The Computer Museum timeline is a bit limited as it only starts at 1945 and is very strictly restricted to electronic computers. Here's a more comprehensive (though less detailed) timeline which starts at 500BC with the invention of the Abacus and includes things like the first Radio Shack Catalog in 1939, Atari's introduction of Asteroids in 1979, and various events involving QDOS 0.10 (later renamed PC DOS/MS-DOS) in 1980.
You will find that Ada Lovelace (full name Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace) is mentioned in the article (at the bottom) along with the fact that the ADA programming language was named after her. No mention of Tom Stoppard though.
Unless the code has been carefuly written with removal in mind, or the program is thoroughly tested after the removal, there is a good chance that the removal of the cheat code logic will introduce problems. It may do so anyway but if the cheat logic were properly written as debug code then the chance of this is low.
In an ideal world the programmer would create separate debug and ship versions of the software. Pieces of code for development hacks like this would all be conditional on _DEBUG being defined. So when the final version is compiled (without _DEBUG defined) they are not in the resulting binaries.
This does require more careful coding and regular checking of the release version. However there are a number of other advantages including use of Assert and the ability to perform extra checking in critical subsystems during development without taking the hit for these in the ship version.
There is a good description of this kind of programming in "Writing Solid Code" by Steve Maguire (1993). Available from all your favourite on-line computer bookstores. Don't write it off because it's Microsoft press it's by one of their old school programmers (back before they started seriously taking over the world).
Battlefield Earth on the other hand was published in 1982 (1984 paperback) long after L Ron Hubbard had started the Scientologists I'm afraid. Battlefield Earth was published after L. Ron Hubbard had not been seen by non-scientologists for several years and was supposed to prove he was still alive. The interesting fact is that he then started to publish the 10 volume series "Invaders Plan". The Scientologists then announced in 1986 that he had died when only about half the books had been published (but the rest were already written - honest).
A sub-plot of the 1981 movie "The First Monday in October" about hiding the death of the CEO of a large company could be based upon the rumours about L. Ron Hubbard at the time.
The Olympics this year are the Summer games which are being held in Sydney Australia. IBM are however also the official provider of internet solutions to them. The next Winter games are in SaltLake City Utah USA but not until 2002.
Netcraft reports the site as running Compaq Tru64 UNIX though this could be because of a firewall or some such. It does report the web server as Domino-Go-Webserver/4.6.2.5 which is a good IBM/Lotus program.
DIVE seems to be an API for standardised access to Video Drivers. DirectX is a collection of APIs for standardised lowish level access to various pieces of hardware.
DirectX includes DirectDraw - 2D graphics DirectInput - Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, etc. DirectPlay - Networking Direct3D - 3D graphics DirectSound and DirectMusic - Guess
DIVE is I suspect equivalent only to DirectDraw. Other important/difficult pieces from a programmer's point of view are the sound, and input.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created Simple DirectMedia Layer which is an open source project to develop DirectX style functionality. This is currently available for Linux, Win32, and BeOS, with unofficial/in progress ports to Solaris, IRIX, OpenBSD, and MacOS. So it might be possible to get this extended to OS/2 WARP as well.
It shows Bill trying out a new MS SideWinder input device. The similarity with Locutus of Borg (from Star Trek - Best of Both Worlds) is completely coincidental (honest).
It's pretty clear that you didn't actually read the article before critisising it (after all you already have your opinions so why bother?). Otherwise you would have realised that Jon Katz did not coin the term 'Chickclicker' but it was rather the name of a web site involved in the article.
My memory is that bubble memory involved the creation of bubble of charge within the substrate by the application of a magnetic field. These bubbles could be polarised in some way to indicate 0 or 1. The size of these bubbles depended upon the strength of the magnetic field with very small bubbles requiring very strong fields (just what you want in a computer).
