If you're in Linuxland, you might find linuxassembly.org helpful. I've done some assembly before (only a semester's worth, though), and the site was rather useful to me. If you've never done x86, though, there might not be enough there for you . . .
Okay, so let's see. We have the technology to digitally edit people out of video scenes in REALTIME. We have the technology to digitally add in elements to a video scene (I would assume in realtime). We have the technology to do damn near anything we want digitally, given enough time and servers, short of making fully-believable humans. And some pictures supposedly sent back from a satellite is going to convince someone who thinks they managed to fake the moon landings 30+ years ago that they were wrong? Riiiiight.
Say what you want, but smoking and drinking are all I have left to shorten my existence on this cursed rock.
Oh, come on. I'm sure you could come up with far more effective ways to shorten your existence. Hell, in certain climates all it would take is wandering outside for awhile during the appropriate time of year.
Question: what's "ripoff" about "Mozilla?" I thought that was always the name of the "brains" behind Netscape. Check the README in your Netscape installation, if you've got one.
Re:Oh that's very responsible of you, SlashDot
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Microsoft News Update
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
On the other hand, if the server gets slashdotted, perhaps nobody will be able to get to it! You see, it's a public service . . .
Oh... and if you don't have the original cd, well cry me a river.
As this appears (to me) to be a jab against people who have illegally copied music, I thought I'd point out that there are some perfectlylegitimate sources for completely legal MP3s. I signed up for an Emusic account a few months ago, and I've got a good 30Gb of totally legal mp3s. Though obviously it's not the end of the world that converting 'em all to OGG would be a Bad Idea. Obviously if it was that big a deal to me I wouldn't have signed up for Emusic until they offered Ogg to begin with or whatever.:)
It's under the preferences somewhere . . . Just uncheck "Use Radial Thingamajiggers" or whatever. It's not quite the same thing as uninstalling, but it does the trick.
The problem I ran into with this particular implementation of pie menus is that when I right-click, it takes a good 1-2 seconds for the menu to come up. That's way too long for me to use it every time I want to do something. The time using a pie menu might save me is eaten up by the amount of time it takes for it to come up properly. I'm on an 833Mhz machine, too, and Mozilla is otherwise quite snappy.
I'll check it out again in a few versions, though, once it gets better, as I'm assuming it will . . .
Re:Trailer Music
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Sen To, X-Men 2
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· Score: 3, Informative
The music... is Mars by Gustav Holst... It just doesn't work with this trailer... Almost like they threw it on at the last minute because they didn't have anything else.
I've got some friends who work on music for movies (orchestration, etc), and as it turns out, the music for most movies tends to be quite incomplete until just before the release, which is why movie trailers tend to use well-known classical pieces (Carmina Burana comes to mind), or clips from other movies' soundtracks (the themes from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Stargate come to mind). They had to completely re-record all of the music for one pretty major film mere weeks before it was hitting theatres.
That said, I didn't mind the music from the X2 trailer.:)
This is precisely one of the issues with WineX. It is being touted as a future for Linux gaming, yet it is ultimately a short-term bandage that might even have bad side effects (like deterring some native ports).
Okay, so some people are touting WineX as the future for Linux gaming. That's not what I'm touting it as, though. I wasn't making that argument. Wine(x) lets me play games today that I wouldn't otherwise be able to play without Windows. It also lets me watch Sorenson-encoded Quicktime movies. It also lets me use some Office programs that I still need for work occasionally. It's providing a solution today and for that I'm thankful. I said that I'd "like" to have many more native Linux games. And I do. I'd also like native Sorenson playback. I'd also like to be able to legally reverse-engineer my own DVD-playing software. I'd also like for Israel and Palestine to grow up and be nice to each other. But, at least in the short-term, none of these things are going to happen. In the meantime, Wine(x) gives me a solution I can use today (though not for the Israel/Palestine and DVD issues. Damn you, WINE developers!).
