Well, in all honesty, BMW has been involved in hydrogen-research for a long time now, and it is common opinion that they are the leaders of that tech right now.
I was more referring to amount of spending/karma here (admittedly GM has a roughly infinite negative karma on environmental stuff as a whole), but that's quite interesting to learn.
GM's universal 'skateboard' platform on which bodies for hydrogen cars are dropped is a concept that's been getting a ton of press, however, and I'm pretty sure with the ungodly amount of money and talent GM is throwing at both the concept and the marketing for it they can't stay behind for long . . . this should be fun to watch. Finally a race between big companies to do something good.
General Motors is investing $1 billion a year in R&D for hydrogen cars. Quite frankly, they're beating everybody else that I'm aware of so freaking badly in the post-gasoline initiatives sector right now the last thing I'm going to do is sit there and criticize them. If canceling the EV1 helps get that hydrogen-powered skateboard out there to the public that much sooner, then I wish they'd pulled it earlier.
Of course, I don't own one so this is easy for me to say.
Various articles on the Sharp tech (don't have link available right now) have stated that there is no eyestrain *EXCEPT* at very close ranges, where the eye is forced to shift between focusing on two different depthplanes (this isn't the right term, but something like that) constantly.
It's logical to assume that games will use decreasing amounts of first person weapons models as this technology proliferates (at least until someone solves the problem).
Either way, I'll be staring at one of these screens 16 hours a day, every day.
Just saying. They could be giving you XP, or WinME, etc. and no MSVC++ 6.0 like some schools I won't mention.
Win2k kicks ass compared to nearly any other client OS I have encountered be it Windows, a Linux distro, *BSD, or BeOS. MSVC6 is decent as well as far as IDEs go.
That and DirectX itself are about the full list of really good things to come out of Microsoft. Everything prior - and it looks increasingly like everything after - did and/or will sucketh mightily. Don't know about you but I'd count myself pretty lucky if the only Microsoft products I had to worry about were the ones you just mentioned.
The vocalist outperformed the lyricist on this one by a few orders of magnitude, methinks. The last 'gooooooone' bit was amazing considering that she belted that out without even so much as a chuckle at the lyrics she had to sing.
FreeBSD has softupdates too. Ah, thanks. Wasn't aware of that.
portmap is turned off by default in OpenBSD 3.2. Yeah, the previous poster mentioned. That's really cool.
X works fine in OpenBSD and i bet most users who use OpenBSD use X on OpenBSD desktops and commandline on *all* their Unix servers, regardless of flavour (why should a dedicated webserver/firewall/database need X running?). I guess that was my point right there - FreeBSD, when I used it a while back, seemed more useful for a workstation. OpenBSD for an edge-of-network machine. But there's no saying each can't be the other, just that there are certain roles the developers seemed to focus on, that's all. Sorry if I ruffled any features.
Short Answer: OpenBSD has less 'nice' functionality, slightly less performance tuning, and no SMP support.
On the other hand it has an extremely well-audited source tree (by largely the same developers as OpenSSH), SoftUpdates, the new systrace work, an excellent brand new packetfilter that has yet to fail to impress from either a security or speed standpoint . ..
OpenBSD isn't really so much the most secure OS in the world as it is in many situations the most secure OS on the x86. For most of us around here, that's probably close enough as makes no odds.
The last release (in a bug that affected the prior release as well) had an OpenSSH issue in the default installation that became the first remote compromise for the default installation in nearly 5 years of the operating system. Admittedly, most things are turned off by default (although I wish a few more - portmap, inetd). Because of this and a few other errata, 3.2 has been looked forward to for a long time.
To sum, you have a stripped-down no-nonsense OS with all of the unnecessary crap tossed out of the default installation and available as ports and packages to those that want it. The perfect OS for those who want a secure router, and/or single/few-function server. This isn't an appropriate choice if you need more than a commandline, really, and there's a fair amount of pride amongst the user community over that.
