Slashback: Armed, Cracked, Cables

Slashback this holiday evening with just a few quick updates and follow-ups (below) -- I hope those to whom the Fourth of July is a significant holiday are out (responsibly) making things explode.

Nearly anything is better than ribbon cables. aibrahim writes "In the recent /. article about Serial ATA some people wanted to know where SCSI was going, and if Serial ATA could deal with some higher end workstation and low end server requirements. Apparently it has been decided that Serial ATA 2 (pdf doc) and Serial Attached SCSI are the answers."

Because being an American is all about first-person shooters. and i starve writes: "For any of you FPS fans out there who have been champing at the bit to see the newest product of our very own government's attempt at a multiplayer video game since Marine Doom your day has final come. America's Army, which utilizes the Unreal Warfare engine was created and designed by the United States Army and is TOTALLY FREE! go grab it off of File Planet right now!"

Before you hit your "JINGO" button, though, An anonymous reader cautions "In typical Army fashion the release of America's Army is a bust. All the servers are either full or down and the way it's set up, you can't play past the basic training without completing some of the training online. Since you can't connect to any of the servers to complete that training you basically can't play the game at all. What a waste of taxpayer money."

Nobody needs to make any cracks about this. Anonymous Coward writes "According to this CNN Article, [some cracks were] found on Space Shuttle Columbia this week, possibly delaying missions for the remainder of the year. This crack is similar to the crack found on Columbia's sister ships, Atlantis and Discovery. "

Worst pun in relation to this gets no prize.

Comments

Check out the rules of engagement

[Anonymous Coward]

The load will lighten up eventually. Check out the rules of engagement on their site. Will it stop cheating? Not a chance. But maybe they could knock one or two doors down, just for show.

Re:Check out the rules of engagement

[Patrick13]

Any and all threats against the server, including attempts to hack, crash, or flood a server, actual or implied, are instant grounds for removal and can result in legal action. Come on, this is the U.S. Army you're messing with! Be smart.

this made me laugh out loud.

Re:Check out the rules of engagement

[Astral Jung]

Somehow, mentioning this episode of Penny Arcade seems appropriate.

Re:Check out the rules of engagement

[Animats]

You think they're kidding?

• Q: Why do I keep getting sent to a prison cell?

  A: You have committed a serious ROE (Rules of Engagement) violation. You have been sent to the United States Military Prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. This violation will go on your permanent record. Repeated ROE violations of this degree will result in a player account being temporarily or permanently banned from official servers.

• Q: What does ROE mean?

  A: ROE stands for Rules of Engagement, which all soldiers must learn and obey while in hostile situations. For America's Army, ROE means not firing upon your fellow U.S. Soldiers, and not attempting to destroy or kill an objective which you are assigned to protect. Every incident of friendly fire will be recorded in your ROE score, including non-fatal shots and grenade damage. If you accumulate an ROE score of over 400 during a single match, you will be kicked off of the server and sent to Leavenworth Prison. Repeated ROE violations will result in your player account being temporarily or permanently banned.

For those of you who don't realize it, America's Army is operated by U.S. Army Recruiting. If you play it well, you'll probably be hearing from them.

Re:Check out the rules of engagement

[jeti]

Doesn't an attack at a US commercial or governmental
server make you a terrorist anyway?

Maybe trying to cheat can give you total immersion to
this military camp thing.

Heh.

[Skreech]

Crack found in third space shuttle

You'd think they were getting high enough already...

Re:Heh.

[gusnz]

And since when did they start sending moderators into space anyway? :)

Re:Heh.

[Megane]

Well, it is the space shuttle Columbia.

FWIW, when I first saw the CNN article, that was the first thing that popped into my head. I guess that's the best way to smuggle it onto the space station.

Re:Heh.

[Some Dumbass...]

And since when did they start sending moderators into space anyway? :)

Strangely enough, this proposal was very popular with the SlashDot crowd, and seeing as how it's a (congressional) election year and all...

Ribbon cables and the like

[ObviousGuy]

I have to commend Apple on one thing, it isn't their crap for kernel OSX nor is it their candy-coated, not meant for serious use user interface. The thing that really stands out about Apples is the case design.

The problem with PC cases is that it is difficult to get into and install components, at least more difficult than it has to be. Apples have the nice fold-out side panel so that opening the box means having all the components open for review right away. All cables are nicely laid so that there isn't the twisting, jumbled, leaning against the CPU and slowly melting ribbon cable problem that afflicts poorly designed PC cases.