As for the other point, I do partially agree, but I doubt that it would work in this case. Console gaming is kind of beside the point; they're all competing in a very limited market. PCs just aren't like that. Gaming isn't the only thing that PCs do. When I was growing up, I'd want to upgrade this and that, but there were always the parents saying, "Make sure I can still use MY programs." Let's imagine the best case scenario: Some huge gaming company decides to release their premiere product on Linux ONLY. This game has been highly anticipated for, say, EVER. Everyone and their dog wants this game, and it's Linux only. "So, Dad, I'm gonna install this game on the home computer, but I'm gonna have to install Linux to do it." "Will I be able to use <blank>?" Sure, you might score some converts. Perhaps the game even comes with some freaky-cool install that repartitions your drive (keeping all the other partitions intact, of course), installing Linux and the game into the new partition, and adding an entry for "PLAY THIS GAME" in the bootup menu next to the regular "Windows 2000" options. Even then. "I have to do what to install this game?" And that's pretty much the only way you'll get any converts, IMO. If you release a Linux AND Windows version, everyone with Windows is going to buy the Windows version. It'll make us Linux-heads happy, but it won't do anything to boost popularity.
Plus you've got the fact that no major game company is going to DO that to begin with. These companies exist to make money, not promote alternative platforms. They're going to develop for where the market is, which just isn't Linux right now.
Now I'll jump on the Wine bandwagon and argue that it might actually be good for "Linux," and not just a measure that works for me now. Every user using Wine isn't using Windows (well, they might dual boot or have more than one computer, but you get what I'm saying). Let's say someone wants to get rid of Windows, but just can't bear to part with program X. Someone else shows him that Program X works perfectly in Wine. *ding!* We've just got a new Linux user. This goes on for awhile, aided by the fact that the Linux desktop continues to get better and better. The new Linux users want to play new Game Y, which happens to work under Wine, so they buy it. The game companies start noticing that more and more of their users are using Linux. Running their games on a platform they didn't even code for! "Linux? What's that? Isn't that just a server OS? But wait! They can run GAME Y on it, and we didn't even know about it! That must be one cool OS. Let's talk about doing native versions in the future, since there seems to be a market for it . .."
All conjecture, of course. But I still say that desktop use has to come first.
"Hm, this game doesn't run on Linux. Better continue to buy Microsoft OSes instead." -or-
"Hm, this game doesn't run natively in Linux, but I can work around it with Wine(X). I guess I'll spend my money on a donation to the EFF instead." (or more realistically, on CDs or Movies or porn or whatever.)
Sure, long term, we'd like many more NATIVE Linux games. However, what's going to convince game makers to make Linux ports? On one hand, you've got happy companies like Id Software who just "believe," as it were. On the other hand, you've got companies who just won't eat the kind of monetary loss doing a Linux port probably creates. Why? The Linux desktop just isn't ready for every-day, mom-and-pop use. Granted, it's been getting a hell of a lot better recently, and I certainly love it, but it's just not there yet. Until there's a significant percentage of home desktop users running Linux, it's just not profitable for most companies to make Linux ports. To say nothing of releasing only Linux versions, which I suppose is the eventual goal here.
So what do I do? I want to play Half-Life. No Linux version will ever be forthcoming. I install Wine(X). There we go. Is that good for the community? ("Hey, switch to Linux - you can still play Half-Life." vs "Hey, switch to Linux - you can't play Half-Life, but maybe someday in the future you'll be able to play other games.") IMO, when Linux wins in the desktop arena, that's when we'll start seeing more native Linux games. Demographics drive the games, not the other way around.
No less useful than a curt post saying, "No, actually I can't give you that link." Or would you like me to set it up on some random, public server just so that I can make your life easier for some reason? And we seem to have a different opinion of "mindless chatter." I thought the tidbit about not putting the strips on a public server had at least some bearing on the matter at hand. Whatever.
