In Quake there is what originated as an anomaly in the physics/client-server control subsystems. It allows one to be able to move around at up to 3 times the speed of a normal player. It involves fluid continuous precice movement of the mouse and strafe-control and jumping at the same time. (I'm only able to achieve 90% of the top) This is important for controling the resources of a map in a 1v1 match. Needless to say it's non-trivial to master, and intentionally left in in all the Quake games.
When I started playing competitively I was aware of some of the 'tricks', but did not realise their full potential until my first tournament game. Watching a good player play was incredible... he literally floated through a level with such speed and acuracy that I just knew what I wanted to be when I grow up...;)
One specific jump on a level reequired this technique and gave a significant advantage, so I practiced it there... needless to say that I tried 100s of times (being told the technique) and failed every time. I was starting to think it was impossible and just a side-effect of some setup variable in his configuration.... and then it happed...suddenly I was on the other side... I had no idea how it happened. It took me about 2 weeks of practice just to make it once and I could not remember doing anything any differently! I still don't know how I could NOT have made it, since at the moment I can do the jump 100% of the time (and much more things I thought were impossible) But it took me about a month before I could do it 1 out of 20, and another month 1 out of 5. Now it's just second nature.
I showed this technique to a 15 year old friend of mine, and he got it right that same day. -sigh-
Quake also has a technique called 'rocket-jumping' which is not really useful for 1v1 matches, but more just for fun. This I could do flawlessly, but nowadays I suffer. It's because I've played competitions too long, where control and accuracy are more important.
This time of training to improve control past the known parameters of a game (kinda like in Matrix ala Douglas Hofstadter) is not present in any other 1st person shooter game, and Id software had by leaving it in all the successive versions of their games, made it into a skill you keep, and is not wasted when a newer version comes out.
I take a long time to learn... I'm a slow learner. But I do tend to be a perfectionist, and I think this may be my saving grace.
On a side note: I got through to the finals of our national Quake 3 competition last year, and had the furtune to play against our number one player (Ph4nt0m) whyo is one of the top players in the world, and I did quite well... I only lost 52 to 5.;)
It was like watching an acrobat perform... in the front row. I'm about 95% on my way there, but that last 5% I am unable to comprehend and achieve. I'm just glad I got this far before my arteries harden... -wink-
I'm 31.5 years old, and until recently I have still played competitive 1v1 1st person shooters. (Quake 3, Half-Life, Wolfenstein, Tron 2.0)
I've now stopped playing in competitions due to time constraints, as I've mastered accuracy, timing and control. (Can do rocket to rail jump on q3dm6) I also still play RTS games as well. (Warcraft III). But also love Morrowind, NWN type games.
I find however that my reflexes do not improve so much anymore, and I do not master new tricks as easily. I'm still a reasonable player, but younger players (13yrs old) seem to catch up easily.
I'm just glad I honed my skills early on, since I think they will stay with me for some time yet to come.
And take out the <dict> entries that matches the unused entries... <PRE> <key>DeliveryAccounts</key> <array> <dict> <key>AccountType</key> <string>SMTPAccount</string> <key>Hostname</key> <string>mail.tbs.co.za</string>   ; <key>ShouldUseAuthentication</key>   ; <string>NO</string> </dict> </array> </PRE>
Windows does not have a free development environment. Windows does not have ease of use. I really don't care if Windows have more software than Mac if I do not need that software.
I basically use something if I have a need for it. I never owned a Mac until recently... and I was quite impressed. As a person who has used AmigaOS/Linux/BSD/Windows/OS2 and many other OSes, I have no real loyalty... each one of the have their plusses and negatives. It just seems that OSX has more plusses these days...;)
I do not really expect any products to hold to the interface design guidelines of the destination OS. It would be cool, but it's not ideal. The biggest thing that bugs me about iTunes for windows is that it does not minimize when I double click on the titlebar... (used to iTunes on OSX)
Other than that it's just the tray icon which could have been done better. They did not remove anything though.
PS: CDex rocks... been using it for ages. I just find that iTunes does exactly the same as CDex with a lot of configuring and tweaking.;)
PS: I'm also a fan of MP 6.4, and recently came across this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
It's basically a killer-app version of MP 6.4 with plug-in support to play realmedia (with subtitles!) and quicktime... It's awesome... check it out!
Actually I tend to agree with the previous poster.
I've installed it and I cannot even seem to play an AVI. Ok, let's see... integration with look and feel: iTunes for windows has ALL the functionality that the Mac version has. It is not a crippled product.