A good source of 'how to' for OpenBSD is www.geodsoft.com's guide to installing and locking down OpenBSD. Whenever I do a fresh installation, I always double-check said site to make sure I haven't forgotten anything. It isn't complete, but it's a damned good start.
Really, though, the best way to learn OpenBSD is to just start using it. As you need to do new things, you'll learn how to effectively use the man pages, sites like Geodsoft, and the misc@OpenBSD mailing list to tackle your questions.
It's clear now (it wasn't at all when the media I read was blitzing the news) that EQ had little role in the killing. Whether it had a role in the general neglect of the infant (malnourishment) isn't addressed in any article I can find, but that seems to be the implication, and the prosecuter makes a statement to that effect in the above link.
This is all gleaned from developer quotes, interviews, and gamasutra articles:
$5 million is quite a bit as it comes out to $60 million a year. Keep in mind that most games are LUCKY to break 100,000 copies sold (x$50 = $5 million), and thus Everquest makes Verant as much in a month as most games do in a year.
However, a solid chunk of this goes to upkeep of the servers, bandwidth, and salaries for the shoddy-at-best support staff. IIRC, slightly less than 50%. So that leaves $30-35 million a year to play with a year. But wait, let's assume I'm way off base and those fees rack up 80% - that's still $10 million a year net.
Guess how much it takes to develop a good MMORPG? Between 8 and 11 million dollars. EQ has been running a few years now, which is why Sony/Verant can afford to develop four new games simultaneously (EQ2, SW:G, some MMOFPS I believe called Planetside, and some MMORTS).
Frankly, the whole business makes me sick. Everquest is terribly unfun to anybody not hooked on it, yet it's like crack to the poor souls addicted to it (many dropping out of college, ignoring their marriages, and in one case neglecting their newborn to the point of death). In exchange for making a shitty game Verant reaps ungodly amounts of money as far as their industry is concerned. Perhaps worst of all, though, is the way Verant hits new heights in censorship of its playerbase - going so far as to remove the accounts of players who post 'objectionable material' in message boards, or those trying to write their own software to act as third-party servers for the game client (DMCA, anyone?). While they're certainly entitled to write any crazed demands into their EULA that they wish, they'll never see another cent from me again.
For a story about a relatively sane MMORPG company that built its game cheaply and (for an MMORPG) fairly bugfree using a mix of licensed proprietary client software and open source software on the backend (smart combination, that), check out Postmortem on Mythic Entertainment's Dark Ages of Camelot (free login required).
But how is it possible for the editorial 'skill' on slashdot to slip even further down the drain?
I might be biased because my feelings for BSD have more in common with other people's feelings for sex or air, but really . . . "teh?" How in the hell can you miss that and still speakah teh Engleesh?
It feels like some of the questions here were slightly dodged, but overall the one thing that becomes readily apparent is that percentage-based licensing is a fair answer to the question of OSS. Bruce Perens onboard can only mean that things will be more favorable for OSS developers than if he were not.
The only thing that I immediately question is the assumption of completely open/free participation in the WWW thus far - the mainstream DNS system hasn't been anything like devoid of money (for full participation - either by domain fees or by paying your ISP for access to their name servers)in the past few years and seems none the worse for it. Many of the people around here (myself included) have their own domains that they pay for, and then host on OSS.
This looks great for a nice wearable SSH2 session, but the bulk of my time (and that of the majority of people using computers, I'd think) is spent digging around the web or using tools of fairly high resolution demands in Win2k (3D Studio MAX, Photoshop, MSDEV, etc.).
If you manage to get it to 1600x1200x32x85hz and retain the general physical characteristics of current models, I'll pay as much as/kill whomever you wish for one. Using an RSI 'cast' to gauntlet-mount a Half Keyboard on one hand and a 4D mouse on the other in combination with one of those tiny stripped down Celery 700 boxes, I'm pretty much set.
But doesn't the speed of sound change with the air-pressure? If I remember highschool physics correctly, sound has a higher velocity in a denser medium.
