We have them, thanks, and very pretty Black and White is too:p
I'm with the original poster, though (as an avid fan of WCs 1 and 2, and StarCraft and BroodWar) - we in the UK can access Battle.net, and have PCs, so why can't we take part in the beta?
It's just not fair, I tell ya!:-(
(Hey, I've got to have something to really show off the capabilities of my soon-to-arrive GeForce3 + ADSL connection...)
Randal tried to tell Intel execs to change their passwords to be more secure. They didn't, and said it was a non issue.
Well, that's very public spirited of him, but it's also none of his business. He was neither the sysadmin nor an employed security guru.
If I tried to crack the password file at work, I would expect to be fired. As the company I work for is pretty small in the grand scheme of things, and doesn't have any major IP to protect, I would be surprised if it went any further. Intel is huge, and has a large amount of sensitive data to protect. I'm not surprised they threw the book at him.
Maybe it was an over-reaction, but by God, did he not expect it? Come on, this is a business we're talking about, and one that is in constant competition with a pretty ferocious competitor (ie AMD). For all they knew, he was trying to sell trade secrets to AMD.
I'm not saying it's right, but if you poke your nose where you know it doesn't belong, you can expect to get it cut off.
If all you're doing is coding, then since that's all logic, physics should fit right in there with it.
Indeed it does. I am a senior programmer currently working at a web agency, but have no formal programming qualifications. My degree is in Physics and, while I did take some programming modules during the course of it, all of these stressed the numerical/physical aspects above the coding ones. In fact, the only language I have ever been taught is Fortran; I taught myself C, C++ and Java. (and BASIC, a smattering of assembler, perl, etc, of course)
I can imagine that it would be just as easy for a CS graduate to pick up at least basic Physics on their own. There isn't really anything that tricky in the sort of mechanics that would be required for most games (fluid dynamics not withstanding, but I have yet to see really realistic water in a game anyway:-) ), and the maths is pretty straightforward too.
I'm sorry to be anti-anti here, but seriously, the #1 factor in business is Marketing!!!! Marketing! I mean, admit it, when ThinkGeek has something phat on the banner ad above the news, don't tell me you don't click on it...
I don't click on it.
They don't deliver the really cool stuff to the UK:-(
That's my privacy!!! Not the fact that I work in computers.
But I want that sort of privacy, too - what I do for a living is my own damn business, I should be allowed to choose who I divulge that knowledge to. I know that marketing people are just trying to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it, just like some people here probably don't like the fact that I get paid to write closed-source software, now that they know. That dislike isn't going to stop me, and my dislike isn't going to stop the marketers, but it doesn't mean that I have to make it easier for them.
"FedEx is a hell of a lot more reliable than FTP when you're running 20 Mbytes," said Charlie Oppenheimer, vice president of marketing at Digital Fountain.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but I semi-regularly download 600+ MB iso images and other multiple-hundred-meg files over ftp links at work, and I've never had problems. It's probably just me, but that really sounds like a load of bull, designed to whip up interest in an otherwise lack-lustre product (given it's high price).
Not entirely; as I understand it, Konqueror and Explorer work in pretty-much the same way, eg the HTML redering is taken care of by a seperate library/DLL, that is available for use by any application.
When I set IE to warn about cookies once, SQL Server Enterprise Manager later warned me about a cookie when I was browsing the db I was adminstering (this was about 2 years ago now).
That's the "cheap" version too; the top of the range, all singing all dancing one with a floating licence would set us back about 12000 GBP. We managed to spring for a single, lower functionality version with a floating licence at a cost of about 8000 GBP.
Together is an amazing piece of software, though; I played with an evaluation copy, and was completely blown away by the features. Damn expensive, of course, but very impressive.
Of course it was sarcasm, this is/., where "greenies" fear to tread;-)
On the other hand, I still think it may be wise to start taking preventative action now, while we argue over whether or not it's necessary, rather than wait until we have conclusive proof that we need to do something, perhaps to find that it's too late. That way, if it turns out that we don't need to do anything after all, we can just stop.
Maybe not, but maybe the two planets are too different to meaningfully compare in this situation.
Or maybe the same thing has happened on Earth already, and we're causing it to happen again, with potentially disastrous effects.
Or maybe, the same thing is happening on Earth, and life as it currently exists is doomed with or without us, but we've cut the timeframe down from millenia to decades.
Whatever, in the case of Mars, it's actually pretty cool if it helps to get the planet terraformed.
