I said i was an engineer, not an english major. I have ways i've been spelling words for years and unless there's something that tells me otherwise (like yourself) i've been spelling those words that way since i was in grade 1. I rarely use spell check as well...
Sorry if my lack of english skills make my comment any less believable.
I've met some of the people involved in the beetle project and had the whole hanging procedure described to me. Let's just say, it wasn't easy and some people involved must have had balls made of steel.
As a former UBC engineer, I really couldn't wipe the smile off my face for days, not just because of the stunt but of the publicity that it caused and how it will help to increase spirit in the engineering faculty. Since i've graduated i've heard and seen less and less people come out to events sponsored by the Engineering Student Society. Something like this will (hopefully) show people that there really is more to school than just going to class and doing your homework...
I was very proud to be able to meet some of hte people involved and personally congradulate them for a job well done. Of course, I have no idea what their names are or what they look like anymore:-)
The main reason he was suspended was because he made fun of the system by attacking it from the inside. By "going through the motions" and actually winning the homecoming competition, he mad a mockery of the system. He played along with the rules and then spit in the school's face, and I think he really made his point.
I applaud his actions and i hope this get's more coverage so that his message get's out further. This type of action by "popular kids" (or whatever he was) will prevent more combine events from happening. By leveling the playing field, the people will become empowered and change will result...
That being said, I actually really like functional languages. I had to learn Scheme in first year Computer Science and found it to be quite an interesting experience:
It introduced me to emacs, whose paren matching and lisp mode saved many, many, many headaches
It showed that you can build any sort of data structure out of lists
You can create any loop construct recursively
Treating functions as regular data, you can do many cool things
You don't need a complex syntax to do interesting things with a language
I remember thinking back then about why they were teaching us this useless language and not something more practical like C or C++. I think the most important this was the simplicity of the syntax. The fact that we wrote a Scheme parser in scheme by the end of the course really shows how little there is to the language but also the power of what it can do in the hands of a newcomer to programming.
People would be challenged by with the problem they were trying to solve, unlike the C/C++ courses of later years where cries of "Why wont this compile" were oh so common. It's difficult to think why someone would have trouble programming in C now that we've been doing for so many years, but think back to those Comp Sci days and it's obvious that simple, functional languages allowed the profs to teach computer science and not language syntax.
I've been meaning to learn LISP again due to that elegant simplicity that I miss about comp sci. If you're interesting, check out the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. If you've ever wondered what you can do with LISP, this is the book to read.
Being from vancouver orginally, I know that you are talking about a very small section of arcades located on Granville Street, about 5 blocks down from Robson. The only reasons that those arcades (there are 3 or 4 of them, IIRC) are 18+ is because they have porn booths in the back. That is because they are located in "porn" area of downtown Vancouver. There are a number of sex shops and a xxx theater within a two block radius of these arcades. This is not the nicest area of town, althought they have been trying to clean it up for the past couple of years. My guess is that the porn booths are there to compete with the sex shops in the area.
These are not the only arcades in town. Go down to UBC a great normal arcade, or Metrotown to find a video game theme park (actually there are a number of them under the same name, which slips my mind at the moment). You can not judge a whole city (or province) by a small section of it.
Basically, there are no age restrictions on going into video arcades in BC unless adult material is being shown.
I'm not too sure that is entirely correct. Not many of the games that I know of used off system processing, except for the obvious that hyped them (ie. StarFox on the SNES). The hardware is *not* designed so that functionality can be placed in carts, it's more clever designs and hacks by changing certain memory addressed and the functionality of the MCB (memory controller) on a given cart. The SuperFX chip was a simple matrix multipler (IIRC) and although I haven't used one, I'm sure it's operation was not trivial.
The only thing that is done on a gameboy cart is rumble. That's the only thing that nintendo provides other than added ram. I've never worked on older systems, but I think that adding functionality to the cart was a very special case and it cut a huge chunk into the profit margins for a given game. So unless you're totally in bed with Nintendo, such extras are *not* feasable for the average publisher.
Not to say that you're wrong, but could you point out any NES/SNES games that did use off system hardware?
No, not that i now of...it was just a quip on that it would be like Bo2K for linux if windows users got ahold of it. Of course, they would never intend to cause damage...that's where the for dummies part came from.
