I can tell you I've had just the opposite experience... The research enviornment is horrid at my university...
We've essentially boiled down the process to a business model...
A) Write Proposal (often times we have no idea how to accomplish what we've proposed -- it just has to look good on paper)
B) Stick it to some GSR (Graduate Student Researcher) who's trying to get his PHD from us... we pay him 40,000$ a year, but we make anywhere from 100g - 1m from the proposal...
C) Launder the rest of the money and use it to pay our salaries, buy equiptment, our manager routinely buys the newest baddest computer when it comes out... (keeps em for 2 months only sometimes) takes trips on the university dollar... etc (while the GSR's are running SS20's and Ultrasparc 1's and 2's...)... and this isn't to mention his 6 fig salary...
D) Start step A again in paralell...
Granted not every research facility is like this, but I thought I'd offer a disenting oponion from someone who deals with it on a daily basis... I've personally witnessed things like -> converting (completed) research papers into research proposals... People in their 7th year of research because the boss considers em too valuable to award a PHD (and thus they'd leave for a job that pays 4 times what we do).
They completley ignored some of the earliest work by Sierra, like Quest for Glory, (originally called Hero's Quest before they were sued by Milton Bradly), one of the first Adventure / Roleplaying game with exportable characters... and of course it was a hella lotta fun. They also missed the fact that Sierra made the first game with graphics at all (I think it was KQ I)?
And what about Lucas Arts Monkey Island series ? Or their 1998 Grim Fandango. Every game lucas arts makes is a breakthrough. Monkey Island was a 256 color game in 1989! Not to mention Day of The Tentacle, a full talking game in 93 or 94...
That link is ceartinly alot of info about the segacd.. but I stand by my convition that the palette was indequate, adn the load times were unacceptable:)... note I didn't say there werent some fun games just the same
As a musician I can tell you this is gods honest truth... in almost every project I've ever been involved in theres been a point at which you weren't sure you were gonna pull it off -- I've been on albums, concerts, musicals... And theres always a point at which in a long project that you just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel...
It comes from having to slug thru something for months or years at a time... you're intimatley familiar with every nuance of the project and you hear so much you'd like to fix... it helps to bring in fresh ears (like lucas is doing with spielberg?) and get a new perspective... but most of all -- the public isn't nearly as discerning as the artist.
I think even an awfull star wars movie would make a fortune.
If a book is worth selling, it wasn't worth buying... The authors guild has assumed an automatic response stance based on their wants...... Which is something that really bothers me about american society (of which I'm a part)... when did it become acceptable for corporations and governments, and actors and musicians and anyone else to lie ? One of my favorite people in the world -- Bill Cosby -- after making "Lenoard part 6" (one of the worst films ever, probably only surpassed by battlefield earth) went on tv asking his fans not to see the movie because it was awfull and he was ashamed of it... you just don't get honesty like that anymore
Second of all, lots of books are out of print, Try to get some early niven books (inferno comes to mind), or some diterlizzi art books -- you can't -- they've been out of print for 10 years... so whats the diff if I buy them on ebay or amazon ?
I own a 2 sega cds, a sega CDX and about 4 more segas... and I can tell ya, the whole sega cd concept was flawed:
First of all, the SegaCD had to duplicate most of the hardware of the Sega (it has its own processor, etc etc ) making it very expensive... but It still used the sega's video DAC, which was just horrible -- it allows 64 colors, which isn't enough for video -- and thats assuming the game is using no colors for itself... In reality you get more like 48 colors and it looks AWFULL.
Second of all, the thing is dang slow! Even in games which don't use real time video the access times are just awfull... In role playing adventure Games like Monkey Island every time you stepped in a new room, you had to wait, 2, 3, 5 seconds for it to load...I will give them props for one thing -- all of my segacds play copied cds with no problems.
Lastly, the games on the SegaCD just sucked which is ultimatley the test of any system... There were a few neat games: Sol Feace, Monkey Island, and a couple I can't recall... none of these games used the digital video facilities though -- which meant they were basically cartridge games with audiocd soundtracks and people knew that... The few good games were completley overwhelmed (or underwhelmed?) though by god awfull games like the power rangers game, corpse killer (shoot wiggling flying zombie corpses), farenheit (walk around in a building on fire waiting for the next clip to load), earthworm him (cool but exactly the same as the cartdridge version), double switch (sit around and watch badly acted video clips with cory haim, although thomas dolby did the soundtrack for this one), Microosim (fly around blood vessels shooting ships)...