Heh. Well, sure, here you go: http://thag/strips. But that's not going to do you much good, because it's behind a firewall you can't get through (or, I suppose, possibly you could if you could find some holes in security, but now we're getting silly). Also, the dailystrips author suggests that you don't put the strips up in any publicly-accessible format, as comic authors tend to get a little tetchy about people reproducing their work all over the place.:)
Heh. Point taken. I suppose I was implying that, were AOL an otherwise fine and upstanding place to take your business and internet connectivity, this alone would be a great reason to stay the hell away.:)
Ugh. Sounds like a great reason to stay off AOL at all costs.:) Still, I suppose AOL will eventually move over to using Netscape, right? Might take awhile, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
Well, I suppose that if they give you a popup ad inside a link you click on (like, they use javascript to move you to the page you want to go to AND do the popup), Mozilla wouldn't block that by default (unless you did the "no new windows" option, too). So I suppose you might get a few. But all in all, it's a much nicer WWW out there with Mozilla.:)
That's true. I haven't seen one popup ad since Mozilla implemented the "no popups I didn't request" feature. I always find it a little strange when people complain about popup ads, because I often forget they even exist. So long as advertisers are using 'em instead of huge banner ads, I'll be happy. Not that you can't block the banner ads, too, but that's more work. Right now I click on one little checkbox and all the popups disappear.
Re:I guess that explains something
on
In Print: MegaTokyo
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Hm, well I'll disagree here, 'cause I think the plot's been moving along rather nicely as of late. Sure, last week was kind of a wash because he spent most of it preparing for / recovering from Otakon (or however that's spelled), and it's not like the occaional DPD or SGD strip is too painful. If it really does piss you off enough, why don't you just try out dailystrips, a wicked-cool perl script which'll go out and download all your favorite strips and present 'em all on a single HTML page for you. I read about twenty strips and it only takes me a minute or two each morning to go through 'em, because I only have to click on one link. And since it's Perl, it'll even run on those heathen Operating Systems out there.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Which kind of defeats the purpose. :)
If you're in Linuxland, you might find linuxassembly.org helpful. I've done some assembly before (only a semester's worth, though), and the site was rather useful to me. If you've never done x86, though, there might not be enough there for you . . .
Didn't think so. :)
Okay, so let's see. We have the technology to digitally edit people out of video scenes in REALTIME. We have the technology to digitally add in elements to a video scene (I would assume in realtime). We have the technology to do damn near anything we want digitally, given enough time and servers, short of making fully-believable humans. And some pictures supposedly sent back from a satellite is going to convince someone who thinks they managed to fake the moon landings 30+ years ago that they were wrong? Riiiiight.
You found a docking station at a Goodwill? The technology at all of the ones around my area stops about twenty years ago.
Question: what's "ripoff" about "Mozilla?" I thought that was always the name of the "brains" behind Netscape. Check the README in your Netscape installation, if you've got one.
On the other hand, if the server gets slashdotted, perhaps nobody will be able to get to it! You see, it's a public service . . .
It's under the preferences somewhere . . . Just uncheck "Use Radial Thingamajiggers" or whatever. It's not quite the same thing as uninstalling, but it does the trick.
I'll check it out again in a few versions, though, once it gets better, as I'm assuming it will . . .
That said, I didn't mind the music from the X2 trailer. :)
As for the other point, I do partially agree, but I doubt that it would work in this case. Console gaming is kind of beside the point; they're all competing in a very limited market. PCs just aren't like that. Gaming isn't the only thing that PCs do. When I was growing up, I'd want to upgrade this and that, but there were always the parents saying, "Make sure I can still use MY programs." Let's imagine the best case scenario: Some huge gaming company decides to release their premiere product on Linux ONLY. This game has been highly anticipated for, say, EVER. Everyone and their dog wants this game, and it's Linux only. "So, Dad, I'm gonna install this game on the home computer, but I'm gonna have to install Linux to do it." "Will I be able to use <blank>?" Sure, you might score some converts. Perhaps the game even comes with some freaky-cool install that repartitions your drive (keeping all the other partitions intact, of course), installing Linux and the game into the new partition, and adding an entry for "PLAY THIS GAME" in the bootup menu next to the regular "Windows 2000" options. Even then. "I have to do what to install this game?" And that's pretty much the only way you'll get any converts, IMO. If you release a Linux AND Windows version, everyone with Windows is going to buy the Windows version. It'll make us Linux-heads happy, but it won't do anything to boost popularity.
Plus you've got the fact that no major game company is going to DO that to begin with. These companies exist to make money, not promote alternative platforms. They're going to develop for where the market is, which just isn't Linux right now.