WiMP for Mac on the other hand does not play the same files as WiMP for Windows. It does not have the visulisations, library support, options, enhancements (audio/video... not UI), it's UI is sucky... all the things that make WiMP for Windows a killer app is not present in the Mac version!
Argh!
I love WiMP for Windows (Check out the Media Player Classic project on Sourceforge!) I love iTunes (even for Windows). But as excited as I were about WiMP9 for Mac.... it sucks.... a real disapointment!
I do not think I'm biased... I love MS for Games/Video, Mac for Mail/Web/Music/Work and Linux for Programming.
Popularity and useability are two seperate things.
It will never become popular if it isn't usable.
Windows is usable, Standard GNU/Linux distros aren't.
My mom can open and save a file in Windows... my mom does not care to do a chmod first... (And believe me, I've done the experiemnt...)
But with that said, I've got to admit that after using Ximian Desktop 2 now for 2 days, that I may be wrong.
For me however, I use GNU/Linux exclusively at clients, OSX for my Company and Windows XP at home (Games games games...) But then again, I'm one of "those nerds". -shrug-
Tool for the job is what I say... and Linux will not go away anytime soon. The people will choose. The best OS will win... in spite of FUD, whatever it will be.
This is not a critique on voting... just one on voting systems. Voting is illegal in many countries, perhaps because it could bring unwanted change? Thus it is fair to assume that voting DOES change things. QED.
So this person's (perhaps random) e-mail fortune sig has much truth to it? (And dual meanings, on which/. has only latched onto one)
So why is voting legal in the States? Perhaps because people cannot change the really important things? -ponder-
When last has voting really had a profound effect? When last have we voted about issues and not FOR parties? A total swing in the political rulers have not had any noticable effect on the country... hence the opinion that there had been no real need to vote.
I only have about 4000 songs in my library, and it seems to stutter every time I switch to the app. It also takes long to start up.
I don't seem to have any of these problems on my iBook.
(But then again, the music is on a different machine across a 100Mb/s network...)
Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it... it's the first player since Zinf (with the Aqua skin) that I find easy to use with a clean design.
One thing about Apple products... they may look feature-poor, but strangely enough they always seem to have the features where and when you actually need them.
Apple has released a patch to the December 2002 Developer Tools which includes gcc 3.3, their new compiler.
Fink does not yet support compiling with gcc 3.3. In addition, it is important not to "mix and match" between compilers: all C++ code in fink packages needs to be compiled with the same compiler.
For this reason, the Fink team recommends that if you update your Developer Tools with the new patch, you should be careful to run sudo gcc_select 3 prior to any "fink build" or "fink install" commands.
You forget one thing: "What if I left them in a will to my children later on" sounds quite good and well, and is something we would be "expected" to be able to do, but even a CD only has a lifespan as long as your own (and shorter), thus all you will be leaving your children will be blank disks anyway.
I for one am glad to have a file stamped with my name... at least it will not degrade before I die! AND it is a move in the right direction.
This person is just an idiot... he may just ruin what could potentially be a good method of distributing music.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and there could be ways of having it being transferred to other people in future... but to try and challenge it now is idiotic, and creates loopholes for others to exploit this system.
The problem is to make the system totally unexploitable will mar the whole music listening experience, so as it is currently is a good compromise.
Re:Other recent releases: Totem, GNOME 2 media pla
on
MPlayer 1.0Pre1 Is Here
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
And how do I use it then if I have a media machine with an IR mouse? For a home entertainment system this will not work.
(See MoviX^2 for the functionality that I require...)
Ah, yes... I saw that yesterday... I though it was funny that two groups would both bring out the same type of collaborative editor for free... So that's what happened to Hydra.
The only problem I had with Hydra was that it had no vi mode. (Or other programming enhancements.)
It would help me and wxWindows if I could get and test beta versions of wxMac... I've looked on the wxWindows site, but cannot see how I can apply for this.
The project I'm working on: see project of the month on http://sourceforge.net/ (Boa-constructor). I'm working on the Mac part of it...
wxWindows on OS X X11 is stable, yes... but then you will still have X11? Just with yet another layer in between.
-sigh-
wxWindows for Native OS X is currently in a mess... it's still VERY broken. I've been using it in conjunction with boa-constructor (SourceForge project) and it is barely working.
If that was not the case then perhaps wxWindows would be a viable alternative..
The compiler I tend to agree. -shrug- It was just an idea.
