Loom was definately a great game. An interesting experiment with the single-click interface too.
I still chuckle about the multimedia intro - that come on an audio cassette tape. How far we come... but I guess that makes it more of an effective demonstration that the technology of the game isn't the most important thing.
(BTW... I remember that supposedly if you beat the game on the hardest mode (without notes on the distaff and without the distaff lighting up) you got a special ending or something... tried it but it didn't seem to work for me, was that just a rumor>)
There was a similar question a while ago about sunlight-viewable screens. The information there may be of use.
To parrot my own previous comment, NEC sells a laptop called the Versa DayLite (aka the LaVie MX in Japan) with a special "reflective LCD" screen that makes it usable outdoors. It also allows it (along with a second internal battery behind the screen) to run up to 8 hours.
On the downside, the screen isn't very good indoors - NEC says it's "suitable for occasional indoor use". The user reviews I've read agree with this (but for your application this doesn't seem too important). PCWorld also has a review.
And then there is the problem that actually killed you that you need to have repaired.
Smithers: "Mr. Smithers plus guest"...huh. There's only one person I would want to bring.
[pulls a frozen Mr. Burns from a slot in the wall]
Oh, Mr. Burns, we'll thaw you out the second they discover the cure for seventeen stab wounds in the back. How're we doing, boys? Frink: Well, we're up to fifteen! Scientists: Yay!
It's not just that there's a pause after "step 2," but that none of the gnomes knew what step 2 was. Yet they knew exactly what steps 1 & 3 were and had absolute confidence in their plan. Perhaps this helps a bit?
ncftp ftp.us.kernel.org... tar -xvzf linux-2.4.19.tar.gz cd linux cp ~/kernel/configs/2.4.18.config make oldconfig su make-kpkg --revision home.1 kernel_image make-kpkg modules_image # for alsa, nvidia-glx, plex86 dpkg -i../kernel-image-2.4.19_home.1_i386.deb dpkg -i../alsa-modules-2.4.18_0.9+0beta12+3+p0+home1_i386.deb
What's your backup strategy? I imagine it's hard to deal with both so much data as well being under constant bombardment from clients around the world. How often is data archived? Have you had any major data loss incidents and, if so, how well were you able to deal with them?
IE keeps on supporting things they did that weren't int the spec (since ie 4) like document.all for referencing elements. Mozilla doesn't (actually, that is a good way to sniff browsers, by detecting the referencing and functions they support).
I believe in taking a slightly different tact - sniff for the function you want to use when you want to use it. Why rely on the assumption that only IE supports document.all (or something similar)?
I find Mozilla's javascript implementation to be better than explorer's actually. The behavior is more consistent and well defined. The event bubbling (which most developers won't use consciously) is fully up to spec, whereas ie support is still a bit flaky in some of those things.
Hear, hear! Mozilla is wonderful for JavaScript. True, it's often more rigid than IE (which lets you get away with a lot of bad coding practices), but I find that if a script works in Mozilla, it's much more likely to work properly in other browsers than the other way around. The debugging tools are also very nice. Being able to quickly test a refex or a short snippet of code in the JavaScript console saves a lot of time. The error reporting is pretty god too (IE has the most utterly useless JavaScript error messages).
Also, I HATE the new (as of ie 6 I think) image management "features" in Internet Explorer (the annoying toolbar that shows up when you mouse over images, and automatically resizes jpegs to fit the screen) yes, it can be turned off, but it annoys the hell out of me when the browser modifies in any non standard way the look of a page without asking.
No kidding. Ugh. It's quite non-intuitive as well; it starts off drawing the image in its native dimensions while it loads, but all of the sudden when it finishes it shrinks down. Then I have to wave the mouse over the image for 5 seconds until I can finally get that little 'restore size' icon to pop up.
IIRC, they gave Hillary Rosen (of RIAA fame) an award for protecting free speech rights.
You're right, they did... in 1997. Perhaps you aren't deliberately being trollish, but the water shouldn't be muddied to fool people into thinking the ACLU agrees with Rosen's more recent behavior.
