Re:it looks like it's just a really good DOT3 bump
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E3 Doom III Preview
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The bump map generation to which you refer can no longer be called "innovative"
I'll grant that, but I think most of the hype is more about real-time bump mapping within a gaming environment, on a consumer machine. That is something that to my knowledge has not been done successfully (and technically hasn't yet, since Doom III is still unreleased.)
The term "CD Quality" refers to more than just the quality of the final sonic reproduction. That, is more dependant upon the equipment that is playing the media than the media itself, in most cases. Since it is so dependent upon the output equipment, it is largely irrelevant. The important issue of "CD Quality" is its "flawless" duplication. Sure, even when using an optical or coaxial feed off of the player, there will be some signal degredation due to faulty transport mechanisms, imperfections on the disc, dust, incorrect optical cable alignment, "jitter," ect. The effects of that are extremely minimal, however, and statisticaly insignificant, even over many multiple generations of duplication.
MP3, on the other hand, is a dead end format. Once a waveform has been compressed, there is no going back without further degredation. Sure, the files can be copied from computer to computer with no information loss, but the audio itself can go no further. You cannot do much with it, other than listen to it on your mid-range to low-end audio set ups.
Granted, that is all most people need, but it is the critical difference between master and duplication that the industry likes to gloss over and pretend does not exist.
That is basically what I was getting at, from a different angle. These days, you have hundreds of games flying at you all of the time. Some of these games might be truly incredibly -- but you either don't hear about them, or you put them aside before you really get a chance to fully flesh out the game because Something Better just came along.
Back "In The Day" the arrival of a new game was a special thing in itself. There wasn't as much volume, and the amount of people playing the games was smaller. The percentage of people playing these games were concentrated more in the dedicated gamer demographic. You had less people who were casually interested in them, because the route to them was obscure and expensive. Personal computers just were not as viable. Now lots of families owns multiple computers, and more people have a much easier path to games.
This is elementary, and this is what causes glut. The percentage shifts from the dedicated core (which incidentally still exists, but is completely stifled) to the more casual gamers. These sort of volumes and percentages are what give you the trends that create the game press engine. It's a symbiotic relationship, they feed off of one another.
Another large factor, in my mind, is where the games are pointed at. What is the average demographic? In the late 70s and 80s, games were targeted at an older age group (though they attracted more than that.) These days, many games (even the "mature" ones) are targeted at a younger demographic. A 32 year old is going to enjoy poking around in a text described dungeon more than a ten year old (in general, of course!)
Throwing all of it aside, getting to the important thing. I don't really care how many feathers and bubbles they throw around, as long as they don't impact the quality of the games I like. In the past, that has happened once or twice, but not enough to really ruffle my feathers. The games I've always enjoyed have been the more detailed simulator types, text based MUD or MUD analogues, or completely anal, rules focused turn based affairs. These have much smaller markets, and thus have been able to survive the explosion around them. I just revisited the Stars! development page, and despite the quantum leap in graphic presentation over the older versions, it still looks as if it will be a fundamentally solid game in the core. If so, that's great! If not, then I'll have to add it to my attrition list, and all of these years spent hopefully waiting for it will be in dissapointment.
I'd be willing to bet there are resources out there for gamers like us who are more interested in the game, and less interested in having to spend several thousand dollars every few years to have the fanciest specular highlighted fragments in our explosions.
That is precisely what I was thinking as I was reading through this thread. The only game that I've purchased within the past half year that I've honestly completely enjoyed is Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator. That team really outdid themselves this time. I've been playing the game since before it had a version number, and it was freshly licensed off of its original creators, on a tiny 5" amber monochrome screen in the first IBM "portable" computer. The latest incarnation beats the pants off of its earlier siblings.
There are other examples of modern games that manage to provide solid entertainment for hours, weeks, months, years.
The problem with perception is partially due to nostalgia, but I would venture to say it has more to do with the simple fact that you cannot have a classic instantly (despite what marketing would like you to believe.) We are living within the world of modern gaming, and in 20 years there will be games that we look back upon fondly from this era. We just don't see them yet because the present is not all condensed in distant memory.
This all said, there are still games being developed on old tech! Sure, the market isn't big, and quite often they are open for free play, but the world of MUDing is far from dead. You can find fresh MUD servers dishing out comparably advanced games, with good engines, methods for fun role playing, and intriguing universes and story lines, to this day.
If you look for the good games out there, you'll find them. They might not be stacked up in CompUSA with an entire row to themselves. They might not have 24/7 BluesNews.com coverage. But they exist, and to deny that is just to fool yourself and others.
P.S. to all of this. One of my favorite strategy games ever, Stars!, never had much in the way of graphics. It was simply presented, but had enormous strategic turn-based appeal. They've been working on the sequel for years now, and I'm in the same SimCity boat as you. Worried about the fact that they are spending X amount of time on graphics. I hear the latest beta is up to almost 2GB of graphics. *sigh* Hopefully they spent as much time on the engine, because that was an honestly good game. It even put VGAPlanets to shame.
Many online and paper audiophile magazines also give recommendations on good classical recordings. Though they tend to slant their reviews towards how well the CD is crafted sonically, typically they also base this on the quality of the performance as well. There are a lot of CDs out there that are recorded poorly, and checking out the recommends in these resources can help you dodge the worst.
