Not to sound rude or anything, but it's not like they were hard to figure out. A ostrich with a lance could safely be assumed to represent Joust; the little ship from Defender, in all probability, represented Defender. A smashed TV might, just might, be Smash TV.
I might be going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing you haven't bought this as a gift for anybody who wasn't familiar with the originals.
And while I can't remember all the icons any more, I don't think all of them were very intuitive (or even that easy to see on a small TV).
Besides: Things have names. Why not show them? It's basic usability.
How would you like it if, the next time you ordered something online, you'd have to pick your state, not from a drop down list, but from a graphic menu showing the shape of each state, arranged alphabetically, without the name?
If you're not developing a hoop-jumping game, don't make your user jump through hoops.
The first volume's was horrible. The icons for the games were hieroglyphics and you couldn't tell which game they were for until you moved the cursor to them and waited for a second for the thing to display a title screen where the title would finally be readable.
Does anybody know which company is developing this? According to the article it's "N/A" which isn't terribly helpful.
I can't wait to see what they're going to cut out of the original for the American version this time. Blood? Bounce? Maybe all the violence, and just have the characters talk to each other or play mini-games to determine the winner?
If similar products are any indication, they'll find a way to make the games subtly different in ways that will completely destroy gameplay (different timing, quirks, uncomfortable controllers, huge reset buttons you can't help but press every once in a while).
Is the concept nice? Sure. Is the execution any good? Can't tell yet.
So you'll excuse me if my nipples don't explode with delight just yet.
And here's a thought: Buy a used VCS2600! They're not exactly rare (by virtue of being very popular back in the day, and not being very easy to destroy).
Here's a hint. Whenever a NEWS article ends with a question mark, the answer is no. News is about reporting things that happen, not asking if something's happened or not.
CVSTrac also gives you the benefit of browsing the code from the web, a bug tracker and a Wiki.
svn allows webdav access through either an apache module or its own daemon. The other features you mentioned seem to be way outside the scope of a source control tool (IMHO but YMMV).
Remember the huge amount of non-music audio material available (say, from libraries, usenet, www.audible.com and www.rusc.com (to name but two)etc).
With those in mind, you may want a player that can also save your place in audio files, hopefully automatically, ideally for every directory. Do any MP3 CD players do that?
That's why I said making a distributed email relay system illegal, not anything like what was mentioned.
One of my points was that since politicians are non-technical (you know, what we geeks call "stupid"), they can end up wording the thing wrong and outlawing much more than intended (like all video gaming instead of gambling, as in Greece).
Don't feel too bad. You can still try to pass off a law restricting access to other types of violent content, like movies or maybe books (remember all that stuff in the bible?).
I wonder if this kind of thing will stop happenning in a few years, when most voters will have grown up with videogames. Or do people lose all sense of freedom when becoming parents?
P.S. It's such a shame money ruled the day. Let's all work together to make sure it never happens again. If it were up to me, I'd just outlaw it outright.
On another note, perhaps legislation should be put forward to outlaw distributed (this would have to be defined further... perhaps third party or in a different physical location, obviously wouldn't want it to affect legitimate servers) mail delivery like this. There's not really any point in a widescale distributed email delivery system OTHER than delivering spam that I can think of.
If it's covered by existing laws, we don't need new ones. And remember that laws aren't enforced - they're just feel-good measures.
Plus, you wouldn't want the gov't to accidentally make SETI or distributed.net or something illegal, would you? Remember when video games were illegal in Greece? (are they still illegal, or did they fix it?).
lightspawn writes "Thiry nine days ago today, A pair of slashdot editors launched a homemade article that forever changed the celebrating of Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary.
There are already enough weird laws on the books to do that. In one way or another, whether you know it or now, we're all criminals under some law in some way.
The land of the free indeed... as long as you don't offend anybody making more money than you and do nothing against the religion of the ruling party (think there are two? check again).
Does the server have to be in New Hampshire? The saver? The savee?
This is completely moronic, of course. What about posession of tools that auto-save conversations (say, ICQ?) Surely this must be illegal in New Hampshire! What about email communication?