Ouch. Weight is listed in the full specifications. Only 2 hours of battery life too. That's not too bad for all that's in it, though, and CDN$2999 doesn't seems too unreasonable a price.
One thing that was left out of the story is that they have retained the "original" English dub cast that did the work for the regular series (i.e. what's showing on Cartoon Network). This is big news; while it's been known that Columbia/Tri-Star obtained the U.S. rights and were probably planning on a theater release, up until now there was no confirmation on the dub cast.
There's a press release here with a bit more information that is the confirmation on the dub cast.
Important note: Their mail server still runs with unencrypted passwords, and their universal cardreader system works by sending your SSN in the clear over CWRUnet. So despite their love for bandwidth, their ability to utilize it lags behind, you know, CMU, and... the other smart schools.
You can check your mail via kpop (although it isn't really advertised). I didn't know about the plaintext SSNs in the card readers, though... that's a little scary.
There is even some company that makes a small device that basicly lets you do the same thing without having to solder up a connector. The commersial connector was around $50 and it costs about $5 in parts to build your own. Anyway, that is one way of getting around the tape-on-a-wire solution.
This is very interesting, can you give me more information about this? Perhaps some links? Thanks!
I agree the Fujitsu is a worthy competitor and bests the Libretto in most categories. However, the Libretto does beat the P-Series in some aspects -
Video: The P-Series uses the rather archaic ATI Rage chipset, which is rather embarressing in this day and age. The Libretto has the much more impressive ATI Mobile Radeon
Keyboard: The Libretto's 18mm pitch is slightly larger than 17mm on the P-Series. Okay, this is only a tiny difference, but for the amount of typing I do, I would prefer as large as possible.
Size: I'm kind of ambivalent about the DVD/CD-RW on the P-Series. On one hand, it's certainly cool to have it double as a really slick portable DVD player, and burning ability is nice. On the other hand, I rarely use the CD-R on my PC. Sure, once in a while I burn something, but most of the time, I just use it to install a program and that's about it. I'm sure I could get by without a drive on my portable and it would make it that much more svelte and smaller.
Overall, though, I would agree the P-Series is a more attractive package. It's got a larger resolution, firewire, SPDIF, S-video out... not to mention it's availabe and supported in the states (for a very attractive price). No need to import direct or pay Dynamism's markup.
... for a few reasons. First, he is widely considered one of the founding fathers of modern electronica. Second, his music runs a wide gamut, from soft to not-so-hard to very hard and experimental. Last, because most of his music is quite good.
The videos are rather odd though; he has this motif of sticking his own face (in a somewhat disturbing leer) on other bodies -- children, teddy bears, women) and it's can be really strange and not a little unsettling (take a look at the cover of Windowlicker for an example). But they're certainly inventive and interesting.
Kernels don't get truly stable until you get thousands of people using them, but all those thousands of people aren't going to install a kernel until it's deemed a stable release.
Release candidate kernels help alleviate this somewhat, but you can never really duplicate what happens when the bulk of normal users stand using it on an everyday basis.
It's quite common nowadays; which is rather unfortunate, given the poor state of Linux APCI support.
And regarding ACPI superiority - APCI is more powerful, but it's also more complicated. It's not just for power management but for general device configuration and initilization as well. Additionally, it includes its own interpreted language, AML, which lets companies write their own custom routines. As you can imagine, having to implement the AML interpreter is a somewhat large task and may be a potential secure risk. There's an overview about this at Kernel Traffic from awhile ago
APM is about standard power-saving commands, whereas ACPI lets the manufacture program
Slashdot Mirror
Loom was definately a great game. An interesting experiment with the single-click interface too.
I still chuckle about the multimedia intro - that come on an audio cassette tape. How far we come... but I guess that makes it more of an effective demonstration that the technology of the game isn't the most important thing.
(BTW... I remember that supposedly if you beat the game on the hardest mode (without notes on the distaff and without the distaff lighting up) you got a special ending or something... tried it but it didn't seem to work for me, was that just a rumor>)
There was a similar question a while ago about sunlight-viewable screens. The information there may be of use.