Ironically, they neglected to notice that such a demonstration (I won't use the term 'scientific test' here) was in fact a strong case for free speech. The very fact that they were allowed to pit an alcoholic beverage against a government document of monumental importance says that much.
Their case would not have been near so effective if they had been arrested for contesting the State, disappearing into some deserted corner of the country in a labor camp.
Live effects are spiffy at first, and for some things they work okay. The problem I, and most other perfectionists have with them though is a lack of flexability. It is just as easy to make drop shadows without 'effecting the image' on grouped layers that you have TONS of control over. I'm the type that goes and airbrushes variations into my artwork. Stock shadows and such just don't cut it.
Now though, they do have their place in scripting. If you want a bunch of cheaply made web images with drop shadows you can really smash them out with an "action." In general though I don't like them enough to ever use them. Something I would much rather see in Gimp now is a freakin' VISABLE BRUSH EDGE.
That is incorrect, one method of configuration requires TK, but you can just as easily configure the kernel using Curses with
# make menuconfig
That would make two apps that need it for you.:) Or you can go the hardcore way and answer questions one by one at your terminal with only a rudimentary shell. Personally, I prefer menuconfig.
But it's ugly. Having a library around just for one program is ass-ugly.
That is your opinion, which is to be respected. Most people in the *NIX world wouldn't agree with you though. Having half a megabyte of libraries isn't that big of a deal at all. What is this single application you have? On my machine there are plenty of applications I use that need ncurses. It is a pretty common library, the typical Linux machine uses it quite a bit.
I have no clue how. According to ktop, my memory usage hovers at 50MB while I'm in KDE 2.0, just after having run a GNOME app.
No offense, but I see several problems with your setup that could be causing this. One is that you are using ktop to scope your processes. I would suggest to you that if memory is a big deal, use the smaller more well tested applications such as top or ps. They are not as pretty, but they do not use so many resources. Which Gnome application are you running? That makes a big difference. If it is gnote then there is a problem.
If you are going to be running both Gnome and KDE simultaniously, you need to be prepared for the usage fees. You are running two major system in tandom (and be thankful that you can do that.) so do not be surprised when it uses a lot of hardware. To be honest with you, once I installed KDE 2 I havn't used Gnome at all. I never thought I would be saying that, but in my opinion KDE 2 surpasses Gnome as far as polish goes. Just my opinion. I don't even use KDE 2 that often, very rarely. Most of my applications do not reside in either the Gnome or KDE realm. I have them there in case I need them, dorment on my hard disk.
And bleeding edge browsers are an absolute necessity for desktop use, ask any BeOS user.
Maybe I should ask what you are defining as a desktop user. I'm a desktop user and I can do 90% of my browsing with lynx. I'm comfortable with the program and it only returns what I need, the information, not the fancy mouse rollovers, flash plugins, and other such glut that serve no purpose other than to wow the user. I fully realize that the average desktop computer user (in my definition) wouldn't understand or like lynx. I don't suggest the world uses it, however I consider myself to be a desktop user and do not need floating layers on my web pages! So your definition is flawed somewhere.
Linux IS a server OS, but I get flamed whenever I say that. Linux is a wanabee desktop OS that just isn't there yet. Have you taken a look outside slackware land lately? Everyone is trying to cram Linux into the desktop.
A work in progress would be a much more apt and intelligent way of putting it than 'wanabee.' Do recall that the entire desktop movement upon which you are referring to is only two or so years old now. It is very infantile, and to assume that it is going to have every single thing you are used to with the MacOS or even Windows only displays your lack of understanding on the issues here.
Now, that being said, I think great progress is being made. When you consider the fact that these desktop distributions, Gnome, KDE, and other solutions are so young, and driven practically 100% by volunteer work it is very impressive and I have great respect for the folks working on those projects.
I'm not going to compare Linux with any other pure desktop system simply because it isn't there yet. It is getting there quickly, but not yet.
Funny, I always seem to need those features.
I find that difficult to believe. You actually use every feature of the latest Word versions? If you do not mind me asking, what is your career? I know that there are some positions that might require that kind of usage in large corporations and whatnot. However, for ever 1 person that actually needs that feature-set there are 10,000 who do not. That puts you in a very, very small minority. You cannot expect the entire development community of open sourcers to cater to such a small percentage before the basics are even complete. Incidentally you might want to check out StarOffice from Sun. I believe it is open source now, and probably the most feature-full office suite out there under that label. If not, it is free.
No, let me guess, you have tried it and it doesn't have one or two features you desperately need to get your work done. Three words: Display some adaptability. That is what makes a good employee anyhow, not one who whines non-stop because of one little detail, but one who can find ways to work around things. I've found that in working around things I usually end up finding much much better ways to do things anyway.
You do know you could probably completely automate or imitate a lot of Words features using the plethora of *NIX tools out there, and end up with a much more consistent and appealling output using LaTeX, don't you?
I don't need Perl, ZSH, CSH, TK, Python, and 90% of the other stuff that the average Linux distro forces me to install. The problem is that the utility developers think that they are writing applications (they're not, utilities are OS-level apps), and indescriminantly use non-standard libraries.
Good for you, you happen once again to be in a pretty minute minority. Most people who use Linux do in fact need those applications. Expecially Perl, in fact some distributions use Perl extensively for their inner workings. Even if you do not personally ever invoke a perl command line, there is a lot of stuff going on behind your back you don't know about that is very likely done with Perl. If you really do not need these things, I suggest you switch distributions. If your distribution does not allow you to select what you install and you so irately do not want it, that is. Again, display some adaptability.
