm
Granulab is fun to play with as well (same site, granular synthesis engine). -
Re:Windowlicker
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Re:acronyms
Anybody that has read Ursula LeGuin knows what a HILF is.
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In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz...
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Why is OSS fud so predictable ..
"Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-"
Fud #1: Use OSS and you spend all you time fixing bugs. According to this, the Trolltech Qt Open Source Edition is available under the GPL license. And if you subscribe to one of the support groups you won't have to spend all your time hunting down bugs. Also if your company sells any OSS product, you won't have to pay any upstream 'licenses'. Did you factor in licensing costs in your figures for the C# IDE, WinCE and Vxworks?
From the same page: "Trolltech Qt License Pricing One Platform Console Edition, 1420, Desktop Light Edition, 1590, Desktop Edition, 2630"
You didn't state what business your startup is in, but if you are selling down stream solutions use GPL er ,, OSS solutions. You did say you rewrote everything to C# so you must have pretty intelligent developers. If you are an end user get a support contract. You know something as I reread your post I get a strong wiff of trolleri. -
TurboExpress SP
Buy a Game Boy Advance SP and a GBA flash cart, and you can run PCEAdvance, a TG16 emulatarr! for GBA. This will do nicely until Nintendo expands Revolution Live Arcade to include Revolution/DS connectivity.
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Obligatory Simpsons quote
"Ha Ha!" - Nelson Muntz
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Re:I was wondering what SVG was
Welcome to 1961.
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Re:Sorry, Tears for Fears
HA HA! Your motion got denied!</voice>
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script evolution
when filmmaker George Lucas sat down in 1974 to write what, within three years, would be the biggest meteor to hit Hollywood since there's been a Hollywood.
It's interesting that what he wrote in 1974 was actually very different than what ended up on screen in 1977. This is mostly irrelevant, but I found this detailed exposition of the history and evolution of the Star Wars script interesting and I thought Slashdotters might like it too:
http://hem.passagen.se/wookiee/developm/
Just as a tidbit, Luke Skywalker was originally a 60+ year old general! -
Re:But (dare I ask) .. why?
Most people don't realize this, but the GBA had backwards compatibility with GB, SGB, and GBC games by including a Gameboy Color on a chip. The older gameboy carts are larger and have a different voltage, so when they are in, the hardware activates the GBC on a chip. When GBA games are in the slot, it activates the GBA circuitry. Both can't be active at the same time. Since many people like to use Flash carts for the GBA, so that they can make a game playlist of their favorite titles, similar to how an MP3 player lets you make a music playlist of your favorite tunes, all without lugging around the original media... work began on an unofficial, yet high-quality Gameboy emulator for the Gameboy Advance, so that people could use a GBA flash cart to include a playlist of their favorite GBA titles as well as their favorite GBC, SGB, and GB titles.
Little did people know at the time that the GBC-on-a-chip would be done away with in Nintendo's next portable. Hence the Gameboy emulator for the GBA became even more important.
So to play old (non-Advance) Gameboy games on a DS, get a GBA flash cart. Put Goomba (GB emulator for the GBA) on it, and then you can play GB and SGB games on your DS. Of course, with the SGB games will play as if they are in a black and white Gameboy and not a Super Gameboy, so you won't get the Super Gameboy enhancements, such as more colors, borders, and other special features.
There are many other uses for these flash carts than piracy. Rip your own games and make your own multi-carts of your favorite titles. I have a multi-cart containing my favorite NES titles along with my favorite GB titles. So one little cart can fit hundreds of great games. That way I can have a variety of great games (puzzle, action, rpg, racing, shooter, etc) without lugging around handfuls of carts.
One last note. The Goomba page I linked above is the official site, but it lacks the most recent version, which can be found at the author's personal page. You can also find the latest version of his NES emulator for the GBA.
Funny how an unofficial NES emulator existed for the GBA long before Nintendo got around to re-releasing their classic series for the GBA. Too little, too late, Nintendo. I still have over 100 NES carts in my closet. I am not about to pay full price for them all over again, and yes I still enjoy playing them. -
Usefulness of the DS now
When it came down to the choice between getting a DS or a PSP now, the choice became the PSP. Granted, I'll get a DS later for other games that I'm interested in and the rumored Palm Pilot module - but it was the usefulness of the PSP *now* that interested me.