I'm sure that such cases are available for non-Apples, but having been component shopping this past weekend, I can attest to their dearth. Why must PC cases be stuck so far in the past? Can't we learn anything from our friends (not the software people) in Mt. View?

Re:Ribbon cables and the like

[Anomolous Cow Herd]

Our friends in Mountain View? You mean Silicon Graphics?

Government learning from industry ....

[reaper20]

"In typical Army fashion the release of America's Army is a bust. All the servers are either full or down and the way it's set up, you can't play past the basic training without completing some of the training online. Since you can't connect to any of the servers to complete that training you basically can't play the game at all. What a waste of taxpayer money."

Wow! I applaud the Army's foray into online gaming, they've cloned every aspect of online gaming, kudos! Tomorrow, there will be a patch, the next day, another one, but that one will break your savegames, but that won't matter, because the master server will still be down....

(Still pissed I can't find a decent roleplaying NWN server....)

Army Game Fix...

[Skuld-Chan]

look in the install dir /system/tours.ini

make sure the following sections look like this,

Dependency(0)=-1
Dependency(1)=-1
Dependency(2)=-1
Dependency(3)=-1
Dependency(4)=-1
Dependency(5)=-1
Dependency(6)=-1
Dependency(7)=-1
Dependency(8)=-1

(farther down)

TourSeq(0)=0
TourSeq(1)=0
TourSeq(2)=0
TourSeq(3)=0
TourSeq(4)=0
TourSeq(5)=0
TourSeq(6)=0
TourSeq(7)=0
TourSeq(8)=0

There - now you can do all the training offline :)

Re:Army and one platform

[user no. 590291]

I don't think the Army's so much looking for Linux-using rebels as Microsoft users willing to follow orders in its enlisted ranks.

US Army == 666

[krs-one]

http://www.pcgameworld.com/company.php/id/666

If you go to that link now, you will find that that is the information about the Army game developers. Conviently, it also has the number 666 as its ID in the database.

Coincidence? I think not! :)

-Vic

Re:US Army == 666

[ImaLamer]

At the risk of being a troll I thought this was cooler

Shows the step by step process of the 9/11 attacks.

Re:US Army == 666

[Col. Klink (retired)]

U 85
n 110
i 105
t 116
e 101
d 100
32
S 83
t 116
a 97
t 116
e 101
s 115
32
A 65
r 114
m 109
y 121
+85+110+105+116+101+100+32+83+116+97-116+101- 115+3 2-65+114-109-121 = 666
Coincidence? I think not!

America's Army links, taken from bluesnews.com

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who hate fileplanet, click here for Mirrors.

3dgamers has it here

OK

[GigsVT]

Apparently it has been decided that Serial ATA 2 (pdf doc) and Serial Attached SCSI are the answers."

I'm usually a supporter of ATA hard disks in all but the most high end servers, due to the outrageous cost benefits they offer, but this is just stupid.

SCSI is a far superior technology, there is no denying that. ATA is a hack ontop of a hack, just barely "good enough" in most cases. Only recently have large ATA RAIDs been available, through people like AXUS, Promise, and 3ware, by placing one controller per disk. Another hack on top of a hack, but very cost effective, and it works well.

If we are going to change our interface anyway, why not get rid of the SCSI vs ATA argument completely and just stick with one or the other?

I see no need for a serial SCSI and a serial ATA except for reasons of price descrimination against people who think SCSI is more reliable due to supersitions and tech mythology. The HDAs have been the same in many cases for a long time.

So why not ditch Serial ATA, or ditch serial SCSI, or ditch both and use a mature technology like Fibre Channel (which is already basically serial SCSI).

I don't see what this fragmentation gets us.