You can very easily uninstall things you do not need too (again depending on your distribution) so even if the Beginner's Installation puts this stuff on without your knowledge, you can always take it off after install.
Once again, ncurses, perl, TK, these are most certainly not non-standard libraries (Perl isn't really a library, but you get the point). Whoever told you that does not have a clue what they are talking about. As for Zsh, and Csh, those are shells, not libraries. I don't know any utilities or applications that require those shells to be functional. The only shell requirement is SH for installation... and please do not tell me that sh is a non-standard library. I will die laughing.
Okay, my honest opinion after hearing you talk for a bit is that you are maybe a one-year or less user of Linux. You got into it because everybody told you it was cool. Shame on those people for not fully preparing you for reality. The reality is that it is a server OS that has a lot of folks working very hard to get desktop-ish features attached to it in a very short amount of time. I still only recommend Linux to developers, sys admins, and computer hobbiests. I don't try to get everyday gamers and whatnot here yet because it isn't quite ready yet. First impressions are important to some people, and right now it doesn't give a good first impression to somebody who has used Windows their entire life.
There are many other factors that one has to overcome when switching OSes. The biggest thing people need to understand is that you are making a very big change in philosophy. The *NIX philosophy hardly resembles the philosophy of Windows users. Even in the way they use GUI applications. You tend to see lots of little apps spread out side by side over multiple virtual screens with X11. This is because over here, people design an application to do a few things, well. Over in the other camp, people pile their applications into one screen on top of each other, and each of these apps are monolithically huge, replacing 5 or 10 *nix apps. It comes down to opinion over which is better. Personally I prefer lots of little applications. Other people like the consistency of having everything in one big application. It is precisely this change in opinion that is required though, to make an effective switch. I had to do it when I switched. I had to realize that such and such application was not going to do everything such and such app did in Windows, but that was okay because I found other apps that worked together and in total did more! With less memory usage, with better stability. That is just one aspect, until you can get over some of these philosophy changes, it will always be weird and "inferior"
It extends to everything. The filesystem is based on this, the inner workings of the OS structure are based on this.
In another area I think where you are going wrong is that you are assuming that the current state of Linux is a good determinate in what it actually is This is not true. Linux, and the rest of the open source world can not be defined by a release date or a static slice in time. Things are very shifting here. Always getting better, though. So if you really do want to see what the future of it will be, stick around. Give it a year, trust me it will impress you more and more as time goes by. Don't just install it once and get hissy over details that you do not like currently. Continue using NT 4 for your games (Which is in itself absurd, why are you doing that? Why not use Win98ME??) and your MS Word needs, and keep tabs on how the Linux world is growing.
I know the tone of this not is a bit harsh, but your outlook is a common one and needs addressing. It is part of the rift between those who have been served by the software giants all their computing life, and those who have been apart of a growing development process.
I know exactly what you mean. I was born in the same year. I take consolidation in the fact that I was born when Star Wars came out anyways. So most of my nostalgic gaming experiences come from the original Flight Simulator, Test Drive, things like that.
In response to the choice of which crime to pursue. Remember this. Dunn has just come to grips with what he is. It is really the pivotal turning point in the movie. Up until that point he had approached his abilities with scorn, humor, disbelief, and finally belief - in that order.
The major defining scenes for all of the above would be scorn, looking for a scam, telling Price to shove off and stay away from his family.
Humor when he is with his son while working out and they keep stacking weights onto the barbell. The humor is both portrayed in his mannerisms and in the general shooting of this scene.
disbelief is the slowest level, and is very elegently portrayed by building slowly into the final scene we are discussing, where doubt turns into realization. He walks into the crowded terminal. The pictures start coming like he's always seen them, except now he is learning to trust what he sees.
Notice his facial reactions as this happens. He is obviously coming to a double realization. One that he can see these things through some miracle, and two, these people have actually DONE the stuff he sees. As he gets more and more images he obviously grows more and more disturbed, each crime building up as he gets over his numb state of mind.
Then, when he sees the murder it is the final straw, there is no more disassociation with reality. This person has actually murdered and almost without thinking he is triggered into action.
This rather well done theatrical sequence is not meant to be a selection process or Shyamalan's list of ethics. Instead it is a climax of emotion and understanding. Notice how each crime that is viewed becomes progressively worse. You go from shop lifting, to violence, to rape, and finally murder. This brings the audience with Dunn on his journey of growing horror and realization.
Personally, even though the ending of the movie just screamed, "SEQUEL!", I kind of hope they don't make one. I like the way it was sort of up to our imagination to think about the direction that Dunn's life took after the end of the movie...
Possibly, yes. The general trend in Hollywood is that sequels completely mess up everything. However, I think with this particular director/writer things could work out okay. Consider his flair for good story telling. If sequels do emerge, I highly doubt they'll just be "the continuing exploits of Super-Dave."
Not even close. We figured it out, if you take all 60 million lines of code and shrink it small enough to print onto (let's be generous) 15 feet of cloth, the font size would be about 13 atoms tall. Given the nature of cloth, hardly any of the "paint" would actually end up on the threads. Most would fall through the holes. You would in fact get a tshirt that was kinda stiff, and solid white.
