First of all, the problem with a chemical solution (acid, explosive, therimte, etc.) is the danger for the user. Bat what about this: The harddisk will be encrypted anyway, if you store a part of the key in a battery backed-up SRAM you just need to make sure the power goes off when the tracking device is removed...
And a german geek would say, Zuse's Z1-Z3 were the first computers. They were 1/2 mechanical and 1/2 electric, AFAIK. I read his book, how they build the machine(s). I can say only one thing: They had the true hacker spirit!
This is quite obviously a April fools joke. If you've read the article: They want you to punch a hole into a black cardboard and watch your DVDs through it... This is based on the general DVD paranoia: The US / JP / EU version of DVD X has move features/is cut/has better encoding. Of course, maybe they've given another idea to the crazy American Censorship freaks.
I don't remeber if it came in C:/MSDOS or C:/WINDOWS, but there was a file "OS2.TXT", where Microsoft described how to install on a computer with OS/2. Basically "back up all data and remove the partition". No word about OS/2's really nice dual-boot system, that could be even configured with a graphical interface.
I just had this strange thought: What if they create a 100% exact copy of a molecular lifeform, but it doesn't start to "live" ? Because some "Spark of life" is missing ? If that would be the proof that there is something not explainable by science ? Would a great war between the religions break out, because now there is a proof of god, just which is the right one ? Of course, that is not going to happen, because life is just a chain of chemical reactions, and thoughts are just electrochemical patterns in our brains. Or not ?
There were a few Glide emulators/wrappers around before. Let's see how 3DFX reacts. The others were sued, and the Glide license protects the API to be used for anything except Glide game.
Yes ! This is exactly what I'm waiting for ! I've been telling this for ages: - We have open-source compilers - We have an open-source OS - A lot of interesting programs are open-source - The OS is portable to different architectures
All you need to support a new architecture is typeing "make". Okay, almost, but if the developers cared about endian or sizeof(int) problems, it will just be a compile.
This is a reason, why I bought a PowerMac. Would it be only the closed-source MacOS I wouldn't have done it, but the Linux/PPC port and the PPC architecture lead to the decision to buy a PPC.
One cool thing is, that this would lead high-quality 3D-modelling applications into the Linux World. And I think we can expect some PSX hackers to improve GIMP's texture editing and image-creation abilities...
I've thought about this, too. AGI was designed for PC/XT style computers, Java should be fast enough. On the other hand: I'd wait until one engine is completed, and you can check your Java engine against that. Another cool Java project would be to rewrite the Editors and Compilers neccessary to write an AGI game - most of it is Win95 or MS/DOS.
Another thing, my "SND2MIDI" program showed, that it is possible to map the AGI music into MIDI-events... Imagine hearing real 3-voice music from your games, when you only knoe the 1-voice pc-speaker version ! (AGI music is stored in a format, to play with the PCjr's sound-chip in 3 voices, the PC version plays only the 1. voice)
AGI made it quite easy: The games are based on an bytecode interpreter, and the differences between the revisions are quite small, like a few additional instructions, or a new file-format for v3. It is more difficult for SCI (for example Space Quest 3 or Kings Quest 4), because the interpreter seems to get major additions for new games. And it isn't completely documented, yet. The same is true for SCUMM. There seem to be major changes between the games, and I have done only a little hacking on Maniac Mansion.
P.S.: Why not playing on an emulator ? Of course, but do we want NATIVE games, with an Open-Source engine that can be ported to any CPU (PPC, Alpha, Sparc, MIPS) out there, or do we want to live forever with emulated MS-DOS and Windows stuff ?
I always thought that the one of the reasons to drop Corel Draw for OS/2 was, that Microsoft threatend to stop any developer's support to Corel. Corel Draw is one of the "Killer Applications" I know for Windows, i.e. a reason for someone working with illustrations to buy a computer and install Windows.
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First of all, the problem with a chemical solution (acid, explosive, therimte, etc.) is the danger for the user.
Bat what about this: The harddisk will be encrypted anyway, if you store a part of the key in a battery backed-up SRAM you just need to make sure the power goes off when the tracking device is removed...
