For one thing, there's a reference to "the darker side of Oz" and Frank Baum made it clear there was no darker side. His intent was to create a land of wonder and amazement without the creatures that caused kids nightmares.
Hmm...
Bitchy old woman that wants to kill cute little dog, CHECK.
Evil witch killed by falling house, CHECK.
Grotesque flying monkeys that have been giving kids nightmares for decades, CHECK
Evil witches that melt into a puddle of goo, CHECK.
Cool! It would be just like a cellphone! Except it would be really expensive, not have a good form factor for this type of use. And now you can't even play games on it.;-)
Yes... there is hard real time, and soft real time. Maybe the vacuum was a bad example, but in general, things that are moving around need to be able to react to the environment quickly. This means that they can't always just "stop and think", because if they're already moving, they'll keep moving due to inertia. If you don't keep steering yourself, you'll end up crashing into something.
The vacuum is kind of a bad example because due to the way the thing is built, it doesn't really coast after the motors are turned off. In that case it's safe to just stop the thing and get your bearings.
Actually I know first hand that most of the newer stuff from Nokia is running RTOSes on the DSP (not on the ARM -- they tend to use Symbian for that). I can't really give more information than that due to NDAs and such.
As Linus points out, though, few consumer embedded devices really need hard real time. Most media-related stuff can paper over delays with buffering. A classic comment is, "You run your web server on Linux. You run your nuclear reactor on QNX".
I think I have to take issue with these statements. There are plenty of consumer embedded devices that require meeting RT deadlines. Take the ubiquitous cell phone for example. How would you like it if your phone dropped your 911 call because it couldn't process the incoming packets fast enough?
Granted, not all embedded devices with RT deadlines fall under those types of life and death situations, but they need to meet those deadlines nonetheless or the devices just plain don't work. Sudenly your TIVO can't record TV shows, your robotic vacuum cleaner can't process data fast enough to avoid careening down the stairs it should avoid, your newfangled washing machine doesn't sense your clothes are dry, your GPS gives you incorrect position readouts... etc., etc., etc.
People don't realize it, but embedded devices are literally just about everywhere these days, whether you realize it or not.
Now we just need to be able to build Eclipse itself using Java 1.5. I really really want to use 1.5 in my Eclipse plugins. I want real container classes dammit!:-P
Currently you probably could build Eclipse using 1.5, but the Eclipse release engineering folks are still building using 1.4 (or at least, they were as of a month or so ago, and I haven't seen any mailing list traffic to the contrary). There won't be any official builds of Eclipse done with 1.5 for a while yet I think.
Game publishers should really do this kind of thing when they kill off a game line...
Take White Wolf for example. This year they killed off the entire line of previously existing World of Darkness games so that they could "reset" the whole world and start fresh. There are many similarities between the old games and the new games which have risen from their ashes (e.g. Vampire: The Requiem is very much like the previous Vampire: The Masquerade). However, there have been a LOT of changes, not just in rules, but primarily in setting.
This has a lot of WW purists cheesed off... "Where is my favourite clan? How could you get rid of them and keep clan X!", etc. There are a lot of people that would be happy to just keep continuing playing the old game, and that also includes people who like the new game as well.
Problem is, now all of the books for the old games are out of print. If you already have the books, well, you're golden for now... until they wear out (and yes, if you actually use them regularly they DO wear out quickly). For now, yeah, you could buy them online, or at your local game store, or whatever, but there is a finite supply. Eventually, they will be either impossible to find or too expensive to buy. At that point, the game will start to die as new players can't get books, etc.
IMHO, some fixed time after they kill off a game, I think they should just take every book that was ever released for it, and jam them onto a CD as PDFs. Sell that sucker for $20 or whatever. Then at least the game will live on forever in theory.
Luckily, I have a copy of the Vampire Revised CD-ROM that they came out with a few years ago, which has the core books on it. But, it doesn't have all the books, and it really really sucks for anything but a quick fact check as the viewable area of the pages is so damned small. A so-so solution at best I'm afraid:-(
Hey, I know.... why not just ASK the remote site if they think they can handle the load?
I think therin lies the real problem with your idea. This system either requires a) that article submitters also submit a "contact email" that goes with every link they put in their story, or b) that the editors follow every link, and then dig around for who knows how long trying to find a contact. The second is definitely not practical.