Dia does networking diagrams. It comes with a decent set of templates. You just switch to the networking set an drag little servers and PCs onto the pasteboard. Connect them up with several options for lines, or make your own lines from scratch.
Dia is still a 'new-ish' program, so it isn't perfect, but it is getting good. I like the feel of the program a lot.
I thought their flowchart template was a little...quaint though. Punchcard templates? Really now.
I've yet to research FreeNet fully, either. It would seem that an entity *could* trace back to the IP level using ISP logs, where they exist. It wouldn't be sure-fire, but it would work much of the time.
If I'm wrong, then I am delighted.
It could be that one day typing in http:// will be just as arcane as typing in gopher://, who knows at this point. It is my hope, and I'm sure that many others share it, that this will remain a rather underground and less industrialized effort. The commercialization of the internet and WWW has done very little overall good. True, good has come of it, but I believe more trouble has been brought down on us by it than anything good.
The only way I can think of would be on the ISP level. Say a law is passed enforcing ISPs to filter out freenet:// calls. This would be exceptionally expensive for ISPs to do, and would likely crush the smaller local ones. That has never stopped the aristocrats before.
I don't see this happening because I believe distributed peer-to-peer will become the future internet. while it is technologically inferior to other methods today, since when has that kept dedicated folks from making it better? Once it becomes a 'standard,' filtering will be out of the question. Such a proliferation of distributed networks will appear and become massive far before the government is able to flesh out anything against it, expecially due to the shifting nature of new tech. Pass a bill today that stops what worked yesterday.
They would have to strike early, as in now to accomplish anything, and I don't believe it has even blipped in the mainstream yet. 9 out of 10 people have never heard of Gnutella, and it is the largest of its breed.
You are correct, I should have puts quotes around the second usage of "hard way" it was my intention.
This is why I think they should teach *NIX in the classrooms instead of just teaching you how to use word processors and spreadsheets. Some would argue that it would be learning the wrong environment since everybody uses MS products in the workplace, but I disagree. Since I've started using Linux I have learned far more about the fundamentals of a computer than I ever learned under DOS and Win32. I'm able to take that knowledge and use it in the Win32 environment easily.
The problem starts with the lack of education in the area of computers. As a regular highschool curiculum, you should take basic *nix fundamentals, basic C programming, maybe Perl, and a hardware course. Fourth year should then move to MS products, VBS and system maintence. Once you can accomplish tasks of this nature, you can very easily learn the simple programs such as making spreadsheets and typing research papers on a computer. It would be second nature at that point.
This isn't going to happen any time soon though. The computer market has way too much inertia in creating software for the dummies. This only leads people to take an increasingly 'dumb' approach to computing.
So, things are still as I have outlined in the original post. You have a division between the people who want to get their fingers dirty and those who don't. As you put it, they see it as a tool. It isn't the way it should be, I never meant to convey that.
Yes! Going back and saying "well we had to do it the hard way." and using that as some sort of meter for crowds of people isn't really fair.
There is the same ratio of lazy people to motivated people today that there was yesterday. If you look around you see a lot of people on computers, but don't forget that when we were learning on computers that you booted on a floppy since harddrives didn't exist, the ones who were NOT motivated, simply didn't use computers.
Now, it is different, they use computers because they are practically a necessity, they still don't want to learn them though. If you look around, there are still plenty of people willing, and even anxious to learn things the hard way and understand the fundamentals of how they work. Same ratio, different set of parameters.
What is it that makes me a karma whore? Are we not allowed to express our opinion on relevant topics any longer? What ever happened to the ideal of encouraging thought provoking conversation? Are we supposed to degrade ourselves into one liners merely to please the hoards?
I know you probably meant very little by what you say, but what you say is a growing trend here, even the modifiers are getting in on it. I believe that the opinion you are backing is very diseased indeed.
Personally, I do not see this inevitable, and it is inevitable, coupling between artificial worlds and the one we currently consume as a wrong or bad thing. In fact, it could be argued that an eventual migration to such technologies could be beneficial, rather than degenerative.
Essentially it will all leverage upon several facets of society. If these facets tip the the write way, it will work, if they tip the wrong way, this alternative world you suggest (as others have suggested many times before you) would become a negative asset.
At what point does an alternative reality become real enough to dispense with a prior reality?
The Matrix, to use an overused analogy, described a world in which that alternative reality became so indectectably ingrained, that the only reason you would not call it reality is because the plot of the story was centered around entrapped humans. The Thirteenth Floor did a better job of depicting this "world-within-world" philosophy.
If the inevitable end of online gaming and virtual reality results in a world that is as rich as ours, yet with the added bonus of being able to escape the types of problems that plague our intelligence-oriented society, what could be wrong with a migration?
The obvious answer to that, would be the fact that our bodies and the machines keeping them alive would still be rooted in this reality, and thus our lives within the alternative reality would be anchored in the safety of these machines, and our flesh body. If there was nobody on the "look out" anything could happen and nobody would know it had happened until they snapped out of their world and found their body trapped in a tomb of ice and machinery.
So then, what about a society based upon balance? Instead of one alternative reality, why not many? Why not have them all be built to serve individual goals in their chaotic structure, like a function produces mathematical order, and have these massive functions increasing the value of the planet, as well as the other societies within societies?
I know, I know, this is all rather far fetched to say the least. My point is to make clear that the concept of dissasociation might very well need to be discarded here, bringing the whole topic to be viewed in a different manner.