Re:OK

[LoRdTAW]

here the hell do you get that fibre channel is more mature then SCSI when SCSI is about 8-10 years older then it? True Fibre channel is very flexible allowing 127 devices and speeds of 2Gbps but SCSI is more mature and much more a standard then FC. IDE was actually derived from SCSI back in the day to make a cheaper consumer version of scsi (The ATA protocal is also taken from SCSI as well.) Yes FC is a more flexible and competitive solution to scsi but it was never really accepted as a direct interface to the device itself, instead relying on FC-scsi raid bridges to chain multiple tape and raid systems to single or multiple servers.
FC disks work in a loop or ring topoligy like token ring. Each drives tx port is connected to the next disks rx port creating a non redundent ring (FL-AL uses a double loop for redundency) so if data in a 10 disk system has to be sent from the host adapter then it has to pass through each disk until it reaches the final drive also if one disk is sending allot of data along the bus then other disks will have to fight for bandwidth. so yea 127 devices sounds great but take into concideration all 127 have to fight for 100 or 200mbytes a sec then it isnt so cool anymore. Serial ATA gives you one dedicated 1500Mbps connection which is said to have a top speed of 150Mbytes/sec. Take that into concideration and create an accelerated raid controller with 8 or more of those disks and you easily could have yourself over 100Mbytes of read/write preformance, maybe even close to 200!

-not edited for grammer or spelling.

Re:OK

[ivan256]

Yes FC is a more flexible and competitive solution to scsi but it was never really accepted as a direct interface to the device itself, instead relying on FC-scsi raid bridges to chain multiple tape and raid systems to single or multiple servers.

The fibre channel protocol for storage is basically SCSI. SCSI commands are encapsulated in a fibre channel frame. The only reason that Fibre Channel isn't used as a direct interface to the device is that there really aren't many devices out there with Fibre Channel on them. This is likely because Fibre Channel has so many features that the interface is very expensive, and since it's just encapsulated SCSI anyway, it's much cheaper to have a single interface bridge. This is why we have serial ATA for cheap systems instead of just using (serial) Fibre Channel.

FC disks work in a loop or ring topoligy like token ring. Each drives tx port is connected to the next disks rx port creating a non redundent ring (FL-AL uses a double loop for redundency) so if data in a 10 disk system has to be sent from the host adapter...

Nobody does this. There are three topologies for Fibre Channel: Arbitrated Loop, Point to Point, and Fabric/Switched. Even if people did use the arbitrated loop topology, it doesn't quite work how you described. There is no fighting for bandwidth (That's what the "arbitrated" part is for), and there is no proceesing of other devices data from the loop. It's basically just repeated. In real life, however, only the point to point and switched topologies are used.

127 devices sounds great but take into concideration all 127 have to fight for 100 or 200mbytes a sec then it isnt so cool anymore.

First of all, in switched mode, there are considerably more then 127 devices supported. The device ID on the fabric is 16 bits, and each storage unit is speaking SCSI, so there can be 256 LUNs per device. That's alot of disks. Secondly, most fibrechannel switches have way more then 2Gb/s backplane bandwidth. so you're only fighting for that 100-200MB/s if multiple machines on the storage network are trying to access the same storage. Third, in a single system situation, you're not going to have hundreds of disks, and finally, if you did you'd have the same problem with serial ATA.

Re:OK

[geekoid]

the reason we have both is money vs. performance.

If they go with SCSI, many drive(i.e. nearly all IDE drives) won't qualify to be SCSI, and thats to expensive.
If they go with ATA, people who need the performance increase will be pissed, and sue.

"I see no need for a serial SCSI and a serial ATA except for reasons of price descrimination against people who think SCSI is more reliable due to supersitions and tech mythology. "

It would be wiser if you didn't expound your ignorance so loudly.

SCSI uses less processor, transfers more data, and can be use up to 12 meters of cable, you can put significantly more devises on a bus, and the fastest SCSI disk is faster then the fastest ATA disk. It is not superstition, it is fact.

I have written code for SCSI and ATA, So I have experience with these issues.

You want medium quality, and low costs, thats fine, but some people want high quality and are willing to pay for it.

You know what really cracks me up? some over clocker who spends 3 days to get every cycle possible, spend 100 bucks on a cooling system, and still runs an IDE system.

Been playing the Army Ops from morning

[cOdEgUru]

Its commmendable that they got it out pretty early, rather than making us wait for years (Duke Nukem). But there are a couple of things which are a bit funny.

After picking up your rifle, if I head off straight to the firing range, boom, the game brings me back in to face the seargeant. After this has happened a couple of times, I kinda loitered around the place after picking up my rifle, And bingo!, the Seargent asks me to move my butt, and I am placed in front of the firing range.

Interestingly, if you pick up your rifle, load up a clip and decide to get rid of the snappy sergeant, then you still could. But a moment later, you are in a 4x4 cell with a cot and a couple of books and could pretty much hear some one playing some musical instrument in the next cell. I guess there were others who tried the same thing.