As for grep, I think it would be a valuable addition to it!
Surely you don't see people grepping for "[gG][rR][eE][pP]" for case insesitivity? The -i option is so cool! But why stop there? I'm not a language guru, how must I know there is another way of spelling flavour? colour? neighbour? And what if I search for entire sentences?
Just like case-insensitivity I think grep should have a non-strict English match setting. This could do a match on both colour and color if either is found.
Perhaps even an option on the compilers? (But this is more dangerous, and can be acompanied by compiler warnings...)
Diversity is a good thing, but the American changes are needless and counterproductive.
I tend to agree with the principle of changing colour to color, knife to nife and christmas to slvvsjcoaehf (Blackadder) and some other changes. They make things clear and unambiguous. But then when you have a large collaborative effort like the Linux kernel, and it has been decided to use international (British) English, then STICK to it.
I could care less about comments, but with code, spelling is important (same goes for consistent indentation practices)
I think to clear matters up, we should use Klingon as the de-facto language of variable names....
Micropayments are worthless if I cannot pay half the people... and since PayPal does not even support my country, that includes me.
I created my PayPal account, and it allowed a user with my country. But then I tried to add my billing and credit card info, it did not have my country suddenly!
The problem is that I cannot seem to delete the half-created account from Paypal, and they keep spamming me!
That is why I gave up on micropayments... mostly because of the incompetency of PayPal.
PayPal is possibly good if it works for you... but I would not know.
I do not think Linux will steal market share from Apple.
I think Linux will steal it someplace else.
For me Apple is just another GNU distro.
It does cost a bit more than Linux, but at least it's not windows and I have Openoffice X11 boa-constructor GNU python fileutils plus all the awsome out-of-the-boxness of the great Apple apps.
It's a pointless comparrison. Linux may overtake Apple, yes, but Apple will also increase it's share.
I really don't care... I just use what works for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a little background:
;)
;)
In Quake there is what originated as an anomaly in the physics/client-server control subsystems. It allows one to be able to move around at up to 3 times the speed of a normal player. It involves fluid continuous precice movement of the mouse and strafe-control and jumping at the same time. (I'm only able to achieve 90% of the top) This is important for controling the resources of a map in a 1v1 match. Needless to say it's non-trivial to master, and intentionally left in in all the Quake games.
When I started playing competitively I was aware of some of the 'tricks', but did not realise their full potential until my first tournament game. Watching a good player play was incredible... he literally floated through a level with such speed and acuracy that I just knew what I wanted to be when I grow up...
One specific jump on a level reequired this technique and gave a significant advantage, so I practiced it there... needless to say that I tried 100s of times (being told the technique) and failed every time. I was starting to think it was impossible and just a side-effect of some setup variable in his configuration.... and then it happed...suddenly I was on the other side... I had no idea how it happened. It took me about 2 weeks of practice just to make it once and I could not remember doing anything any differently! I still don't know how I could NOT have made it, since at the moment I can do the jump 100% of the time (and much more things I thought were impossible) But it took me about a month before I could do it 1 out of 20, and another month 1 out of 5. Now it's just second nature.
I showed this technique to a 15 year old friend of mine, and he got it right that same day. -sigh-
Quake also has a technique called 'rocket-jumping' which is not really useful for 1v1 matches, but more just for fun. This I could do flawlessly, but nowadays I suffer. It's because I've played competitions too long, where control and accuracy are more important.
This time of training to improve control past the known parameters of a game (kinda like in Matrix ala Douglas Hofstadter) is not present in any other 1st person shooter game, and Id software had by leaving it in all the successive versions of their games, made it into a skill you keep, and is not wasted when a newer version comes out.
I take a long time to learn... I'm a slow learner. But I do tend to be a perfectionist, and I think this may be my saving grace.
On a side note: I got through to the finals of our national Quake 3 competition last year, and had the furtune to play against our number one player (Ph4nt0m) whyo is one of the top players in the world, and I did quite well... I only lost 52 to 5.
It was like watching an acrobat perform... in the front row. I'm about 95% on my way there, but that last 5% I am unable to comprehend and achieve. I'm just glad I got this far before my arteries harden... -wink-
I'm 31.5 years old, and until recently I have still played competitive 1v1 1st person shooters. (Quake 3, Half-Life, Wolfenstein, Tron 2.0)
I've now stopped playing in competitions due to time constraints, as I've mastered accuracy, timing and control. (Can do rocket to rail jump on q3dm6) I also still play RTS games as well. (Warcraft III). But also love Morrowind, NWN type games.
