I play a MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). A major part of DAoC consists of realm vs. realm combat, where players from opposing realms clash in epic battles (a.k.a. lag fests). There is one well known form of cheating in DAoC, known as radar, which allows the radar user to see the positions of enemy forces in realtime before he can be seen himself.
The most popular radar program for DAoC is Excalibur, hosted by your very own Sourceforge. The troubling thing about Excalibur is that it does not fit any of the definitions of cheating, although it clearly gives players using it an unfair advantage. It does not modify the game binaries, or modify memory areas or graphical output when running. It does not interfere with or modify data streams between the client and server. In fact, it doesn't even run on the same computer you play the game on. Excalibur runs on a Linux / *nix computer on your local network, and works by passively sniffing packets, decoding them, and constructing a detailed overhead map of the player's surrounding area. Thus it is, and always will be, undetectable whether someone is using radar or not.
It really is a rather clever hack, but it's ruining the game for us honest players. (And no, I have never ran Excalibur, even to try it out.) The question is what can be done about? It would seem that the only two options are: 1.) Encrypt every packet sent between the server and client, which would undoubtably slow everything down. 2.) Send less information to the client, by implementing some kind of server-side clipping, whereby the server determines what objects are visible to each client and sends only those. Again, this would slow everything down, on the server side because it requires more work, and on the client side because when the player suddenly encounters the enemy horde, his computer will be forced to load hundreds of character models all at once.
No, seriously. I used to watch Star Trek: TNG occassionaly, even liked it a bit. But for the life of me, I can't remember anything about his character. Can someone refresh my memory?
There is no source code to any implementation of X available on xwin.org.
Without source code available for download, you can hardly call this an "official fork", can you Slashdot? Maybe a fork exists on Keith Packard's personal home computer, but until it is made available to the public, there may as well be no fork at all. Sounds to me like they are still just in the planning phase.
If you work somewhere like a university, like I do. I got the ISOs via BitTorrent last week. It lived up to it's name, in that it was torrential. I got all 3 ISOs in under an hour, simulatiously serving up bits of them to others at the same rate. Then I got the call from the Networking Department... "One of your computers sent over 2 Gigabytes of data over the network in under half an hour..." Apparently, I had slowed everything across campus to a crawl for that half hour...
I remember, back when I was playing Diablo 2, there was this undead mummy that would randomly pop up with different names. One time it was named "The Creeping Feature" and another time "The Feeping Creature"...
That is probably the most interesting comment to have EVER been posted on Slashdot. Too bad it was wasted on a bunch of 13 year old trolls that didn't even notice it.
Re:Former Enron Corp. Vice Chairman, dead at 43
on
Lindows Reviewed
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Funny, I just passed this off as the "Stephen King found dead" troll. Then I saw it at the top of my Yahoo news. Talk about the boy who cried wolf...
I've been busy all day, and I just now read this, so I'm sure everything that could possibly be said about this has been said, but I'll just add my "Wow." and "Holy fucking shit."
You're exactly right that a modern PRT system would have some major improvements. As much as I like to complain about our PRT system, I use it every day, because I don't have a car, and even people who do have cars use it because it really is more convenient (when it's working).
Back to picking on our PRT system: You're right, it really is mis-named. It's not very Personal (especially when the car is crowded with people sweaty from running to get to class, the weather is hot, and the air conditioner is hardly working), it's not too Rapid, and at times like yesterday, it's not even Transit.
Slashdot Mirror
It's new and, uh, stuff.
And new stuff is cool!
Think I could make headlines on Slashdot?
SCO had credibility?
Now that is news...
I play a MMORPG called Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). A major part of DAoC consists of realm vs. realm combat, where players from opposing realms clash in epic battles (a.k.a. lag fests). There is one well known form of cheating in DAoC, known as radar, which allows the radar user to see the positions of enemy forces in realtime before he can be seen himself.