A lot of people underestimate the usefulness of the GBA and Nintendo DS now. Like the PSP, the GBA or Nintendo DS supports its own proprietary memory card format. A GBA memory card such as the Flash2Advance or the EFA-Linker greatly expands the capabilities of a GBA or Nintendo DS system:
- Like the PSP, the GBA can play music, through the GBA GSM Player.
- Unlike the PSP, which can't run games for any previous Sony platform, the GBA can run most NES games, many Game Boy monochrome games, and even some PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) games, in emulation.
- Unlike the PSP, the GBA does not use digital signatures for programs stored on memory cards. Developers have created several homebrew games and made available to the public. I am one of those developers.
The only thing you're lacking is video, but there's another peripheral for that.
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Coagula
Brings to mind Coagula, the "Industrial Strength Color-Note Organ", which converts
.bmp files to synth sounds. -
Same joke many times
Who cares about being able to bench cars? Admit to yourself how rarely this would be useful and grow as a human being.
Of course, usefulness has little to do with the first cybernetic implant on *my* christmas list in 2020.
The Mr Stud's Implant.
Every robot will have a 12" steel johnson. -
Remember that the DS can play GBA SP games
That's a tie ratio of less than one piece of DS software per DS hardware sold.
Nintendo DS can play all single-player games that work on GBA SP[1], and it can play most NES and Game Boy mono games and many PC Engine/TurboGrafx games through emulation. What you're seeing is the effect of parents who lack enough money for a DS and a game but who have agreed that Santa will bring the DS and the Easter Bunny will bring a game.
The Regginator said that Spider-Man DS was his favorite launch title, yet it barely scraped its way to 40k units, or less than one-fifth of Super Mario 64 DS
What you're seeing is the effect of lack of a strong brand. How many commercials did you see for Spider-Man DS, compared to the commercials for Super Mario 64 (the 1996 ones and the 2004 ones)? Ports help build and maintain a brand.
[1] There may be one or two GBA games with a tilt sensor or camera that work on the GBA but do not work well on the GBA SP, having reversed controls due to reversed placement of the GBA Game Pak slot. WarioWare Twisted for GBA (out now in Japan; coming soon to North America and Europe) compensates for the SP reversedness.
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Re:Future
Identifying THREE parallel instructions at compile time, ALL THE TIME, is damn hard, and normally the compilers fail. Hence slow.
Actually, one of my MS students and I did some work, later extended in a MS thesis by Svante Arvedahl, that showed that it is pretty straightforward to produce decently-scheduled code for the IA-64 on a JIT basis using combinatorial search techniques and related heuristics. The cool part about this is that you can then use HotSpot(TM)-type techniques to get your instruction-level parallelism way up.
If the IA-64 hadn't tanked so badly in the marketplace, I'd still be working on this stuff...
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Actually, it is relevant to modern 3d
Well, actually, reading the claims, what they call "spherical panning" (it's not planning btw, there's an error in the article) is simply the fact of defining a camera position, relative to an object, using three angles, a distance, and a projection type.
They say it is done by going from one space to another. Well, it's called transformation, it's done by multiplying matrices. In fact, what they describe are the minimum math needed to display 3d on a computer screen.
It's way too broad. It's almost like they're patenting basic 3d math.
There are a some games that were released before 1988, like starglider and elite, that displayed wireframe 3d, and that had to apply what's claimed in the patent.
In fact, by 1988, a lot of things had already been done in the field of 3d computer graphics... And this patent is trying to protect the basic stuff that all these things had to do at some point to be able to render 3d stuff. -
Re:uspto
The claims are very broad.
They include representing 3d data by defining an orientation, a distance from the viewer, a projection type and so on, as well as manipulating the orientation using three angles, by transforming the data from a space to another...
This is very basic and covers roughly anything displaying interactive 3d on a 2d screen...