Thank you! I knew it was city/golden something or other. I read the first one, then got halfway through the second before Cryptonomicon came around and I've never come back to the series, I intend to though, it is very well written and with a good story to boot.
I think there is a simple reason for this, and Netscapes redirection schemes. The links that come default with the browser are very likely purchased by websites. Think of it this way, if you have an airplane ticket sale sight, what would be the best way to advertise? Banners? Hardly anybody clicks on those, or notices them, some even filter them.
Spamming your site to the top of websearch engines? That used to work with old search tech. Now with engines like Google, and human sorted directories that are big enough to be useful (dmoz.org) that doesn't work so well either.
That leaves convincing the browser producers to use your link as a default. Microsoft and Netscape very likely get payed to put those links there, and naturally they are going to want to track the usage of those links, so that they can see which ones are beneficial and which ones are duds. The purchasers of the default link would no doubt be interested in those statistics as well.
I have no idea if this is the case, but it seems to fit together for me.
I'm no scientist, but I can think of quite a few ways in which inert objects are bound together. It seems this new process will make it easier to fabricate a 'sheet' of diamond in place. So why not fashion the tip of the blade with a small groove that the diamond envelopes, and when it hardens it would cleave to the blade. The only way you could get it off would be to snap the blade.
I don't know enough about the process to be certain, but the mechanics of the idea would work.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll grant that, but I think most of the hype is more about real-time bump mapping within a gaming environment, on a consumer machine. That is something that to my knowledge has not been done successfully (and technically hasn't yet, since Doom III is still unreleased.)
The term "CD Quality" refers to more than just the quality of the final sonic reproduction. That, is more dependant upon the equipment that is playing the media than the media itself, in most cases. Since it is so dependent upon the output equipment, it is largely irrelevant. The important issue of "CD Quality" is its "flawless" duplication. Sure, even when using an optical or coaxial feed off of the player, there will be some signal degredation due to faulty transport mechanisms, imperfections on the disc, dust, incorrect optical cable alignment, "jitter," ect. The effects of that are extremely minimal, however, and statisticaly insignificant, even over many multiple generations of duplication.
MP3, on the other hand, is a dead end format. Once a waveform has been compressed, there is no going back without further degredation. Sure, the files can be copied from computer to computer with no information loss, but the audio itself can go no further. You cannot do much with it, other than listen to it on your mid-range to low-end audio set ups.
Granted, that is all most people need, but it is the critical difference between master and duplication that the industry likes to gloss over and pretend does not exist.
Back "In The Day" the arrival of a new game was a special thing in itself. There wasn't as much volume, and the amount of people playing the games was smaller. The percentage of people playing these games were concentrated more in the dedicated gamer demographic. You had less people who were casually interested in them, because the route to them was obscure and expensive. Personal computers just were not as viable. Now lots of families owns multiple computers, and more people have a much easier path to games.
This is elementary, and this is what causes glut. The percentage shifts from the dedicated core (which incidentally still exists, but is completely stifled) to the more casual gamers. These sort of volumes and percentages are what give you the trends that create the game press engine. It's a symbiotic relationship, they feed off of one another.
Another large factor, in my mind, is where the games are pointed at. What is the average demographic? In the late 70s and 80s, games were targeted at an older age group (though they attracted more than that.) These days, many games (even the "mature" ones) are targeted at a younger demographic. A 32 year old is going to enjoy poking around in a text described dungeon more than a ten year old (in general, of course!)
Throwing all of it aside, getting to the important thing. I don't really care how many feathers and bubbles they throw around, as long as they don't impact the quality of the games I like. In the past, that has happened once or twice, but not enough to really ruffle my feathers. The games I've always enjoyed have been the more detailed simulator types, text based MUD or MUD analogues, or completely anal, rules focused turn based affairs. These have much smaller markets, and thus have been able to survive the explosion around them. I just revisited the Stars! development page, and despite the quantum leap in graphic presentation over the older versions, it still looks as if it will be a fundamentally solid game in the core. If so, that's great! If not, then I'll have to add it to my attrition list, and all of these years spent hopefully waiting for it will be in dissapointment.
I'd be willing to bet there are resources out there for gamers like us who are more interested in the game, and less interested in having to spend several thousand dollars every few years to have the fanciest specular highlighted fragments in our explosions.
If you find anything, let me know.
That is precisely what I was thinking as I was reading through this thread. The only game that I've purchased within the past half year that I've honestly completely enjoyed is Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator. That team really outdid themselves this time. I've been playing the game since before it had a version number, and it was freshly licensed off of its original creators, on a tiny 5" amber monochrome screen in the first IBM "portable" computer. The latest incarnation beats the pants off of its earlier siblings.
There are other examples of modern games that manage to provide solid entertainment for hours, weeks, months, years.
The problem with perception is partially due to nostalgia, but I would venture to say it has more to do with the simple fact that you cannot have a classic instantly (despite what marketing would like you to believe.) We are living within the world of modern gaming, and in 20 years there will be games that we look back upon fondly from this era. We just don't see them yet because the present is not all condensed in distant memory.
This all said, there are still games being developed on old tech! Sure, the market isn't big, and quite often they are open for free play, but the world of MUDing is far from dead. You can find fresh MUD servers dishing out comparably advanced games, with good engines, methods for fun role playing, and intriguing universes and story lines, to this day.
