I am in the beta, haven't played for two, almost three weeks now.
I was realy happy when I got the game, but the unit limits (mabye removed in the last patch????) and the overall. . . . pace of the game made it boring as hell for me.
I did play all the way through advance wars in the last two days.
Actualy I just got over a GBA gaming spree (well, ok, played almost every game on it, so I _HAVE_ to be through with it, right???) that took the place of Warcraft 3.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is balanced to hell in it. WAAAAY too balanced.
I was never one of those freaks screaming "balance the game balance the game!!!" but rather one of the few going "heya, cool, I LOVE this mega-unit dude. Adds challenge when the other poor SOB uses a ton of them!"
Of course out of my first 30 games losing 29 of them didn't help my spirits any either, LOL!
The thing is that War3 goes COMPLEATLY against my normal playing style.
I am a resource whore.
Plain and simple.
I SUCK DOWN resources like nothing.
But Warcraft3 has MINIMAL resourcs per map, everything is flash boom bang and then over with.
Hell I barly get STARTED and all of the mines on the map have ran out.
The way that I like my games to go is all night strategy/tactical fests. Not the "sh00tz0r shnitz!!!!" way that Warcraft 3 does things. Everything is just. . . . . over with so fast. No time to sit around and ponder grand strategies, no walling in entire enemy bases (heh::evil grin:: ) no ADVANCED late game strategies.
And well hell, I happen to LOVE the late game.
(doesn't help any that I suck at donkey balls at mid-game. I get assloads of resources within the first few minutes, manage to fuck up the mid game, and then I can kick ass in late game. This is almost any RTS. Problem is, Warcraft 3 has no late game.:(:(:( )
Not to mention a great way to get your IP banned from entire NETWORKS of Hubs on Direct Connect. ^_^
Besides, DC does almost NO checking of authenticity, any 13 year old with a packet sniffer can easily figure out how to insert a "Dude I have 10000000 Gigabytes of files!!!!" message.
(this problem was recently taken care off by the regular swift application of perma-bans to anybody stupid enough to enter a hub sharing more GBs of files then exists data on the internet.:) )
Now what you MIGHT want to do is help us poor windows users out and add some decent security to this program, last I checked anybody can still access/run any program on your computer if you have direct connect up and running. (as I said, it doesn't check ANYTHING for authenticity, though a 'security update' was released awhile back, but no information was given as to WTF it actualy DID. . ..)
Most sites that have grown large enough to NEED a dynamic page delivery system (and if you don't need it, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD DO NOT USE IT) are able to easily (or at least without too much trouble) withstand the/. effect.
And the web is not broken, it is just littered with porn and blogs. . . ..
(used to be porn and geocities pages with out of focus pictures of kittens on them. Now it is blogs with out of focus pictures of kittens on them. My how we have progressed. . . . )
This is one reason why for a single unit of currancy the sign should not be able to arbitrarily change the decimal place. . ..
8 |c| (no idea how to artificaly represent the cent sign) is $0.08
$.8 (what I thought it said) is $0.80
.8 |c| is $0.008
Bleh.
Note to self, double check decimal places. (hmm, I have the same damn problems in class too, got all the theory down, damned if I don't make a shitpot load of stupid ass simple misakes applying it though. ^_^ )
Well darnit, that just takes all the fun out of it!
You mean no more downloading 600MB-1.2GB files only to find out that 1 or 2 bytes have been corrupted and that the entire download was useless?
Oh man! NOW what I am I going to bitch about?:)
Seriously though, Thank God you have come to the thread! I got here within the first 5 minutes carrying the "It is NOT a p2p application, it is for web servers darnit!" banner, but it seemed to be a losing battle for most of the evening, LOL!
I think that there were just to many links posted in the stories main body, people lost interest partway through and never got to your actual Homepage. . ..
On the plus side though, if that isn't the case and they did get to your homepage, congrats on surviving the/.'ing.:) Though with text only you had good chance for survival from the get go:) . On the flip side seeing as how you are doing network engineering it defiantly wouldn't look good if you didn't survive the/.'ing.;)
Oh yes, and your page needs more information! Even doing things like saying how it directs users around (does the main server keep a list of users and how far along they are in the clients download process or does it just give the client a list of other clients and say have at it?)
