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Textmode Quake 2
Artemis writes: "Following the Quake 2 source code release under the GPL, here's the follow-up of the famous ttyquake, it's a text mode Quake II called aaquake2 which has just been released. Time for more 3d text mode gaming fun! The site includes screenshots for those of you who haven't seen Quake-turned-Text before."
This is such bullshit, I've seen this kind of hoax before. All they do is have a bunch of guys sitting at their computer and as each move request come in, they just type out the screen on their keyboard and send it back to your viewer. When they get tired, it's called "lag."
Wake up slashdot and check out your stories before you post them!
Now I can really test the pixel output of my brand-new geForceRS232vt220turbo!!!
Imagine a beowulf clus... ah nevermind.
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
Well, with sufficiently small characters, it should look fine. In fact, as you approach a 1-pixel font it should look quite nice. Add color and you're there. Oh, wait...
This gives us an interesting example of what Lawrence Lessig suggested earlier: mandatory source code release after a set period of time for software, which follows a reasonably short period of exclusivity.
;), would have not have come to light if Quake II had not been open-sourced after it ceased to become cutting-edge technology. By releasing the code after a reasonable period of time Carmack has given us a golden lesson in copyright. By putting the source in more hands we get more speech and interesting ideas put into the public domain, this is the kinda of thing closed source and excessively long copyright terms deny, e.g. Looking forward to David Fincher's Catcher in The Rye? Keep waiting, that book will still be in copyright over 70 years from now, and he will be long dead.
This guys speech, as weird and freaky as it is
-Shieldwolf
PS - of course I know the software is still under copyright, e.g. GPL via Id Software, I merely mean that it is gives you an IDEA of how this could work.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
from the we-will-be-getting-duplicate-submissions-of-this-
and given your recent track record i guess you'll post it a couple more times as well   ;-)
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
First of all, let's figure out how big a frame is. If you have a matrix, like in a terminal, which consists of rows and columns, there is a powerful technique called "multiplication" that will allow you to calculate how many elements there are in this matrix. So, we compute the width (w) by the height (h) to get a product (p), in the form: w*h=p. Whew! That was tricky, but it gets more complicated! Consider that each character on the terminal (for ASCII, not Unicode) is one byte. That is eight bits. Since bandwidth is measured in bits, this what we're interested in. So, we take our product (p) and do that crazy "multiplication" thing again in: p*8. WOW! But let's not slow down there!! We're almost near the end! The result of p*8 (which is actually (w*h)*8, surprisingly) is only for one frame! So what do we do? Think that maybe the average number of frames we'll get per second is 20. That means, that every second, 20 frames of p*8 bits passes through the wire. You know what that means, MORE multiplication! p*8*20, crazy, isn't it? It comes down to (w*h)*160 bits per second. So now, all YOU gotta do is figure out how big your terminal is, and that's now many bits/second it costs! Isn't math fun? (DISCLAIMER: this does not take into account compression, or encoding scemes used to reduce the number of characters sent/received.)
Why bother.
I'm updating my homepage right now with some screenshots, see it at my homepage.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
There is just something wrong and inhuman about my ability to perceive in a way that is similiar to all other humans. Here is a short list of things I cannot read:
1. Music
2. Prenatal sonograms
3. tty Quake and Quake2
Now, I've been able to see those "optical illusions" in the Sunday funnies. I can even read hiragana, katakana and a few Kanji characters as well. But those three things and probable a few others I can't think of right now escape me entirely!
I can't "see" the sound it's [music] supposed to make. I can't "see" the baby and I certainly can't tell if it has a penis or not. I can't tell where I'm going on those screens!!!
Am I alone in this?!
Compare to UserFriendly, Dec. 29.
From the way I understand it from Lessig,
The difference is whether you want copyright protection for said program or not. If you want it copyrighted, then hand the source code over to the copyright office, and after x years, they release it upon request, after you have had your chance to make your $$$.
If you don't ever want your source code out there, you don't have to file for a copyright. But, then people could copy/hack the binaries all they wanted.
Interesting tradeoff!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
I agree, but this isn't the same thing. It's not really different from, say, copyrights expiring after a reasonable period of time (read: a few years, 7 max for software, just like when copyright law was originally enacted). The limit on software should probably be 3-4 years due to the extremely short lifespan.
In fact, it could be made a part of software copyright law that for a copyright to be granted on a piece of software, it as well as the source must be released into the public domain after the 4-year copyright period.
This is a far stretch from requiring private, personal information from individuals. It's just the original spirit of the copyright law returned. But don't expect to see something so sane get passed, large corporations are making too much off the laws as they are, and pushing for even worse ones like the DMCA and SSSCA.
(Personally I think corporations should be required to disclose all information publically at all times, except for "trade secret" information, which can stay secret for at most a year or two. Patents should not be applicable against individuals or non-commercial entities, only against commercial corporations. Copyrights should also be reduced to 7 years again. But then I might as well wish for world peace or something. :-P)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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