Now I'll jump on the Wine bandwagon and argue that it might actually be good for "Linux," and not just a measure that works for me now. Every user using Wine isn't using Windows (well, they might dual boot or have more than one computer, but you get what I'm saying). Let's say someone wants to get rid of Windows, but just can't bear to part with program X. Someone else shows him that Program X works perfectly in Wine. *ding!* We've just got a new Linux user. This goes on for awhile, aided by the fact that the Linux desktop continues to get better and better. The new Linux users want to play new Game Y, which happens to work under Wine, so they buy it. The game companies start noticing that more and more of their users are using Linux. Running their games on a platform they didn't even code for! "Linux? What's that? Isn't that just a server OS? But wait! They can run GAME Y on it, and we didn't even know about it! That must be one cool OS. Let's talk about doing native versions in the future, since there seems to be a market for it . . ."
All conjecture, of course. But I still say that desktop use has to come first.
- "Hm, this game doesn't run on Linux. Better continue to buy Microsoft OSes instead."
- "Hm, this game doesn't run natively in Linux, but I can work around it with Wine(X). I guess I'll spend my money on a donation to the EFF instead." (or more realistically, on CDs or Movies or porn or whatever.)
Sure, long term, we'd like many more NATIVE Linux games. However, what's going to convince game makers to make Linux ports? On one hand, you've got happy companies like Id Software who just "believe," as it were. On the other hand, you've got companies who just won't eat the kind of monetary loss doing a Linux port probably creates. Why? The Linux desktop just isn't ready for every-day, mom-and-pop use. Granted, it's been getting a hell of a lot better recently, and I certainly love it, but it's just not there yet. Until there's a significant percentage of home desktop users running Linux, it's just not profitable for most companies to make Linux ports. To say nothing of releasing only Linux versions, which I suppose is the eventual goal here.-or-
So what do I do? I want to play Half-Life. No Linux version will ever be forthcoming. I install Wine(X). There we go. Is that good for the community? ("Hey, switch to Linux - you can still play Half-Life." vs "Hey, switch to Linux - you can't play Half-Life, but maybe someday in the future you'll be able to play other games.") IMO, when Linux wins in the desktop arena, that's when we'll start seeing more native Linux games. Demographics drive the games, not the other way around.
Hm. Well, obviously we've got differing ideas as to what's garbage, then. Again, whatever. Just a discussion forum. Later . . .
No less useful than a curt post saying, "No, actually I can't give you that link." Or would you like me to set it up on some random, public server just so that I can make your life easier for some reason? And we seem to have a different opinion of "mindless chatter." I thought the tidbit about not putting the strips on a public server had at least some bearing on the matter at hand. Whatever.
Heh. Well, sure, here you go: http://thag/strips. But that's not going to do you much good, because it's behind a firewall you can't get through (or, I suppose, possibly you could if you could find some holes in security, but now we're getting silly). Also, the dailystrips author suggests that you don't put the strips up in any publicly-accessible format, as comic authors tend to get a little tetchy about people reproducing their work all over the place. :)
Uncheck it to disallow pages from doing so. There's lots of other fun options in there, too.
Ugh. Sounds like a great reason to stay off AOL at all costs. :) Still, I suppose AOL will eventually move over to using Netscape, right? Might take awhile, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
Well, I suppose that if they give you a popup ad inside a link you click on (like, they use javascript to move you to the page you want to go to AND do the popup), Mozilla wouldn't block that by default (unless you did the "no new windows" option, too). So I suppose you might get a few. But all in all, it's a much nicer WWW out there with Mozilla. :)
Hm, well I'll disagree here, 'cause I think the plot's been moving along rather nicely as of late. Sure, last week was kind of a wash because he spent most of it preparing for / recovering from Otakon (or however that's spelled), and it's not like the occaional DPD or SGD strip is too painful. If it really does piss you off enough, why don't you just try out dailystrips, a wicked-cool perl script which'll go out and download all your favorite strips and present 'em all on a single HTML page for you. I read about twenty strips and it only takes me a minute or two each morning to go through 'em, because I only have to click on one link. And since it's Perl, it'll even run on those heathen Operating Systems out there. :)