In fact, neither are practical. Even IF you can find such an email, most of the various "webmaster@foo.com" emails NEVER get checked (or at least not in a timely fashion) because they are deluged with inane emails from the dregs of the internet, spam, etc. If you find one that does get checked, chances are your request is going to churn through managerial hell while the sysadmin, his 6 bosses, and the company's lawyers pass the buck amongst themselves trying to get permission to accomodate your request.
And then, there are just the gazillion people that won't be bothered to respond to you, not even to say "No".
Face it, what you propose would just never work. Slashdot would grind to a halt. Besides, webpages are like cars... if you're willing to put one out there running, you better be able to handle the traffic, or have enough sense to get off the road and park that sucker in the garage if things get too intense for you.
Most recently I used my dremel and got through in about ten seconds (like a knife through hot butter)
Man, I don't know where you come from, but ten seconds? You must have either really blunt knives in your town, or titanium spiked butter or something, but damn!
Must be even worse than you think... The last time I checked, hot butter was a liquid...
I've always felt that the eye's light adaptation should be simulated by the game
FYI, they did this in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. In the multiplayer portion, if you hold still or move slowly enough, the room will actually brighten. Not a 100% biologically accurate simulation, but an interesting twist on the gameplay nonetheless.
Watch an aging Indy in a wheelchair fight off seniale ex-Nazis in a search for the bathroom so he doesn't have to use that bedpan any more. Yet when he gets there, a seniale ex-Nazi has the last roll of toliet paper! Watch as they battle it out with canes, and pause many times to take a breather and adjust their bifocal glasses.
Someone call Bruce Campbell... I think we have our plot for Bubba Ho-Tep II...
They designed it so you wouldn't HAVE to load your save game when you died.
I dunno about the rest of you but regardless of how well done and user friendly the "you just died" functionality was, if I failed a mission, I bloody well loaded up my last save point to maintain my previous stats and inventory. I'm willing to bet just about everyone else did this too.
Hell, I'm the kind of guy that used to hit the reset button back on my 486 DX33 while playing X-Wing because I didn't want my pilot to get captured or killed, and if I hit reboot before it saved the stats to the hard drive, I could just restart the mission.
Face it, these kinds of schemes are just way too easy to circumvent. As long as there are stats or an inventory that count for something, people will "cheat death" in the game.
5. Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC
Well given that it was Gabe Newell's PC that was compromised, and given that Gabe Newell is the CEO, I think the chances of him firing himself are fairly small...
Then again, it would be the perfect excuse to buy them another year of development time...
*Jay mode on* Dude, when my wife finally gets sick of catching me on your site and finally kills me in my sleep and cuts off my penis, I am fucking willing you that insurance money. God knows you've earned it. Motherfucker should be enshrined in the Smithsonian and shit! *end Jay*
It's all just a cover story... really the sensors are for tracking intruders that might stumble upon the Pentagon's secret Area 52 base in the Arctic Circle...
I want Google search on my.pst files from Outlook. Searching for a keyword through 2+ years of email takes FOREVER with the built-in search feature in Outlook. We're talking 5 or 10 minutes here.
And if I had a nickel for every time I had to resend something to a co-worker because they were too goddamned lazy to just search their email for the message I sent them THE FIRST TIME, well, Google wouldn't need an IPO because I'd just buy them outright!
That being said, filesystem searches with Google would be damn nice too.:-P
I also do 'serious amateur' (25-50MB images) with Photoshop
I finally realized I was stuck in the depths of perversity when I looked at the above and immediately thought "Serious amateur" was some sort of porn reference...
I was very disappointed when I saw LOTR: ROTK, and there was no Battle of Hobbiton. I was really hoping to see this scene, and it just wasn't there. [...] Then there is also Tom Bombadil. Where'd he go?
Batte of Hobbiton I will concede, but c'mon, how many of us really wanted to see an hour of film devoted to Tom and his love of talking in rhymes and whatnot? Even as a fan I find those parts of the books annoying... how can you expect Joe Sixpack to sit through that let alone enjoy it?
IMHO, I think including Bombadil would have done a lot to wreck the generally serious and epic feel of the films. People already had enough complaints about the comic relief of Gimli and Pippen ruining the atmosphere for them. Personally I thought those were fine, but put in Bombadil and you would have whole different movie. When I think of the LOTR movies as is, I think "epic" the way I think of say, Ben Hur, or Spartacus, not funny and silly like the animated Disney movie Hercules.
when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately
Is it just me, or does it seem like they are opening themselves up to trouble by not having some sort of screening program in place for the designs? How long before a giant, vector graphic representation of the goatse.cx guy is seen floating over Dublin?
