I have used this argument before on Slashdot, but here it goes again.
The issue as I mentioned previously is not your pants size alone. Its a correlation of all the data. By itself, the pants data is probably harmless.
The question then becomes do you want people to know a ton of your private personal details?
Your answer to this is probably: "I don't care, I have nothing to hide."
Really?
What is your pants size?
What is your home mailing address?
What are your phone numbers?
How old are you?
What sex are you?
How often do you brush your teeth?
How often do you have sex?
How many people have you had sex with??
Have you ever had homosexual sex?
Have you ever fantisized about it?
What is your favorite type of porn, and how often do you masturbate to it?
What are the names and addresses of your previous/current sexual partners so that we can contact them and get their opinion on your sexual prowess?
Now, my suggestions are getting outrageous right?
But you must see my point that there are some things that *YOU* don't want the world at large to know. If you fill out enough of these little tidbits in enough little areas it is possible that this information could end up in a centralized database with some pretty interesting statistics on you.
Just imagine what would happen if an estranged individual got ahold of THAT information.
With a credit card it is difficult to find out too much about you... Or it should be.
Although this is turning into a slippery slope argument, I must wonder how far this can go?
Think about it, Website A has your pants size. Website B has your real name and address. Website C has a large log of the things you like to buy from their online shopping. Website D has a collection of what type of p0rn you like to surf for....
Websites A,B,C and D sell their information to some "spamhaus" that creates a database that is able to correlate all the information from the sites back to you. Now mass marketers have access to information in a singular database that you are not aware of.
If this happens, where does your privacy go??
Any malicious individual (or just a plain "marketer") now has access to a collection of things that you thought were private details.
Its not the pants alone that is the issue, its the possiblity that your pants data can be correlated with your surfing habits etc...
I think you are accurately describing the future of PDA's. I already use my Palm IIIx in most of the above capacity, Books, news, Email. The only thing it does not have is the storage and the connectivity. The next big jump is as you have surmised... PDA's.
Palm will be on the forefront of this, the Palm VII is just the tip of the iceberg.
On the note of reliability, the palms need to be more durable, I have broken 2 screens, and a friend of mine broke one yesterday.
The next killer app, is already here, it will just take time to develop.
I would never want a "net device", but I am a geek. I own 8 PC's and I administer many more at work. Because I am a geek people always ask me what kind of computer they should buy, I always give them some idea of what they need.
You can see where this is going...
People who know nothing about the systems ask the people who do know what to buy... How often would you imagine that the word-of-mouth from geeks is praiseworthy over a net device? I would say almost never.
On the bright side (for geeks) there are cheap "PC's" around to hack on. I am trying to get a WebSurfer from Virgin to build a dedicated Linux MP3 player for my car. (The WebSurfer has a disk on a chip WOOO! Talk about fast boots!)
There was an earlier slashdot story about the claw, which is a similar device. I posted there.
Code reuse is a good thing right? So is post-recycling!
================================================ ==
A long time ago when I first started with the mouse in Quake 1 I went through 3 different incarnations of my key layout. Here is (part of) my current key configuration from Quake bind "e" "impulse 10"
bind "f" "+moveright"
bind "g" "impulse 7"
bind "r" "+movedown"
bind "s" "+moveleft"
bind "t" "messagemode "
bind "MOUSE1" "+attack "
bind "MOUSE2" "+forward "
bind "SPACE" "+jump "
There is a reason for every key above. Mind you depending on the game I add keys. (Currently I am playing Thief 2 with the above setup, and a is set to toggle crouch for example.)
Now, over time I have seen many many key setups and neat tricks for FPS games. I still have yet to see anything that replaces a good key setup.
Believe it or not, I borrowed the current key configuration from my Kung Fu Style. (No Really!)
My left hand rests on A,S,D,F, and thumb on space. The same keys that it is resting on now while I type, I do not have to move my left hand from the
home position if I desire to type (just move one finger for T, and take right hand off mouse.) This is what is called "economy of motion" that is, never move more than you need to to accomplish you goal. The less of a distance you have to move, the faster you will move.
S and F are strafe naturally (I still cannot believe how few people use this, watch them you can see the people who dont use this!) Your setup should have it that these keys are ALWAYS under your fingers, you need to be able to sidestep.
I can temporarily take my left hand off the keyboard and grab a snack or a drink and I still have move forward and fire bound to the mouse. I
sacrifice some mobility, but I am still moblie while drinking. (Yes, I am a die-hard:)
Now look at all the keys I have not yet listed:
Mouse weel (3 buttons actually by itself)
Mouse thumb button (logitech mouseman +) A (usually assigned to duck)T (talk/type) Q, Z, C, V, B, G, R, Y, H, N, Shift, Cntrl, Tab, and numbers 1-6. I assign these dependent on the game I play.