Also I think that it was a linear storage medium where the bubbles were moved in a loop around the chip by placing voltages on T shaped elements. This would probably mean that the speed of retrieval is not very great, as the bubbles are led past a read-out area.
It probably was just a technology that did not offer any advantage over easier or already existing devices. One advantage was meant to be non-volatility (with a battery backup). Now we have Flash memory.
Reading the article I'm just a little concerned about how sensitive anything that small and magnetised will be to stray magnetic fields. I mean if its magnetism can be affected by what can be placed through a very thin wire then what about the stray magnetic fields from a normal mains cable.
I guess you could shield it but you would probably have to keep it from being too close to the rest of the electronics. They could also use duplicate storage with a 'voting' system to resolve any inconsistancies and/or a RAID style strategy. Drat that's less than 200 Gigabits effective storage - I guess its not worth the effort now.
I think this is meant to be a joke actually
on
Suck On Skins And UI
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· Score: 1
If you actually read more than a sentence or two into this item then it becomes fairly clear this is meant to be a tease rather than a troll. But then what do I know about humour (look I'm from the UK and can't even spell it).
They are however very useful for certain situations where you need to achieve a bit more cooling that water could achieve but do not need to go all the way to refrigeration or similar. In the 1980's we used them to cool the photomultiplier detector on a Raman Spectrometer. The extra heat went into the cooling water.
A peltier is the active equivalent of a thermo-couple. This means that there are two terminals and a voltage generates a temperature difference between them. Where as in a thermocouple the temperature difference generates a voltage.
One terminal is normally in a heat buffer of some kind (ice bath, flowing water, etc.). If the voltage is applied one way then the second terminal will become hotter yes. But if the voltage is reversed then it becomes cooler. This is because the first terminal cannot become hotter as its temperatue is buffered.
Book Recommendations not Reviews
on
Star Maker
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· Score: 2
I always view the actual article of a book topic on Slashdot as more of a recommendation than a true review. Most book reviews are where a person was alocated a book and told to come up with a review. At Slashdot it weems more that a person finds a book that they are interested in telling other people about.
However once it has become a topic on Slashdot then the responses from other people will give a much more representative impression of the book. At Slashdot the 'reviewer' proposes a positive impression and the rest of us support or argue against this position to give any interested parties a fairly comprehensive review.
I agree with this and believe that a site that does not wish deep linking should check where the system has navigated from and actually substitute the top page, a login screen, or at least a warning/copyright front page.
Part of the problem is that a lot sites are created by people who are more adept at glitz than at the nuts and bolts of secure navigation and http. If those in positions of responsibility were more aware of the possibilities then hopefully they would insist that their developers use these methods where appropriate.
If the courts were aware of the measures that could be taken they they would be less likely to uphold a complaint made where such measures had not been taken.
There is a need for education of the people in positions of responsibility so that appropriate measures are taken which do not involve excessive legal involvement (Why give money to the lawyers?).
Unfortunately it is not fiber optics that you need to build an optical computer but optical switches. Just as you don't build an electronic computer from wires but as you said from transistors. The vital property of a transistor is that the voltage it produces at its output(s) depend upon the input voltages. This allows the the building of logic circuits which are the basis of computer chips.
One point would be that much greater than 99 percent of cheats are not creating these hacks themselves (or else there is just far too much parallel development going on out there). They are simply pulling the latest 'enhancement' off a site somewhere and are using it to cheat. There is no great innovation going on for most of them, simply a different form of sheep like behaviour.
A lot of these hacks are the equivalent of forging money. I haven't seen a lot of opinion that forging is good. In fact it is generally considered very bad for any economy. This is why online games try very hard to prevent it. You have no excuse to get upset if when they find you doing it and drop on you from a great height. Most people at least tolerate reasonable checks to detect forgery and deal with it (Checking that high denomination not you just paid with). At the moment they are still developing these tests in online games.
