I haven't read the STL book mentioned in the parent, but I'd reccommend using Meyers' Effective STL as a compliment. Just like Effective C++ I think it does an excellent job of clearly explaining the "why's" of its subject, leaving the "what's" for a reference book.
I've found Stroustrup's and Meyers' works invaluable at work. I was brought up on C++ during college, but my work was left me dealing with a lot more old C code than I expected. Their explanations of "these are the ugly C workarounds, now this is how C++ can do them cleanly" have really helped me understand what sorts of idioms and practices are being attempted in the old C code.
I personally react much better to sound than sight. Sight requires I actively be looking around, with sound, I just have to listen. Deer don't look around, they listen for a twig to snap.
I can almost never play Smash Brothers Melee with the sound off. I listen for things like items being thrown (ok, time to dodge), moves with large execution times (ok, time to strike while they're vulnerable), etc. That way I don't have to keep my eye on the opponent at all times, I can focus on using the environment to my advantage.
I'm just getting into the market for a serious mixer. Currently this is at the top of my list, in the same range as the Pioneer DJM-600. It's probably too cluttered if you're a serious battle DJ, but all I can think if is all the possibilities this opens up.
6 stereo channels (4 phono or line, 2 mono/mic or stereo return)
Guilty Gear X2 / XX is THE quentissential 2D fighting game. It has the most evolved and polished gameplay I have ever seen. It is balanced beyond belief, yet all the characters are wildly different (from style of play to art).
Sammy revitalized the 2D fighter. I haven't been this blown away since Street Fighter II. They paid very close attention to what's been done in the gameplay of the genre, and improved upon it. Take the tension meter, for example. Not only can this be used for super moves, but also to block w/o taking damage, or to instantly Roman Cancel out of a special move to avoid the entire animation time penalty.
The graphics in Guilty Gear X2 are insanely nice, yes, and OK the loading times are low. But they clearly focused all of their efforts on the gameplay.
They're not going to be known for their Pachinko machines much longer:)
OpenGL is essentially a giant state machine. You issue a glTexture() command and now everything is drawn with that texture. Anything... from bound texture, to blending function, to rendering triangles vs. vertex arrays, is a state that can be changed. Whenever you render some fancy textured, lit, alpha-blended scene, with different materials (say, Quake 3), there are a LOT of potential state changes.
State changes are SLOW, and so anyone hoping to render mildly complex scenes had better find a better alternative to resetting the state for every object in the scene. Well, there is... lazily update the states (only change the states that need changing, instead of manually setting every one). You could even go one step further and sort how you render your objects based upon state, so as to cause the least number of changes possible.
Today, OpenGL drivers DO NOT KEEP TRACK OF THE STATE. They just merrily pass the state-changing function calls along. Thus, the programmer is forced to go through the tedium of creating some abstraction of OpenGL states, and tending to it themselves. This is frustrating boring work, there is no reason this shouldn't happen transparently!
VTK is (or at least was, last I heard) guilty of not managing states lazily. A professor around here was working on a project to render from VTK to a large tiled display, which he did by more or less replacing the opengl driver with his own custom tile-display creation. It just happened to lazily update states. The end result was the uber-demo-model displaying smoothly on the tiled display, while chunking along at 10-15 FPS on the actual computer monitor!
OpenGL implementations need to keep track of their rendering states, not just send the requests off to the card!
Because this is honestly the first accurate description of the way things are and should be with slashdot.
This place is merely a community. If you want it to survive, you donate. The editors are providing some kind of minor reward for this. But really, the reward means shit, you're donating to this site if you truly want it to go on. If you don't, then shut up.
The only other place that I in my limited college student surfing experience have witnessed do this honor system is Penny Arcade. You donate, you get a bonus wallpaper. The only way the site got payment was through their users. They tried this at the beginning of July. Note that link isn't dead.
I believe Craze is sponsored by Stanton but that does not detract from his performance at all. Craze spins drum'n'bass, a genre that is probably more entrenched in dubplate culture than any other form of dance/electronic music out there. A year or two ago, Craze came out of NOWHERE (as far as the d'n'b scene was concerned)and blindsided most of UK with his amazing performance. Most DJ's will throw in a scratch or two, beatjuggle occasionally, and perhaps drop only two bars... but the speed and constant variance that Craze pushes blows all else away. If his show can be done with these tools, there is NO reason to doubt these. Vinyl purists there will always be (I myself prefer it), but this is WAY beyond the league of "newbie-CD-decks" in terms of respectability.