This goes straight back to kung fu: Economy of Motion. While the claw offers me the same (sort of) functionality, I would have to take BOTH my
hands off my control devices to be able to type. That violates the Economy of Motion principle.
Now, lets look at the strategic commander.
Its good, it does all of the above, it even has programmable "macros" allowing multiple combinations. This is good. However, in order to type a message you must take BOTH hands off of your control devices. That is not good. Without control you are going to be an easy frag, even if you are Thresh himself. The only advantage I can see is the added macro/record ability, and I rarely use macros (TFC being the only exception) as I feel that the breed weakness. I remember the people using keybinds in Quake 1 for rocket jumping. It worked flawlessly: but only for specific jumps. macros breed weakness, if you can only do one kind of rocket jump for example, you cant do a running backwards one, or a sideways one, or the original 180 rocket jump as seen in quake done quicker.
So, I think that this thing is neat, but I don't see it conveying a huge advantage (if any) over the keyboard/mouse combo.
Since the debut of the IBM PS2 Model 25 I have been doing all my home compting in a lazy boy. Currently I have a large table in front of me that has an extended monitor arm for my 17" monitor, and a bevy of monitors to my left on a seperate table for the rest of my machines. To my right is a chair that I put my mouse on, and one of my Cambridge Soundworks Speakers.
You probably think that this is silly, as do most of the people who come into my "geek-room". Still if it was so damn silly then why do some of my geek friends use this exact same setup? Because its comfortable thats why. (They thought it was dumb at first too, until they sat down and tried it...)
No one blinks an eye when someone uses a Lazyboy to watch tv. They all seem to get up in arms when one uses it to sit in for a Quake match...
Heck, I have upgraded this rig too! My O'Reilly books are within easy reach as is my Hub, cable modem, desk lamp and "under lazyboy chair heater" for those cold Canadian days in the geek-room.
If you are going to try it, just make certain you have a table that is high enough to get your legs under in the lazy boy.
Re:Why not use the Quake engine?
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I have heard of a generator that makes random quake levels on the fly. I would love to find it again. I have an idea for a mod/game that could really make use of that technology.
You could I suppose use flexible design in the way you used the brushes to create the level. You are correct though. The BSP design is fast when the level is already VIS'ed. Good point.
No, its not BS. As I said in my original post in my experience I have watched X choke. I was dual booting a 486 DX with 32 MB of ram and win 95 ran faster than Linux with X and FWMV95. Thats what I have witnessed. (RH 5.2 back in the day). Ok, maybe I don't know how to optimize X to give it better performance than explorer.exe. Fine.
Would you care to let me know how to do it? Because on my P-133 with 32 MB of ram X is still slow. On my primary machine (Celeron 450, 192 Mb of ram, matrox G400, dual boot) Windows does not have a chance. X just *SMOKES* explorer. It runs like a dog on the other machines.
Re:Why not use the Quake engine?
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Unfortunatly it already has been. Some time ago.
Back in 1996 I remember downloading quake levels that were exactly that.
It has been done with doom as well.
From what I understand the novelty of such things has worn off because I have not heard about it being done in Quake 2-3 or any other engine to date.
AFAIK, the quake engine is very streamlined for 3d. If you were to use it as a windowing environment you could really strip it down by removing all the "game" options. The requirements for it are no longer considered high IMO.
What I find strange is that Win 95 will run fine on a 486, but in my experience X chokes with insufficent ram. X itself is bloated, and building a WM on top of that adds to the problem. Quakes footprint is not ALL that bad, and again, you would have to modify the code for your specific purpose anyhow.
I would love to get Carmacks opinion on this.
Why not use the Quake engine?
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John Carmack thoughtfully GPL'ed the Quake engine, why can't this be used for a WM?
Quake is a lean 3d graphics engine, and now with programmers working on it at sourceforge it can only improve. Heck, since you can run it from the command line you can completly bypass X! (Although too much software depends on X now...)
It is disabled by default. Take a look at your ini file in the myst demo folder. There are some hash marks before a few lines, one of them is the extended keys. Unfortunatly you cannot bind your own, but they are in there.
Voting time is upon both the U.S. and Canada.
As a Canadian I see a the net from distinctly different point of view.