Perhaps CmdrTaco would feel a bit differently if he was the one spending 16 hours a day on the phone every day for 14 days straight listening to that elevator music from Hell while overworked and scatterbrained qwest.net employees accidentally canceled his entire account three times just because he wanted to switch off a DMT line so that his Cisco 675 would work - what should have been a 24 hour interruption-free and painless operation. Perhaps he'd be outright enraged if this was in some way, shape, or form, critical to, say, slashdot's smooth functioning (analogy, obviously).
The word 'anti-achievement' doesn't belong in there, troll.
Personally: Foaming at the mouth? Yes. Socialist? Ideally (not pragmatically) Liberal? Not for social moires. Communist? No. Anti-capitalist? Hell Yes. Pro-government? Ahahahaha No. Anti-achievement? You could not be more wrong.
Tits wasn't my point, nor was guns. Thief would be my alltime favorite game.
I should point out that Conker's BFD has done HORRIBLY in sales - especially for a console game.
Can you name another really good title for the N64 geared towards someone who goes for Thief, Deus Ex, Fallout Tactics?
Dynasty Warriors comes immediately to mind for the PS2 - Halo for the Xbox of course, not to mention that every PC game from here on out will be ported to it. I feel like Nintendo stopped being a solution for my type of gamer around the same time Squaresoft gave them the finger.
I hate to say this (and it'll get me modded down), but Nintendo stopped making games for people over age 10 a long time ago. Sony has more or less a complete hold on the adult console market at the moment (Dreamcast isn't bad but Sega's done and gone). Not to tout Microsoft, but I'll welcome the Xbox if and when it's dual 'Joe-AOL's Consumer PC' and 'Every PC Game Developer' advantages help it gouge bloodied chunks from Sony's monopoly.
Screw Nintendo - they stopped making games for serious gamers a long time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, in all honesty, BMW has been involved in hydrogen-research for a long time now, and it is common opinion that they are the leaders of that tech right now.
I was more referring to amount of spending/karma here (admittedly GM has a roughly infinite negative karma on environmental stuff as a whole), but that's quite interesting to learn.
GM's universal 'skateboard' platform on which bodies for hydrogen cars are dropped is a concept that's been getting a ton of press, however, and I'm pretty sure with the ungodly amount of money and talent GM is throwing at both the concept and the marketing for it they can't stay behind for long . . . this should be fun to watch. Finally a race between big companies to do something good.
General Motors is investing $1 billion a year in R&D for hydrogen cars. Quite frankly, they're beating everybody else that I'm aware of so freaking badly in the post-gasoline initiatives sector right now the last thing I'm going to do is sit there and criticize them. If canceling the EV1 helps get that hydrogen-powered skateboard out there to the public that much sooner, then I wish they'd pulled it earlier. Of course, I don't own one so this is easy for me to say.
Various articles on the Sharp tech (don't have link available right now) have stated that there is no eyestrain *EXCEPT* at very close ranges, where the eye is forced to shift between focusing on two different depthplanes (this isn't the right term, but something like that) constantly.
It's logical to assume that games will use decreasing amounts of first person weapons models as this technology proliferates (at least until someone solves the problem).
Either way, I'll be staring at one of these screens 16 hours a day, every day.
--Ryv
Just saying. They could be giving you XP, or WinME, etc. and no MSVC++ 6.0 like some schools I won't mention.
Win2k kicks ass compared to nearly any other client OS I have encountered be it Windows, a Linux distro, *BSD, or BeOS. MSVC6 is decent as well as far as IDEs go.
That and DirectX itself are about the full list of really good things to come out of Microsoft. Everything prior - and it looks increasingly like everything after - did and/or will sucketh mightily. Don't know about you but I'd count myself pretty lucky if the only Microsoft products I had to worry about were the ones you just mentioned.
--Ryvar
No. Why?
Here's why.
The vocalist outperformed the lyricist on this one by a few orders of magnitude, methinks. The last 'gooooooone' bit was amazing considering that she belted that out without even so much as a chuckle at the lyrics she had to sing.