Offtopic, big up Craze for bringing stateside drum'n'bass to a whole new level:) DJ Hype has merely his label's plates and his forays into nu-breaks to compete with this, and that's not much IMO.
Everyone seems to be obsessed with talking about how DJ's will never be replaced because of their flow and their artistry. "A computer will pander to the audience, play only what they want to hear, and never have such epic progressions or varied styles!"
Bullshit.
Artistry or not, DJ'ing consists of the following:
- a library of songs/tricks/skills
- knowledge of what songs work with what
- tailoring predefined progressions toward your audience
Now, most DJ's as artists tend to not even think about this. Something just instantly feels right, so that's what goes on next. But really, it feels right because they know that it's going to compliment the current song, the current mood, and will lead to someplace where the DJ is similarly comfortable.
Just because the crowd doesn't expect it doesn't mean the DJ doesn't either. (Triple negative, woohoo!)
My point is, DJ'ing comes down to making decisions based upon some sets of knowledge. I think it is very possible for a computer to mimic this. A library of songs is easy to build. A reference of what songs work well with others is possible, both through a DJ's input, or noting how a crowd responded to the two mixed together weighted by the rest of the mood of that session. A list of progessions that generated certain moods is possible. Mutations upon those to cause those "sudden unexpected surprises" is possible.
Seriously, no different. This is just merchandising slapped on top of a game concept that has already been done. The graphics for the blocks are even the same. Go get a SNES.
Boy I'm happy to see my school come up on slashdot, but not like this.
Those of us who came to UVA from out of state seem to have a lot more respect for this school in general. Unfortunately, we're very outnumbered, and they're STILL trying to raise the tuition on us to lower the in-state tuition.
The overall opinion I get from in-state students is that.. eh.. it's UVA. Not that it's "The University" or "Damn this place rules" but "It's alright I guess." If you're that complacent about the school, chances are you're going to be about as active in participating in the honor system.
I fear that it will eventually die here, and that is a shame. It nearly has already. Used to be that an Honor Violation was basically The Big Hammer of Doom. Today, that has deemed "too harsh." I really hate this political correctness crap or whatever the hell it is. An Honor Violation should be somewhere up there with the Wrath Of God or whoever you pray to. Otherwise, you get the situation today. People just don't care.
This is one step closer to what I've dreamed of ever since I first experienced the thrill of deathmatch.
A few points of interest:
- As I understand it, this is essentially one player watching the game, and the "multicast" is people connecting to that player and seeing the same thing. Makes sense. Now.. what exactly does this player see? Is it limited to receiving events only within a certain distance, as with normal players? Does it receive all info about everything that's happening at once?
- Following from that, how hard would it be to pull off varying camera angles? It seems as though everyone would be limited to the same view.
- Seems they can address cheating with their buffer. Buffering up 1-3 minutes of gameplay before casting it out would hopefully prevent most forms of eye-in-the-sky cheating. The instant replay idea is neat too.
Deathmatch could work very well as a spectator sport. This comes close. It lacks commentary, and it lacks varying camera angles. Ideally one could choose to wander around on their own and follow individual players, or rely on a group of cameramen with commentators in control of what view gets shown when. Wide-angle shots zooming into tight behind-the-shoulder shots, etc., would keep pace and make things interesting.
Now, I'm not a person with hands-on experience, and really the only reason I'm posting is to get someone like that to reply. I'm genuinely curious about this. Anyway, my opinion:
We have some pretty fat honkin' pipes.... relative to the end users. They're "holding up" network speeds in more ways than one. When someone gets broadband, trust me, they're going to end up using all of it.
I don't think pipes today are capable of handling a faster last mile. Fiber to the home nothing, let's just go with 30% of internet users getting cable instead of what is it now, 5% I think? Companies today are loathe to go the last mile because the last mile is costly, and the current networks would need a big-ass overhaul. That's a lot of money. They would end up having to eat it or pass the cost on to consumers. Both situations don't really look good.