JA2 was a gorgeous game. I would love to see the development of a multiplayer mode; that would definitely be a lot of fun.
Definitely. Turn based multiplayer would even out the lag and twitchy reflex factors. Then the game would be about strategy and tactics, not pixel perfect aiming with your mouse, nor how many FPS you can get out of your video card, nor how low you can get your ping to the server.
And hell, while we're at it, you could definitely combat cheating with this too. Since combat is not realtime, you would not have to offload very much processing to the client. Shooting your enemies becomes a matter of sending a "I want to shoot at the guy on my left. Server, please calculate my to-hit roll and tell me if I hit him," request, rather then "Server, please fire bullet along vector (x,y,z) which has conveniently been generated by my aimbot."
Ahhh... a more cheat free game... tell me that's not attractive.
Somebody get on the call and ask them "If you have such a strong company and case, why do you feel the need to couple lawsuit announcements with your financial call?"
I would LOVE to see the Slashdot effect at work on this conference call. I don't suppose we're so lucky as for SCO to have set this up on a system where they pay per user connected, are we?:-)
That and it would be great having 10,000 slashdotters heckling them:-)
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing, there's a reference to "the darker side of Oz" and Frank Baum made it clear there was no darker side. His intent was to create a land of wonder and amazement without the creatures that caused kids nightmares.
Hmm...
Bitchy old woman that wants to kill cute little dog, CHECK.
Evil witch killed by falling house, CHECK.
Grotesque flying monkeys that have been giving kids nightmares for decades, CHECK
Evil witches that melt into a puddle of goo, CHECK.
Yep, no dark side whatsoever!
Mechanik
Cool! It would be just like a cellphone! Except it would be really expensive, not have a good form factor for this type of use. And now you can't even play games on it. ;-)
You mean like the N-Gage?
Yes... there is hard real time, and soft real time. Maybe the vacuum was a bad example, but in general, things that are moving around need to be able to react to the environment quickly. This means that they can't always just "stop and think", because if they're already moving, they'll keep moving due to inertia. If you don't keep steering yourself, you'll end up crashing into something.
The vacuum is kind of a bad example because due to the way the thing is built, it doesn't really coast after the motors are turned off. In that case it's safe to just stop the thing and get your bearings.
Actually I know first hand that most of the newer stuff from Nokia is running RTOSes on the DSP (not on the ARM -- they tend to use Symbian for that). I can't really give more information than that due to NDAs and such.
As Linus points out, though, few consumer embedded devices really need hard real time. Most media-related stuff can paper over delays with buffering. A classic comment is, "You run your web server on Linux. You run your nuclear reactor on QNX".
I think I have to take issue with these statements. There are plenty of consumer embedded devices that require meeting RT deadlines. Take the ubiquitous cell phone for example. How would you like it if your phone dropped your 911 call because it couldn't process the incoming packets fast enough?
Granted, not all embedded devices with RT deadlines fall under those types of life and death situations, but they need to meet those deadlines nonetheless or the devices just plain don't work. Sudenly your TIVO can't record TV shows, your robotic vacuum cleaner can't process data fast enough to avoid careening down the stairs it should avoid, your newfangled washing machine doesn't sense your clothes are dry, your GPS gives you incorrect position readouts... etc., etc., etc.
People don't realize it, but embedded devices are literally just about everywhere these days, whether you realize it or not.
Mechanik
Now we just need to be able to build Eclipse itself using Java 1.5. I really really want to use 1.5 in my Eclipse plugins. I want real container classes dammit! :-P
Currently you probably could build Eclipse using 1.5, but the Eclipse release engineering folks are still building using 1.4 (or at least, they were as of a month or so ago, and I haven't seen any mailing list traffic to the contrary). There won't be any official builds of Eclipse done with 1.5 for a while yet I think.
Mechanik
Game publishers should really do this kind of thing when they kill off a game line...