If the information is there, then shove it all into an FAQ and indent to hell!
(see my page for an example of indenting everything until it is blitheringly obvious.:) )
Bah, some people leave spreadsheet files shared on p2p applications because they want to increase their share size (a big deal on Direct Connect in which you get access to better and better hubs as you share more and more gigabytes worth a files).
CC#s and more. . ..
Bleh, dumb shits. Lucky for them I am kind enough to tell them about it as opposed to taking the information for myself. . ..
The main site says that it is designed as a drop in replacement for HTTP and even has the potential to match HTTPS services if somebody ever gets around to paying him $$$ to develop that feature.:)
I do not know how well it scales (hell I have gotten 10 karma points today just for spending 2 f*cking minutes at the site, if even that long. The site has all of 5 or so small pages to it. . . . LOL! ), or how the connections are handled.
It does NOT appear help with keeping users anon though, naturally not I would think that it shares IPs like mad, LOL!
"Dumb" file resuming methods (like the one Direct Connect) uses does not need for the person serving the file to have the entire thing, often times I will download the first 300 megs or so of a file from one user and then wait a few weeks until somebody comes along who has the complete file.
By coincidence I have about 15GB of 1/2 done *COUGH* files *COUGH* on my HD. . . . (no, not MP3s, bleh!:P:)
But it does work a bit better then those stupid systems that keep record of where files are to leave off and what not.
Of course one big disadvantage of not having any sort of file integrity checking is that when a SINGLE mistake is made in a file transfer and the rest of the transfer is completed, that mistake can spread throughout the network expontentialy.
There is actualy a corrupted copy of the Yu Yu Hakusho movie that was going around p2p programs for 2 years, and very well MAY BE STILL going around on the networks, that I started passing out on VNN2000 (any other VNN2000 fans out there? I know there are, I first got linked to it from a persons/. sig, LOL! Hia, this is Shiloh, need help with your VNN2k client?:) ) after a tranfer of that file from a different user got corrupted.
On VNN2000 I was one of the few (at times only) user with that file, so. . . . by the time I realized my mistake I:
A: Decided screw it I may get around to fixing it some day
B: Technicaly it is just a few bytes so anybody who REALLY wanted to get the data could boot up a hex editor and fix things. . . . if they had insansly large amounts of hex editing skills.:) )
The error was actualy caused by a 'known but WTF is causing it????" bug in VNN2000 that resulted in minor file corruptions at times when resumed files were appended to each other. (I forget the exact details, the bug popped up a number of times, once I do believe it added some of the network code to the end of the file, oops. No, 'close connection'[1] isn't a valid part of an MPEG4 encoded AVI frame, just ask WMP.:) )
{caveman ugh footnotes} [1] Me no bothering to look up WTF this would have really been, you worry, you get bin code, {/end caveman ugh}
It is a browser plugin (IE) that creates mini distributed networks based around a website.
So say you start downloading the latest Counterstrike patch from some server. Well you know how servers giving out the CS patch get filled up quickly.
Well if the users were running this program (plugins to IE, no restart neccisary, look if there is a {browser here} version yourself!) then when they started downloading somebody ELSE could start downloading FROM them.
No file synch issues (same file, same source) the server just re-directs future downloaders to current downloads and has the original downloaders forward the files along.
Oddly enough, we likely have Microsoft to thanks for the sheer popularity of the wheel on mice.
No they did not invent it, but by including it with their OEM mice they sure as heck made it ubiquitous, and thus sellable en-masse for other retailers.
Ok, highly offtopic, but, uh, why is like a good per-friggin-centage of the net dead right now? The results on the pages for the search "internet backbone status" in google, not to mention the sheer number of sites I cannot reach currently, make me wonder;
". Wouldn't a benchmark that shows how many objects/tetxures/polygons/special rendering features it can perform at a fixed frame rate and resolution make more sense?"
Locking frame rates SUCKS royaly, it was tried, it was abandoned, after it was figured out that testing in that way was pretty darn silly.