Well, considering that the gameboy is over ten years old with over a hundred million units out on the market, I think nintendo has made quite a bit back on thier initial hardware development investment. It seems that it takes about 5 years for a company to really start profiting on console hardware and with the number of re-releases of the gameboy plus an extra 5 year lifespan for the console, nintendo is probably making a pretty hefty profit on the hardware sales compared to most consoles.
Nintendo is not a big fan of emulators (neither is Sony or Sega), but there really isn't anything that they can do to stop them. With the recent settlements/injunctions between Sony and the , there is no way to say that creating an emulator is illegal. Of course, to play the games without the hardware, you need either a cart ripper or to download the ROM images from the 'net. The emulator doesn't do that, the users do that.
In fact, emulators are a great thing for the game market. It gives programmers an opportunity to work with an almost exact replica of the hardware for nothing. Console development was always a black art because nobody but official developers ever had access to the hardware; emulators change this and allows for an all new generation of programmers to learn like we all did with our C-64's and Apples.
But, I digress. Yes, coming out with an emulator right after a new console comes out would not be good for sales. Coming out after 4,5 or even 10 years later is not as big as an issue, at least with regards to future console development. Gameboy emulators have been around for years and that hasn't stopped them from developing the Gameboy Advanced (which isn't really a development, just a handheld version of the SNES hardware with a different processor).
In other words, emulators are a good thing, IMSHO.
Is there information on how to perform these operations (302/303/etc) from the site? I've always used http-equiv as I was never sure how to get the web server to send different responses. Does this require a cgi script to send the response, or can it be done from the header of a page?
The best thing about the movie was that about 20 minutes into it, about half of the shots were actaully level (horizontal). My guess for this was that my head slumped over to one side, causing it to be exactly at the angle that the director chose to tilt the camera for most of the shots.
Of course that was only for half of the scenes, the other half had a distinct vertical orientation, since there were 2 distinct angles for alternating shots.
When I was sitting there watching it, I had this feeling that this would be a great cult movie a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I felt that it would be really great with some audience participation (me and my friends were very entertained by cheering near the end...it alleviated the boredom), but could you imagine people dressing up as aliens carrying those green drink beakers and throwing them at the screen? Shouting "fuck you" after every utterance of man animal. Having the scenes acted out by a full cast? Singing along to random songs during the boring parts?
Ok, it's stupid, but any movie as bad as that one could really benefit from such a treatment.
Oh, and though oft overused, the heat distortion effect on the air ship engines was pretty neat as well...
Given that they have already decided that IE is an inseperable part of windows (shared dll's, main interface, common controls), how do they plan to create two different companies?
Seperating (most) applications would be easy; just get them a new office and send them on thier way with the developer tech support numbers. Instant company with no insider benefits.
Seperating IE and Windows is would not be so easy. Something like this could require a fundamental redesign of both IE and Windows which could take a significant amount of time and money before the seperation could even be attempted.
I just don't see a plan like this working from a software perspective. The two are now so closely tied that they're siamese twins. They don't work very well together, but they can still survive. Seperated, the vital organs have to be divided between the two, which could mean death for either on if a bad surgeon is performing the operation.
I'm sure it wouldn't take long for AOL/TW to buy up IE once it was created. Just in time for the next great american monopoly case.:-)
Period. A program is useless if it does not match a certain level of stability, whether that means not crashing, or creating predictable results from strange data (which often leads to the previous).
That's why I started using Linux/Unix in the first place. Flash and style were not important, only a good, solid kernel and set of tools which were known to work so I could work.
The gameboy market is for 6 year olds. I don't even want to think of what could happen to one of those fragile toys in the hands of such a reckless monster. Nintendo spent alot of time to make those things as durable as possible.
A bit too expensive too.
Palm has more number crunching power by far (I'm a gameboy developer...I know *exactly* how many cpu cycles you have to do something useful, and it ain't all that many).
Color gameboy displays are better than the palm, refresh wise, and they have color (limited, lame ass, backward compatible color, but color nonetheless).
Gameboys are designed to be cheap: 1 chip for everything, a SRAM chip, lcd, some resistors and transistors for an amp and joypad. Palms are not.
I generally click on banner ads mostly to help out the site that I'm visiting. The easiest way of saying "I appreciate your site" is by giving them a little coin.
Except for slashdot, where I've actually found interesting banner ads...