With the number of different system configurations out in the wild, it is almost impossible to fully test them all.
I've seen patches for software before now that fix a bug that only occurs if you have a specific graphics card and driver version and a certain other software package installed. Try catching that in beta testing.
I don't mean to flame, but I work as a programmer (although not in the games industry), so I know just how hard it can be to catch all the bugs lurking in a system prior to release. (For "hard", read "impossible").
This is only going to work on PC's Loaded with Linux Running XIMIAN/GNOME
Not true; you only need the required libraries installed in order to run evolution, you don't need gnome to be running. You can quite happily run it on a machine running KDE, or WindowMaker, twm, etc. You may well lose some of the default integration stuff, but that should be fixed just by changing file type associations to point at your chosen apps.
Even if you install Gnome in its entirity, you'll only blow a hundred megs of disk space or so, and even I can afford that;-) (Current storage capacity is 2.5 gigs; I desperately need a new hard drive...)
Slashdot had an article about Brazil a couple months ago explaining about how their government was planning to break the patent on an AIDS drug because they couldn't agree with the manufacturer on a price.
Here are a few statistics for you:
Brazil has the highest number of people with AIDS in Latin America, at around 200,000
a quarter of Brazil's annual AIDS treatment budget of $300m is spent on the drug in question (nelfinavir)
breaking the patent would allow them to save $34.8m per year, and so improve the level of care provided
(Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1 505000/1505163.stm and http://asia.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/08/22/aids.drug/)
Your comparison with Cipro is, imho, spurious. There have been what, a dozen cases of anthrax in the US since 11/9, which have lead to about 4 fatalities? On the other hand, Brazil is facing an AIDS problem of epidemic proportions. Yes, I realise that anthrax could have been a real problem, and so in the face of this potential problem the US government started making threats. Well, Brazil's problem is very real, and only going to get worse. The length of time remaining on the patent is immaterial.
I'm not against patents, just their misuse, and in my opinion charging too much for a drug that is so vitally needed is immoral and an abuse of the patent system.
I admit, I don't buy games very often; the last (full-price) one I bought was Black and White. I do have to take some issue with your comment, though - most games ship with the version of DirectX that they require (although I've noticed that some of the more recent ones I have don't...), so that's not really a problem. Further, there really is no excuse at all to be running Win3.x on a gaming machine, and 3D accelerator cards have been standard PC hardware for about 3 years now.
I guess I'm probably just spoilt because I have a fairly standard 700MHz P3 + TNT2Ultra + Win98SE; as always, for more unusual configurations, YMMV:-)
Anyway, I have only ever had one game that required a particular type of processor - Unreal, which apparently needed the MMX extensions of a real Pentium, and refused to run under my Cyrix. Beyond that, assuming your hardware isn't archaic, you really shouldn't have any problems beyond poor frame rates. Of course, for some of us, poor frame rates are the reason we occasionally spend more on computer hardware in a single go than we do on clothes in a year:-)
You see, unlike the console world I don't have to have 3 or 4 different expensive bulky boxes in order to be able to play all the cool new releases. I just have to have one expensive bulky box.
Of course, in order to get a decent gaming experience from your PC, you're probably going to have to spend about as much on it as you would on those 3 or 4 consoles combined. A GeForce3 Ti200 alone costs about as much as if not more than a PS2.
That said, I do largely agree with you. As much as I dislike Microsoft and Win9x (and NT for that matter; not used 2k, ME or XP), it is nice to be able to walk into a shop and barely even have to worry about system requirements, let alone exact matching of OS and hardware.
What did I do?! Okay, okay, so I took a three hour lunchbreak when I should have been at work, and I met up with a female friend which my (paranoid) girlfirend probably wouldn't aprove of, but hey, I'm only human!;-)
Second place goes to the elderly UK politician who decked the 20-something guy who pied him.
I'm not entirely sure that "elderly" is fair, although the politician in question (John Prescott) must be in his (late?) fifties; I guess that's elderly to the average slashdotter. Also, it wasn't a pie, it was an egg.
To put it in context a little, Mr Prescott was apparently an amateur boxer in his younger days, whilst in the navy I think. I don't think he was anything particularly special, but personally I wouldn't tangle with an ex-boxer:-)
(Said guy than had the nerve to whine about it.)
Not that it did him any good - the police decided not to press charges.
That's easy. A trusted third party takes care of all that. Off the top of my head, you give all your details to this third party, who give your browser some sort of an id number. Your browser transmits this to any pay-for website, which requests payment from the trusted third party (either real time or batched up).