:-(
Take White Wolf for example. This year they killed off the entire line of previously existing World of Darkness games so that they could "reset" the whole world and start fresh. There are many similarities between the old games and the new games which have risen from their ashes (e.g. Vampire: The Requiem is very much like the previous Vampire: The Masquerade). However, there have been a LOT of changes, not just in rules, but primarily in setting.
This has a lot of WW purists cheesed off... "Where is my favourite clan? How could you get rid of them and keep clan X!", etc. There are a lot of people that would be happy to just keep continuing playing the old game, and that also includes people who like the new game as well.
Problem is, now all of the books for the old games are out of print. If you already have the books, well, you're golden for now... until they wear out (and yes, if you actually use them regularly they DO wear out quickly). For now, yeah, you could buy them online, or at your local game store, or whatever, but there is a finite supply. Eventually, they will be either impossible to find or too expensive to buy. At that point, the game will start to die as new players can't get books, etc.
IMHO, some fixed time after they kill off a game, I think they should just take every book that was ever released for it, and jam them onto a CD as PDFs. Sell that sucker for $20 or whatever. Then at least the game will live on forever in theory.
Luckily, I have a copy of the Vampire Revised CD-ROM that they came out with a few years ago, which has the core books on it. But, it doesn't have all the books, and it really really sucks for anything but a quick fact check as the viewable area of the pages is so damned small. A so-so solution at best I'm afraid
Mechanik
Hey, I know.... why not just ASK the remote site if they think they can handle the load?
I think therin lies the real problem with your idea. This system either requires a) that article submitters also submit a "contact email" that goes with every link they put in their story, or b) that the editors follow every link, and then dig around for who knows how long trying to find a contact. The second is definitely not practical.
In fact, neither are practical. Even IF you can find such an email, most of the various "webmaster@foo.com" emails NEVER get checked (or at least not in a timely fashion) because they are deluged with inane emails from the dregs of the internet, spam, etc. If you find one that does get checked, chances are your request is going to churn through managerial hell while the sysadmin, his 6 bosses, and the company's lawyers pass the buck amongst themselves trying to get permission to accomodate your request.
And then, there are just the gazillion people that won't be bothered to respond to you, not even to say "No".
Face it, what you propose would just never work. Slashdot would grind to a halt. Besides, webpages are like cars... if you're willing to put one out there running, you better be able to handle the traffic, or have enough sense to get off the road and park that sucker in the garage if things get too intense for you.
Mechanik
If the pussy is green, there is definitely something wrong with it.
I for one, welcome our new vagina-bearing overlords...
(Sorry, you had that one coming...)
Mechanik
Most recently I used my dremel and got through in about ten seconds (like a knife through hot butter)
Man, I don't know where you come from, but ten seconds? You must have either really blunt knives in your town, or titanium spiked butter or something, but damn!
Must be even worse than you think... The last time I checked, hot butter was a liquid...
Mechanik
I've always felt that the eye's light adaptation should be simulated by the game
FYI, they did this in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. In the multiplayer portion, if you hold still or move slowly enough, the room will actually brighten. Not a 100% biologically accurate simulation, but an interesting twist on the gameplay nonetheless.
Mechanik
Watch an aging Indy in a wheelchair fight off seniale ex-Nazis in a search for the bathroom so he doesn't have to use that bedpan any more. Yet when he gets there, a seniale ex-Nazi has the last roll of toliet paper! Watch as they battle it out with canes, and pause many times to take a breather and adjust their bifocal glasses.
Someone call Bruce Campbell... I think we have our plot for Bubba Ho-Tep II...
Mechanik
They designed it so you wouldn't HAVE to load your save game when you died.
I dunno about the rest of you but regardless of how well done and user friendly the "you just died" functionality was, if I failed a mission, I bloody well loaded up my last save point to maintain my previous stats and inventory. I'm willing to bet just about everyone else did this too.
Hell, I'm the kind of guy that used to hit the reset button back on my 486 DX33 while playing X-Wing because I didn't want my pilot to get captured or killed, and if I hit reboot before it saved the stats to the hard drive, I could just restart the mission.
Face it, these kinds of schemes are just way too easy to circumvent. As long as there are stats or an inventory that count for something, people will "cheat death" in the game.
Mechanik
5. Fire the retarded programmer that lets sniffers get installed on his PC
Well given that it was Gabe Newell's PC that was compromised, and given that Gabe Newell is the CEO, I think the chances of him firing himself are fairly small...
Then again, it would be the perfect excuse to buy them another year of development time...