So there are a couple of issues like the server being unresponsive (thousands of wannabe soldiers trying to connect) and the game not being as colorful as the unreal series. But hey, the realism of the game is what gets me. That and the fact that I scored 36 out of 40 in the Test Firing range. Do you think the US Army would hire sharpshooters based on this score ? :)

Army FPS

[bobtheprophet]

Uncle Sam wants you to go and frag those biznatches!

where's the patch for the Peace Corps simulation?

[js7a]

There - now you can do all the training offline :)

Great, so, where's the patch that turns it into a The Sims-style system for the Army Corps of Engineers, where you go around installing solar roofs and handing out educational systems to disadvantaged third-world nations?

The only way to win is to not breed the festering terrorists that the marines have to shoot at in the first place.

fragmentation

[mrgunntm]

I kind of like the fragmentation of the different standards. the old ones that are no good will fall away in time, but the new ones will always have advancements making them even more versatile.

For example, my PC has both an IDE expansion (7 IDE devices) and a SCSI card (2 devices) since they don't interfere with each other, i can have up to 24 devices, which is more than i could have with just IDE ATA expansion cards. I rather like the fact that my SCSI card can do 16 devices all on one cable where i have to add a new IDE channel for every 2 ATA drives i want.
Both hap there ups and downs, but they are well mached ups and downs. if we only had one interface, then we would have downs that we couldn't get past.

Imagine if noone ever made the PCI interface, and we had to use hacked together ISA connections for all of our add-ons. Noone complains that a new AGP bus is coming out, and complaints are few for other new interfaces. Anything that is better than what we have is, well, better than what we have.

I can't wait to get more interfaces. But i will always use the old ones, in conjunction. (I happen to /like/ my Syquest SCSI cartridge drive)

--
http://www.i9t.net

Just how realistic is it?

[flacco]

For example, will I be able to shoot myself in the foot and get off the front line if I get scared?

America's Army...

[I Want GNU!]

The government of the United States presents this great first person shooter to you, bundled with your own personalized version of Magic Lantern! I mean, all you're doing is going around shooting people, it's not like they'd want to spy all over your computer. Just don't tell Osama, I hope he downloads it and they catch him!

Not that I endorse it

[SirSlud]

> words such "gay" or "jew" will not be tolerated

This is going to be weird for most FPS fans. From personal experience, thats like, 90% of the vocabulary used in Quake 3 online.

Where are the parents? Or maybe they dont care. :(

Military intelligence?

[I Want GNU!]

If this really is a true simulation of the US military, wouldn't that mean it might give away information on our army to anyone in the world that might want to know this intelligence? This worries me, I hope they didn't include any sensitive information in it.

Re:Military intelligence?

[slashdoter]

"whys he an idiot just cuz he wants the army data secure"

This simple fact is that the army doesn't have any secrets. The army has no super secret weapon, that hasn't been seen before( we do have some I'm sure, like some sort of ray gun, but it hasn't been on CNN yet so I don't expect to see it in the game). The real power in our army( note that I'm not saying navy or air force, they have lots of secret shit) is the training and support of our troops. Our boys ( and girls) WANT to be in the army and spend billions of dollars training every year, they have strong tech support and solid weapons. I don't think we are going to see anything in this game you can't read out of a Jane's book or watch in a TLC show. Basic army tactics are mostly unchanged since Vietnam just my $0.02

Re:Who cares about 4th July?

[flacco]

It's strange that most usa people (which, btw, love to claim they're 'americans' by all means) think someone outside the usa care about the fake 4th july thing.

Whatever gave you the idea that we give a shit what you or anyone else thinks?

(bonus points - be sure to use the words "arrogant" and "cowboys" in your reply)

We already have Serial SCSI...

[Diesel Dave]

it's called Fibre Channel. 'SAS' digresses. SCSI should rightfully die as a transport. Fibre channel already transports SCSI-3, TCP/IP, and others over a single pair loop configuration similar to ethernet. 'Infiniband' will be the forth coming 10GB general replacement for Fibre Channel...

Serial ATA is of course a joke. What should be done is to standardize a basic non-SCA cabling scheme and spec for 'consumer' rated Fibre Channel, instead of going on with this ridiculous ATA bullshit. (Like SCSI should have been standardized on years ago.)

Re:We already have Serial SCSI...