The political system here is different in that anyone (more or less) can for their own party, which is why we don't have just Republicans and Democrats. IMO I believe that this is what creates the apparent apathy in American voters. IIRC ~50% of the American public votes in elections, because there is really only a choice between Republican and Democrat. Here in Canada we have so many different parties in different provinces (Heck, we even had a RHINO party once that was a complete FARCE, and it was a farce ON PURPOSE!)
I am not saying our system is better, just different. I think it helps eliminate the apathy though, having more choice. This is why I don't forsee the internet becoming a "dominant" political forum in Canada for some time. I can see it in the U.S. where people feel that they have a lesser choice.
Its sad really, given that there are other candidates than Bush and Gore, but they won't get in because of voter apathy, or this feeling that they could never get in. Well, they will never be elected if you don't vote for them dammit. 50% of the vote is SIGNIFIGANT!
So, to tie it all together, yes. The internet will become quite a dominant political device sometime *AFTER* the current election in the U.S. I hope it distributes more choice amongst Americans.
Well, thats my opinion. I expect to get flamed to hell and back for it.
Well I am not to proud to admit that I was taken in. Goddam, I could have sworn it was April 1.
I was hooked right until the very end until "he" started mentioning that the document should not be leaked. Then of course is the note at the end about it being satire.
Thanks Slashdot, thanks alot. Now everyone on my ICQ list who got that link is gonna flame me for the comments attached to the URL I sent everyone.
This problem has been known for some time, I forget when I first read this paper, but it has been out for over a year. It describes the problem in good enough detail that I downloaded the adobe versions and made a hard copy of them. Its about time that "major" news service noticed.
Goddam that makes me angry.
Just when you think stuff like this can't happen in your country it does. (It can happen anywhere)
I must admit that I have considered joining the RCMP specifically for computer crime. I like the idea of "hacking", I wish I was a "grey-hat" but I really am a white one.
I don't know if I want to join the RCMP for computer work now. I like the idea of prosecuting REAL computer criminals. I strongly dislike the idea of the types of things that occured in your case. I don't know if I could work for an organization that is supposed to UPHOLD the law, but actually breaks it.
Linus Torvalds has spurred a love of beer amongst Linux users according to Jargon.org, he really loves Guiness. Wierd, really given the Guiness used to flavour their beer with dead horses in the early years IIRC.
Oh what is a Linux geek to do? Boycott Guinness? Offend the founding father, Oh! Agony!
That's it. Im switching to BSD, Penguins like beer but Demons drink a mixture of sulpur and brimstone, as far as I know no one has tried to register sulphur-and-brimstone-really-sucks.com!
This guy gets it. I must say I am impressed. From the article:
Yikes! Let's get real for a minute. The CueCat is free. D:C sent it out to magazine readers without them even requesting it. Consider a few analogies: If I send you a free microwave, can I then demand that you use it only to heat liquids? Can I force you to power it using only electricity from my favored energy utility? Could I prohibit you from sawing it in half and using it as a miniature golf obstacle? Similarly, if I mailed you a free, unsolicited PC, could I force you to install Windows on it, if you'd rather use Linux? My lawyer friends tell me no.
I only wish there was more reporting like this, and as Hemos notes, they do say that Slashdot is one of the better places for this kind of discussion. Now I only wish that I could get a cue cat here in Canada. I checked out www.getcuecat.com and they are not avalible here. I asked at the local Radio Shack, and they are supposed to be coming here soon. I can't wait to get one and get the software for Linux for it. Bizzare licence agreements be dammned!
A long time ago when I first started with the mouse in Quake 1 I went through 3 different incarnations of my key layout. Here is (part of) my current key configuration from Quake bind "e" "impulse 10"
bind "f" "+moveright"
bind "g" "impulse 7"
bind "r" "+movedown"
bind "s" "+moveleft"
bind "t" "messagemode "
bind "MOUSE1" "+attack "
bind "MOUSE2" "+forward "
bind "SPACE" "+jump "
There is a reason for every key above. Mind you depending on the game I add keys. (Currently I am playing Thief 2 with the above setup, and a is set to toggle crouch for example.)
Now, over time I have seen many many key setups and neat tricks for FPS games. I still have yet to see anything that replaces a good key setup.
Believe it or not, I borrowed the current key configuration from my Kung Fu Style. (No Really!)
My left hand rests on A,S,D,F, and thumb on space. The same keys that it is resting on now while I type, I do not have to move my left hand from the home position if I desire to type (just move one finger for T, and take right hand off mouse.) This is what is called "economy of motion" that is, never move more than you need to to accomplish you goal. The less of a distance you have to move, the faster you will move.