FreeBSD has softupdates too.
Ah, thanks. Wasn't aware of that.
portmap is turned off by default in OpenBSD 3.2.
Yeah, the previous poster mentioned. That's really cool.
X works fine in OpenBSD and i bet most users who use OpenBSD use X on OpenBSD desktops and commandline on *all* their Unix servers, regardless of flavour (why should a dedicated webserver/firewall/database need X running?).
I guess that was my point right there - FreeBSD, when I used it a while back, seemed more useful for a workstation. OpenBSD for an edge-of-network machine. But there's no saying each can't be the other, just that there are certain roles the developers seemed to focus on, that's all. Sorry if I ruffled any features.
Short Answer:
.
OpenBSD has less 'nice' functionality, slightly less performance tuning, and no SMP support.
On the other hand it has an extremely well-audited source tree (by largely the same developers as OpenSSH), SoftUpdates, the new systrace work, an excellent brand new packetfilter that has yet to fail to impress from either a security or speed standpoint . .
OpenBSD isn't really so much the most secure OS in the world as it is in many situations the most secure OS on the x86. For most of us around here, that's probably close enough as makes no odds.
The last release (in a bug that affected the prior release as well) had an OpenSSH issue in the default installation that became the first remote compromise for the default installation in nearly 5 years of the operating system. Admittedly, most things are turned off by default (although I wish a few more - portmap, inetd). Because of this and a few other errata, 3.2 has been looked forward to for a long time.
To sum, you have a stripped-down no-nonsense OS with all of the unnecessary crap tossed out of the default installation and available as ports and packages to those that want it. The perfect OS for those who want a secure router, and/or single/few-function server. This isn't an appropriate choice if you need more than a commandline, really, and there's a fair amount of pride amongst the user community over that.
"I like those odds! Thank God my ISP admins don't!"
A good source of 'how to' for OpenBSD is www.geodsoft.com's guide to installing and locking down OpenBSD. Whenever I do a fresh installation, I always double-check said site to make sure I haven't forgotten anything. It isn't complete, but it's a damned good start.
Really, though, the best way to learn OpenBSD is to just start using it. As you need to do new things, you'll learn how to effectively use the man pages, sites like Geodsoft, and the misc@OpenBSD mailing list to tackle your questions.
--Ryv
3. While drivign down the street at night have you ever turned off your headlights and driven using only the force? did you live?
. . . I'm not even sure how to answer that last bit. No?
Yes, actually. Although like many news stories, what was initially reported (and what I read) was not what actually happened:
Here.
It's clear now (it wasn't at all when the media I read was blitzing the news) that EQ had little role in the killing. Whether it had a role in the general neglect of the infant (malnourishment) isn't addressed in any article I can find, but that seems to be the implication, and the prosecuter makes a statement to that effect in the above link.
Actual St. Petersburg article here.
--Ryv
This is all gleaned from developer quotes, interviews, and gamasutra articles:
$5 million is quite a bit as it comes out to $60 million a year. Keep in mind that most games are LUCKY to break 100,000 copies sold (x$50 = $5 million), and thus Everquest makes Verant as much in a month as most games do in a year.
However, a solid chunk of this goes to upkeep of the servers, bandwidth, and salaries for the shoddy-at-best support staff. IIRC, slightly less than 50%. So that leaves $30-35 million a year to play with a year. But wait, let's assume I'm way off base and those fees rack up 80% - that's still $10 million a year net.
Guess how much it takes to develop a good MMORPG? Between 8 and 11 million dollars. EQ has been running a few years now, which is why Sony/Verant can afford to develop four new games simultaneously (EQ2, SW:G, some MMOFPS I believe called Planetside, and some MMORTS).