I think that mp3.com took the wrong defence. There are a number of online storage sites which allow you to store, upload and download mp3, which seem to be out of the jurisdiction of the RIAA (XDrive, etc). I see the mp3.com service as indistinguishable, except for the fact that you are not uploading the entire cd. I cannot recall the algorithm that mp3.com uses for media verification, but it seems that it's uploading the identity of the cd but not the data, thereby providing a huge bandwidth savings for the user and mp3.com.
Also, mp3.com bought all of the cd's that they are distributing. They were allowed to make copies for personal use, assuming that the same rules apply for business as they do for people.
So, the major boo boo that mp3.com did was distributing the mp3's without a licence. But so do the online storage sites. The only difference being about 100000000000 bits of data clogging the net during the upload process.
I think this defence hasn't been explored enough. Not many people have mentioned it (that i've seen), so maybe there is a fundimental flaw to my logic? Does this defence fail because the file that's downloaded might not be an exact match that the user would generate using a difference mp3 encoder? If mp3.com distributed rippers and storage space while providing the same database and download capabilities, would they have gotten in the same trouble?
I was talking from a hypothetical perspective of a company or it's legal representatives. If the rationale that viewing DVD's on a non-authorized player is wrong, then how long is it until your hardware modifications are deemed non-authorized usage? We already saw something like this with the iOpener fiasco. It used to be that buying something and listening/viewing it in any way was legal. Now it's not.
I was merely speculating on the possible expansion of that into the hardware domain. By overclocking your chip, they are losing money from you not buying the more expensive faster processer (with a possible loss in stability). By viewing your DVD on a non-authorized player, someone has circumvented the licencing of the DVD group, causing them to lose money. As long as a company is losing money, they will try to stop it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry if my lack of english skills make my comment any less believable.
ERTW == Engineers Rule The World
I've met some of the people involved in the beetle project and had the whole hanging procedure described to me. Let's just say, it wasn't easy and some people involved must have had balls made of steel.
As a former UBC engineer, I really couldn't wipe the smile off my face for days, not just because of the stunt but of the publicity that it caused and how it will help to increase spirit in the engineering faculty. Since i've graduated i've heard and seen less and less people come out to events sponsored by the Engineering Student Society. Something like this will (hopefully) show people that there really is more to school than just going to class and doing your homework...
I was very proud to be able to meet some of hte people involved and personally congradulate them for a job well done. Of course, I have no idea what their names are or what they look like anymore :-)
I bet they like stories like this so they get posted on Linux fanatic metanews sites
Wow! Maybe it'll even be kinda like there is another country in the world besides the US!
I applaud his actions and i hope this get's more coverage so that his message get's out further. This type of action by "popular kids" (or whatever he was) will prevent more combine events from happening. By leveling the playing field, the people will become empowered and change will result...
Hell, probably all week...
I knew that :-P
Of course, since the site is /.ed, I might have missed the "Hail of Bullets Raining From The Sky" scenario...
People don't naturally think recursively.
That being said, I actually really like functional languages. I had to learn Scheme in first year Computer Science and found it to be quite an interesting experience:
- It introduced me to emacs, whose paren matching and lisp mode saved many, many, many headaches
- It showed that you can build any sort of data structure out of lists
- You can create any loop construct recursively
- Treating functions as regular data, you can do many cool things
- You don't need a complex syntax to do interesting things with a language
I remember thinking back then about why they were teaching us this useless language and not something more practical like C or C++. I think the most important this was the simplicity of the syntax. The fact that we wrote a Scheme parser in scheme by the end of the course really shows how little there is to the language but also the power of what it can do in the hands of a newcomer to programming.People would be challenged by with the problem they were trying to solve, unlike the C/C++ courses of later years where cries of "Why wont this compile" were oh so common. It's difficult to think why someone would have trouble programming in C now that we've been doing for so many years, but think back to those Comp Sci days and it's obvious that simple, functional languages allowed the profs to teach computer science and not language syntax.
I've been meaning to learn LISP again due to that elegant simplicity that I miss about comp sci. If you're interesting, check out the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. If you've ever wondered what you can do with LISP, this is the book to read.
These are not the only arcades in town. Go down to UBC a great normal arcade, or Metrotown to find a video game theme park (actually there are a number of them under the same name, which slips my mind at the moment). You can not judge a whole city (or province) by a small section of it.
Basically, there are no age restrictions on going into video arcades in BC unless adult material is being shown.
The only thing that is done on a gameboy cart is rumble. That's the only thing that nintendo provides other than added ram. I've never worked on older systems, but I think that adding functionality to the cart was a very special case and it cut a huge chunk into the profit margins for a given game. So unless you're totally in bed with Nintendo, such extras are *not* feasable for the average publisher.