To parrot my own previous comment, NEC sells a laptop called the Versa DayLite (aka the LaVie MX in Japan) with a special "reflective LCD" screen that makes it usable outdoors. It also allows it (along with a second internal battery behind the screen) to run up to 8 hours.
On the downside, the screen isn't very good indoors - NEC says it's "suitable for occasional indoor use". The user reviews I've read agree with this (but for your application this doesn't seem too important). PCWorld also has a review.
at the link in the article ...
And then there is the problem that actually killed you that you need to have repaired.
Smithers: "Mr. Smithers plus guest"...huh. There's only one person I would want to bring.
[pulls a frozen Mr. Burns from a slot in the wall]
Oh, Mr. Burns, we'll thaw you out the second they discover the cure for seventeen stab wounds in the back. How're we doing, boys?
Frink: Well, we're up to fifteen!
Scientists: Yay!
It's not just that there's a pause after "step 2," but that none of the gnomes knew what step 2 was. Yet they knew exactly what steps 1 & 3 were and had absolute confidence in their plan. Perhaps this helps a bit?
ncftp ftp.us.kernel.org ... .config ../kernel-image-2.4.19_home.1_i386.deb ../alsa-modules-2.4.18_0.9+0beta12+3+p0+home1_i386 .deb
tar -xvzf linux-2.4.19.tar.gz
cd linux
cp ~/kernel/configs/2.4.18
make oldconfig
su
make-kpkg --revision home.1 kernel_image
make-kpkg modules_image # for alsa, nvidia-glx, plex86
dpkg -i
dpkg -i
etc.
Thanks for the good work, Manoj!
What's your backup strategy? I imagine it's hard to deal with both so much data as well being under constant bombardment from clients around the world. How often is data archived? Have you had any major data loss incidents and, if so, how well were you able to deal with them?
IE keeps on supporting things they did that weren't int the spec (since ie 4) like document.all for referencing elements. Mozilla doesn't (actually, that is a good way to sniff browsers, by detecting the referencing and functions they support).
I believe in taking a slightly different tact - sniff for the function you want to use when you want to use it. Why rely on the assumption that only IE supports document.all (or something similar)?
I find Mozilla's javascript implementation to be better than explorer's actually. The behavior is more consistent and well defined. The event bubbling (which most developers won't use consciously) is fully up to spec, whereas ie support is still a bit flaky in some of those things.
Hear, hear! Mozilla is wonderful for JavaScript. True, it's often more rigid than IE (which lets you get away with a lot of bad coding practices), but I find that if a script works in Mozilla, it's much more likely to work properly in other browsers than the other way around. The debugging tools are also very nice. Being able to quickly test a refex or a short snippet of code in the JavaScript console saves a lot of time. The error reporting is pretty god too (IE has the most utterly useless JavaScript error messages).
Also, I HATE the new (as of ie 6 I think) image management "features" in Internet Explorer (the annoying toolbar that shows up when you mouse over images, and automatically resizes jpegs to fit the screen) yes, it can be turned off, but it annoys the hell out of me when the browser modifies in any non standard way the look of a page without asking.
No kidding. Ugh. It's quite non-intuitive as well; it starts off drawing the image in its native dimensions while it loads, but all of the sudden when it finishes it shrinks down. Then I have to wave the mouse over the image for 5 seconds until I can finally get that little 'restore size' icon to pop up.
some construct are really horrible:
value =selectBox[selectdBox.selectedIndex].value
That's a DOM issue, not a JavaScript issue. And, BTW, that's only necessary in IE. In Netscape, value = selectBox.value works just fine.
Guess I got to agree with you here. When I saw the title, I thought "Cool, two colleges playing pracks on each other."
IIRC, they gave Hillary Rosen (of RIAA fame) an award for protecting free speech rights.
You're right, they did... in 1997. Perhaps you aren't deliberately being trollish, but the water shouldn't be muddied to fool people into thinking the ACLU agrees with Rosen's more recent behavior.
Ouch. Weight is listed in the full specifications. Only 2 hours of battery life too. That's not too bad for all that's in it, though, and CDN$2999 doesn't seems too unreasonable a price.