Ignoring the technical problems of this (security, identity theft, etc), something like this should work with a minimum of fuss for users and websites.
And guess what? Such a third party service is already being created - Hailstorm. Microsoft could even engineer a UUID into compliant versions of IE, helping to cut down on identity theft and making the whole process that bit easier. The other potential consequences of this are left as an exercise for the reader.
Personally, I wouldn't pay a penny a page. Not because I'm not prepared to pat for content - I am - but because I think that the potential for misuse is too great. If I have to pay for the sites I visit, I'd much rather pay some sort of flat-fee, preferrably on a day-by-day basis so that if I was without a connection for an extended period of time I wouldn't be paying for something I couldn't use.
So you get your crypto written in a non-signatory country, so what? You still live in a country that's signed the treaty and acted on it, you still have to hand your keys over.
The only ways to avoid this are to emigrate, or to make sure it never becomes law.
That says "3rd person", not "3d". Also, not all 3d games are about killing (although I admit that I'm finding myself hard-pressed to think of any examples; I think that probably says something about my taste in games...)
Other than that it could be argued that, as the game is displayed as a flat image on a 2d screen, no the polygons are not 3d.
If it's any consolation, I would've voted you up +1, Funny (or perhaps +1, Yeah That Film Sucked Didn't It? if there was such an option) if only I had mod points...
I am only not forced to use MS software because I can get away with telling people to print out copies of Word docs that they send me for me.
Were I not quite so senior here, both in terms of position and length of service, with such understanding colleagues, I may well not get away with it.
No-one forced to use MS software? Tell that to the people who receive multiple Word and Excel documents every day from clients.
10^n flies can be wrong, but they can also effectively remove any choice you may once have ahd.
Slashdot Mirror
We have them, thanks, and very pretty Black and White is too :p
:-(
I'm with the original poster, though (as an avid fan of WCs 1 and 2, and StarCraft and BroodWar) - we in the UK can access Battle.net, and have PCs, so why can't we take part in the beta?
It's just not fair, I tell ya!
(Hey, I've got to have something to really show off the capabilities of my soon-to-arrive GeForce3 + ADSL connection...)
Cheers,
Tim
Randal tried to tell Intel execs to change their passwords to be more secure. They didn't, and said it was a non issue.
Well, that's very public spirited of him, but it's also none of his business. He was neither the sysadmin nor an employed security guru.
If I tried to crack the password file at work, I would expect to be fired. As the company I work for is pretty small in the grand scheme of things, and doesn't have any major IP to protect, I would be surprised if it went any further. Intel is huge, and has a large amount of sensitive data to protect. I'm not surprised they threw the book at him.
Maybe it was an over-reaction, but by God, did he not expect it? Come on, this is a business we're talking about, and one that is in constant competition with a pretty ferocious competitor (ie AMD). For all they knew, he was trying to sell trade secrets to AMD.
I'm not saying it's right, but if you poke your nose where you know it doesn't belong, you can expect to get it cut off.
Cheers,
Tim
If all you're doing is coding, then since that's all logic, physics should fit right in there with it.
:-) ), and the maths is pretty straightforward too.
Indeed it does. I am a senior programmer currently working at a web agency, but have no formal programming qualifications. My degree is in Physics and, while I did take some programming modules during the course of it, all of these stressed the numerical/physical aspects above the coding ones. In fact, the only language I have ever been taught is Fortran; I taught myself C, C++ and Java. (and BASIC, a smattering of assembler, perl, etc, of course)
I can imagine that it would be just as easy for a CS graduate to pick up at least basic Physics on their own. There isn't really anything that tricky in the sort of mechanics that would be required for most games (fluid dynamics not withstanding, but I have yet to see really realistic water in a game anyway
Cheers,
Tim
Sorry, that was a question?
If you could do that, publish it.
Stuff the collateral damage, that in itself would be a major achievement.
Sciene is not progressed by discovering things and keeping them to yourself...
Cheers,
Tim
One time pad + anything = uncrackable
Uncrackable encryption is nothing new; the problem is produicng the large sequences of random data (one time pads) and distributing them securely.
As the old saying goes, "if you have a secure way to distribute the key (pad), why not use it to distribute the message..?"
Cheers,
Tim
I'm sorry to be anti-anti here, but seriously, the #1 factor in business is Marketing!!!! Marketing! I mean, admit it, when ThinkGeek has something phat on the banner ad above the news, don't tell me you don't click on it...