Not to say that you're wrong, but could you point out any NES/SNES games that did use off system hardware?
It was just meant to be a joke.
They're looking at developing a Windows client to allow Win32 users to administer a Linux system remotely.
Kinda like Bo2K for dummies that really want to cause some real damage...
Nintendo is not a big fan of emulators (neither is Sony or Sega), but there really isn't anything that they can do to stop them. With the recent settlements/injunctions between Sony and the , there is no way to say that creating an emulator is illegal. Of course, to play the games without the hardware, you need either a cart ripper or to download the ROM images from the 'net. The emulator doesn't do that, the users do that.
In fact, emulators are a great thing for the game market. It gives programmers an opportunity to work with an almost exact replica of the hardware for nothing. Console development was always a black art because nobody but official developers ever had access to the hardware; emulators change this and allows for an all new generation of programmers to learn like we all did with our C-64's and Apples.
But, I digress. Yes, coming out with an emulator right after a new console comes out would not be good for sales. Coming out after 4,5 or even 10 years later is not as big as an issue, at least with regards to future console development. Gameboy emulators have been around for years and that hasn't stopped them from developing the Gameboy Advanced (which isn't really a development, just a handheld version of the SNES hardware with a different processor).
In other words, emulators are a good thing, IMSHO.
Of course that was only for half of the scenes, the other half had a distinct vertical orientation, since there were 2 distinct angles for alternating shots.
I felt that it would be really great with some audience participation (me and my friends were very entertained by cheering near the end...it alleviated the boredom), but could you imagine people dressing up as aliens carrying those green drink beakers and throwing them at the screen? Shouting "fuck you" after every utterance of man animal. Having the scenes acted out by a full cast? Singing along to random songs during the boring parts?
Ok, it's stupid, but any movie as bad as that one could really benefit from such a treatment.
Oh, and though oft overused, the heat distortion effect on the air ship engines was pretty neat as well...
Seperating (most) applications would be easy; just get them a new office and send them on thier way with the developer tech support numbers. Instant company with no insider benefits.
Seperating IE and Windows is would not be so easy. Something like this could require a fundamental redesign of both IE and Windows which could take a significant amount of time and money before the seperation could even be attempted.
I just don't see a plan like this working from a software perspective. The two are now so closely tied that they're siamese twins. They don't work very well together, but they can still survive. Seperated, the vital organs have to be divided between the two, which could mean death for either on if a bad surgeon is performing the operation.
I'm sure it wouldn't take long for AOL/TW to buy up IE once it was created. Just in time for the next great american monopoly case. :-)
That's why I started using Linux/Unix in the first place. Flash and style were not important, only a good, solid kernel and set of tools which were known to work so I could work.
A bit too expensive too.
Palm has more number crunching power by far (I'm a gameboy developer...I know *exactly* how many cpu cycles you have to do something useful, and it ain't all that many).
Color gameboy displays are better than the palm, refresh wise, and they have color (limited, lame ass, backward compatible color, but color nonetheless).
Gameboys are designed to be cheap: 1 chip for everything, a SRAM chip, lcd, some resistors and transistors for an amp and joypad. Palms are not.
Except for slashdot, where I've actually found interesting banner ads...
Also, mp3.com bought all of the cd's that they are distributing. They were allowed to make copies for personal use, assuming that the same rules apply for business as they do for people.
So, the major boo boo that mp3.com did was distributing the mp3's without a licence. But so do the online storage sites. The only difference being about 100000000000 bits of data clogging the net during the upload process.
I think this defence hasn't been explored enough. Not many people have mentioned it (that i've seen), so maybe there is a fundimental flaw to my logic? Does this defence fail because the file that's downloaded might not be an exact match that the user would generate using a difference mp3 encoder? If mp3.com distributed rippers and storage space while providing the same database and download capabilities, would they have gotten in the same trouble?
You can never have more bandwidth than a station wagon full of tapes driving at 100 MPH...
or something like that...
Remember, bandwidth is bits/sec :-)
I was merely speculating on the possible expansion of that into the hardware domain. By overclocking your chip, they are losing money from you not buying the more expensive faster processer (with a possible loss in stability). By viewing your DVD on a non-authorized player, someone has circumvented the licencing of the DVD group, causing them to lose money. As long as a company is losing money, they will try to stop it.