So to anyone reading who perhaps could answer on the basis of more than an opinion, how ready is the internet for a faster last mile? And then anyone else, how do you suppose we get that to happen? I'm not but so sure 10 years from now modems will still be prominent.
Dug this up from my bookmarks because I think some may find it interesting. Essentially Valve focused on making a specific portion as cool as possible, then they moved on, went back and made it as cool as possible again. I think it's a shame this isn't tried out more.
Considering that this is one of the little gems that has done things RIGHT lately, I should hope more people take note of HOW it was done right.
Fundemental theory about light
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 2
...is that no matter what frame of reference you're in, light will always travel at c. You're standing still? It travels c. You're running alongside a beam of light at 299,999 mps? It travels c.
But uhh yeah, like has been said, velocity is a measure involving time. My stupid way of thinking is velocity measures the change of everything else, xyz, in fixed positions of time. So would moving in time measure (eg) zyt, in fixed positions of x?
I hope I'm not the only one who remembers this. Blair Witch had a huge underground following with a very well orchestrated campaign that had a lot of people wondering if it was real, or at least reading about the 'details' of the Blair Witch in eager anticipation of the movie.
There were very little movie trailers/previews used before the movie became such a box office hit. Just their website, and the newspaper clippings and short video clips that were posted to it under the guise of news. That has to be one of the best cases of "Internet Hype" used to its full extent.
First off I'll correct the type, it's Kosheen, and is Decoder & Substance's vocal side project, you can find their releases on the Moksha label if I'm not mistaken. A full album is either already out now or due out soon, I forget exactly, but I've seen mp3's of it floating around already.
Secondly, 100 to 1 the word promo is involved. Promo CD. Promo vinyl. Test press vinyl. DJ got friendly and lent a dubplate they ripped to mp3. It could be an mp3 from say.. sour (an mp3 ripping group specializing in drum'n'bass) I suppose, but I'm just saying it's far more likely that it's the radio station getting a promo to build up more hype for the track (that thing really did blow up). Happens all the time.
It's sort of sad to say this, but all too often tracks blow up and get real popular WAAAAAY before they are available due to the dubplate way of life. Like.. Konflict - Messiah. Or... anything from the Cybotron 2000 album.
Just my 2 cents.
(Personally I think this needs far more coverage than just a slashback, guys)
Apache has started that Voodoo Extreme (the link probably won't work:P) would return in full force in the coming days. They had already started to move before the plug was pulled. The VE staff are taking a few days vacation before they go back with their new host, who though unmentioned is receiving high praises.
By all accounts it sounds like GameFan was collapsing rapidly and it's amazing they lasted as long as they did. Something shady was going on with advertising revenue. Many people have stated that since moving to new hosts they've gotten almost 50% more click-through/hit revenue than what Gamefan was showing them.
What concerns me is that this is not going to be the last network to fall by any means. UGO and IGN BOTH sound like they're in for a very tough year, and to me this is going really raise questions about the profitability of internet-only content. Wired, CNN, WSJ, NYT, and hell even/., are all able to stay very much alive because of real world counterparts in other media (or just plain ol' big bucks hoping to diversify). Do the online portions, despite the large readership, actually provide profit at all? Would you pay for Blue's? sCary's?
Someone is going to have to come up with a better answer for online-only content distribution, and this year is going to prove it.
After TaOS was mentioned here a while back, I was inspired to go and check... and sure enough I had the issue of Edge magazine that had TaOS as its cover. But more to the point.
While perusing other issues, I recall reading about a voxel-based 3/4 view helicopter game made for the Amiga. It sounded quite interesting, because it also allowed for realtime landscape deformation. You could blow a huge hole in the ground to force the enemy someplace else where you had a more strategic advantage. It sounded quite neat. I also can't remember the name. Plus I'm not even sure it's what you're talking about;)
When I got through, this post was right underneath the article. Since some of you are having trouble getting there...
" by chip (chip@valinux.com) on Thursday July 20, @06:10PM EST
I was there. Here are the facts as I remember them:
The only things actually decided at the ``closed-door'' meeting (actually we had a visitor and we didn't throw him out) were [1] that a rewrite could be attempted; [2] that it didn't have to be 100% compatible; [3] that one big list like p5p can't support such a large developer population.