The most popular radar program for DAoC is Excalibur, hosted by your very own Sourceforge. The troubling thing about Excalibur is that it does not fit any of the definitions of cheating, although it clearly gives players using it an unfair advantage. It does not modify the game binaries, or modify memory areas or graphical output when running. It does not interfere with or modify data streams between the client and server. In fact, it doesn't even run on the same computer you play the game on. Excalibur runs on a Linux / *nix computer on your local network, and works by passively sniffing packets, decoding them, and constructing a detailed overhead map of the player's surrounding area. Thus it is, and always will be, undetectable whether someone is using radar or not.
It really is a rather clever hack, but it's ruining the game for us honest players. (And no, I have never ran Excalibur, even to try it out.) The question is what can be done about? It would seem that the only two options are:
1.) Encrypt every packet sent between the server and client, which would undoubtably slow everything down.
2.) Send less information to the client, by implementing some kind of server-side clipping, whereby the server determines what objects are visible to each client and sends only those. Again, this would slow everything down, on the server side because it requires more work, and on the client side because when the player suddenly encounters the enemy horde, his computer will be forced to load hundreds of character models all at once.
So, any other suggestions?
So now this worm will just Fizzle out?
<random Monty Python quote>
Judean People's Front?!?
We're the People's Front of Judea!!
That's the Judean People's Front over there...
</random Monty Python quote>
You may have also heard the line "Feels like I'm sinking... into a dream within a dream" from the song "Sweat" from TOOL's Opiate.
Edgar Allen Poe, of course. It's from one of his poetry books.
No, seriously. I used to watch Star Trek: TNG occassionaly, even liked it a bit. But for the life of me, I can't remember anything about his character. Can someone refresh my memory?
n/t
After thoroughly scanning xwin.org, I concluded:
There is no source code to any implementation of X available on xwin.org.
Without source code available for download, you can hardly call this an "official fork", can you Slashdot? Maybe a fork exists on Keith Packard's personal home computer, but until it is made available to the public, there may as well be no fork at all. Sounds to me like they are still just in the planning phase.
If you work somewhere like a university, like I do. I got the ISOs via BitTorrent last week. It lived up to it's name, in that it was torrential. I got all 3 ISOs in under an hour, simulatiously serving up bits of them to others at the same rate. Then I got the call from the Networking Department... "One of your computers sent over 2 Gigabytes of data over the network in under half an hour..." Apparently, I had slowed everything across campus to a crawl for that half hour...
I know what he would have to say if any of his employees were caught writing backdoors into commercial web applications.
No, KFlame you!!!
GFlame!!!
KFlame!!!
GFlame!!!
KFlame!!!
GFlame!!!
KFlame!!!
GFlame!!!
KFlame!!!
I quit reading Slashdot...
I remember, back when I was playing Diablo 2, there was this undead mummy that would randomly pop up with different names. One time it was named "The Creeping Feature" and another time "The Feeping Creature"...
I suspected as much...
and keep them from reproducing without my permission?
Don't even start.
How about this one, from a long time KDE supporter?
He said it again!
Stone him! Stone him!
...Now i'm going to go back to playing Dark Age of Camelot.
That is probably the most interesting comment to have EVER been posted on Slashdot. Too bad it was wasted on a bunch of 13 year old trolls that didn't even notice it.
Funny, I just passed this off as the "Stephen King found dead" troll. Then I saw it at the top of my Yahoo news. Talk about the boy who cried wolf...
I've been busy all day, and I just now read this, so I'm sure everything that could possibly be said about this has been said, but I'll just add my "Wow." and "Holy fucking shit."
You're exactly right that a modern PRT system would have some major improvements. As much as I like to complain about our PRT system, I use it every day, because I don't have a car, and even people who do have cars use it because it really is more convenient (when it's working).
Back to picking on our PRT system: You're right, it really is mis-named. It's not very Personal (especially when the car is crowded with people sweaty from running to get to class, the weather is hot, and the air conditioner is hardly working), it's not too Rapid, and at times like yesterday, it's not even Transit.