Frankly, the whole business makes me sick. Everquest is terribly unfun to anybody not hooked on it, yet it's like crack to the poor souls addicted to it (many dropping out of college, ignoring their marriages, and in one case neglecting their newborn to the point of death). In exchange for making a shitty game Verant reaps ungodly amounts of money as far as their industry is concerned. Perhaps worst of all, though, is the way Verant hits new heights in censorship of its playerbase - going so far as to remove the accounts of players who post 'objectionable material' in message boards, or those trying to write their own software to act as third-party servers for the game client (DMCA, anyone?). While they're certainly entitled to write any crazed demands into their EULA that they wish, they'll never see another cent from me again.
For a story about a relatively sane MMORPG company that built its game cheaply and (for an MMORPG) fairly bugfree using a mix of licensed proprietary client software and open source software on the backend (smart combination, that), check out Postmortem on Mythic Entertainment's Dark Ages of Camelot (free login required).
--Ryv
--Ryv
But how is it possible for the editorial 'skill' on slashdot to slip even further down the drain?
I might be biased because my feelings for BSD have more in common with other people's feelings for sex or air, but really . . . "teh?" How in the hell can you miss that and still speakah teh Engleesh?
--Ryv
Well. I guess that'll teach YOU to use a Mac.
--Ryv
It feels like some of the questions here were slightly dodged, but overall the one thing that becomes readily apparent is that percentage-based licensing is a fair answer to the question of OSS. Bruce Perens onboard can only mean that things will be more favorable for OSS developers than if he were not.
The only thing that I immediately question is the assumption of completely open/free participation in the WWW thus far - the mainstream DNS system hasn't been anything like devoid of money (for full participation - either by domain fees or by paying your ISP for access to their name servers)in the past few years and seems none the worse for it. Many of the people around here (myself included) have their own domains that they pay for, and then host on OSS.
--Ryv
This looks great for a nice wearable SSH2 session, but the bulk of my time (and that of the majority of people using computers, I'd think) is spent digging around the web or using tools of fairly high resolution demands in Win2k (3D Studio MAX, Photoshop, MSDEV, etc.).
If you manage to get it to 1600x1200x32x85hz and retain the general physical characteristics of current models, I'll pay as much as/kill whomever you wish for one. Using an RSI 'cast' to gauntlet-mount a Half Keyboard on one hand and a 4D mouse on the other in combination with one of those tiny stripped down Celery 700 boxes, I'm pretty much set.
--SB
But doesn't the speed of sound change with the air-pressure? If I remember highschool physics correctly, sound has a higher velocity in a denser medium.
--Ryv
Perhaps CmdrTaco would feel a bit differently if he was the one spending 16 hours a day on the phone every day for 14 days straight listening to that elevator music from Hell while overworked and scatterbrained qwest.net employees accidentally canceled his entire account three times just because he wanted to switch off a DMT line so that his Cisco 675 would work - what should have been a 24 hour interruption-free and painless operation. Perhaps he'd be outright enraged if this was in some way, shape, or form, critical to, say, slashdot's smooth functioning (analogy, obviously).
--Ryvar
Personally:
Foaming at the mouth? Yes.
Socialist? Ideally (not pragmatically)
Liberal? Not for social moires.
Communist? No.
Anti-capitalist? Hell Yes.
Pro-government? Ahahahaha No.
Anti-achievement? You could not be more wrong.
--Ryvar
Of course, ipf.c has claims within it that run contrary to this, and the license changes only affect the test versions -so far-.
If that same license makes it into the production versions . . . well, doesn't FreeBSD have a nice firewall package anyways?
--Ryvar
In a world of black, the few bits of white really stand out. That was good for me to hear. --Ryv
I should point out that Conker's BFD has done HORRIBLY in sales - especially for a console game.
Can you name another really good title for the N64 geared towards someone who goes for Thief, Deus Ex, Fallout Tactics?
Dynasty Warriors comes immediately to mind for the PS2 - Halo for the Xbox of course, not to mention that every PC game from here on out will be ported to it. I feel like Nintendo stopped being a solution for my type of gamer around the same time Squaresoft gave them the finger.
--Ryvar
Screw Nintendo - they stopped making games for serious gamers a long time ago.
--Ryvar