If you look for the good games out there, you'll find them. They might not be stacked up in CompUSA with an entire row to themselves. They might not have 24/7 BluesNews.com coverage. But they exist, and to deny that is just to fool yourself and others.
P.S. to all of this. One of my favorite strategy games ever, Stars!, never had much in the way of graphics. It was simply presented, but had enormous strategic turn-based appeal. They've been working on the sequel for years now, and I'm in the same SimCity boat as you. Worried about the fact that they are spending X amount of time on graphics. I hear the latest beta is up to almost 2GB of graphics. *sigh* Hopefully they spent as much time on the engine, because that was an honestly good game. It even put VGAPlanets to shame.
Many online and paper audiophile magazines also give recommendations on good classical recordings. Though they tend to slant their reviews towards how well the CD is crafted sonically, typically they also base this on the quality of the performance as well. There are a lot of CDs out there that are recorded poorly, and checking out the recommends in these resources can help you dodge the worst.
I have heard that it stands for Squirrels, Possoms And Mice.
Their case would not have been near so effective if they had been arrested for contesting the State, disappearing into some deserted corner of the country in a labor camp.
Now though, they do have their place in scripting. If you want a bunch of cheaply made web images with drop shadows you can really smash them out with an "action." In general though I don't like them enough to ever use them. Something I would much rather see in Gimp now is a freakin' VISABLE BRUSH EDGE.
That is incorrect, one method of configuration requires TK, but you can just as easily configure the kernel using Curses with :) Or you can go the hardcore way and answer questions one by one at your terminal with only a rudimentary shell. Personally, I prefer menuconfig.
# make menuconfig
That would make two apps that need it for you.
But it's ugly. Having a library around just for one program is ass-ugly.
That is your opinion, which is to be respected. Most people in the *NIX world wouldn't agree with you though. Having half a megabyte of libraries isn't that big of a deal at all. What is this single application you have? On my machine there are plenty of applications I use that need ncurses. It is a pretty common library, the typical Linux machine uses it quite a bit.
I have no clue how. According to ktop, my memory usage hovers at 50MB while I'm in KDE 2.0, just after having run a GNOME app.
No offense, but I see several problems with your setup that could be causing this. One is that you are using ktop to scope your processes. I would suggest to you that if memory is a big deal, use the smaller more well tested applications such as top or ps. They are not as pretty, but they do not use so many resources. Which Gnome application are you running? That makes a big difference. If it is gnote then there is a problem.
If you are going to be running both Gnome and KDE simultaniously, you need to be prepared for the usage fees. You are running two major system in tandom (and be thankful that you can do that.) so do not be surprised when it uses a lot of hardware. To be honest with you, once I installed KDE 2 I havn't used Gnome at all. I never thought I would be saying that, but in my opinion KDE 2 surpasses Gnome as far as polish goes. Just my opinion. I don't even use KDE 2 that often, very rarely. Most of my applications do not reside in either the Gnome or KDE realm. I have them there in case I need them, dorment on my hard disk.
And bleeding edge browsers are an absolute necessity for desktop use, ask any BeOS user.
Maybe I should ask what you are defining as a desktop user. I'm a desktop user and I can do 90% of my browsing with lynx. I'm comfortable with the program and it only returns what I need, the information, not the fancy mouse rollovers, flash plugins, and other such glut that serve no purpose other than to wow the user. I fully realize that the average desktop computer user (in my definition) wouldn't understand or like lynx. I don't suggest the world uses it, however I consider myself to be a desktop user and do not need floating layers on my web pages! So your definition is flawed somewhere.
Linux IS a server OS, but I get flamed whenever I say that. Linux is a wanabee desktop OS that just isn't there yet. Have you taken a look outside slackware land lately? Everyone is trying to cram Linux into the desktop.
A work in progress would be a much more apt and intelligent way of putting it than 'wanabee.' Do recall that the entire desktop movement upon which you are referring to is only two or so years old now. It is very infantile, and to assume that it is going to have every single thing you are used to with the MacOS or even Windows only displays your lack of understanding on the issues here.
Now, that being said, I think great progress is being made. When you consider the fact that these desktop distributions, Gnome, KDE, and other solutions are so young, and driven practically 100% by volunteer work it is very impressive and I have great respect for the folks working on those projects.
I'm not going to compare Linux with any other pure desktop system simply because it isn't there yet. It is getting there quickly, but not yet.
Funny, I always seem to need those features.
I find that difficult to believe. You actually use every feature of the latest Word versions? If you do not mind me asking, what is your career? I know that there are some positions that might require that kind of usage in large corporations and whatnot. However, for ever 1 person that actually needs that feature-set there are 10,000 who do not. That puts you in a very, very small minority. You cannot expect the entire development community of open sourcers to cater to such a small percentage before the basics are even complete. Incidentally you might want to check out StarOffice from Sun. I believe it is open source now, and probably the most feature-full office suite out there under that label. If not, it is free.
No, let me guess, you have tried it and it doesn't have one or two features you desperately need to get your work done. Three words: Display some adaptability. That is what makes a good employee anyhow, not one who whines non-stop because of one little detail, but one who can find ways to work around things. I've found that in working around things I usually end up finding much much better ways to do things anyway.
You do know you could probably completely automate or imitate a lot of Words features using the plethora of *NIX tools out there, and end up with a much more consistent and appealling output using LaTeX, don't you?