I'm pretty sure that there's some prior art. -
No choices
There's only one option here - you must vote for Fxjkhr. And remember - regime change begins at home.
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Re:"Well known Actors"
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Re:social engineering
"Seriously though, I could easily socially engineer anyone." Well, you certainly have the confidence needed to be a con-man but your estimation of your own smack fu is not uncommon as seen at this really cool site here.
:-) -
Re:GBA Compatible?
This is correct, luckily the current GBA is able to emulate a classic GameBoy perfectly in software (not using the GBA's hardware chip), so I would expect the extra horse power of the DS would easily allow for GBC emulation in software too.
The only limitation to playing GB and GB Colour games on the DS would be having some sort of re-writable media like the flash cards available for the GBA. -
Inducement and Free SpeechIf p2p providers can be found guilty for inducing "children" what about Movie and Music producers who promote questionable messages with certain types of films or music. If a neutral type of technology can be outlawed because it may be used for bad purposes, how can this type of inducing media be protected under free speech? I guess it's okay if Smith and Wesson makes the guns so long as they don't hire Bob Marley or license his song?
So would a film that portrays a fictional p2p service in a positive light also be illegal? What if it portrayed in a negative light? (probably ok) What if someone *gasp* downloaded the film via p2p? (definitely not ok--unless it's Farenheit 9/11
;). . . the not so faint scent of hypocrisy wafts up from below . . .
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2007-01-01 Mon Lithuania joins the Euro(?)
YEAAAH. That makes us Critical and Significant, doesn't it? And I thought all we could do was sharpen our teeth and club out Mel Gibson's brains out with golf clubs on every occasion we got.
--Coder -
PCE, now on your GBA! :D
Yes! You heard right! The allmighty Graga knows everything about the GBA!
Flubba has mixed an emu for GBA together. Get it here!
NOW DANCE!
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"Amarok" solves the problem
Many older albums (Pink Floyd, especially) are meant to be listened to as albums, not singular songs "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield solves this problem: the CD/work is a single track of 60 minutes in length. Never mind that one can break it up into sections: it only plays as one track unless you have special player program written just to play parts of the single track.
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Re:capitalism--monopolies
Metaphor: The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin .
CC. -
Whee!
This will let people use the One True Joystick on modern hardware.
I could have sworn I've seen an Atari-to-USB adapter before, though, but maybe it was just an Atari-to-PCJoystick adapter after all... frankly, it's strange that no one has come up with these before.
I have had one complaint about USB: It's not so easy for random people to make hardware based on USB. Back in the C64 days, everyone who could hold a soldering iron could make all sorts of weird widgets to connect to the computer. Especially controllers. Almost everyone I knew who had any kind of access to parts had built themselves a reset switch or a game controller, or in latter times, an 1541-to-PC cable (I, with more than a little help from my father, have done all three =)
... can't say that's going to take off on PC world, unless "legacy adapters" like these joystick adapters or serial-to-USB adapters take off! -
Re:"Practical C++"What sign?
I hope you're not talking about sticking a pink carnation in your hat and, er, making the old sign...
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THIS IS A HOAX.
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Re:Chicken or Egg?I think the makers of StarCraft had a good idea of how human spacefarers would look and act.
:)To be fair, I think they were supposed to be prisoners and were exiled to that region of space. So they weren't made up of mostly the best and the brightest anyway. (According to StarCraft Nuclear Zone they were criminals exiled from Earth. Another site suggested they were political prisoners.)
Be that as it may, your point is still valid. Being in space won't turn us into a Star Trek utopia, we'll still have all our problems and emotions.
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Fan boy alert!I liked Sandman (it pioneered many things within "comicdom"), but damn if The Dark Knight Returns wasn't one the greatest works of literature of modern times (also published by DC Comics). I want to see a Frank Miller written, Jim Lee illustrated graphic novel of Batman - such a thing is what dreams are made of.
I would also love to see a cross over story arc of Spider-Man and Batman with John Romita Jr. and Jim Lee alternating between titles (Jim Lee doing Spider-Man, and Romita Jr. doing Batman). You wouldn't have to search for writers, because every stellar comic writer of recent times would be fighting tooth and nail to pen this.