S and F are strafe naturally (I still cannot believe how few people use this, watch them you can see the people who dont use this!) Your setup should have it that these keys are ALWAYS under your fingers, you need to be able to sidestep.
I can temporarily take my left hand off the keyboard and grab a snack or a drink and I still have move forward and fire bound to the mouse. I sacrifice some mobility, but I am still moblie while drinking. (Yes, I am a die-hard:)
Now look at all the keys I have not yet listed:
Mouse well (3 buttons actually by itself)
Mouse thumb button (logitech mouseman +)
A (usually assigned to duck)T (talk/type)
Q, Z, C, V, B, G, R, Y, H, N, Shift, Cntrl, Tab, and numbers 1-6. I assign these dependent on the game I play.
This goes straight back to kung fu: Economy of Motion. While the claw offers me the same (sort of) functionality, I would have to take BOTH my hands off my control devices to be able to type. That violates the Economy of Motion principle.
Sure, I am nuts. But I credit my key setup for giving me that little edge in a few tournaments that I have won. There is one on right now for a PIII 800 system, $20 entry fee here in my town. I have a pretty good shot at it.
There thats my story and I am sticking to it.
Month? Nah, probably a little faster...
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Take a PC, install a default copy of RH 6.2, hook it up to a static IP DSL modem. Come back in a month or two, and you'll find that you have
at least 1 or 2 "volunteer" sysadmins!
Month or two? Try a few hours. I have tried this a few times, and it is usually compromised within a week. Twice I have seen the machine compromised within 5 hours.
I am posting from work, because my @Home connection has been sporadic for 3 days now.
I know what they are doing with the cable system in my area, I have friends on the "inside" as it were. They sent out a Email to all the people in our area annoucing that they would be performing "upgrades" to our service. I found out that this is not exactly true. One of the things that they are doing is DECREASING the overall speed in our area. This is called an upgrade. They are doing this because more and more people in our area are signing on, and they need to preserve bandwith for everyone. As a sysadmin I can understand this. I cannot condone calling this an upgrade to my service however.
I know one of the former tech support Guru's for my area (left for better pay and respect) and I got a good deal of some of the internal doings at @home. I would say that the main problem is that the individual companies tied to @home are still running with the "cable TV mentality".
It seems that the managers in my area are quite familiar with Cable TV, but are totally clueless when it comes to the internet. My friend (no, I will not give out his name thank you very much) told me horror stories of how members of upper management would dictate how certain server upgrades or changes were to be made, yet they have no networking experience of any kind.
There are both good and bad people in my area. Some really know their stuff, some dont. It just seems like the dilbert principle applies here. The least capable people are promoted to management where they can do the least harm.
Yes, you are bang on in this. There was a good article on this a few issues back in MaximumPC. Things like their golf game and flight unlimited helped to bleed the company. The sad thing is that LG was great at making original games, but not at cookie cutter games (golf, flight). Well or rather they were alright at it, but LG had no competiton in their class, indeed no gaming company even approached their class (efforts by Spector notwithstanding).
Its too bad, they should have stayed with the original games. Really, the worst thing is the number of people who bought their games was low (not overly low, but not UT or Q3A levels.) My opinion is that LG made games for people with brains, people who like plot development, and a damn good experience. Its rather like a Stanley Kubrick movie, great critical acclaim, but no one goes to see them.
Note to Slashdotters, If you have not tried Thief 1 or 2, or System Shock 2 (also by Irrational games) You really should, some of these titles are in the bargain bin now...
Daikatana is the worst game of the year not because it sucked itself down, not because the sidekick AI was slightly smarter than a watermelon...
Daikatana sucked because of Romero's endless spending and Eidos's decision to back them financially. This (helped) cause the demise of Looking Glass Entertainment Maker of such incredible games as Thief 1 and 2, and System Shock 2.
Its really Ironic that a division of Ion Storm managed to produce one of the best games of the year, Deus Ex. It is even more Ironic that Warren Spector, Producer of Thief 1 works for Ion Storm. And now, Warren Spector has the rights to Thief 3 (damn good thing he does too!) and it looks like Ion Storm will be releasing it.
I want to modify a furby so that if fed after midnight all its fur falls of and it turns green.
An additional feature to this model would be the automatic replication of Furby's when placed into contact with water.
From what I understand of studying my schematics so far however, the Furby would be extremly adverse to light. For some reason that I cannot explain it seems that water-based asexual reproduction in a Furby results in a structure that is degraded by photons. Curious.
("The next time those little buggers come in here I'm gonna turn the fire hoses on them!")
Slashdot Mirror
I have used this argument before on Slashdot, but here it goes again.