The best way to go is just to shove a royal assload of highly textured polygons at the graphics cards in the lineup and give kudos to which ever one is standing on top.
Indeed the frame rate system of measurement IS a bit silly when the numbers get this high, but hell,
I wouldn't Benchmark a Geforce 4 card on Quake1, so why would I want to benchmark a future Geforce 6 card on Quake3? ^_^
The FPS system works GREAT for measuring cards when games and cards keep leapfrogging each other, it shows the player (buyer) exactly what sort of performance they can expect IN REAL WORLD situations from their card.
How often have you played an FPS game that always has a constant number of objects on the screen?
^_^
The old torture test demo runs that used to be performed on graphics cards was a bit better of a system though, especialy when used to compare performance with other test demos run under the graphical settings, but unforutnatly those torture tests have mostly gone out of style.:(
Yah, GPL was pretty much the ONLY reason that the Rendition card was able to stay around so long.
Pretty darn good game still, hell, damn GREAT game still, heh.
I remember a looking from at a screenshot from GPL printed on the then Highest Resolution Printer In The World(tm)Lexmark z(whatever). Damn nearly looked like a photograph.
When I saw screenshots of it directly, hell, it DOES look damn nearly like a photograph!
Whatever API they used and however it interacted with that chip was damn powerful, blew the living shit out of anything to come for another 2 years or so.
How is a developer or even a programmer supposed to figure out if a console is worth a shit without aactualy playtesting it?
Nobody would think of not letting a company with a new method of controling a computer not let that company let the attendets try out that product, after all, usability feel and function are essential to ANY product.
It is not until I actualy get my HANDS around a controler that I begin to instantly visualize what I will be able to do with that controler, the full posabilities of it open up to me only because I am able to feel it work within my hands.
Seeing how responsive the character up on the screen can be to my movements is a BIG plus. Typicaly a hardware company will have the BEST examples of a product running on their hardware (or else why bother with a demonstration unit at all?) and it gives an excellent overall 'feel' for what the system as a whole is capable of.
Hell almost ANY controler can look easy to use and smooth and precise in the hands of the proper player, but the fact is that what the controler REALLY feels like to the player is something that can only be experanced first hand.
Even something as seemingly simple as a mousewheel can have vastly different feels to it from person to person. I loved the resistence of the old Intelimice, but many people could not stand it. Heck I am sure that a few even thought it too light handed. Either way you go, only PERSONAL experance can tell!
Monopolies ARE NOT ILLEGAL but ILLEGALY ESTABLISHING a Monopoly IS.
Motive intent and methods.
Now Microsoft faking evidence for something even though they could REALLY go ahead and DO the bit of extra work to create the REAL evidence is IN ITSELF evidence of the overall mindset that exists within the company
Look at the parrell.
Easier to CHEAT to make your OS popular then to do the extra WORK neccisary to MAKE it popular by making it GOOD.
(yah yah yah it is FINALY there, more or less. This is ignoring the fact that all of the features of WinXP could fit in a space 1/4th that which they take up now if it had been written properly from the get go)
Slashdot Mirror
Real time broadcasting of videos from studios. No more damned taped delays. :)
:(
All sent in whatever formats are needed, all at once. Nice and speedy like.
I myself am sick and f*cking tired of MPEG2 compression artificats in my digital cable.
Nononono
.
:P )
:)
Real life being POOR is no fun, or even a middle class white collar worker.
But being, say, 20, retired, rich, hansom, and strong with the ladies oogling all over you. . .
Ah yes, I can see a serious potential for this new market of. . . . shall we call them Holosims?
(do I get points for originality, do I do I?
Seriously though, being like real life, just not the real life YOU lead, but rather some . . . . other . . . . real life.
I am in the beta, haven't played for two, almost three weeks now.
::evil grin:: ) no ADVANCED late game strategies.
:( :( :( )
I was realy happy when I got the game, but the unit limits (mabye removed in the last patch????) and the overall. . . . pace of the game made it boring as hell for me.
I did play all the way through advance wars in the last two days.
Actualy I just got over a GBA gaming spree (well, ok, played almost every game on it, so I _HAVE_ to be through with it, right???) that took the place of Warcraft 3.