The sega cd was just a 1 trick pony, and the trick sucked:)
Thats a damn good point! I buy alot of audio equiptment, and everytime I buy anything over 1000$ they bank calls to confirm...
One time I spent 1700$ with 8thstreet.com and in 30 minutes both the bank security department and bank fraud department called.
My only guess would be that he must be familiar with credit practicies, and the recurring charges have something to do with it -- ie after 6 monthly charges they don't check ANY from that vendor...
He's also playing numbers -- he probably dosen't expect to collect most of the 10,000$ fees... but he probably collects a few -- and he's still making 25$ a month from each user when his DSL probably costs him 50$ a month..
What disapoints me most is that people are so scared of the legal system that this guy can do this at all... says more about the legal system then anything else
I seem to recall that plant chlorophyl (sp?) needs two specific frequencies of light in the 600-700nm range to grow and thats it... Can they make LED's to improve my, um, closet horticulture?:)
Latex is a great program -- but latex is for typesetting not for word processing... its true most latex users combine the two distinct phases into one messy process...
There is however a windows tex word processor who's name escapes me -- but it reads / writes tex files as its native format and allows you to write latex files in a interactive format, which IMHO is alot better then the "edit and compile" paradigm...
This would really be the best of both worlds... the unix heads can have their programming language latex, and the windows-bred secretaries can have a program that they can work with as well...
Sun has an EXCELLENT edu program.. you can get 40 - 50% off on alot of things. (an a1000 for 11 grand!, we paid 33 for ours...)... but they have some machines around 1200$ for a basic setup... I wouldn't take solaris off it though...
Unfourtnatley the offer from sun expired on the 22nd, but they will most ceartinly continue it in a few weeks. http://store.sun.com/docs/specials/specials_index. jhtmlHeres a list of their promos:
If your not a student, goto a JC, pay 50$ for a class, get a student ID, and save 50% on a machine...
I seem to recall that teachers are responsible for the actions of students they are in charge of... same with ship captians and military officers?...
The real problem here is ignorance... LEA's are ignorant, teachers, administrators... They are afraid -- when people challenge their beliefs, it brings their plastic fantastic world to a halt, they're insecure and scared, in order to put their world back into perspetive, they have to criminilize the messenger instead of the institutions that are lying to them...
That all said, I am a little suspiscious about how he could break in to whatever it was he was supposd to have broken into... the article has no details at all about the software, the computer, the attack etc... I doubt with the level of sophistication the school seems to demonstrate, they could tell a misconfiuration from a compromise.
In my HS library we had these computers they thought were locked down with a shitty dos program that only allowed you to run a few research programs... I brought a boot disk one day, stole the program, and used one of those mod2exe demo makers to attach the most god awfull.mod file I'd ever heard to the menu program (it piped the sound out the pc speaker)... the mod just sounded like warbling cats and car horns.. anyways, brought it on a boot disk that had a rigged up batch file to replace the menu program not the FIRST time the computer was started, but the time after that, so I could be way gone before this happened:)... it went off perfectly and although I wasn't there I am told it was quite a sight:)
I would hope this would stir up some competitive nationalism in the US congress -- and they would in turn fund NASA enough that we could get some decent space missions around here...
I think if we wanna survive as a species, statistically we're gonna wanna get off this planet before something fucks up... all of our eggs are kinda in one basket right now:)
My mother makes CDs into ancient wool spinning devices called (curiously) "Spindles"... Apparently they are from before the spinning wheel was invented hundres of years go... basically its a dowel with the cds affixed at one end, with a hook into that end of the dowel to guide the wool...
You spin the whole thing and with a flick of the wrist you've just spun a tiny tiny bit of wool... musta sucked back in the day
A company named Hammerfall makes digitial audio cards with alsa drivers.. they're 24/96 and have an outrageous number of inputs. 24 if I recall on the 600$ model... I can't find the link but you can find em on sweetwater.com or several other music retailers.
Echo Audio also makes excellent cards, but I think the support for them is very beta (www.echoaudio.com)...
When your done, you hook them up to Ardor http://sourceforge.net/projects/ardour/ , and you've got a nice multitrack... If that wasn't what you wanted then your on your own:)
For pro audio though, don't even think about using linux, its just not ready for prime time.