Implicit consent should (almost?) always be assumed in communication of this type.
Are we going to see more disclaimers when we log into chat servers? "By logging in, you hereby consent etc etc; if you don't like it log out now".
I think it's enough to say the theory is proven... no number of bits of security is ever going to be "enough" to be uncrackable
Pet peeve: You can't prove something is always true by providing anecdotal evidence - but you can disprove it.
Anyway, to the main point: you live in a universe with a finite number of particles and a finite TTL (physics majors are welcome to argue if they want). Or let's put it this way: The total amount of resources available to humanity is limited. Given that, there are problems that, although possible to solve in theory, are impossible in practice - take, for example, the problem of playing perfect chess by fully computing the game tree. With enough bits encryption becomes unbruteforcable too. And most secrets themselves really have a TTL of only a few years or decades and there's no point in trying to protect them any longer.
So while a "Digital Fortress"-style theoretically uncrackable encryption may not be possible, practically uncrackable encryption certainly is.
Slashdot Mirror
How should I know which books are appropriate for my kids?
Take the bible for instance. Is this really appropriate for under-18s?
Are we going to see this every time a new artistic medium is created?
Not to sound rude or anything, but it's not like they were hard to figure out. A ostrich with a lance could safely be assumed to represent Joust; the little ship from Defender, in all probability, represented Defender. A smashed TV might, just might, be Smash TV.
I might be going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing you haven't bought this as a gift for anybody who wasn't familiar with the originals.
And while I can't remember all the icons any more, I don't think all of them were very intuitive (or even that easy to see on a small TV).
Besides: Things have names. Why not show them? It's basic usability.
How would you like it if, the next time you ordered something online, you'd have to pick your state, not from a drop down list, but from a graphic menu showing the shape of each state, arranged alphabetically, without the name?
If you're not developing a hoop-jumping game, don't make your user jump through hoops.
The first volume's was horrible. The icons for the games were hieroglyphics and you couldn't tell which game they were for until you moved the cursor to them and waited for a second for the thing to display a title screen where the title would finally be readable.
Does anybody know which company is developing this? According to the article it's "N/A" which isn't terribly helpful.
Wisdom Tree's NES games.
Did you know Sunday Funday was just a graphics hack of Menace Beach?
Also see: Bible Adventures.
"GOOD WORK! BUT YOU FORGOT BABY MOSES!".
Yeah, I'm sure the passion of the christ will make for a great game, with the player controlling Jesus, and.. getting beat up and stuff?
Now, if you could switch to Robot Jesus, Ninja Jesus, or Hyper Jesus, then we'd have something...
I can't wait to see what they're going to cut out of the original for the American version this time. Blood? Bounce? Maybe all the violence, and just have the characters talk to each other or play mini-games to determine the winner?
When is the army going to install this in Iraq?
Oops, I forgot we don't deserve the same freedom as the Iraqis. Silly me.
If similar products are any indication, they'll find a way to make the games subtly different in ways that will completely destroy gameplay (different timing, quirks, uncomfortable controllers, huge reset buttons you can't help but press every once in a while).
Is the concept nice? Sure. Is the execution any good? Can't tell yet.
So you'll excuse me if my nipples don't explode with delight just yet.
And here's a thought: Buy a used VCS2600! They're not exactly rare (by virtue of being very popular back in the day, and not being very easy to destroy).
ripping from digital cable music channels?
A smart app could figure not only when the songs change, but OCR the picture to try and parse the artist, album and track info.
Instead of providing your ISP's account info/config only once, do it for every game? No.
And get this, it does ogg and flac, why would I want anything else?
.mod and .mid.
.mid music.
.mod revival would really be great (make your own music instead of using RIAA stuff! what a concept!)
Now we just need
No, seriously, 20 gigs is like a lifetime of
Plus a
Here's a hint. Whenever a NEWS article ends with a question mark, the answer is no. News is about reporting things that happen, not asking if something's happened or not.
Shouldn't that be in 'ask slashdot'?
Coming soon: Is FTP dead?