Seriously, EVERYTHING is balanced to hell in it. WAAAAY too balanced.
I was never one of those freaks screaming "balance the game balance the game!!!" but rather one of the few going "heya, cool, I LOVE this mega-unit dude. Adds challenge when the other poor SOB uses a ton of them!"
Of course out of my first 30 games losing 29 of them didn't help my spirits any either, LOL!
The thing is that War3 goes COMPLEATLY against my normal playing style.
I am a resource whore.
Plain and simple.
I SUCK DOWN resources like nothing.
But Warcraft3 has MINIMAL resourcs per map, everything is flash boom bang and then over with.
Hell I barly get STARTED and all of the mines on the map have ran out.
The way that I like my games to go is all night strategy/tactical fests. Not the "sh00tz0r shnitz!!!!" way that Warcraft 3 does things. Everything is just. . . . . over with so fast. No time to sit around and ponder grand strategies, no walling in entire enemy bases (heh
And well hell, I happen to LOVE the late game.
(doesn't help any that I suck at donkey balls at mid-game. I get assloads of resources within the first few minutes, manage to fuck up the mid game, and then I can kick ass in late game. This is almost any RTS. Problem is, Warcraft 3 has no late game.
Now if only they would prohibit their employees from writting x86 code. . . .
Not to mention a great way to get your IP banned from entire NETWORKS of Hubs on Direct Connect. ^_^
:) )
.)
Besides, DC does almost NO checking of authenticity, any 13 year old with a packet sniffer can easily figure out how to insert a "Dude I have 10000000 Gigabytes of files!!!!" message.
(this problem was recently taken care off by the regular swift application of perma-bans to anybody stupid enough to enter a hub sharing more GBs of files then exists data on the internet.
Now what you MIGHT want to do is help us poor windows users out and add some decent security to this program, last I checked anybody can still access/run any program on your computer if you have direct connect up and running. (as I said, it doesn't check ANYTHING for authenticity, though a 'security update' was released awhile back, but no information was given as to WTF it actualy DID. . .
Most sites that have grown large enough to NEED a dynamic page delivery system (and if you don't need it, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD DO NOT USE IT) are able to easily (or at least without too much trouble) withstand the /. effect.
.
And the web is not broken, it is just littered with porn and blogs. . . .
(used to be porn and geocities pages with out of focus pictures of kittens on them. Now it is blogs with out of focus pictures of kittens on them. My how we have progressed. . . . )
This is one reason why for a single unit of currancy the sign should not be able to arbitrarily change the decimal place. . . .
8 |c| (no idea how to artificaly represent the cent sign) is $0.08
$.8 (what I thought it said) is $0.80
.8 |c| is $0.008
Bleh.
Note to self, double check decimal places. (hmm, I have the same damn problems in class too, got all the theory down, damned if I don't make a shitpot load of stupid ass simple misakes applying it though. ^_^ )
Send letter off to moz team, source code for both projects is availble, no reason it cannot be implemented.
:)
If enough people ask and / or do. . . .
Well darnit, that just takes all the fun out of it!
:)
.
/.'ing. :) Though with text only you had good chance for survival from the get go :) . On the flip side seeing as how you are doing network engineering it defiantly wouldn't look good if you didn't survive the /.'ing. ;)
:) )
You mean no more downloading 600MB-1.2GB files only to find out that 1 or 2 bytes have been corrupted and that the entire download was useless?
Oh man! NOW what I am I going to bitch about?
Seriously though, Thank God you have come to the thread! I got here within the first 5 minutes carrying the "It is NOT a p2p application, it is for web servers darnit!" banner, but it seemed to be a losing battle for most of the evening, LOL!
I think that there were just to many links posted in the stories main body, people lost interest partway through and never got to your actual Homepage. . .
On the plus side though, if that isn't the case and they did get to your homepage, congrats on surviving the
Oh yes, and your page needs more information! Even doing things like saying how it directs users around (does the main server keep a list of users and how far along they are in the clients download process or does it just give the client a list of other clients and say have at it?)
If the information is there, then shove it all into an FAQ and indent to hell!