I find however that my reflexes do not improve so much anymore, and I do not master new tricks as easily. I'm still a reasonable player, but younger players (13yrs old) seem to catch up easily.
I'm just glad I honed my skills early on, since I think they will stay with me for some time yet to come.
Edit:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
And take out the <dict> entries that matches the unused entries...
<PRE>
<key>DeliveryAccounts</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>AccountType</key>
<string>SMTPAccount</string>
<key>Hostname</key>
<string>mail.tbs.co.za</string>
  ; <key>ShouldUseAuthentication</key>
  ; <string>NO</string>
</dict>
</array>
</PRE>
Windows does not have a free development environment. Windows does not have ease of use. I really don't care if Windows have more software than Mac if I do not need that software.
;)
I basically use something if I have a need for it. I never owned a Mac until recently... and I was quite impressed. As a person who has used AmigaOS/Linux/BSD/Windows/OS2 and many other OSes, I have no real loyalty... each one of the have their plusses and negatives. It just seems that OSX has more plusses these days...
I do not really expect any products to hold to the interface design guidelines of the destination OS. It would be cool, but it's not ideal. The biggest thing that bugs me about iTunes for windows is that it does not minimize when I double click on the titlebar... (used to iTunes on OSX)
;)
Other than that it's just the tray icon which could have been done better. They did not remove anything though.
PS: CDex rocks... been using it for ages. I just find that iTunes does exactly the same as CDex with a lot of configuring and tweaking.
PS: I'm also a fan of MP 6.4, and recently came across this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
It's basically a killer-app version of MP 6.4 with plug-in support to play realmedia (with subtitles!) and quicktime... It's awesome... check it out!
Actually I tend to agree with the previous poster.
I've installed it and I cannot even seem to play an AVI. Ok, let's see... integration with look and feel: iTunes for windows has ALL the functionality that the Mac version has. It is not a crippled product.
WiMP for Mac on the other hand does not play the same files as WiMP for Windows. It does not have the visulisations, library support, options, enhancements (audio/video... not UI), it's UI is sucky... all the things that make WiMP for Windows a killer app is not present in the Mac version!
Argh!
I love WiMP for Windows (Check out the Media Player Classic project on Sourceforge!) I love iTunes (even for Windows). But as excited as I were about WiMP9 for Mac.... it sucks.... a real disapointment!
I do not think I'm biased... I love MS for Games/Video, Mac for Mail/Web/Music/Work and Linux for Programming.
Popularity and useability are two seperate things.
It will never become popular if it isn't usable.
Windows is usable, Standard GNU/Linux distros aren't.
My mom can open and save a file in Windows... my mom does not care to do a chmod first...
(And believe me, I've done the experiemnt...)
But with that said, I've got to admit that after using Ximian Desktop 2 now for 2 days, that I may be wrong.
For me however, I use GNU/Linux exclusively at clients, OSX for my Company and Windows XP at home (Games games games...) But then again, I'm one of "those nerds".
-shrug-
Tool for the job is what I say... and Linux will not go away anytime soon. The people will choose. The best OS will win... in spite of FUD, whatever it will be.
This is not a critique on voting... just one on voting systems. Voting is illegal in many countries, perhaps because it could bring unwanted change? Thus it is fair to assume that voting DOES change things. QED.
/. has only latched onto one)
So this person's (perhaps random) e-mail fortune sig has much truth to it? (And dual meanings, on which
So why is voting legal in the States? Perhaps because people cannot change the really important things?
-ponder-
When last has voting really had a profound effect? When last have we voted about issues and not FOR parties? A total swing in the political rulers have not had any noticable effect on the country... hence the opinion that there had been no real need to vote.
More interesting reading HERE.
I only have about 4000 songs in my library, and it seems to stutter every time I switch to the app. It also takes long to start up.
I don't seem to have any of these problems on my iBook.
(But then again, the music is on a different machine across a 100Mb/s network...)
Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it... it's the first player since Zinf (with the Aqua skin) that I find easy to use with a clean design.
One thing about Apple products... they may look feature-poor, but strangely enough they always seem to have the features where and when you actually need them.
Is it plagiarism to use the same typeface when printing books nowadays?
Coding styles are similar, and given a large enough sample of data the statistical chance increases of similarities.
Next SCO will sue mathematics since somewhere in the sequence of numbers in pi they will find their entire kernel source.
From the Fink site:
2003-06-26: Developer Tools Update.