Talk about a fanboy's disgustingly drenched wet dream!!
OK, so I am a big nerd, so sue me.
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Re:From the site.Besides, the transcriber has got it all wrong.
Consider this extract I got after a bit of focussed googling. Compare that with the Roman transliteration given at the bottom of a fan page. This, apparently, is an absolutely correct piece of transliteration; notice how the author points with glee that JRR Tolkein himself got it wrong in his transliteration. In particular, Tolkein apparently forgot that the script is phonetic in nature, and that the long 'e' in 'even' and 'seen' needs an additional accent on the next consonant.
Now observe what the transcriber returns for 'even'. (Hint:- No double accent over the Tengwar alternative for the letter E)
Not just that, none of the fonts provided have a mapping for the double accent, nor, apparently, is it possible to actually type the additional accent in.
[Okay, I need to get a life and all that - heck, I am known to be a language buff - but just to point out that the 'rules' here don't seem to be serious at all.
:-)]As for Hindi, it is actually simple to type on a typewriter; there have been typewriters for quite sometime now. It's just that on computers you can process letters more logically than a typewriter, so glyph production tends to be complex. The problem, really, is that the concept of a 'standard' is almost non-existent, despite 15 years of ISCII and Unicode. And then, the adjunct consonants, the so-called aadha-akshar, are a bitch to generate in Unicode.
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Re:From the site.Besides, the transcriber has got it all wrong.
Consider this extract I got after a bit of focussed googling. Compare that with the Roman transliteration given at the bottom of a fan page. This, apparently, is an absolutely correct piece of transliteration; notice how the author points with glee that JRR Tolkein himself got it wrong in his transliteration. In particular, Tolkein apparently forgot that the script is phonetic in nature, and that the long 'e' in 'even' and 'seen' needs an additional accent on the next consonant.
Now observe what the transcriber returns for 'even'. (Hint:- No double accent over the Tengwar alternative for the letter E)
Not just that, none of the fonts provided have a mapping for the double accent, nor, apparently, is it possible to actually type the additional accent in.
[Okay, I need to get a life and all that - heck, I am known to be a language buff - but just to point out that the 'rules' here don't seem to be serious at all.
:-)]As for Hindi, it is actually simple to type on a typewriter; there have been typewriters for quite sometime now. It's just that on computers you can process letters more logically than a typewriter, so glyph production tends to be complex. The problem, really, is that the concept of a 'standard' is almost non-existent, despite 15 years of ISCII and Unicode. And then, the adjunct consonants, the so-called aadha-akshar, are a bitch to generate in Unicode.
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Re:Real Life is not a very fun game."People still act like animals, why are people aggressive? Why do we have wars? Why do people abuse power, and human rights?"
Forget about people. Do you act like an animal, are you aggressive, do you start wars, do you abuse power and human rights? If not, then you have progressed since you were a trilobite.
You saw that lion at the zoo. How do you think he'll behave when he'll be reborn as a human being?
Real Life gives a chance to anyone. There must be a place where a lion-reborn can learn to overcome his aggressiveness.
There will always be wars and pain and abuse in the World of Real Life, because even the most hopeless players need a chance to level-up... or level-down.
... and I bet Real Life is no fun at all for them! P.S. I'm not saying that people who are suffering now (for famine, deseases, wars) deserve to suffer because they are on a lower level of the game. They might in fact be much higher in score than myself: less selfish, less cynical, more open-minded, and for sure everyone who is suffering deserves our help. -
Re:Google IS BigBrother
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Google as God, realise that Google goodthinkful ingsoc therefore = BB.
"Big Brother records all. BB remembers all, even after it's gone"
Ingsoc unistand!
Ingsoc unifall!
Conform is doubleplusgood!
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Re:good for you
Only after reading the first response, did the theme music kick in for me....
To stop myself singing that first line over and over again, I decided to find the lyrics and post them for anyone else suffering so....
So according to hem.passagen.se the lyrics are....