[the eric conspiracy]

it's called Fibre Channel [cinonic.com]

Fibre channel? I don't think so. Fibre channel is dying out, and is being replaced by GigE and Gig10E. Fibre channel suffers tremendously from lack of standards, low production volume and high costs.

Re:We already have Serial SCSI...

[ivan256]

Fibre channel? I don't think so. Fibre channel is dying out, and is being replaced by GigE and Gig10E. Fibre channel suffers tremendously from lack of standards, low production volume and high costs.

GigE is based on fibre channel. The physical layer was lifted directly from the fibre channel spec. Ethernet doesn not have the features necissary to be a good storage interconnect. Fibre Channel has many, well defined standards. There is a high production volume. (Almost every enterprise storage solution available has FC)

Fibre Channel is not a good alternative for Serial ATA. Fibre Channel supports way too many things, and the average interface chip is larger then most x86 northbridges. Hardly cost/power/space effective.

Re:We already have Serial SCSI...

[the eric conspiracy]

that's great. link please?

OK

Quotation:

Part of the confusion between SAN and NAS can be attributed to the current battle brewing over FC and GigE. There is no doubt that these two protocols are competing standards. FCIA ahs gone as far as endorsing the move to create a new standard where FC can operate over IP networks: FCIP. The only problem here is, as you envelope protocols within protocols, performance becomes an issue. Why not just use IP natively? What we need is "more SAN, but less fibre!" or a fibreless SAN that uses IP. It only makes sense.

It's ok... the army is allowed to do that

[SailorFrag]

I find this an interesting contrast to the past few years where people have tried various things ranging from restricting sales of violent games (especially FPSs) to banning them outright, with claims that they were causing kids to want to kill each other.

So the US Army comes along and makes a violent FPS. Why aren't they complaining? Apparently it's bad if Id does it, but it's alright for the army.

Who are they expecting needs to be faught against, anyway?

Re:It's ok... the army is allowed to do that

[guttentag]

Who are they expecting needs to be faught against, anyway?

Saddam Hussein. Who else?

U.S. Plan Calls for Massive Attack on Iraq - Report
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A draft U.S. military plan for an invasion of Iraq envisions a multi-pronged attack with tens of thousands of Marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Next question?

Re:It's ok... the army is allowed to do that

[geekoid]

there will be compliants, you watch.

Most people try not to remember the military kills people.

I am not taking a side on whether this is right or wrong in this post.

Army HW Support

[Jeepsta]

Ok so now I cant even play this game b/c my voodoo card is unsupported. Seems you cant use any voodoo 1/2/3 cards....bullshit! So I guess i wont try it out.

Re:Army HW Support

[bogie]

get a GF4MX for $73 or better yet a Radeon 8500 from Newegg for $99. Heck even a GF2Ti is only ~$60. Buy any one of those cards and you can play any game out there now. Even the older GF2 plays UT2003 well at 800x600 Medium detail.
If you want to be a gamer you gotta spend money sometime.

Re:Army HW Support

[geekoid]

Thats fine. you want to stick with older techology, no one will force you to play.
I'm sure you won't miss doom 3 either.

Re:Who cares about 4th July?

[flacco]

You boorish, colonial cowboys are far too arrogant.

We have a winner :-)

Re:Army and one platform

[Barbarian]

I think the decision to not target Mac fanatics must mean that the army is going to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Re:Who cares about 4th July?

[flacco]

but they sure are a lot of rednecks in USia

I'm with you on that one. But every nation has its rednecks...

I think you have won... NO PRIZE!

[Nindalf]

Does anyone else remember the whole Marvel "no-prize" thing?

Re:I think you have won... NO PRIZE!

[gripdamage]

No but this sounds a bit like the motto on every soda bottle I have opened in a the last few years:

YOU ARE NOT A WINNER

Geez, and all I wanted was a drink, and they brand me a loser. For all time apparently.... No appeal or anything....

More about the art director...

[writermike]

For what it's worth, I know the art director on the Army Game project very well. Luke Ahearn is a real class act and will listen to any concerns you guys have.

I used to work with him several years ago when he ran Goldtree Enterprises. They created Cylindrix and Dead Reckoning. They also released a number of FRPG utilities to help GMs run games. The web site is still online.

Review of Cylindrix

Review of Dead Reckoning

It's really a pleasure to see the fruits of labor finally. Army Game has been pretty hush-hush since Luke left New Orleans for the project.