The issue as I mentioned previously is not your pants size alone. Its a correlation of all the data. By itself, the pants data is probably harmless.
The question then becomes do you want people to know a ton of your private personal details?
Your answer to this is probably: "I don't care, I have nothing to hide."
Really?
What is your pants size?
What is your home mailing address?
What are your phone numbers?
How old are you?
What sex are you?
How often do you brush your teeth?
How often do you have sex?
How many people have you had sex with??
Have you ever had homosexual sex?
Have you ever fantisized about it?
What is your favorite type of porn, and how often do you masturbate to it?
What are the names and addresses of your previous/current sexual partners so that we can contact them and get their opinion on your sexual prowess?
Now, my suggestions are getting outrageous right?
But you must see my point that there are some things that *YOU* don't want the world at large to know. If you fill out enough of these little tidbits in enough little areas it is possible that this information could end up in a centralized database with some pretty interesting statistics on you.
Just imagine what would happen if an estranged individual got ahold of THAT information.
With a credit card it is difficult to find out too much about you... Or it should be.
Although this is turning into a slippery slope argument, I must wonder how far this can go?
Think about it, Website A has your pants size. Website B has your real name and address. Website C has a large log of the things you like to buy from their online shopping. Website D has a collection of what type of p0rn you like to surf for....
Websites A,B,C and D sell their information to some "spamhaus" that creates a database that is able to correlate all the information from the sites back to you. Now mass marketers have access to information in a singular database that you are not aware of.
If this happens, where does your privacy go??
Any malicious individual (or just a plain "marketer") now has access to a collection of things that you thought were private details.
Its not the pants alone that is the issue, its the possiblity that your pants data can be correlated with your surfing habits etc...
I think you are accurately describing the future of PDA's. I already use my Palm IIIx in most of the above capacity, Books, news, Email. The only thing it does not have is the storage and the connectivity. The next big jump is as you have surmised... PDA's.
Palm will be on the forefront of this, the Palm VII is just the tip of the iceberg.
On the note of reliability, the palms need to be more durable, I have broken 2 screens, and a friend of mine broke one yesterday.
The next killer app, is already here, it will just take time to develop.
Your list of criteria is dead on.
I would never want a "net device", but I am a geek. I own 8 PC's and I administer many more at work. Because I am a geek people always ask me what kind of computer they should buy, I always give them some idea of what they need.
You can see where this is going...
People who know nothing about the systems ask the people who do know what to buy... How often would you imagine that the word-of-mouth from geeks is praiseworthy over a net device? I would say almost never.
On the bright side (for geeks) there are cheap "PC's" around to hack on. I am trying to get a WebSurfer from Virgin to build a dedicated Linux MP3 player for my car. (The WebSurfer has a disk on a chip WOOO! Talk about fast boots!)
There was an earlier slashdot story about the claw, which is a similar device. I posted there.
= ==
Code reuse is a good thing right? So is post-recycling!
===============================================
A long time ago when I first started with the mouse in Quake 1 I went through 3 different incarnations of my key layout. Here is (part of) my current key configuration from Quake bind "e" "impulse 10"
bind "f" "+moveright"
bind "g" "impulse 7"
bind "r" "+movedown"
bind "s" "+moveleft"
bind "t" "messagemode "
bind "MOUSE1" "+attack "
bind "MOUSE2" "+forward "
bind "SPACE" "+jump "
There is a reason for every key above. Mind you depending on the game I add keys. (Currently I am playing Thief 2 with the above setup, and a is set to toggle crouch for example.)
Now, over time I have seen many many key setups and neat tricks for FPS games. I still have yet to see anything that replaces a good key setup.
Believe it or not, I borrowed the current key configuration from my Kung Fu Style. (No Really!)
My left hand rests on A,S,D,F, and thumb on space. The same keys that it is resting on now while I type, I do not have to move my left hand from the
home position if I desire to type (just move one finger for T, and take right hand off mouse.) This is what is called "economy of motion" that is, never move more than you need to to accomplish you goal. The less of a distance you have to move, the faster you will move.
S and F are strafe naturally (I still cannot believe how few people use this, watch them you can see the people who dont use this!) Your setup should have it that these keys are ALWAYS under your fingers, you need to be able to sidestep.
I can temporarily take my left hand off the keyboard and grab a snack or a drink and I still have move forward and fire bound to the mouse. I
sacrifice some mobility, but I am still moblie while drinking. (Yes, I am a die-hard:)
Now look at all the keys I have not yet listed:
Mouse weel (3 buttons actually by itself)
Mouse thumb button (logitech mouseman +) A (usually assigned to duck)T (talk/type) Q, Z, C, V, B, G, R, Y, H, N, Shift, Cntrl, Tab, and numbers 1-6. I assign these dependent on the game I play.