Denver, the last dinosaur
He's my friend and a whole lot more
Denver, the last dinosaur
Shows me a world I never saw before
Everywhere we go
We don't really care
If people stop and stare
At our pal dino
Creating history thru the rock n' roll spotlight
We've got a friend who helps us, we can do alright
That's Denver, the last dinosaur
He's my friend and a whole lot more
Denver, the last dinosaur
Shows me a world I never saw before.
Whether they are the actual lyrics or not, I have no idea..... -
Big Deal...This was done long ago...
This demo is offline these days, but the info is all still up there.
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Re:I wrote a simple RTS engine in Java...> Apples + Oranges
Well, not really. Frag Island didn't use "Java 3D" or any other fancy API that didn't exist 5 years ago.
It was doing all its rendering in software, and was drawing a plain bitmap on a plain AWT canvas, probably using a method very similar to yours (ImageProducer etc..).The (now rather dead and smelly) site for the applet is at: http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/fraggame.htm
Unfortunately it doesn't load as it seems to be missing some data files, but the code is there for the grabbing and the jading.
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Re:What about Frontier Labs?
I just pre-ordered my NEX ia a few days ago (it doesn't ship for a few more days; $130 + s/h for a NEX ia + 128MB CF) - my NEX II served me well for two years and just recently died. One neat feature is that it does do 64kbps MP3 recording w/ an internal mic. I was originally looking for a decent MP3 recorder, but unfortunately, one doesn't exist (the only ones that have level meters for example are $1000+ bulky pro units).
Anyway, I posted some research on my blog which might be of interest:
My old NEX II MP3 player just recently died on me. I started taking it apart, and it looks like I might be able to do some soldering to possibly get it working, but chances are slim (approximately corresponding to my soldering skills). It looks like the new NEX ia is coming out though, with voice/FM recording, better firmware, and possible Ogg Vorbis support, among other things. I sent an email to see what the recording quality is (hopefully with line-in capabilities), and to see if some slightly annoying NEX II bugs have been fixed.
From correspondence w/ Frontier Labs:
- improvements: multiple folder support, alphabetical song listing, more buffering, improved shuffle (but no m3u support, so you'll want to keep your CopyNex handy - see also: FATSort, PlaylistExpander)
- Ogg Vorbis is actually being worked on, for the NEX II's as well as the NEX ia and will be released as a firmware upgrade
- 64Kbps recording (can record at higher bitrates, but no selection mechanism in the firmware right now)
- No (recording) level-meter
- No line-in, the only external input is the built-in voice recording microphone
- Can play back MP3 files at the same time as recording
Perception Digital has a PD-095-01 Portable MP3 player which has a can record from an internal mic, FM, or a line-in at 13Kbps voice or 48-320kbps MP3 (!). That's pretty frickin' awesome. It's a little bit on the chunkier side, and only accepts SmartMedia, no Compact Flash though. Still, tempting, if I could find some user reviews...
The e.Digital Odyssey 300 (SmartMedia) looks interesting, although it also looks like it's no longer available. [the Mpio DMB+ looks like the same thing]
Also, PoGo! Products has their RipFlash line of Recordable Digital Audio Players (the TRIO is one w/ mic and line in, but is not memory expandable). Uses SD/MMC... (CNet RipFlash DX review)
See Also: minidisc.org's Portable Recorders with Uploading Facilities list.
Places to buy: e.Digital Odyseey 300, PoGo! RipFlash Trio, Perception Digital Hercules (PD-095-01),
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Re:What about Frontier Labs?
I just pre-ordered my NEX ia a few days ago (it doesn't ship for a few more days; $130 + s/h for a NEX ia + 128MB CF) - my NEX II served me well for two years and just recently died. One neat feature is that it does do 64kbps MP3 recording w/ an internal mic. I was originally looking for a decent MP3 recorder, but unfortunately, one doesn't exist (the only ones that have level meters for example are $1000+ bulky pro units).