Tom C. hasn't been excommunicated or anything, any more than I have. (I'm not on the list either, you notice.) Tom C. left the meeting soon after it started, so he wasn't around to volunteer when the chairs were being assigned. We shut down p6p because we don't want another p5p shark tank. The bootstrap mailing list works; I know that people have been using it. It's only a temporary list, anyway; that's why it has that name. Some (not all, I think) development lists will be closed, also to avoid the p5p-alike fate. The assignment list is real. I can't help what seems real to you.
Perl needs a spin doctor to fight the FUD spawned by anti-Perl bigots of various persuasions.
Meritocracy means that promotions go by ability. What makes you think that only the ability to code is the exclusive measure of ability that should matter? Management is, contrary to popular opinion, a real skill that some people have more of than others.
We already do hear from the community. They use mail and news and Slashdot and use Perl. But the non-traditional-hacker user base doesn't communicate through those channels. Consider Dick Hardt our ``speaker to suits''. As for your participation, well, you're welcome to stay."
I agree with you completely that groups such as EGO, RNS, KSI, etc. do it for the piracy. But I'd like to point out sour, who do it for the music. Most of the rippers are also DJ's who from time to time share the dubplate wealth, put out live mixes of their own or whatever is featured on KISS FM at the moment. These guys are the sole reason I've ever heard of MUCH of what I've been buying recently.
Jungle music is one area where I think mp3 is really helping. Kinda the pirate radio of today. Really, the cost per track of stuff on vinyl is much higher than CD, so being able to check out a preview before you buy can really help. It's not really going to kill record sales either, because the ones who were going to buy records are still going to buy records; not too many people DJ mp3's seriously.
I just had to point out, anyway, that not all "real" ripping groups are doing it solely for the piracy.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't read the STL book mentioned in the parent, but I'd reccommend using Meyers' Effective STL as a compliment. Just like Effective C++ I think it does an excellent job of clearly explaining the "why's" of its subject, leaving the "what's" for a reference book.
I've found Stroustrup's and Meyers' works invaluable at work. I was brought up on C++ during college, but my work was left me dealing with a lot more old C code than I expected. Their explanations of "these are the ugly C workarounds, now this is how C++ can do them cleanly" have really helped me understand what sorts of idioms and practices are being attempted in the old C code.
- spiff
I personally react much better to sound than sight. Sight requires I actively be looking around, with sound, I just have to listen. Deer don't look around, they listen for a twig to snap.
I can almost never play Smash Brothers Melee with the sound off. I listen for things like items being thrown (ok, time to dodge), moves with large execution times (ok, time to strike while they're vulnerable), etc. That way I don't have to keep my eye on the opponent at all times, I can focus on using the environment to my advantage.
- spiff
I'm just getting into the market for a serious mixer. Currently this is at the top of my list, in the same range as the Pioneer DJM-600. It's probably too cluttered if you're a serious battle DJ, but all I can think if is all the possibilities this opens up.
6 stereo channels (4 phono or line, 2 mono/mic or stereo return)
2 auxiliary sends selectable pre/post fader (and crossfader)
MIDI output from VCF 1+2, crossfader, LFO (MIDI clock), dedicated data control and start/stop button
New twin-rail VCA channel faders or high quality VCA rotary faders
2 independent stereo mix outputs
2 VCF filters - any performance channel can be assigned to either filter and either side of crossfader
2 x independent Low Frequency Oscillators (LFO) for filter modulation
Active crossfader allowing contour to be set from smooth to scratch mix
Custom illumination showing status of all performance switches
4 band EQ - high definition of frequency bands, with 'infinite kill' on HF and LF; wide Q for cut, narrow Q for boost.
- spiff
Guilty Gear X2 / XX is THE quentissential 2D fighting game. It has the most evolved and polished gameplay I have ever seen. It is balanced beyond belief, yet all the characters are wildly different (from style of play to art).
:)
Sammy revitalized the 2D fighter. I haven't been this blown away since Street Fighter II. They paid very close attention to what's been done in the gameplay of the genre, and improved upon it. Take the tension meter, for example. Not only can this be used for super moves, but also to block w/o taking damage, or to instantly Roman Cancel out of a special move to avoid the entire animation time penalty.