:-(
I don't click on it.
They don't deliver the really cool stuff to the UK
That's my privacy!!! Not the fact that I work in computers.
But I want that sort of privacy, too - what I do for a living is my own damn business, I should be allowed to choose who I divulge that knowledge to. I know that marketing people are just trying to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it, just like some people here probably don't like the fact that I get paid to write closed-source software, now that they know. That dislike isn't going to stop me, and my dislike isn't going to stop the marketers, but it doesn't mean that I have to make it easier for them.
Cheers,
Tim
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the quote, but I semi-regularly download 600+ MB iso images and other multiple-hundred-meg files over ftp links at work, and I've never had problems. It's probably just me, but that really sounds like a load of bull, designed to whip up interest in an otherwise lack-lustre product (given it's high price).
Cheers,
Tim
Not entirely; as I understand it, Konqueror and Explorer work in pretty-much the same way, eg the HTML redering is taken care of by a seperate library/DLL, that is available for use by any application.
When I set IE to warn about cookies once, SQL Server Enterprise Manager later warned me about a cookie when I was browsing the db I was adminstering (this was about 2 years ago now).
Cheers,
Tim
we realized that it comes at 4-6k (USD) PER SEAT
That's the "cheap" version too; the top of the range, all singing all dancing one with a floating licence would set us back about 12000 GBP. We managed to spring for a single, lower functionality version with a floating licence at a cost of about 8000 GBP.
Together is an amazing piece of software, though; I played with an evaluation copy, and was completely blown away by the features. Damn expensive, of course, but very impressive.
Cheers,
Tim
Of course it was sarcasm, this is /., where "greenies" fear to tread ;-)
On the other hand, I still think it may be wise to start taking preventative action now, while we argue over whether or not it's necessary, rather than wait until we have conclusive proof that we need to do something, perhaps to find that it's too late. That way, if it turns out that we don't need to do anything after all, we can just stop.
Cheers,
Tim
Maybe we aren't as significant as we think.
Maybe not, but maybe the two planets are too different to meaningfully compare in this situation.
Or maybe the same thing has happened on Earth already, and we're causing it to happen again, with potentially disastrous effects.
Or maybe, the same thing is happening on Earth, and life as it currently exists is doomed with or without us, but we've cut the timeframe down from millenia to decades.
Whatever, in the case of Mars, it's actually pretty cool if it helps to get the planet terraformed.
Cheers,
Tim
With the number of different system configurations out in the wild, it is almost impossible to fully test them all.
I've seen patches for software before now that fix a bug that only occurs if you have a specific graphics card and driver version and a certain other software package installed. Try catching that in beta testing.
I don't mean to flame, but I work as a programmer (although not in the games industry), so I know just how hard it can be to catch all the bugs lurking in a system prior to release. (For "hard", read "impossible").
Cheers,
Tim
This is only going to work on PC's Loaded with Linux Running XIMIAN/GNOME
;-) (Current storage capacity is 2.5 gigs; I desperately need a new hard drive...)
Not true; you only need the required libraries installed in order to run evolution, you don't need gnome to be running. You can quite happily run it on a machine running KDE, or WindowMaker, twm, etc. You may well lose some of the default integration stuff, but that should be fixed just by changing file type associations to point at your chosen apps.
Even if you install Gnome in its entirity, you'll only blow a hundred megs of disk space or so, and even I can afford that
Cheers,
Tim
Here are a few statistics for you:
(Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_
Your comparison with Cipro is, imho, spurious. There have been what, a dozen cases of anthrax in the US since 11/9, which have lead to about 4 fatalities? On the other hand, Brazil is facing an AIDS problem of epidemic proportions. Yes, I realise that anthrax could have been a real problem, and so in the face of this potential problem the US government started making threats. Well, Brazil's problem is very real, and only going to get worse. The length of time remaining on the patent is immaterial.
I'm not against patents, just their misuse, and in my opinion charging too much for a drug that is so vitally needed is immoral and an abuse of the patent system.
Cheers,
Tim
I admit, I don't buy games very often; the last (full-price) one I bought was Black and White. I do have to take some issue with your comment, though - most games ship with the version of DirectX that they require (although I've noticed that some of the more recent ones I have don't...), so that's not really a problem. Further, there really is no excuse at all to be running Win3.x on a gaming machine, and 3D accelerator cards have been standard PC hardware for about 3 years now.