Mechanik
*Jay mode on*
Dude, when my wife finally gets sick of catching me on your site and finally kills me in my sleep and cuts off my penis, I am fucking willing you that insurance money. God knows you've earned it. Motherfucker should be enshrined in the Smithsonian and shit!
*end Jay*
It's all just a cover story... really the sensors are for tracking intruders that might stumble upon the Pentagon's secret Area 52 base in the Arctic Circle...
Mark my words, some poor penguin is going to get hauled off in the middle of the night for "tampering with US Government Property"...
Mechanik
quoth the parent: I've been secretly fucking your sister in the ass for quite some time. I think it finally broke her
Slashdot really needs a "+1 - I know I'm going straight to hell for this but I'm modding you Funny anyway"
I want Google search on my .pst files from Outlook. Searching for a keyword through 2+ years of email takes FOREVER with the built-in search feature in Outlook. We're talking 5 or 10 minutes here.
:-P
And if I had a nickel for every time I had to resend something to a co-worker because they were too goddamned lazy to just search their email for the message I sent them THE FIRST TIME, well, Google wouldn't need an IPO because I'd just buy them outright!
That being said, filesystem searches with Google would be damn nice too.
Mechanik
I also do 'serious amateur' (25-50MB images) with Photoshop
I finally realized I was stuck in the depths of perversity when I looked at the above and immediately thought "Serious amateur" was some sort of porn reference...
Yikes...
Mechanik
I wonder how feasible it would be to have a "Christian mode"
/me ducks...
I think we're safe. Most FPS games already have a God mode...
Mechanik
I was very disappointed when I saw LOTR: ROTK, and there was no Battle of Hobbiton. I was really hoping to see this scene, and it just wasn't there. [...] Then there is also Tom Bombadil. Where'd he go?
Batte of Hobbiton I will concede, but c'mon, how many of us really wanted to see an hour of film devoted to Tom and his love of talking in rhymes and whatnot? Even as a fan I find those parts of the books annoying... how can you expect Joe Sixpack to sit through that let alone enjoy it?
IMHO, I think including Bombadil would have done a lot to wreck the generally serious and epic feel of the films. People already had enough complaints about the comic relief of Gimli and Pippen ruining the atmosphere for them. Personally I thought those were fine, but put in Bombadil and you would have whole different movie. When I think of the LOTR movies as is, I think "epic" the way I think of say, Ben Hur, or Spartacus, not funny and silly like the animated Disney movie Hercules.
Mechanik
when I submitted mine there was no one in the queue, so it was displayed immediately
Is it just me, or does it seem like they are opening themselves up to trouble by not having some sort of screening program in place for the designs? How long before a giant, vector graphic representation of the goatse.cx guy is seen floating over Dublin?
Mechanik
"Luke... *I* am your father"
...
"Yeah Dad, I saw that back in Episode 3"
Which means the CORRECT viewing order for future generations of Star Wars fans MUST be... 4, 5, 6, and then 1,2 and 3. NOT in chronological order.
Hah! Any true Star Wars fan would know the correct viewing order is 4, then 5, then 6, and 1, 2, and 3 not at all.
Mechanik
JA2 was a gorgeous game. I would love to see the development of a multiplayer mode; that would definitely be a lot of fun.
Definitely. Turn based multiplayer would even out the lag and twitchy reflex factors. Then the game would be about strategy and tactics, not pixel perfect aiming with your mouse, nor how many FPS you can get out of your video card, nor how low you can get your ping to the server.
And hell, while we're at it, you could definitely combat cheating with this too. Since combat is not realtime, you would not have to offload very much processing to the client. Shooting your enemies becomes a matter of sending a "I want to shoot at the guy on my left. Server, please calculate my to-hit roll and tell me if I hit him," request, rather then "Server, please fire bullet along vector (x,y,z) which has conveniently been generated by my aimbot."
Ahhh... a more cheat free game... tell me that's not attractive.
Mechanik
Somebody get on the call and ask them "If you have such a strong company and case, why do you feel the need to couple lawsuit announcements with your financial call?"
:-)
:-)
I would LOVE to see the Slashdot effect at work on this conference call. I don't suppose we're so lucky as for SCO to have set this up on a system where they pay per user connected, are we?
That and it would be great having 10,000 slashdotters heckling them
Mechanik