I don't need Perl, ZSH, CSH, TK, Python, and 90% of the other stuff that the average Linux distro forces me to install. The problem is that the utility developers think that they are writing applications (they're not, utilities are OS-level apps), and indescriminantly use non-standard libraries.
Good for you, you happen once again to be in a pretty minute minority. Most people who use Linux do in fact need those applications. Expecially Perl, in fact some distributions use Perl extensively for their inner workings. Even if you do not personally ever invoke a perl command line, there is a lot of stuff going on behind your back you don't know about that is very likely done with Perl. If you really do not need these things, I suggest you switch distributions. If your distribution does not allow you to select what you install and you so irately do not want it, that is. Again, display some adaptability.
You can very easily uninstall things you do not need too (again depending on your distribution) so even if the Beginner's Installation puts this stuff on without your knowledge, you can always take it off after install.
Once again, ncurses, perl, TK, these are most certainly not non-standard libraries (Perl isn't really a library, but you get the point). Whoever told you that does not have a clue what they are talking about. As for Zsh, and Csh, those are shells, not libraries. I don't know any utilities or applications that require those shells to be functional. The only shell requirement is SH for installation... and please do not tell me that sh is a non-standard library. I will die laughing.
Okay, my honest opinion after hearing you talk for a bit is that you are maybe a one-year or less user of Linux. You got into it because everybody told you it was cool. Shame on those people for not fully preparing you for reality. The reality is that it is a server OS that has a lot of folks working very hard to get desktop-ish features attached to it in a very short amount of time. I still only recommend Linux to developers, sys admins, and computer hobbiests. I don't try to get everyday gamers and whatnot here yet because it isn't quite ready yet. First impressions are important to some people, and right now it doesn't give a good first impression to somebody who has used Windows their entire life.
There are many other factors that one has to overcome when switching OSes. The biggest thing people need to understand is that you are making a very big change in philosophy. The *NIX philosophy hardly resembles the philosophy of Windows users. Even in the way they use GUI applications. You tend to see lots of little apps spread out side by side over multiple virtual screens with X11. This is because over here, people design an application to do a few things, well. Over in the other camp, people pile their applications into one screen on top of each other, and each of these apps are monolithically huge, replacing 5 or 10 *nix apps. It comes down to opinion over which is better. Personally I prefer lots of little applications. Other people like the consistency of having everything in one big application. It is precisely this change in opinion that is required though, to make an effective switch. I had to do it when I switched. I had to realize that such and such application was not going to do everything such and such app did in Windows, but that was okay because I found other apps that worked together and in total did more! With less memory usage, with better stability. That is just one aspect, until you can get over some of these philosophy changes, it will always be weird and "inferior"
It extends to everything. The filesystem is based on this, the inner workings of the OS structure are based on this.
In another area I think where you are going wrong is that you are assuming that the current state of Linux is a good determinate in what it actually is This is not true. Linux, and the rest of the open source world can not be defined by a release date or a static slice in time. Things are very shifting here. Always getting better, though. So if you really do want to see what the future of it will be, stick around. Give it a year, trust me it will impress you more and more as time goes by. Don't just install it once and get hissy over details that you do not like currently. Continue using NT 4 for your games (Which is in itself absurd, why are you doing that? Why not use Win98ME??) and your MS Word needs, and keep tabs on how the Linux world is growing.
I know the tone of this not is a bit harsh, but your outlook is a common one and needs addressing. It is part of the rift between those who have been served by the software giants all their computing life, and those who have been apart of a growing development process.
I know exactly what you mean. I was born in the same year. I take consolidation in the fact that I was born when Star Wars came out anyways. So most of my nostalgic gaming experiences come from the original Flight Simulator, Test Drive, things like that.
That is too exaggerated to work. Nobody will fall for that troll.
The major defining scenes for all of the above would be scorn, looking for a scam, telling Price to shove off and stay away from his family.
Humor when he is with his son while working out and they keep stacking weights onto the barbell. The humor is both portrayed in his mannerisms and in the general shooting of this scene.
disbelief is the slowest level, and is very elegently portrayed by building slowly into the final scene we are discussing, where doubt turns into realization. He walks into the crowded terminal. The pictures start coming like he's always seen them, except now he is learning to trust what he sees.
Notice his facial reactions as this happens. He is obviously coming to a double realization. One that he can see these things through some miracle, and two, these people have actually DONE the stuff he sees. As he gets more and more images he obviously grows more and more disturbed, each crime building up as he gets over his numb state of mind.
Then, when he sees the murder it is the final straw, there is no more disassociation with reality. This person has actually murdered and almost without thinking he is triggered into action.
This rather well done theatrical sequence is not meant to be a selection process or Shyamalan's list of ethics. Instead it is a climax of emotion and understanding. Notice how each crime that is viewed becomes progressively worse. You go from shop lifting, to violence, to rape, and finally murder. This brings the audience with Dunn on his journey of growing horror and realization.
Hope that makes sense.
Possibly, yes. The general trend in Hollywood is that sequels completely mess up everything. However, I think with this particular director/writer things could work out okay. Consider his flair for good story telling. If sequels do emerge, I highly doubt they'll just be "the continuing exploits of Super-Dave."