Re:Who cares about 4th July?

[istartedi]

If "graceful" includes the Revolutionary war, impressment of US sailors, and the war of 1812 in which they marched on our capital and burned the White House, I'd hate to see what "grudgingly" looks like.

Cowboys

[os2fan]

Where I come from, a cowboy is the boy who milks the station's cow, and do other odd chores around the station buildings.

A station is similar to what the US types call a ranch, although ranches are very small. Jackeroos (and Jilleroos) go out and round up the cattle or sheep in the paddocks.

Given that the americans come over here to see the real bush, as opposed to those market gardens and spelling pens you call "ranches", they should move their national day to something more appropriate, like 26 Jan.

Good point but...

[ObviousGuy]

If you fear bin Laden or Al Queda I think you're taking the threat a little too seriously. Since the attack on Tora Bora there simply haven't been any new bin Laden videos with actual new footage of the man himself.

On the other hand, America's enemies are not simply limited to crazy Arabic peoples bitter about America's hegemony. They include a very wary China, a not quite mentally stable North Korea, and a beaten but not cowed Iraq. The thing is, though, that they likely already have our secrets. So basically, it's way too late to worry about the possibility that this game is going to give away military secrets.

Re:Good point but...

[I Want GNU!]

I agree that it is frightening about the nuclear secrets. Still, China having them wouldn't do too much in my opinion, since they already have enough nukes in my opinion. I guess some nukes might be stronger, but I sort of thing of nukes as nukes. Plus, there is the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that will keep most nuclear countries (China mainly) from attacking us (aside from North Korea). Hopefully India and Pakistan will soon catch on to MAD before blowing each other up.

I think that conventional war tactics are the more likely ones to be used in wars with this type of country if we have a war with them.

best mirror I've found

[brad3378]

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=army_download

I've had the best luck with the split files.
Search for These files on Kazaa:

Army.1 (19.5MB)
Army.2 (19.5MB)
Army.3 (19.5MB)
Army.4 (19.5MB)
Army.5 (19.5MB)
Army.6 (19.5MB)
Army.7 (19.5MB)
Army.8 (19.5MB)
Army.9 (19.5MB)
Army.10 (13.5MB)
Merge.bat (1KB)

run the merge batchfile to combine downloads

Re:best mirror I've found

[Sangui5]

Except that there are 11 split files. 10 isn't the last one. There's an 11th (~13.5 meg) which isn't linked to on the nvidia web page, but is there nonetheless.

Don't believe me--take a look at Merge.bat.

*IF* you can get through to their ftp server you can get all 11. So far I've had mixed luck with it. Right now I just need to get the tail end of 3 and I'm done, but I've been hand-coddling the connection, noting when it has totally stalled and cut it to resume, etc. Royal pain in the ass.

Re:best mirror I've found

[brad3378]

Good eye!
I didn't catch that missing 12th file (army.11)

The file is on their site, but the link is missing.

Here it is:
http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/Army/Split_ fi les/Army.11

If you keep having trouble with the mirrors, try a peer2peer search.
The files are already showing up on Kazaa.

Quake 3 Vocabulary

[Geek In Training]

This is going to be weird for most FPS fans. From personal experience, thats like, 90% of the vocabulary used in Quake 3 online.

Where are the parents? Or maybe they dont care. :(

As an avid quake3er, I can attest to this, as I am one of the biggest offenders out there. I pay $70 for crappy DSL that won't get me under 100 ping on any server in the known universe, and I cannot swear at all around real people. SO I take my frustrations out on the unsuspecting "virtual people" on Jolt1 in the UK. I'm trying to knock off some of the more filthy things, but some of my favorite things to say are:

"That was worse than giving Chewbacca a blowjob!" when my team gets owned 8 - 0 ...and pretty much anything with 'crap' in it, such as:
Craptastic, craptacular, crapulous, crappity crap crap crap, etc. :)

As for my parents, well seeing as I am 26, they live on the other side of town. And when dad is stuck in rush hour, mom is cooking dinner, and junior is "doing his homework," I'll bet the parents are trusting their kids to be polite and not looking over their shoulders every minute of every day.

When I have kids and internet access, you're darn right I am going to filter and log all kinds of crap, and moderate my children's usage whenever necessary... but who has time to sit over their kid's shoulder while gaming to make sure they don't say "You stupid jew fag!" :P

-[H]olyGeekboy

Re:Army and one platform

[Barbarian]

Must I remind you of the Apple rainbow logo that was so popular in the 80's?