If you want a more mentally based example then I would propose that you consider it the equivalent of taking your lecture notes into an exam with you. Or taking the relevant Cliff Notes into an English Lit. exam. Not only do you gain a result that you have not deserved but you distort the results of everyone else so that they do not achieve the reward that they deserve. There are normally invigilators there to prevent this but in the case of online games they are still trying to figure out how to do this.
To revert to a sports analogy it is like taking steroids to boost your body development and hence performance. This gives you an unfair (and originally undetectable) advantage when competing against other who are not taking steroids. Verant were trying to find an equivalent to the dope tests that winners of most large events (and random other competitors) submit to these days.
Of course cheats are not interested in other people (except as victims of their actions) so they don't normally see that in cheating they are infringing others rights. However the right to swing your arm stops short of my nose.
There is an interesting article on the Computer Games Online site that argues that OpenGL may be dying. Its argument is not that DirectX is necessarily better but that it has better driver support from the hardware manufacturers and updates more regularly (once a year) to keep up with technology.
OpenGL is an API for standardised 3D graphics work. DirectX is a collection of APIs for standardised lowish level access to various pieces of hardware.
DirectX includes DirectDraw - 2D graphics DirectInput - Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, etc. DirectPlay - Networking Direct3D - 3D graphics DirectSound and DirectMusic - Guess
OpenGL is equivalent only to Direct3D. The most important/difficult pieces from a programmer's point of view are the sound, input and 2d. In fact a lot of games until recently (DirectX 6/7) used some pieces of DirectX but did not use Direct3D. Instead writing their own 3D code (GLIDE or OpenGL). A number still do their own networking rather than use DirectPlay.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created Simple DirectMedia Layer which is an open source project to develop DirectX style functionality.
If you boycott this does this mean that you are also boycotting the games that Loki release for Linux. I'm pretty certain that they are closed source too. What about Quake 3 I don't think id has released the source for that either.
Slashdot Mirror
The Computer Museum timeline is a bit limited as it only starts at 1945 and is very strictly restricted to electronic computers. Here's a more comprehensive (though less detailed) timeline which starts at 500BC with the invention of the Abacus and includes things like the first Radio Shack Catalog in 1939, Atari's introduction of Asteroids in 1979, and various events involving QDOS 0.10 (later renamed PC DOS/MS-DOS) in 1980.
You will find that Ada Lovelace (full name Augusta Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace) is mentioned in the article (at the bottom) along with the fact that the ADA programming language was named after her. No mention of Tom Stoppard though.
Unless the code has been carefuly written with removal in mind, or the program is thoroughly tested after the removal, there is a good chance that the removal of the cheat code logic will introduce problems. It may do so anyway but if the cheat logic were properly written as debug code then the chance of this is low.
In an ideal world the programmer would create separate debug and ship versions of the software. Pieces of code for development hacks like this would all be conditional on _DEBUG being defined. So when the final version is compiled (without _DEBUG defined) they are not in the resulting binaries.
This does require more careful coding and regular checking of the release version. However there are a number of other advantages including use of Assert and the ability to perform extra checking in critical subsystems during development without taking the hit for these in the ship version.
There is a good description of this kind of programming in "Writing Solid Code" by Steve Maguire (1993). Available from all your favourite on-line computer bookstores. Don't write it off because it's Microsoft press it's by one of their old school programmers (back before they started seriously taking over the world).
we could all see what the password is.
I'm afraid that you are very much mistaken.
The original Dianetics article was published in the May 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (John W. Campbell was also into this kind of thing). The book seems to have originally been published in 1951 according to the Library of Congress.
Battlefield Earth on the other hand was published in 1982 (1984 paperback) long after L Ron Hubbard had started the Scientologists I'm afraid. Battlefield Earth was published after L. Ron Hubbard had not been seen by non-scientologists for several years and was supposed to prove he was still alive. The interesting fact is that he then started to publish the 10 volume series "Invaders Plan". The Scientologists then announced in 1986 that he had died when only about half the books had been published (but the rest were already written - honest).