(see my page for an example of indenting everything until it is blitheringly obvious.
Bah, some people leave spreadsheet files shared on p2p applications because they want to increase their share size (a big deal on Direct Connect in which you get access to better and better hubs as you share more and more gigabytes worth a files).
.
.
CC#s and more. . .
Bleh, dumb shits. Lucky for them I am kind enough to tell them about it as opposed to taking the information for myself. . .
Ethics suck at times. ^_^
The main site says that it is designed as a drop in replacement for HTTP and even has the potential to match HTTPS services if somebody ever gets around to paying him $$$ to develop that feature. :)
:P :)
/. sig, LOL! Hia, this is Shiloh, need help with your VNN2k client? :) ) after a tranfer of that file from a different user got corrupted.
:) )
:) )
I do not know how well it scales (hell I have gotten 10 karma points today just for spending 2 f*cking minutes at the site, if even that long. The site has all of 5 or so small pages to it. . . . LOL! ), or how the connections are handled.
It does NOT appear help with keeping users anon though, naturally not I would think that it shares IPs like mad, LOL!
"Dumb" file resuming methods (like the one Direct Connect) uses does not need for the person serving the file to have the entire thing, often times I will download the first 300 megs or so of a file from one user and then wait a few weeks until somebody comes along who has the complete file.
By coincidence I have about 15GB of 1/2 done *COUGH* files *COUGH* on my HD. . . . (no, not MP3s, bleh!
But it does work a bit better then those stupid systems that keep record of where files are to leave off and what not.
Of course one big disadvantage of not having any sort of file integrity checking is that when a SINGLE mistake is made in a file transfer and the rest of the transfer is completed, that mistake can spread throughout the network expontentialy.
There is actualy a corrupted copy of the Yu Yu Hakusho movie that was going around p2p programs for 2 years, and very well MAY BE STILL going around on the networks, that I started passing out on VNN2000 (any other VNN2000 fans out there? I know there are, I first got linked to it from a persons
On VNN2000 I was one of the few (at times only) user with that file, so. . . . by the time I realized my mistake I:
A: Decided screw it I may get around to fixing it some day
B: Technicaly it is just a few bytes so anybody who REALLY wanted to get the data could boot up a hex editor and fix things. . . . if they had insansly large amounts of hex editing skills.
The error was actualy caused by a 'known but WTF is causing it????" bug in VNN2000 that resulted in minor file corruptions at times when resumed files were appended to each other. (I forget the exact details, the bug popped up a number of times, once I do believe it added some of the network code to the end of the file, oops. No, 'close connection'[1] isn't a valid part of an MPEG4 encoded AVI frame, just ask WMP.
{caveman ugh footnotes}
[1] Me no bothering to look up WTF this would have really been, you worry, you get bin code, {/end caveman ugh}
This is a drop in replacement for HTTP though, browsers can easily be made to support it with minimal work.
No, but some poor SOB was found guilty for looking at a clothing mag that was MAILED to his house.
You see it had pictures of under-aged girls in swim suits.
....
Uh.. . .
/. itself is not, AFAIK, having bandwidth problems.
The idea was to help sites that GET linked to BY Slashdot.
You know, those small user pages with some cool casemod on it?
This network would allow viewers of the site to download the images from EACH OTHER instead of from the main server.
Already there actualy.
Under current US law any images that are USED for thinking about sex about minors are illegal.
Yes, that is right, if you look at a victorias secret and think that the model's breasts are a few sizes too big you could be breaking US law.
joy.
It is a browser plugin (IE) that creates mini distributed networks based around a website.
So say you start downloading the latest Counterstrike patch from some server. Well you know how servers giving out the CS patch get filled up quickly.
Well if the users were running this program (plugins to IE, no restart neccisary, look if there is a {browser here} version yourself!) then when they started downloading somebody ELSE could start downloading FROM them.
No file synch issues (same file, same source) the server just re-directs future downloaders to current downloads and has the original downloaders forward the files along.
Oddly enough, we likely have Microsoft to thanks for the sheer popularity of the wheel on mice.