Anyway, I posted some research on my blog which might be of interest:
My old NEX II MP3 player just recently died on me. I started taking it apart, and it looks like I might be able to do some soldering to possibly get it working, but chances are slim (approximately corresponding to my soldering skills). It looks like the new NEX ia is coming out though, with voice/FM recording, better firmware, and possible Ogg Vorbis support, among other things. I sent an email to see what the recording quality is (hopefully with line-in capabilities), and to see if some slightly annoying NEX II bugs have been fixed.
From correspondence w/ Frontier Labs:
- improvements: multiple folder support, alphabetical song listing, more buffering, improved shuffle (but no m3u support, so you'll want to keep your CopyNex handy - see also: FATSort, PlaylistExpander)
- Ogg Vorbis is actually being worked on, for the NEX II's as well as the NEX ia and will be released as a firmware upgrade
- 64Kbps recording (can record at higher bitrates, but no selection mechanism in the firmware right now)
- No (recording) level-meter
- No line-in, the only external input is the built-in voice recording microphone
- Can play back MP3 files at the same time as recording
Perception Digital has a PD-095-01 Portable MP3 player which has a can record from an internal mic, FM, or a line-in at 13Kbps voice or 48-320kbps MP3 (!). That's pretty frickin' awesome. It's a little bit on the chunkier side, and only accepts SmartMedia, no Compact Flash though. Still, tempting, if I could find some user reviews...
The e.Digital Odyssey 300 (SmartMedia) looks interesting, although it also looks like it's no longer available. [the Mpio DMB+ looks like the same thing]
Also, PoGo! Products has their RipFlash line of Recordable Digital Audio Players (the TRIO is one w/ mic and line in, but is not memory expandable). Uses SD/MMC... (CNet RipFlash DX review)
See Also: minidisc.org's Portable Recorders with Uploading Facilities list.
Places to buy: e.Digital Odyseey 300, PoGo! RipFlash Trio, Perception Digital Hercules (PD-095-01),
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DESQview/X
I read some people here say there isn't such thing YET, but as a matter of fact, there WAS. Unfortunatelly, no more.
In ye good ol' DOS times, there was DESQview/X, that allowed you to run Win 3.1 in a X-Window, and display it on any X-Server. It could also turn any 386 w/ DOS in a X-terminal.
Pretty cool stuff, but probably little market share. You can see screenshots here. More info here. If you don't care for 95/2000/XP support, as it doesn't have it, you can download DESQview/X here (I didn't test it, though. -
H�kan Lans - DoppingenHåkan Lans the swedish inventor, built together with a friend and some advice from different people his own submarine "Doppingen" in High School.
Håkan Lans standing in front of his submarine, that is now placed in Swedens Technical Museum
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Re:Didn't say when
Clue: in 1996, there was a Java applet that would play Quake maps on a 200Mhz Pentium Pro just fine (and reportedly lesser machines, but that's what I had).
Clue: I've both written and used Java apps that don't have the speed problems you're talking about (dunno about memory, never really checked). Check out DbVisualizer for an example.
Maybe it is the programming. I've been brought on to a few server side projects that I've have to refactor extensively to get it such that performance was good. I can only imagine what happens in most client side apps. -
Java Quake?
Old, old, old story. JQuake is dead. Long live Frag Island!. Well, back in 1997 anyway.
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Re:Skills
And back in 97, I played around with a Java applet that could render Quake maps on a PPro-180 just fine. I was making UIs with the AWT that were fast and responsive, and I've done the same with swing. Mostly, my work has me doing J2EE, so it's just web based front ends, but I can still cut a reasonable UI. Check out DBVisualizer for a Swing UI that is responsive, well designed, easy to use, and gives you access to any JDBC database (close to TOAD in quality, but DBV 2.1 lacked updating via the data view and no cration wizards, while TOAD didn't have the relational graphing).
It is possible to do, but if you
a) don't care about speeding your UI up and/or,
b) believe the UI is slow because of Java and not because of crappy coding
then you will end up with a slow UI. -
Re:the inevitabele Forth/Jupiter Ace comment
OK, so things are sluggish at work.
A quick trawl came up with the following 'Nix based
emulator
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Re:Harrowing?
You can also overclock your old pentium to death!
There's a tutorial just here: Overclock a P133 to 1 Ghz!!!