OD - the humble guys music
But how was sting? how can you review the movie and not talk about hte only reason to SEE the movie? Sting! Nobody gives a rats ass about a lama:) Common here...
BTW, next time you have a chance to mention you've watched 250hrs of anime , don't:)
That 400mhz figure is a fairytale... its a 100mhz buss that xmits 4 whatevers per clock cycle... They're flat out lying... some people might ask what the difference is... but if they didn't think there was a difference, they'd say "its a 100mhz buss that transmits four words per clock' instead of "its a 400mhz bus"
Slashdot Mirror
A mini distro ...
I stand corrected :)
We've essentially boiled down the process to a business model ...
A) Write Proposal (often times we have no idea how to accomplish what we've proposed -- it just has to look good on paper)
B) Stick it to some GSR (Graduate Student Researcher) who's trying to get his PHD from us ... we pay him 40,000$ a year, but we make anywhere from 100g - 1m from the proposal ...
C) Launder the rest of the money and use it to pay our salaries, buy equiptment, our manager routinely buys the newest baddest computer when it comes out ... (keeps em for 2 months only sometimes) takes trips on the university dollar ... etc (while the GSR's are running SS20's and Ultrasparc 1's and 2's ...) ... and this isn't to mention his 6 fig salary ...
D) Start step A again in paralell ...
Granted not every research facility is like this, but I thought I'd offer a disenting oponion from someone who deals with it on a daily basis ... I've personally witnessed things like -> converting (completed) research papers into research proposals ... People in their 7th year of research because the boss considers em too valuable to award a PHD (and thus they'd leave for a job that pays 4 times what we do).
And what about Lucas Arts Monkey Island series ? Or their 1998 Grim Fandango. Every game lucas arts makes is a breakthrough. Monkey Island was a 256 color game in 1989! Not to mention Day of The Tentacle, a full talking game in 93 or 94...
That link is ceartinly alot of info about the segacd .. but I stand by my convition that the palette was indequate, adn the load times were unacceptable :) ... note I didn't say there werent some fun games just the same
It comes from having to slug thru something for months or years at a time ... you're intimatley familiar with every nuance of the project and you hear so much you'd like to fix ... it helps to bring in fresh ears (like lucas is doing with spielberg?) and get a new perspective ... but most of all -- the public isn't nearly as discerning as the artist.
I think even an awfull star wars movie would make a fortune.
If a book is worth selling, it wasn't worth buying ... The authors guild has assumed an automatic response stance based on their wants ... ... Which is something that really bothers me about american society (of which I'm a part) ... when did it become acceptable for corporations and governments, and actors and musicians and anyone else to lie ? One of my favorite people in the world -- Bill Cosby -- after making "Lenoard part 6" (one of the worst films ever, probably only surpassed by battlefield earth) went on tv asking his fans not to see the movie because it was awfull and he was ashamed of it ... you just don't get honesty like that anymore
Second of all, lots of books are out of print, Try to get some early niven books (inferno comes to mind), or some diterlizzi art books -- you can't -- they've been out of print for 10 years ... so whats the diff if I buy them on ebay or amazon ?
First of all, the SegaCD had to duplicate most of the hardware of the Sega (it has its own processor, etc etc ) making it very expensive ... but It still used the sega's video DAC, which was just horrible -- it allows 64 colors, which isn't enough for video -- and thats assuming the game is using no colors for itself ... In reality you get more like 48 colors and it looks AWFULL.
Second of all, the thing is dang slow! Even in games which don't use real time video the access times are just awfull ... In role playing adventure Games like Monkey Island every time you stepped in a new room, you had to wait, 2, 3, 5 seconds for it to load...I will give them props for one thing -- all of my segacds play copied cds with no problems.
Lastly, the games on the SegaCD just sucked which is ultimatley the test of any system ... There were a few neat games: Sol Feace, Monkey Island, and a couple I can't recall ... none of these games used the digital video facilities though -- which meant they were basically cartridge games with audiocd soundtracks and people knew that ... The few good games were completley overwhelmed (or underwhelmed?) though by god awfull games like the power rangers game, corpse killer (shoot wiggling flying zombie corpses), farenheit (walk around in a building on fire waiting for the next clip to load), earthworm him (cool but exactly the same as the cartdridge version), double switch (sit around and watch badly acted video clips with cory haim, although thomas dolby did the soundtrack for this one), Microosim (fly around blood vessels shooting ships) ...