A sub-plot of the 1981 movie "The First Monday in October" about hiding the death of the CEO of a large company could be based upon the rumours about L. Ron Hubbard at the time.
Of course as anyone who has watched Serial Experiments:Lain knows the real problem will come with the version 7 protocol.
p.s. It was several episodes before I got the Be joke at the end.
The Olympics this year are the Summer games which are being held in Sydney Australia. IBM are however also the official provider of internet solutions to them. The next Winter games are in SaltLake City Utah USA but not until 2002.
Netcraft reports the site as running Compaq Tru64 UNIX though this could be because of a firewall or some such. It does report the web server as Domino-Go-Webserver/4.6.2.5 which is a good IBM/Lotus program.
DIVE seems to be an API for standardised access to Video Drivers. DirectX is a collection of APIs for standardised lowish level access to various pieces of hardware.
DirectX includes
DirectDraw - 2D graphics
DirectInput - Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, etc.
DirectPlay - Networking
Direct3D - 3D graphics
DirectSound and DirectMusic - Guess
DIVE is I suspect equivalent only to DirectDraw. Other important/difficult pieces from a programmer's point of view are the sound, and input.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created Simple DirectMedia Layer which is an open source project to develop DirectX style functionality. This is currently available for Linux, Win32, and BeOS, with unofficial/in progress ports to Solaris, IRIX, OpenBSD, and MacOS. So it might be possible to get this extended to OS/2 WARP as well.
It shows Bill trying out a new MS SideWinder input device. The similarity with Locutus of Borg (from Star Trek - Best of Both Worlds) is completely coincidental (honest).
It's pretty clear that you didn't actually read the article before critisising it (after all you already have your opinions so why bother?). Otherwise you would have realised that Jon Katz did not coin the term 'Chickclicker' but it was rather the name of a web site involved in the article.
My memory is that bubble memory involved the creation of bubble of charge within the substrate by the application of a magnetic field. These bubbles could be polarised in some way to indicate 0 or 1. The size of these bubbles depended upon the strength of the magnetic field with very small bubbles requiring very strong fields (just what you want in a computer).
Also I think that it was a linear storage medium where the bubbles were moved in a loop around the chip by placing voltages on T shaped elements. This would probably mean that the speed of retrieval is not very great, as the bubbles are led past a read-out area.
It probably was just a technology that did not offer any advantage over easier or already existing devices. One advantage was meant to be non-volatility (with a battery backup). Now we have Flash memory.
Reading the article I'm just a little concerned about how sensitive anything that small and magnetised will be to stray magnetic fields. I mean if its magnetism can be affected by what can be placed through a very thin wire then what about the stray magnetic fields from a normal mains cable.
I guess you could shield it but you would probably have to keep it from being too close to the rest of the electronics. They could also use duplicate storage with a 'voting' system to resolve any inconsistancies and/or a RAID style strategy. Drat that's less than 200 Gigabits effective storage - I guess its not worth the effort now.
If you actually read more than a sentence or two into this item then it becomes fairly clear this is meant to be a tease rather than a troll. But then what do I know about humour (look I'm from the UK and can't even spell it).
They are however very useful for certain situations where you need to achieve a bit more cooling that water could achieve but do not need to go all the way to refrigeration or similar. In the 1980's we used them to cool the photomultiplier detector on a Raman Spectrometer. The extra heat went into the cooling water.
A peltier is the active equivalent of a thermo-couple. This means that there are two terminals and a voltage generates a temperature difference between them. Where as in a thermocouple the temperature difference generates a voltage.
One terminal is normally in a heat buffer of some kind (ice bath, flowing water, etc.). If the voltage is applied one way then the second terminal will become hotter yes. But if the voltage is reversed then it becomes cooler. This is because the first terminal cannot become hotter as its temperatue is buffered.