The graphics in Guilty Gear X2 are insanely nice, yes, and OK the loading times are low. But they clearly focused all of their efforts on the gameplay.
They're not going to be known for their Pachinko machines much longer
- spiff
OpenGL is essentially a giant state machine. You issue a glTexture() command and now everything is drawn with that texture. Anything... from bound texture, to blending function, to rendering triangles vs. vertex arrays, is a state that can be changed. Whenever you render some fancy textured, lit, alpha-blended scene, with different materials (say, Quake 3), there are a LOT of potential state changes.
State changes are SLOW, and so anyone hoping to render mildly complex scenes had better find a better alternative to resetting the state for every object in the scene. Well, there is... lazily update the states (only change the states that need changing, instead of manually setting every one). You could even go one step further and sort how you render your objects based upon state, so as to cause the least number of changes possible.
Today, OpenGL drivers DO NOT KEEP TRACK OF THE STATE. They just merrily pass the state-changing function calls along. Thus, the programmer is forced to go through the tedium of creating some abstraction of OpenGL states, and tending to it themselves. This is frustrating boring work, there is no reason this shouldn't happen transparently!
VTK is (or at least was, last I heard) guilty of not managing states lazily. A professor around here was working on a project to render from VTK to a large tiled display, which he did by more or less replacing the opengl driver with his own custom tile-display creation. It just happened to lazily update states. The end result was the uber-demo-model displaying smoothly on the tiled display, while chunking along at 10-15 FPS on the actual computer monitor!
OpenGL implementations need to keep track of their rendering states, not just send the requests off to the card!
- spiff
Because this is honestly the first accurate description of the way things are and should be with slashdot.
This place is merely a community. If you want it to survive, you donate. The editors are providing some kind of minor reward for this. But really, the reward means shit, you're donating to this site if you truly want it to go on. If you don't, then shut up.
The only other place that I in my limited college student surfing experience have witnessed do this honor system is Penny Arcade. You donate, you get a bonus wallpaper. The only way the site got payment was through their users. They tried this at the beginning of July. Note that link isn't dead.
I believe Craze is sponsored by Stanton but that does not detract from his performance at all. Craze spins drum'n'bass, a genre that is probably more entrenched in dubplate culture than any other form of dance/electronic music out there. A year or two ago, Craze came out of NOWHERE (as far as the d'n'b scene was concerned)and blindsided most of UK with his amazing performance. Most DJ's will throw in a scratch or two, beatjuggle occasionally, and perhaps drop only two bars... but the speed and constant variance that Craze pushes blows all else away. If his show can be done with these tools, there is NO reason to doubt these. Vinyl purists there will always be (I myself prefer it), but this is WAY beyond the league of "newbie-CD-decks" in terms of respectability.
:) DJ Hype has merely his label's plates and his forays into nu-breaks to compete with this, and that's not much IMO.
Offtopic, big up Craze for bringing stateside drum'n'bass to a whole new level
Everyone seems to be obsessed with talking about how DJ's will never be replaced because of their flow and their artistry. "A computer will pander to the audience, play only what they want to hear, and never have such epic progressions or varied styles!"
Bullshit.
Artistry or not, DJ'ing consists of the following:
- a library of songs/tricks/skills
- knowledge of what songs work with what
- tailoring predefined progressions toward your audience
Now, most DJ's as artists tend to not even think about this. Something just instantly feels right, so that's what goes on next. But really, it feels right because they know that it's going to compliment the current song, the current mood, and will lead to someplace where the DJ is similarly comfortable.
Just because the crowd doesn't expect it doesn't mean the DJ doesn't either. (Triple negative, woohoo!)
My point is, DJ'ing comes down to making decisions based upon some sets of knowledge. I think it is very possible for a computer to mimic this. A library of songs is easy to build. A reference of what songs work well with others is possible, both through a DJ's input, or noting how a crowd responded to the two mixed together weighted by the rest of the mood of that session. A list of progessions that generated certain moods is possible. Mutations upon those to cause those "sudden unexpected surprises" is possible.
And yes, I DJ. With that thing called vinyl.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-03 -01&res=l
Please tell me I'm not the only one who instantly thought of the reference.