The sega cd was just a 1 trick pony, and the trick sucked :)
... Its not worth anything to us :)
One time I spent 1700$ with 8thstreet.com and in 30 minutes both the bank security department and bank fraud department called.
My only guess would be that he must be familiar with credit practicies, and the recurring charges have something to do with it -- ie after 6 monthly charges they don't check ANY from that vendor ...
He's also playing numbers -- he probably dosen't expect to collect most of the 10,000$ fees ... but he probably collects a few -- and he's still making 25$ a month from each user when his DSL probably costs him 50$ a month ..
What disapoints me most is that people are so scared of the legal system that this guy can do this at all ... says more about the legal system then anything else
Ozymandril said something very simliar in Monkey Island 4: Escape from monkey island :)
Do you have any confidence in the court system at this point to correctly define a circumvention device?
I seem to recall that plant chlorophyl (sp?) needs two specific frequencies of light in the 600-700nm range to grow and thats it ... Can they make LED's to improve my, um, closet horticulture? :)
Is it any coincidence about half these adds seem to be targeted directly at star trek fans? :)
There is however a windows tex word processor who's name escapes me -- but it reads / writes tex files as its native format and allows you to write latex files in a interactive format, which IMHO is alot better then the "edit and compile" paradigm ...
This would really be the best of both worlds ... the unix heads can have their programming language latex, and the windows-bred secretaries can have a program that they can work with as well ...
Unfourtnatley the offer from sun expired on the 22nd, but they will most ceartinly continue it in a few weeks. http://store.sun.com/docs/specials/specials_index. jhtmlHeres a list of their promos:
If your not a student, goto a JC, pay 50$ for a class, get a student ID, and save 50% on a machine ...
The real problem here is ignorance ... LEA's are ignorant, teachers, administrators ... They are afraid -- when people challenge their beliefs, it brings their plastic fantastic world to a halt, they're insecure and scared, in order to put their world back into perspetive, they have to criminilize the messenger instead of the institutions that are lying to them ...
That all said, I am a little suspiscious about how he could break in to whatever it was he was supposd to have broken into ... the article has no details at all about the software, the computer, the attack etc ... I doubt with the level of sophistication the school seems to demonstrate, they could tell a misconfiuration from a compromise.
In my HS library we had these computers they thought were locked down with a shitty dos program that only allowed you to run a few research programs ... I brought a boot disk one day, stole the program, and used one of those mod2exe demo makers to attach the most god awfull .mod file I'd ever heard to the menu program (it piped the sound out the pc speaker)... the mod just sounded like warbling cats and car horns .. anyways, brought it on a boot disk that had a rigged up batch file to replace the menu program not the FIRST time the computer was started, but the time after that, so I could be way gone before this happened :) ... it went off perfectly and although I wasn't there I am told it was quite a sight :)
Might be good living now ... but when the economy heads south, my BS is gonna look alot better then your nothing
I think if we wanna survive as a species, statistically we're gonna wanna get off this planet before something fucks up ... all of our eggs are kinda in one basket right now :)
My mother makes CDs into ancient wool spinning devices called (curiously) "Spindles" ... Apparently they are from before the spinning wheel was invented hundres of years go ... basically its a dowel with the cds affixed at one end, with a hook into that end of the dowel to guide the wool ...
You spin the whole thing and with a flick of the wrist you've just spun a tiny tiny bit of wool ... musta sucked back in the day
The old ladies dig it cuz its "high-tech" ... :)
Echo Audio also makes excellent cards, but I think the support for them is very beta (www.echoaudio.com) ...
When your done, you hook them up to Ardor http://sourceforge.net/projects/ardour/ , and you've got a nice multitrack ... If that wasn't what you wanted then your on your own :)
For pro audio though, don't even think about using linux, its just not ready for prime time. OD - the humble guys music
BTW, next time you have a chance to mention you've watched 250hrs of anime , don't :)
That 400mhz figure is a fairytale ... its a 100mhz buss that xmits 4 whatevers per clock cycle ... They're flat out lying ... some people might ask what the difference is ... but if they didn't think there was a difference, they'd say "its a 100mhz buss that transmits four words per clock' instead of "its a 400mhz bus"
Consoles *WILL* grow up to be the poor-mans computer