One thing that was left out of the story is that they have retained the "original" English dub cast that did the work for the regular series (i.e. what's showing on Cartoon Network). This is big news; while it's been known that Columbia/Tri-Star obtained the U.S. rights and were probably planning on a theater release, up until now there was no confirmation on the dub cast.
There's a press release here with a bit more information that is the confirmation on the dub cast.
Important note: Their mail server still runs with unencrypted passwords, and their universal cardreader system works by sending your SSN in the clear over CWRUnet. So despite their love for bandwidth, their ability to utilize it lags behind, you know, CMU, and... the other smart schools.
You can check your mail via kpop (although it isn't really advertised). I didn't know about the plaintext SSNs in the card readers, though... that's a little scary.
There is even some company that makes a small device that basicly lets you do the same thing without having to solder up a connector. The commersial connector was around $50 and it costs about $5 in parts to build your own. Anyway, that is one way of getting around the tape-on-a-wire solution.
This is very interesting, can you give me more information about this? Perhaps some links? Thanks!
Oh goodie, Duke Nukem Forever must be coming out any moment now!
...who had Bill Gates mentioned his virus by name
So you're a 'gawker'?
Heh, you're right... I like how he gave the URL with the ip instead of the domain name to make it less obvious...
I agree the Fujitsu is a worthy competitor and bests the Libretto in most categories. However, the Libretto does beat the P-Series in some aspects -
Video: The P-Series uses the rather archaic ATI Rage chipset, which is rather embarressing in this day and age. The Libretto has the much more impressive ATI Mobile Radeon
Keyboard: The Libretto's 18mm pitch is slightly larger than 17mm on the P-Series. Okay, this is only a tiny difference, but for the amount of typing I do, I would prefer as large as possible.
Size: I'm kind of ambivalent about the DVD/CD-RW on the P-Series. On one hand, it's certainly cool to have it double as a really slick portable DVD player, and burning ability is nice. On the other hand, I rarely use the CD-R on my PC. Sure, once in a while I burn something, but most of the time, I just use it to install a program and that's about it. I'm sure I could get by without a drive on my portable and it would make it that much more svelte and smaller.
Overall, though, I would agree the P-Series is a more attractive package. It's got a larger resolution, firewire, SPDIF, S-video out... not to mention it's availabe and supported in the states (for a very attractive price). No need to import direct or pay Dynamism's markup.
... for a few reasons. First, he is widely considered one of the founding fathers of modern electronica. Second, his music runs a wide gamut, from soft to not-so-hard to very hard and experimental. Last, because most of his music is quite good.
The videos are rather odd though; he has this motif of sticking his own face (in a somewhat disturbing leer) on other bodies -- children, teddy bears, women) and it's can be really strange and not a little unsettling (take a look at the cover of Windowlicker for an example). But they're certainly inventive and interesting.
Specifically, Vangelis did the soundtrack for Blade Runner as well as Chariots of Fire (whose theme became quite famous back in the 80s).
He's done a lot of other soundtrack work as well, but those are two you may have heard already without knowing who it was.
The stuff on Animal Rights is understanbly not liked for adverts, because it's shit.
The track Alone is good, and I could easily imagine that as the background music for an advert. But you're right, man that album was terrible...
Kernels don't get truly stable until you get thousands of people using them, but all those thousands of people aren't going to install a kernel until it's deemed a stable release.
Release candidate kernels help alleviate this somewhat, but you can never really duplicate what happens when the bulk of normal users stand using it on an everyday basis.
It's quite common nowadays; which is rather unfortunate, given the poor state of Linux APCI support.
And regarding ACPI superiority - APCI is more powerful, but it's also more complicated. It's not just for power management but for general device configuration and initilization as well. Additionally, it includes its own interpreted language, AML, which lets companies write their own custom routines. As you can imagine, having to implement the AML interpreter is a somewhat large task and may be a potential secure risk. There's an overview about this at Kernel Traffic from awhile ago
APM is about standard power-saving commands, whereas ACPI lets the manufacture program