:-)
:-)
I guess I'm probably just spoilt because I have a fairly standard 700MHz P3 + TNT2Ultra + Win98SE; as always, for more unusual configurations, YMMV
Anyway, I have only ever had one game that required a particular type of processor - Unreal, which apparently needed the MMX extensions of a real Pentium, and refused to run under my Cyrix. Beyond that, assuming your hardware isn't archaic, you really shouldn't have any problems beyond poor frame rates. Of course, for some of us, poor frame rates are the reason we occasionally spend more on computer hardware in a single go than we do on clothes in a year
Cheers,
Tim
Presumably "simulate" is a typo, and should be "stimulate" ;-)
Cheers,
Tim
You see, unlike the console world I don't have to have 3 or 4 different expensive bulky boxes in order to be able to play all the cool new releases. I just have to have one expensive bulky box.
Of course, in order to get a decent gaming experience from your PC, you're probably going to have to spend about as much on it as you would on those 3 or 4 consoles combined. A GeForce3 Ti200 alone costs about as much as if not more than a PS2.
That said, I do largely agree with you. As much as I dislike Microsoft and Win9x (and NT for that matter; not used 2k, ME or XP), it is nice to be able to walk into a shop and barely even have to worry about system requirements, let alone exact matching of OS and hardware.
Cheers,
Tim
*ouch!!!*
;-)
What did I do?! Okay, okay, so I took a three hour lunchbreak when I should have been at work, and I met up with a female friend which my (paranoid) girlfirend probably wouldn't aprove of, but hey, I'm only human!
Cheers,
Tim C
PS Yes, I know this is Offtopic...
Second place goes to the elderly UK politician who decked the 20-something guy who pied him.
:-)
I'm not entirely sure that "elderly" is fair, although the politician in question (John Prescott) must be in his (late?) fifties; I guess that's elderly to the average slashdotter. Also, it wasn't a pie, it was an egg.
To put it in context a little, Mr Prescott was apparently an amateur boxer in his younger days, whilst in the navy I think. I don't think he was anything particularly special, but personally I wouldn't tangle with an ex-boxer
(Said guy than had the nerve to whine about it.)
Not that it did him any good - the police decided not to press charges.
Cheers,
Tim
Because how else are we going to pay them?
That's easy. A trusted third party takes care of all that. Off the top of my head, you give all your details to this third party, who give your browser some sort of an id number. Your browser transmits this to any pay-for website, which requests payment from the trusted third party (either real time or batched up).
Ignoring the technical problems of this (security, identity theft, etc), something like this should work with a minimum of fuss for users and websites.
And guess what? Such a third party service is already being created - Hailstorm. Microsoft could even engineer a UUID into compliant versions of IE, helping to cut down on identity theft and making the whole process that bit easier. The other potential consequences of this are left as an exercise for the reader.
Personally, I wouldn't pay a penny a page. Not because I'm not prepared to pat for content - I am - but because I think that the potential for misuse is too great. If I have to pay for the sites I visit, I'd much rather pay some sort of flat-fee, preferrably on a day-by-day basis so that if I was without a connection for an extended period of time I wouldn't be paying for something I couldn't use.
Cheers,
Tim
How will that help?
So you get your crypto written in a non-signatory country, so what? You still live in a country that's signed the treaty and acted on it, you still have to hand your keys over.
The only ways to avoid this are to emigrate, or to make sure it never becomes law.
Cheers,
Tim
That says "3rd person", not "3d". Also, not all 3d games are about killing (although I admit that I'm finding myself hard-pressed to think of any examples; I think that probably says something about my taste in games...)
Other than that it could be argued that, as the game is displayed as a flat image on a 2d screen, no the polygons are not 3d.
Cheers,
Tim
5pm -> 3am = 10 hours, not 8
;-)
Someone needs to brush up on their base 12 arithmetic
Cheers,
Tim
If it's any consolation, I would've voted you up +1, Funny (or perhaps +1, Yeah That Film Sucked Didn't It? if there was such an option) if only I had mod points...
Cheers,
Tim
Burning Karma because I can
I am only not forced to use MS software because I can get away with telling people to print out copies of Word docs that they send me for me.
Were I not quite so senior here, both in terms of position and length of service, with such understanding colleagues, I may well not get away with it.
No-one forced to use MS software? Tell that to the people who receive multiple Word and Excel documents every day from clients.
10^n flies can be wrong, but they can also effectively remove any choice you may once have ahd.
Cheers,
Tim