This goes straight back to kung fu: Economy of Motion. While the claw offers me the same (sort of) functionality, I would have to take BOTH my
hands off my control devices to be able to type. That violates the Economy of Motion principle.
Now, lets look at the strategic commander.
Its good, it does all of the above, it even has programmable "macros" allowing multiple combinations. This is good. However, in order to type a message you must take BOTH hands off of your control devices. That is not good. Without control you are going to be an easy frag, even if you are Thresh himself. The only advantage I can see is the added macro/record ability, and I rarely use macros (TFC being the only exception) as I feel that the breed weakness. I remember the people using keybinds in Quake 1 for rocket jumping. It worked flawlessly: but only for specific jumps. macros breed weakness, if you can only do one kind of rocket jump for example, you cant do a running backwards one, or a sideways one, or the original 180 rocket jump as seen in quake done quicker.
So, I think that this thing is neat, but I don't see it conveying a huge advantage (if any) over the keyboard/mouse combo.
Since the debut of the IBM PS2 Model 25 I have been doing all my home compting in a lazy boy. Currently I have a large table in front of me that has an extended monitor arm for my 17" monitor, and a bevy of monitors to my left on a seperate table for the rest of my machines. To my right is a chair that I put my mouse on, and one of my Cambridge Soundworks Speakers.
You probably think that this is silly, as do most of the people who come into my "geek-room". Still if it was so damn silly then why do some of my geek friends use this exact same setup? Because its comfortable thats why. (They thought it was dumb at first too, until they sat down and tried it...)
No one blinks an eye when someone uses a Lazyboy to watch tv. They all seem to get up in arms when one uses it to sit in for a Quake match...
Heck, I have upgraded this rig too! My O'Reilly books are within easy reach as is my Hub, cable modem, desk lamp and "under lazyboy chair heater" for those cold Canadian days in the geek-room.
If you are going to try it, just make certain you have a table that is high enough to get your legs under in the lazy boy.
I have heard of a generator that makes random quake levels on the fly. I would love to find it again. I have an idea for a mod/game that could really make use of that technology.
You could I suppose use flexible design in the way you used the brushes to create the level. You are correct though. The BSP design is fast when the level is already VIS'ed. Good point.
BS
No, its not BS. As I said in my original post in my experience I have watched X choke. I was dual booting a 486 DX with 32 MB of ram and win 95 ran faster than Linux with X and FWMV95. Thats what I have witnessed. (RH 5.2 back in the day). Ok, maybe I don't know how to optimize X to give it better performance than explorer.exe. Fine.
Would you care to let me know how to do it? Because on my P-133 with 32 MB of ram X is still slow. On my primary machine (Celeron 450, 192 Mb of ram, matrox G400, dual boot) Windows does not have a chance. X just *SMOKES* explorer. It runs like a dog on the other machines.
Unfortunatly it already has been. Some time ago.
Back in 1996 I remember downloading quake levels that were exactly that.
It has been done with doom as well.
From what I understand the novelty of such things has worn off because I have not heard about it being done in Quake 2-3 or any other engine to date.
AFAIK, the quake engine is very streamlined for 3d. If you were to use it as a windowing environment you could really strip it down by removing all the "game" options. The requirements for it are no longer considered high IMO.
What I find strange is that Win 95 will run fine on a 486, but in my experience X chokes with insufficent ram. X itself is bloated, and building a WM on top of that adds to the problem. Quakes footprint is not ALL that bad, and again, you would have to modify the code for your specific purpose anyhow.
I would love to get Carmacks opinion on this.
John Carmack thoughtfully GPL'ed the Quake engine, why can't this be used for a WM?
Quake is a lean 3d graphics engine, and now with programmers working on it at sourceforge it can only improve. Heck, since you can run it from the command line you can completly bypass X! (Although too much software depends on X now...)
It is disabled by default. Take a look at your ini file in the myst demo folder. There are some hash marks before a few lines, one of them is the extended keys. Unfortunatly you cannot bind your own, but they are in there.
Voting time is upon both the U.S. and Canada.
As a Canadian I see a the net from distinctly different point of view.
The political system here is different in that anyone (more or less) can for their own party, which is why we don't have just Republicans and Democrats. IMO I believe that this is what creates the apparent apathy in American voters. IIRC ~50% of the American public votes in elections, because there is really only a choice between Republican and Democrat. Here in Canada we have so many different parties in different provinces (Heck, we even had a RHINO party once that was a complete FARCE, and it was a farce ON PURPOSE!)