Seriously, I think this hits the oft asked question right on. (Why) Should I care how my art is interpreted by others?
Too funny how many have fallen hook line and sinker. You oughta check his user info, see how many other blatant trolls this guy's posted.
Quit wasting your time.
Honest to goodness curious question that I'm sure the slashdot crowd could answer: what exactly does "turn-key" mean here?
Seriously, no different. This is just merchandising slapped on top of a game concept that has already been done. The graphics for the blocks are even the same. Go get a SNES.
Boy I'm happy to see my school come up on slashdot, but not like this.
Those of us who came to UVA from out of state seem to have a lot more respect for this school in general. Unfortunately, we're very outnumbered, and they're STILL trying to raise the tuition on us to lower the in-state tuition.
The overall opinion I get from in-state students is that.. eh.. it's UVA. Not that it's "The University" or "Damn this place rules" but "It's alright I guess." If you're that complacent about the school, chances are you're going to be about as active in participating in the honor system.
I fear that it will eventually die here, and that is a shame. It nearly has already. Used to be that an Honor Violation was basically The Big Hammer of Doom. Today, that has deemed "too harsh." I really hate this political correctness crap or whatever the hell it is. An Honor Violation should be somewhere up there with the Wrath Of God or whoever you pray to. Otherwise, you get the situation today. People just don't care.
The future may be sooner than you think, eh?
This is one step closer to what I've dreamed of ever since I first experienced the thrill of deathmatch.
A few points of interest:
- As I understand it, this is essentially one player watching the game, and the "multicast" is people connecting to that player and seeing the same thing. Makes sense. Now.. what exactly does this player see? Is it limited to receiving events only within a certain distance, as with normal players? Does it receive all info about everything that's happening at once?
- Following from that, how hard would it be to pull off varying camera angles? It seems as though everyone would be limited to the same view.
- Seems they can address cheating with their buffer. Buffering up 1-3 minutes of gameplay before casting it out would hopefully prevent most forms of eye-in-the-sky cheating. The instant replay idea is neat too.
Deathmatch could work very well as a spectator sport. This comes close. It lacks commentary, and it lacks varying camera angles. Ideally one could choose to wander around on their own and follow individual players, or rely on a group of cameramen with commentators in control of what view gets shown when. Wide-angle shots zooming into tight behind-the-shoulder shots, etc., would keep pace and make things interesting.
Good step in the right direction
Now, I'm not a person with hands-on experience, and really the only reason I'm posting is to get someone like that to reply. I'm genuinely curious about this. Anyway, my opinion:
We have some pretty fat honkin' pipes.... relative to the end users. They're "holding up" network speeds in more ways than one. When someone gets broadband, trust me, they're going to end up using all of it.
I don't think pipes today are capable of handling a faster last mile. Fiber to the home nothing, let's just go with 30% of internet users getting cable instead of what is it now, 5% I think? Companies today are loathe to go the last mile because the last mile is costly, and the current networks would need a big-ass overhaul. That's a lot of money. They would end up having to eat it or pass the cost on to consumers. Both situations don't really look good.
So to anyone reading who perhaps could answer on the basis of more than an opinion, how ready is the internet for a faster last mile? And then anyone else, how do you suppose we get that to happen? I'm not but so sure 10 years from now modems will still be prominent.
Dug this up from my bookmarks because I think some may find it interesting. Essentially Valve focused on making a specific portion as cool as possible, then they moved on, went back and made it as cool as possible again. I think it's a shame this isn't tried out more.
Considering that this is one of the little gems that has done things RIGHT lately, I should hope more people take note of HOW it was done right.
notext
But uhh yeah, like has been said, velocity is a measure involving time. My stupid way of thinking is velocity measures the change of everything else, xyz, in fixed positions of time. So would moving in time measure (eg) zyt, in fixed positions of x?
Head hurting...
Good thread btw, I'd mod it up if I could
I hope I'm not the only one who remembers this. Blair Witch had a huge underground following with a very well orchestrated campaign that had a lot of people wondering if it was real, or at least reading about the 'details' of the Blair Witch in eager anticipation of the movie.
There were very little movie trailers/previews used before the movie became such a box office hit. Just their website, and the newspaper clippings and short video clips that were posted to it under the guise of news. That has to be one of the best cases of "Internet Hype" used to its full extent.