CVSTrac also gives you the benefit of browsing the code from the web, a bug tracker and a Wiki.
svn allows webdav access through either an apache module or its own daemon. The other features you mentioned seem to be way outside the scope of a source control tool (IMHO but YMMV).
Sorry, I guess I should have explained. It's easy to set up - pretty straightforward if you only want to use it locally - it's as easy as
svnadmin create dbname
A huge plus is it's easy to export/import the database to a single (large) file, so you can actually see it does what it's supposed to.
It's written by the people who used to maintain CVS before noticing how annoying it was.
So it's not overkill, and satisfies all of your criteria.
here.
Pity the new fool overlords.
Remember the huge amount of non-music audio material available (say, from libraries, usenet, www.audible.com and www.rusc.com (to name but two)etc).
With those in mind, you may want a player that can also save your place in audio files, hopefully automatically, ideally for every directory. Do any MP3 CD players do that?
That's why I said making a distributed email relay system illegal, not anything like what was mentioned.
One of my points was that since politicians are non-technical (you know, what we geeks call "stupid"), they can end up wording the thing wrong and outlawing much more than intended (like all video gaming instead of gambling, as in Greece).
Don't feel too bad. You can still try to pass off a law restricting access to other types of violent content, like movies or maybe books (remember all that stuff in the bible?).
I wonder if this kind of thing will stop happenning in a few years, when most voters will have grown up with videogames. Or do people lose all sense of freedom when becoming parents?
P.S. It's such a shame money ruled the day. Let's all work together to make sure it never happens again. If it were up to me, I'd just outlaw it outright.
On another note, perhaps legislation should be put forward to outlaw distributed (this would have to be defined further... perhaps third party or in a different physical location, obviously wouldn't want it to affect legitimate servers) mail delivery like this. There's not really any point in a widescale distributed email delivery system OTHER than delivering spam that I can think of.
If it's covered by existing laws, we don't need new ones. And remember that laws aren't enforced - they're just feel-good measures.
Plus, you wouldn't want the gov't to accidentally make SETI or distributed.net or something illegal, would you? Remember when video games were illegal in Greece? (are they still illegal, or did they fix it?).
lightspawn writes "Thiry nine days ago today, A pair of slashdot editors launched a homemade article that forever changed the celebrating of Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary.
Don't even have one job, you insensitive clod!
There are already enough weird laws on the books to do that. In one way or another, whether you know it or now, we're all criminals under some law in some way.
Did you know, for example, that cohabitation is illegal in North Carolina?
The land of the free indeed... as long as you don't offend anybody making more money than you and do nothing against the religion of the ruling party (think there are two? check again).
Does the server have to be in New Hampshire? The saver? The savee?
This is completely moronic, of course. What about posession of tools that auto-save conversations (say, ICQ?) Surely this must be illegal in New Hampshire! What about email communication?
Implicit consent should (almost?) always be assumed in communication of this type.
Are we going to see more disclaimers when we log into chat servers? "By logging in, you hereby consent etc etc; if you don't like it log out now".
I think it's enough to say the theory is proven... no number of bits of security is ever going to be "enough" to be uncrackable
Pet peeve: You can't prove something is always true by providing anecdotal evidence - but you can disprove it.
Anyway, to the main point: you live in a universe with a finite number of particles and a finite TTL (physics majors are welcome to argue if they want). Or let's put it this way: The total amount of resources available to humanity is limited. Given that, there are problems that, although possible to solve in theory, are impossible in practice - take, for example, the problem of playing perfect chess by fully computing the game tree. With enough bits encryption becomes unbruteforcable too. And most secrets themselves really have a TTL of only a few years or decades and there's no point in trying to protect them any longer.
So while a "Digital Fortress"-style theoretically uncrackable encryption may not be possible, practically uncrackable encryption certainly is.
Why not do the same for books and movies too?
I mean, take the bible. Some of it's pretty gruesome. I would NOT want my kids reading this kind of stuff.
Oh, I know. It's because video games weren't around when these people were growing up, so they have no idea what they are.