I am not saying our system is better, just different. I think it helps eliminate the apathy though, having more choice. This is why I don't forsee the internet becoming a "dominant" political forum in Canada for some time. I can see it in the U.S. where people feel that they have a lesser choice.
Its sad really, given that there are other candidates than Bush and Gore, but they won't get in because of voter apathy, or this feeling that they could never get in. Well, they will never be elected if you don't vote for them dammit. 50% of the vote is SIGNIFIGANT!
So, to tie it all together, yes. The internet will become quite a dominant political device sometime *AFTER* the current election in the U.S. I hope it distributes more choice amongst Americans.
Well, thats my opinion. I expect to get flamed to hell and back for it.
Well I am not to proud to admit that I was taken in. Goddam, I could have sworn it was April 1.
I was hooked right until the very end until "he" started mentioning that the document should not be leaked. Then of course is the note at the end about it being satire.
Thanks Slashdot, thanks alot. Now everyone on my ICQ list who got that link is gonna flame me for the comments attached to the URL I sent everyone.
Goddam. Hook Line and Sinker.
From what I understand in the early 1800's they let a dead horse decompose in their beer vats.
Ewww.
Heh, I am a vegitarian anyhow (for health reasons, not fanatical ones)
Is avalible here.
This problem has been known for some time, I forget when I first read this paper, but it has been out for over a year. It describes the problem in good enough detail that I downloaded the adobe versions and made a hard copy of them. Its about time that "major" news service noticed.
Goddam that makes me angry.
Just when you think stuff like this can't happen in your country it does. (It can happen anywhere)
I must admit that I have considered joining the RCMP specifically for computer crime. I like the idea of "hacking", I wish I was a "grey-hat" but I really am a white one.
I don't know if I want to join the RCMP for computer work now. I like the idea of prosecuting REAL computer criminals. I strongly dislike the idea of the types of things that occured in your case. I don't know if I could work for an organization that is supposed to UPHOLD the law, but actually breaks it.
Linus Torvalds has spurred a love of beer amongst Linux users according to Jargon.org, he really loves Guiness. Wierd, really given the Guiness used to flavour their beer with dead horses in the early years IIRC.
Oh what is a Linux geek to do? Boycott Guinness? Offend the founding father, Oh! Agony!
That's it. Im switching to BSD, Penguins like beer but Demons drink a mixture of sulpur and brimstone, as far as I know no one has tried to register sulphur-and-brimstone-really-sucks.com!
This guy gets it. I must say I am impressed. From the article:
Yikes! Let's get real for a minute. The CueCat is free. D:C sent it out to magazine readers without them even requesting it. Consider a few analogies: If I send you a free microwave, can I then demand that you use it only to heat liquids? Can I force you to power it using only electricity from my favored energy utility? Could I prohibit you from sawing it in half and using it as a miniature golf obstacle? Similarly, if I mailed you a free, unsolicited PC, could I force you to install Windows on it, if you'd rather use Linux? My lawyer friends tell me no.
I only wish there was more reporting like this, and as Hemos notes, they do say that Slashdot is one of the better places for this kind of discussion. Now I only wish that I could get a cue cat here in Canada. I checked out www.getcuecat.com and they are not avalible here. I asked at the local Radio Shack, and they are supposed to be coming here soon. I can't wait to get one and get the software for Linux for it. Bizzare licence agreements be dammned!
A long time ago when I first started with the mouse in Quake 1 I went through 3 different incarnations of my key layout. Here is (part of) my current key configuration from Quake bind "e" "impulse 10"
bind "f" "+moveright"
bind "g" "impulse 7"
bind "r" "+movedown"
bind "s" "+moveleft"
bind "t" "messagemode "
bind "MOUSE1" "+attack "
bind "MOUSE2" "+forward "
bind "SPACE" "+jump "
There is a reason for every key above. Mind you depending on the game I add keys. (Currently I am playing Thief 2 with the above setup, and a is set to toggle crouch for example.)
Now, over time I have seen many many key setups and neat tricks for FPS games. I still have yet to see anything that replaces a good key setup.
Believe it or not, I borrowed the current key configuration from my Kung Fu Style. (No Really!)
My left hand rests on A,S,D,F, and thumb on space. The same keys that it is resting on now while I type, I do not have to move my left hand from the home position if I desire to type (just move one finger for T, and take right hand off mouse.) This is what is called "economy of motion" that is, never move more than you need to to accomplish you goal. The less of a distance you have to move, the faster you will move.