And a german geek would say, Zuse's Z1-Z3 were the first computers. They were 1/2 mechanical and 1/2 electric, AFAIK.
I read his book, how they build the machine(s). I can say only one thing: They had the true hacker spirit!
This is quite obviously a April fools joke. If you've read the article: They want you to punch a hole into a black cardboard and watch your DVDs through it...
This is based on the general DVD paranoia: The US / JP / EU version of DVD X has move features/is cut/has better encoding.
Of course, maybe they've given another idea to the crazy American Censorship freaks.
Jens
I don't remeber if it came in C:/MSDOS or
C:/WINDOWS, but there was a file "OS2.TXT", where Microsoft described how to install on a computer with OS/2. Basically "back up all data and remove the partition".
No word about OS/2's really nice dual-boot system, that could be even configured with a graphical interface.
I just had this strange thought: What if they create a 100% exact copy of a molecular lifeform, but it doesn't start to "live" ? Because some "Spark of life" is missing ?
If that would be the proof that there is something not explainable by science ?
Would a great war between the religions break out, because now there is a proof of god, just which is the right one ?
Of course, that is not going to happen, because life is just a chain of chemical reactions, and thoughts are just electrochemical patterns in our brains. Or not ?
I think Origin licensed Babelfish for Ultima Online for this... Interesting idea, it's quite obvious. I'd really like to see it.
Alpha:
- all requested features implemented
- there are known bugs preventing operation in 10% of cases
Beta:
- no known bugs
- code not rock-solid
- should operate in 99% of cases
Release:
- Rock solid, bugs apear only in special cases not though of during development
I think the project wants to find out how the rewiring works. If you can control that, you don't need to wait...
There were a few Glide emulators/wrappers around before. Let's see how 3DFX reacts. The others were sued, and the Glide license protects the API to be used for anything except Glide game.
I'd be surprised if this isn't specified in ELF...
Yes ! This is exactly what I'm waiting for ! I've been telling this for ages:
- We have open-source compilers
- We have an open-source OS
- A lot of interesting programs are open-source
- The OS is portable to different architectures
All you need to support a new architecture is typeing "make". Okay, almost, but if the developers cared about endian or sizeof(int) problems, it will just be a compile.
This is a reason, why I bought a PowerMac. Would it be only the closed-source MacOS I wouldn't have done it, but the Linux/PPC port and the PPC architecture lead to the decision to buy a PPC.
One cool thing is, that this would lead high-quality 3D-modelling applications into the Linux World. And I think we can expect some PSX hackers to improve GIMP's texture editing and image-creation abilities...
I've thought about this, too. AGI was designed for PC/XT style computers, Java should be fast enough.
On the other hand: I'd wait until one engine is completed, and you can check your Java engine against that.
Another cool Java project would be to rewrite the Editors and Compilers neccessary to write an AGI game - most of it is Win95 or MS/DOS.
Jens
Another thing, my "SND2MIDI" program showed, that it is possible to map the AGI music into MIDI-events... Imagine hearing real 3-voice music from your games, when you only knoe the 1-voice pc-speaker version !
(AGI music is stored in a format, to play with the PCjr's sound-chip in 3 voices, the PC version plays only the 1. voice)
AGI made it quite easy: The games are based on an bytecode interpreter, and the differences between the revisions are quite small, like a few additional instructions, or a new file-format for v3.
It is more difficult for SCI (for example Space Quest 3 or Kings Quest 4), because the interpreter seems to get major additions for new games. And it isn't completely documented, yet.
The same is true for SCUMM. There seem to be major changes between the games, and I have done only a little hacking on Maniac Mansion.
P.S.: Why not playing on an emulator ? Of course, but do we want NATIVE games, with an Open-Source engine that can be ported to any CPU (PPC, Alpha, Sparc, MIPS) out there, or do we want to live forever with emulated MS-DOS and Windows stuff ?
Isn't this an Infocom adventure ? Try your favourite port of the Z-Engine....
I always thought that the one of the reasons to drop Corel Draw for OS/2 was, that Microsoft threatend to stop any developer's support to Corel.
Corel Draw is one of the "Killer Applications" I know for Windows, i.e. a reason for someone working with illustrations to buy a computer and install Windows.