Re:Easy Access Cases

[Skjellifetti]

Nah, I've got one of their not-quite-server-but-too-big-for-a-workstation cases. The hard drive bay is held to the case with ticky-tacky plastic tabs on the front. Except they don't quite fit so the drive bay is not quite solidly mounted to the case. And that same hard drive bay holds the lock mechanism for the side door which means the door is not quite held onto the case. Their engineering is better than some I've seen, but still has lots of room for improvement.

mirrors

[Barbarian]

the mirrors at

shacknews are quite good, and not overloaded.

Also, instead of using Gamespy Arcade to find servers to play on, plain old Gamespy works better and isn't full of ads in your face. Unfortunately the protocol is closed ("powered by gamespy") or something so All Seeing Eye doesn't work with it.

US Army's game impressed me...

[sterno]

I have never seen a video game so aptly demonstrate what goes terribly wrong when you try to get anything done with an overfunded bureaucracy. Kudos to the developers! :)

Actually from what little I can tell from the training missions (since I can't get on an fscking server), it looks like it could be really good. If only they had either:

1) insured that there were plenty of good servers
2) dropped the silly requirement of playing one map before you could play the others

Should be interesting to see how they handle this. I'm sure it will be handled in an amply bureaucratic and ineffective way.

subscriptsions

[Twillerror]

For all of you out there that aren't signed up for slashdot subscription ( I'm one them ) it's time to relize the benefit of the model.

I'm a subscriber to gamespot complete. As a member I get access to their download network. Honestly I forget the name of the provide, someone please respond with it.

Anyways, I was queued for the download before it was released. The second is was, I was first in line for it. I got home for my 4th festivities to find it waiting for me.

Just think of it as a magazine subscriptions with benifits. Sign up for you favorite site!!, put your $ where you mouth is

Ogg Vorbis Use

[Mnemia]

Interestingly, it appears that the Army game uses Ogg Vorbis for sound...
In the system folder of its directory I see the files vorbis.dll and vorbisfile.dll.
If that's the case, I think it's pretty cool...
Now if only they dropped the whole Windows thing :)

FC Dying? Huh?

[stereoroid]

Fibre Channel is dying out? Huh? Do you actually deal with high-end storage?

• first or all, 2Gb FC is already being used, with 10Gb on the way. That's plenty if you use it correctly.
• Don't forget that current SAN design involves FC Switched Fabric, which is to FC-Arbritrated Loop as a Ethernet Switch is to a Hub. (No, you can't have one, unless you sell your car first.)
• in current FC disk subsystems, the disks use FC-AL for their local connection. That's more than enough bandwidth for an array of physical disks, and high-end controllers support multiple loops.
• Comparisons between FC-AL and Token Ring are only superficially correct. At the bit level, there's far less overhead, and no token-passing delays.
• This has been said earlier, but bears repeating: FC is a transport-level standard. At the physical level, it can run on copper (short runs), or fibre. At higher levels, it commonly carries SCSI-3 and IP, but could carry anything else e.g. IPX, SNA, MIDI, whatever, if someone implements it.

Gigabit Ethernet is not currently a replacement for FC by any means, I'm afraid, unless you discount the whole SAN concept. I think I still have a few years left before I need to think about switch careers (again)...

Re:FC Dying? Huh?

[No-op]

Thank you for trotting out the cluestick.

Re:FC Dying? Huh?

[the eric conspiracy]

Do you actually deal with high-end storage?

Yes, actually I just finished installing a 10 TB EMC setup. While it uses FC internally, there is no block mode transfer to external applications in this setup, and everything outside the EMC equipment is GigE. The fact is that NAS is much more widely used than SAN, and a pure NAS installation does not use FC. In addition NAS vendors are encroaching on the SAN market by adding SAN features to their ethernet transport layers. With the commodity pricing of GigE (and soon 10GigE) I expect that what we currently know as SAN will disappear. As that happens so will FC.

get some perpective

[stud9920]

What a waste of taxpayer money

Yeah ! That game cost like what ? One million dollars (flame me, it may be five as far as I care)?

With that money they could have killed extra terrrorists ! They could have bought 1000 murderous machine guns, 1/1500th of a bloody B2 bomber, 1/20th of an Apache helicopter or 1/736th of an intercontinental nuke.