S and F are strafe naturally (I still cannot believe how few people use this, watch them you can see the people who dont use this!) Your setup should have it that these keys are ALWAYS under your fingers, you need to be able to sidestep.
I can temporarily take my left hand off the keyboard and grab a snack or a drink and I still have move forward and fire bound to the mouse. I sacrifice some mobility, but I am still moblie while drinking. (Yes, I am a die-hard:)
Now look at all the keys I have not yet listed:
Mouse well (3 buttons actually by itself)
Mouse thumb button (logitech mouseman +)
A (usually assigned to duck)T (talk/type)
Q, Z, C, V, B, G, R, Y, H, N, Shift, Cntrl, Tab, and numbers 1-6. I assign these dependent on the game I play.
This goes straight back to kung fu: Economy of Motion. While the claw offers me the same (sort of) functionality, I would have to take BOTH my hands off my control devices to be able to type. That violates the Economy of Motion principle.
Sure, I am nuts. But I credit my key setup for giving me that little edge in a few tournaments that I have won. There is one on right now for a PIII 800 system, $20 entry fee here in my town. I have a pretty good shot at it.
There thats my story and I am sticking to it.
Take a PC, install a default copy of RH 6.2, hook it up to a static IP DSL modem. Come back in a month or two, and you'll find that you have
at least 1 or 2 "volunteer" sysadmins!
Month or two? Try a few hours. I have tried this a few times, and it is usually compromised within a week. Twice I have seen the machine compromised within 5 hours.
I am posting from work, because my @Home connection has been sporadic for 3 days now.
I know what they are doing with the cable system in my area, I have friends on the "inside" as it were. They sent out a Email to all the people in our area annoucing that they would be performing "upgrades" to our service. I found out that this is not exactly true. One of the things that they are doing is DECREASING the overall speed in our area. This is called an upgrade. They are doing this because more and more people in our area are signing on, and they need to preserve bandwith for everyone. As a sysadmin I can understand this. I cannot condone calling this an upgrade to my service however.
I know one of the former tech support Guru's for my area (left for better pay and respect) and I got a good deal of some of the internal doings at @home. I would say that the main problem is that the individual companies tied to @home are still running with the "cable TV mentality".
It seems that the managers in my area are quite familiar with Cable TV, but are totally clueless when it comes to the internet. My friend (no, I will not give out his name thank you very much) told me horror stories of how members of upper management would dictate how certain server upgrades or changes were to be made, yet they have no networking experience of any kind.
There are both good and bad people in my area. Some really know their stuff, some dont. It just seems like the dilbert principle applies here. The least capable people are promoted to management where they can do the least harm.
Yes, you are bang on in this. There was a good article on this a few issues back in MaximumPC. Things like their golf game and flight unlimited helped to bleed the company. The sad thing is that LG was great at making original games, but not at cookie cutter games (golf, flight). Well or rather they were alright at it, but LG had no competiton in their class, indeed no gaming company even approached their class (efforts by Spector notwithstanding).
Its too bad, they should have stayed with the original games. Really, the worst thing is the number of people who bought their games was low (not overly low, but not UT or Q3A levels.) My opinion is that LG made games for people with brains, people who like plot development, and a damn good experience. Its rather like a Stanley Kubrick movie, great critical acclaim, but no one goes to see them.
Note to Slashdotters, If you have not tried Thief 1 or 2, or System Shock 2 (also by Irrational games) You really should, some of these titles are in the bargain bin now...
Daikatana is the worst game of the year not because it sucked itself down, not because the sidekick AI was slightly smarter than a watermelon...
Daikatana sucked because of Romero's endless spending and Eidos's decision to back them financially. This (helped) cause the demise of Looking Glass Entertainment Maker of such incredible games as Thief 1 and 2, and System Shock 2.
Its really Ironic that a division of Ion Storm managed to produce one of the best games of the year, Deus Ex. It is even more Ironic that Warren Spector, Producer of Thief 1 works for Ion Storm. And now, Warren Spector has the rights to Thief 3 (damn good thing he does too!) and it looks like Ion Storm will be releasing it.
That is a strange cycle of events...
I want to modify a furby so that if fed after midnight all its fur falls of and it turns green.
An additional feature to this model would be the automatic replication of Furby's when placed into contact with water.
From what I understand of studying my schematics so far however, the Furby would be extremly adverse to light. For some reason that I cannot explain it seems that water-based asexual reproduction in a Furby results in a structure that is degraded by photons. Curious.
("The next time those little buggers come in here I'm gonna turn the fire hoses on them!")