No they did not invent it, but by including it with their OEM mice they sure as heck made it ubiquitous, and thus sellable en-masse for other retailers.
hmm according to that sheet;
80 cents canadian tax per megabyte for removable micro drives.
Uh
Either definition of a megabyte you go buy, those 1GB Microdrives are going to cost a f*cking arm and a leg in canada now.
ouch.
Part of internet possibly down, this being an internet site, how is internet downage EVER offtopic on /.?
Ok, highly offtopic, but, uh, why is like a good per-friggin-centage of the net dead right now? The results on the pages for the search "internet backbone status" in google, not to mention the sheer number of sites I cannot reach currently, make me wonder;
what did some idiot do with a backhoe this time?
Hell, I can tell the difference between 40fps and 60 fps and I am legaly blind in one eye and have a damaged optic nerve in the other!
". Wouldn't a benchmark that shows how many objects/tetxures/polygons/special rendering features it can perform at a fixed frame rate and resolution make more sense?"
:(
Locking frame rates SUCKS royaly, it was tried, it was abandoned, after it was figured out that testing in that way was pretty darn silly.
The best way to go is just to shove a royal assload of highly textured polygons at the graphics cards in the lineup and give kudos to which ever one is standing on top.
Indeed the frame rate system of measurement IS a bit silly when the numbers get this high, but hell,
I wouldn't Benchmark a Geforce 4 card on Quake1, so why would I want to benchmark a future Geforce 6 card on Quake3? ^_^
The FPS system works GREAT for measuring cards when games and cards keep leapfrogging each other, it shows the player (buyer) exactly what sort of performance they can expect IN REAL WORLD situations from their card.
How often have you played an FPS game that always has a constant number of objects on the screen?
^_^
The old torture test demo runs that used to be performed on graphics cards was a bit better of a system though, especialy when used to compare performance with other test demos run under the graphical settings, but unforutnatly those torture tests have mostly gone out of style.
Yah, GPL was pretty much the ONLY reason that the Rendition card was able to stay around so long.
Pretty darn good game still, hell, damn GREAT game still, heh.
I remember a looking from at a screenshot from GPL printed on the then Highest Resolution Printer In The World(tm)Lexmark z(whatever). Damn nearly looked like a photograph.
When I saw screenshots of it directly, hell, it DOES look damn nearly like a photograph!
Whatever API they used and however it interacted with that chip was damn powerful, blew the living shit out of anything to come for another 2 years or so.
How is a developer or even a programmer supposed to figure out if a console is worth a shit without aactualy playtesting it?
Nobody would think of not letting a company with a new method of controling a computer not let that company let the attendets try out that product, after all, usability feel and function are essential to ANY product.
It is not until I actualy get my HANDS around a controler that I begin to instantly visualize what I will be able to do with that controler, the full posabilities of it open up to me only because I am able to feel it work within my hands.
Seeing how responsive the character up on the screen can be to my movements is a BIG plus. Typicaly a hardware company will have the BEST examples of a product running on their hardware (or else why bother with a demonstration unit at all?) and it gives an excellent overall 'feel' for what the system as a whole is capable of.
Hell almost ANY controler can look easy to use and smooth and precise in the hands of the proper player, but the fact is that what the controler REALLY feels like to the player is something that can only be experanced first hand.
Even something as seemingly simple as a mousewheel can have vastly different feels to it from person to person. I loved the resistence of the old Intelimice, but many people could not stand it. Heck I am sure that a few even thought it too light handed. Either way you go, only PERSONAL experance can tell!
The PROBLEM is Microsofts MOTIVES.
Monopolies ARE NOT ILLEGAL but ILLEGALY ESTABLISHING a Monopoly IS.
Motive intent and methods.
Now Microsoft faking evidence for something even though they could REALLY go ahead and DO the bit of extra work to create the REAL evidence is IN ITSELF evidence of the overall mindset that exists within the company
Look at the parrell.
Easier to CHEAT to make your OS popular then to do the extra WORK neccisary to MAKE it popular by making it GOOD.
(yah yah yah it is FINALY there, more or less. This is ignoring the fact that all of the features of WinXP could fit in a space 1/4th that which they take up now if it had been written properly from the get go)