Not even close. We figured it out, if you take all 60 million lines of code and shrink it small enough to print onto (let's be generous) 15 feet of cloth, the font size would be about 13 atoms tall. Given the nature of cloth, hardly any of the "paint" would actually end up on the threads. Most would fall through the holes. You would in fact get a tshirt that was kinda stiff, and solid white.
Dia is still a 'new-ish' program, so it isn't perfect, but it is getting good. I like the feel of the program a lot.
I thought their flowchart template was a little...quaint though. Punchcard templates? Really now.
I've yet to research FreeNet fully, either. It would seem that an entity *could* trace back to the IP level using ISP logs, where they exist. It wouldn't be sure-fire, but it would work much of the time. If I'm wrong, then I am delighted.
It could be that one day typing in http:// will be just as arcane as typing in gopher://, who knows at this point. It is my hope, and I'm sure that many others share it, that this will remain a rather underground and less industrialized effort. The commercialization of the internet and WWW has done very little overall good. True, good has come of it, but I believe more trouble has been brought down on us by it than anything good.
I don't see this happening because I believe distributed peer-to-peer will become the future internet. while it is technologically inferior to other methods today, since when has that kept dedicated folks from making it better? Once it becomes a 'standard,' filtering will be out of the question. Such a proliferation of distributed networks will appear and become massive far before the government is able to flesh out anything against it, expecially due to the shifting nature of new tech. Pass a bill today that stops what worked yesterday.
They would have to strike early, as in now to accomplish anything, and I don't believe it has even blipped in the mainstream yet. 9 out of 10 people have never heard of Gnutella, and it is the largest of its breed.
This is why I think they should teach *NIX in the classrooms instead of just teaching you how to use word processors and spreadsheets. Some would argue that it would be learning the wrong environment since everybody uses MS products in the workplace, but I disagree. Since I've started using Linux I have learned far more about the fundamentals of a computer than I ever learned under DOS and Win32. I'm able to take that knowledge and use it in the Win32 environment easily.
The problem starts with the lack of education in the area of computers. As a regular highschool curiculum, you should take basic *nix fundamentals, basic C programming, maybe Perl, and a hardware course. Fourth year should then move to MS products, VBS and system maintence. Once you can accomplish tasks of this nature, you can very easily learn the simple programs such as making spreadsheets and typing research papers on a computer. It would be second nature at that point.
This isn't going to happen any time soon though. The computer market has way too much inertia in creating software for the dummies. This only leads people to take an increasingly 'dumb' approach to computing.
So, things are still as I have outlined in the original post. You have a division between the people who want to get their fingers dirty and those who don't. As you put it, they see it as a tool. It isn't the way it should be, I never meant to convey that.
There is the same ratio of lazy people to motivated people today that there was yesterday. If you look around you see a lot of people on computers, but don't forget that when we were learning on computers that you booted on a floppy since harddrives didn't exist, the ones who were NOT motivated, simply didn't use computers.
Now, it is different, they use computers because they are practically a necessity, they still don't want to learn them though. If you look around, there are still plenty of people willing, and even anxious to learn things the hard way and understand the fundamentals of how they work. Same ratio, different set of parameters.
What is it that makes me a karma whore? Are we not allowed to express our opinion on relevant topics any longer? What ever happened to the ideal of encouraging thought provoking conversation? Are we supposed to degrade ourselves into one liners merely to please the hoards? I know you probably meant very little by what you say, but what you say is a growing trend here, even the modifiers are getting in on it. I believe that the opinion you are backing is very diseased indeed.
Essentially it will all leverage upon several facets of society. If these facets tip the the write way, it will work, if they tip the wrong way, this alternative world you suggest (as others have suggested many times before you) would become a negative asset.
At what point does an alternative reality become real enough to dispense with a prior reality?
The Matrix, to use an overused analogy, described a world in which that alternative reality became so indectectably ingrained, that the only reason you would not call it reality is because the plot of the story was centered around entrapped humans. The Thirteenth Floor did a better job of depicting this "world-within-world" philosophy.
If the inevitable end of online gaming and virtual reality results in a world that is as rich as ours, yet with the added bonus of being able to escape the types of problems that plague our intelligence-oriented society, what could be wrong with a migration?
The obvious answer to that, would be the fact that our bodies and the machines keeping them alive would still be rooted in this reality, and thus our lives within the alternative reality would be anchored in the safety of these machines, and our flesh body. If there was nobody on the "look out" anything could happen and nobody would know it had happened until they snapped out of their world and found their body trapped in a tomb of ice and machinery.
So then, what about a society based upon balance? Instead of one alternative reality, why not many? Why not have them all be built to serve individual goals in their chaotic structure, like a function produces mathematical order, and have these massive functions increasing the value of the planet, as well as the other societies within societies?
I know, I know, this is all rather far fetched to say the least. My point is to make clear that the concept of dissasociation might very well need to be discarded here, bringing the whole topic to be viewed in a different manner.
Thank you! I knew it was city/golden something or other. I read the first one, then got halfway through the second before Cryptonomicon came around and I've never come back to the series, I intend to though, it is very well written and with a good story to boot.
That leaves convincing the browser producers to use your link as a default. Microsoft and Netscape very likely get payed to put those links there, and naturally they are going to want to track the usage of those links, so that they can see which ones are beneficial and which ones are duds. The purchasers of the default link would no doubt be interested in those statistics as well.
I have no idea if this is the case, but it seems to fit together for me.
I don't know enough about the process to be certain, but the mechanics of the idea would work.