First off I'll correct the type, it's Kosheen, and is Decoder & Substance's vocal side project, you can find their releases on the Moksha label if I'm not mistaken. A full album is either already out now or due out soon, I forget exactly, but I've seen mp3's of it floating around already. Secondly, 100 to 1 the word promo is involved. Promo CD. Promo vinyl. Test press vinyl. DJ got friendly and lent a dubplate they ripped to mp3. It could be an mp3 from say.. sour (an mp3 ripping group specializing in drum'n'bass) I suppose, but I'm just saying it's far more likely that it's the radio station getting a promo to build up more hype for the track (that thing really did blow up). Happens all the time. It's sort of sad to say this, but all too often tracks blow up and get real popular WAAAAAY before they are available due to the dubplate way of life. Like.. Konflict - Messiah. Or... anything from the Cybotron 2000 album. Just my 2 cents.
(Personally I think this needs far more coverage than just a slashback, guys)
Apache has started that Voodoo Extreme (the link probably won't work :P) would return in full force in the coming days. They had already started to move before the plug was pulled. The VE staff are taking a few days vacation before they go back with their new host, who though unmentioned is receiving high praises.
By all accounts it sounds like GameFan was collapsing rapidly and it's amazing they lasted as long as they did. Something shady was going on with advertising revenue. Many people have stated that since moving to new hosts they've gotten almost 50% more click-through/hit revenue than what Gamefan was showing them.
What concerns me is that this is not going to be the last network to fall by any means. UGO and IGN BOTH sound like they're in for a very tough year, and to me this is going really raise questions about the profitability of internet-only content. Wired, CNN, WSJ, NYT, and hell even /., are all able to stay very much alive because of real world counterparts in other media (or just plain ol' big bucks hoping to diversify). Do the online portions, despite the large readership, actually provide profit at all? Would you pay for Blue's? sCary's?
Someone is going to have to come up with a better answer for online-only content distribution, and this year is going to prove it.
- Spiff
While perusing other issues, I recall reading about a voxel-based 3/4 view helicopter game made for the Amiga. It sounded quite interesting, because it also allowed for realtime landscape deformation. You could blow a huge hole in the ground to force the enemy someplace else where you had a more strategic advantage. It sounded quite neat. I also can't remember the name. Plus I'm not even sure it's what you're talking about ;)
Just thought I'd share...
" by chip (chip@valinux.com) on Thursday July 20, @06:10PM EST
I was there. Here are the facts as I remember them:
The only things actually decided at the ``closed-door'' meeting (actually we had a visitor and we didn't throw him out) were [1] that a rewrite could be attempted; [2] that it didn't have to be 100% compatible; [3] that one big list like p5p can't support such a large developer population.
Tom C. hasn't been excommunicated or anything, any more than I have. (I'm not on the list either, you notice.) Tom C. left the meeting soon after it started, so he wasn't around to volunteer when the chairs were being assigned. We shut down p6p because we don't want another p5p shark tank. The bootstrap mailing list works; I know that people have been using it. It's only a temporary list, anyway; that's why it has that name. Some (not all, I think) development lists will be closed, also to avoid the p5p-alike fate. The assignment list is real. I can't help what seems real to you.
Perl needs a spin doctor to fight the FUD spawned by anti-Perl bigots of various persuasions.
Meritocracy means that promotions go by ability. What makes you think that only the ability to code is the exclusive measure of ability that should matter? Management is, contrary to popular opinion, a real skill that some people have more of than others.
We already do hear from the community. They use mail and news and Slashdot and use Perl. But the non-traditional-hacker user base doesn't communicate through those channels. Consider Dick Hardt our ``speaker to suits''. As for your participation, well, you're welcome to stay."
People getting a little antsy to denounce stuff?
Jungle music is one area where I think mp3 is really helping. Kinda the pirate radio of today. Really, the cost per track of stuff on vinyl is much higher than CD, so being able to check out a preview before you buy can really help. It's not really going to kill record sales either, because the ones who were going to buy records are still going to buy records; not too many people DJ mp3's seriously.
I just had to point out, anyway, that not all "real" ripping groups are doing it solely for the piracy.