I always view the actual article of a book topic on Slashdot as more of a recommendation than a true review. Most book reviews are where a person was alocated a book and told to come up with a review. At Slashdot it weems more that a person finds a book that they are interested in telling other people about.
However once it has become a topic on Slashdot then the responses from other people will give a much more representative impression of the book. At Slashdot the 'reviewer' proposes a positive impression and the rest of us support or argue against this position to give any interested parties a fairly comprehensive review.
I agree with this and believe that a site that does not wish deep linking should check where the system has navigated from and actually substitute the top page, a login screen, or at least a warning/copyright front page.
Part of the problem is that a lot sites are created by people who are more adept at glitz than at the nuts and bolts of secure navigation and http. If those in positions of responsibility were more aware of the possibilities then hopefully they would insist that their developers use these methods where appropriate.
If the courts were aware of the measures that could be taken they they would be less likely to uphold a complaint made where such measures had not been taken.
There is a need for education of the people in positions of responsibility so that appropriate measures are taken which do not involve excessive legal involvement (Why give money to the lawyers?).
Unfortunately it is not fiber optics that you need to build an optical computer but optical switches. Just as you don't build an electronic computer from wires but as you said from transistors. The vital property of a transistor is that the voltage it produces at its output(s) depend upon the input voltages. This allows the the building of logic circuits which are the basis of computer chips.
One point would be that much greater than 99 percent of cheats are not creating these hacks themselves (or else there is just far too much parallel development going on out there). They are simply pulling the latest 'enhancement' off a site somewhere and are using it to cheat. There is no great innovation going on for most of them, simply a different form of sheep like behaviour.
A lot of these hacks are the equivalent of forging money. I haven't seen a lot of opinion that forging is good. In fact it is generally considered very bad for any economy. This is why online games try very hard to prevent it. You have no excuse to get upset if when they find you doing it and drop on you from a great height. Most people at least tolerate reasonable checks to detect forgery and deal with it (Checking that high denomination not you just paid with). At the moment they are still developing these tests in online games.
If you want a more mentally based example then I would propose that you consider it the equivalent of taking your lecture notes into an exam with you. Or taking the relevant Cliff Notes into an English Lit. exam. Not only do you gain a result that you have not deserved but you distort the results of everyone else so that they do not achieve the reward that they deserve. There are normally invigilators there to prevent this but in the case of online games they are still trying to figure out how to do this.
To revert to a sports analogy it is like taking steroids to boost your body development and hence performance. This gives you an unfair (and originally undetectable) advantage when competing against other who are not taking steroids. Verant were trying to find an equivalent to the dope tests that winners of most large events (and random other competitors) submit to these days.
Of course cheats are not interested in other people (except as victims of their actions) so they don't normally see that in cheating they are infringing others rights. However the right to swing your arm stops short of my nose.
There is an interesting article on the Computer Games Online site that argues that OpenGL may be dying. Its argument is not that DirectX is necessarily better but that it has better driver support from the hardware manufacturers and updates more regularly (once a year) to keep up with technology.
OpenGL is an API for standardised 3D graphics work. DirectX is a collection of APIs for standardised lowish level access to various pieces of hardware.
DirectX includes
DirectDraw - 2D graphics
DirectInput - Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick, etc.
DirectPlay - Networking
Direct3D - 3D graphics
DirectSound and DirectMusic - Guess
OpenGL is equivalent only to Direct3D. The most important/difficult pieces from a programmer's point of view are the sound, input and 2d. In fact a lot of games until recently (DirectX 6/7) used some pieces of DirectX but did not use Direct3D. Instead writing their own 3D code (GLIDE or OpenGL). A number still do their own networking rather than use DirectPlay.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created Simple DirectMedia Layer which is an open source project to develop DirectX style functionality.
If you boycott this does this mean that you are also boycotting the games that Loki release for Linux. I'm pretty certain that they are closed source too. What about Quake 3 I don't think id has released the source for that either.