I mean, get some perspective. That's even less money they can spend killing people or they can use to fund terrorists

80's nostalgia

[Blackheart2]

Coincidence? I think not! :)

Nonono. Pick one:

• Was it coincidence...? Or was it... SATAN?!?!
• Coincidence, or bullshit? You decide.

The right protocol for disk access

[hta]

is IP, of course. See the IP Storage set of standards-in-development that includes iSCSI (IPS charter here).
Etherhet cabling is much cheaper than all the other stuff out there, and with 10G Ethernet just standardized, it goes faster too.

Re:The right protocol for disk access

[ivan256]

and with 10G Ethernet just standardized, it goes faster too.

Try it. Seriously, try and use it. It's slow, high latency, unpredictable, CPU expensive, and basically just not ready yet. Come back in 5 years.

Re:Easy Access Cases

[zaphod110676]

I'll second this. Mine is great. The 5.25" devices slied out on rails, the 3.5" device cages can be removed with the flick of a little metal lever. The spare drive rails have mounts on the bottom of the case. The thing came with a power supply with two fans and three additional case fans, plus there was room to add one right in the hard drive cage. The thing actually created a draft down near the floor. And the whole thing is really quite quiet.

Oh, and both the side pannel and the from lock. This is important since my 15 month old daughter just discovered how much fun power switches are.

I think the crack award goes to you.

[No-op]

I believe the post you were commenting on was referring to Fibre Channel as a mature technology as compared to serial ATA or serial SCSI. Fibre channel is by far and away faster than any other disk arrangements out there, and trumping out the silly FC-AL arguments is old. fibre channel switches do the same for your FC array as a true switch does for your network, compared to a hub. a fully switched mesh for your drives? at 2GB/sec ? I'll take it.

for that matter, the logic for a FC drive isn't that much worse than a SCSI drive, so you can just pick up the same drives as FC disks... we have piles of them for sun boxes, and they work very well.

FC-SCSI bridges are mostly used for lower-end storage devices, to cut down on cost. they have some value in the sense that you can have multiple scsi controllers accessing the drives in an enclosure(usually a proprietary setup, but useful) and then backending FC onto that. this allows for massive redundancy and we all know how much it sucks to have a controller blow at 4 am with no backup!

FC-SCSI bridges are also used for things like tape archives, cheap storage boxes, etc, when you're looking for a way to use that DLT library with your spiffy new SAN.

Don't mock what you don't understand, please.

The other guy is the bad guy and good PR

[quantaman]

I can't/am too lazy to find an article now but it's interesting how they set it up so your always on the US army team and the other team is always the terrorists. Intestesting how that actually adds to the realism in a way because in the eyes of both teams they are always the good guys defending their country and their way of life against the evil forgein terrorists.

On a side note I think actually making the game is a brilliant move by the army. From the sounds of it it cost somewhere around 5-7 million which is fairly small compared to most advertising campaigns. Combine that with the fact that it is free HUGE numbers of people will download it and it could easily become the most widely played FPS considering the fact that it is a retail quality game and it's free. Imagine Toyota put out a Need for Speed style racing game like this? Just by putting their name at the begainning like any game company does they will get a lot of loyalty from geeks everywhere which will be certainly be a lot more effective than any ad campaign. People tend to like you a lot more when you are directly giving them something very entertaining for free that usually costs money, than when you are just shoving ads in their face.

Re:US Army == 666 - haahahaha

[ftobin]

Since there are 18 numbers involved, all the author would have to do is have a short program that figures out all possibilities of adding/subtracting those numbers, which is a fairly small number, 2^18=262144. You could point it towards any number, and you are likely to to find the right combination of adding/subtracting.

Re:Been playing the Army Ops from morning

[geekoid]

no.
you get 40 out of 40, and put most of them through the same hole, then they will be interested.

I watch a guy out 12 shots through the same hole. That's impressive.

Re:Army and one platform

[geekoid]

haha, thats funny.

unfortunatly, you'll get modded down by people with no sense of humor about themselves, or there platform.

Re:Do it in your head, Another Combo

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Actually, I did it from a small perl script that I downloaded off usenet in 1996. It will take any string and, if possible reveal that strings connection to the antichrist.

I tried to post the script earlier, but /.'s filter didn't like it. Alas, a google link has solved my problem.