Quick Summary: DO NOT INSTALL THIS UPDATE.
Apple has released a patch to the December 2002 Developer Tools which includes gcc 3.3, their new compiler.
Fink does not yet support compiling with gcc 3.3. In addition, it is important not to "mix and match" between compilers: all C++ code in fink packages needs to be compiled with the same compiler.
For this reason, the Fink team recommends that if you update your Developer Tools with the new patch, you should be careful to run sudo gcc_select 3 prior to any "fink build" or "fink install" commands.
The title states 'Attacked', but the article talks about successful compromises (Hacked).
Linux is the most hacked system?
Hmm...
Seems like a bit of reader manipulation there Slashdot!
You forget one thing: "What if I left them in a will to my children later on" sounds quite good and well, and is something we would be "expected" to be able to do, but even a CD only has a lifespan as long as your own (and shorter), thus all you will be leaving your children will be blank disks anyway.
I for one am glad to have a file stamped with my name... at least it will not degrade before I die! AND it is a move in the right direction.
This person is just an idiot... he may just ruin what could potentially be a good method of distributing music.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and there could be ways of having it being transferred to other people in future... but to try and challenge it now is idiotic, and creates loopholes for others to exploit this system.
The problem is to make the system totally unexploitable will mar the whole music listening experience, so as it is currently is a good compromise.
And how do I use it then if I have a media machine with an IR mouse? For a home entertainment system this will not work.
(See MoviX^2 for the functionality that I require...)
Ah, yes... I saw that yesterday... I though it was funny that two groups would both bring out the same type of collaborative editor for free... So that's what happened to Hydra.
The only problem I had with Hydra was that it had no vi mode. (Or other programming enhancements.)
zsh: The shell of choice of Zim.
It would help me and wxWindows if I could get and test beta versions of wxMac... I've looked on the wxWindows site, but cannot see how I can apply for this.
The project I'm working on: see project of the month on http://sourceforge.net/ (Boa-constructor). I'm working on the Mac part of it...
I shall reserve judgement until then then.
wxWindows on OS X X11 is stable, yes... but then you will still have X11? Just with yet another layer in between.
-sigh-
wxWindows for Native OS X is currently in a mess... it's still VERY broken. I've been using it in conjunction with boa-constructor (SourceForge project) and it is barely working.
If that was not the case then perhaps wxWindows would be a viable alternative..
It had crappy graphic and crappy sound, but there was something almost mystical about the ending...
Must be the fact that it was based on a propper work of prose.
The compiler I tend to agree. -shrug- It was just an idea.
As for grep, I think it would be a valuable addition to it!
Surely you don't see people grepping for "[gG][rR][eE][pP]" for case insesitivity? The -i option is so cool! But why stop there? I'm not a language guru, how must I know there is another way of spelling flavour? colour? neighbour? And what if I search for entire sentences?
I think grep and gcc need to be changed.
Just like case-insensitivity I think grep should have a non-strict English match setting. This could do a match on both colour and color if either is found.
Perhaps even an option on the compilers? (But this is more dangerous, and can be acompanied by compiler warnings...)
Diversity is a good thing, right?
Diversity is a good thing, but the American changes are needless and counterproductive.
I tend to agree with the principle of changing colour to color, knife to nife and christmas to slvvsjcoaehf (Blackadder) and some other changes. They make things clear and unambiguous. But then when you have a large collaborative effort like the Linux kernel, and it has been decided to use international (British) English, then STICK to it.
I could care less about comments, but with code, spelling is important (same goes for consistent indentation practices)
I think to clear matters up, we should use Klingon as the de-facto language of variable names....
Micropayments are worthless if I cannot pay half the people... and since PayPal does not even support my country, that includes me.
I created my PayPal account, and it allowed a user with my country. But then I tried to add my billing and credit card info, it did not have my country suddenly!
The problem is that I cannot seem to delete the half-created account from Paypal, and they keep spamming me!
That is why I gave up on micropayments... mostly because of the incompetency of PayPal.
PayPal is possibly good if it works for you... but I would not know.
I do not think Linux will steal market share from Apple.
I think Linux will steal it someplace else.
For me Apple is just another GNU distro.
It does cost a bit more than Linux, but at least it's not windows and I have Openoffice X11 boa-constructor GNU python fileutils plus all the awsome out-of-the-boxness of the great Apple apps.
It's a pointless comparrison. Linux may overtake Apple, yes, but Apple will also increase it's share.
I really don't care... I just use what works for me.
Me.