The RFID's were visible behind the due date card slot glued to the inside of the back cover. There was only one entrance and exit to the library which was bordered by RFID checking gates. If a person walked through them carrying a book he shouldn't have (or at least the actual RFID, which could be removed from the book and discreetly deposited in an unsuspecting student's backpack) a loud beeping would go off.
Falcon 4.0, a landmark achievement in consumer flight simulation technology had its full source code leaked several years ago. What happened aftewards?
Nothing for several months. People went about playing Falcon 4.0 as they did before. Then a user posted a single screenshot to the combatsim.com fora. It showed the Falcon 4.0 options menu, except with some rather peculiar options-- 3dnow! support, 32 bit textures, object texture filtering, DirectX 7 support, and some others. Falcon 4.0 did not ship with support for said features, so either it was an edited screenshot or the user had modified the source code. Then the actual executable was released. It was real, the engine enhancements worked.
Development of the leaked source code exploded shortly after that. A team known as eTeam (the executable was called eFalcon) was created to work on it, devoted to closing the numerous memory leaks, and improving the overall realism and performance of the game. The improvements were incredible, bringing a game released in 1998 to a 2001 state, competitive (or far superior, which was most people's opinions) to simulations released that year. The game's publisher ignored this for a few years.
The game's publisher then put its foot down. It said that all development of the leaked source code had to be ceased. Quickly though the community reached an agreement. It managed to convince the publisher to allow continued development of the leaked source code, as long as the publisher maintained all rights to all of the community's work and was not required to compensate the actual contributors. The result was the Falcon 4.0 Unified Team, composed of most of the eTeam members (not all though, some refused to join because of the constrictive agreement) as well as many from the Realism Patch group, a non-source code team focusing mostly on realism enhancements. The F4UT has succeeded in making hundreds if not thousands of changes to Falcon 4.0, ranging from technical (graphics engine, campaign engine, AI, sound engine, etc.) to gameplay (new flyable aircraft, dogfight AI improvements, numerous miscellaneous tweaks etc.) to other content (re-done textures, models, sound effects, completely new cockpit art, etc.). The F4UT finally brought Falcon 4.0 to what its original developers intended, not only simulation of F-16 combat, but a true military aviation experience taking place in a dynamic computer simulated war.
How does this relate to Half-Life 2's source code being leaked? Well, sometimes leaked source code can lead to greater things. After the Falcon 4.0 source code happenings, the full source code, including the graphics engine, network code etc. of a few simulations (Enemy Engaged Comanche Vs. Hokum, MiG Alley, maybe some others) have been released to the public. Maybe this practice could spread to other game genres.
"Back at ILM, sequence supervisor Robert Weaver noticed a tremendous performance boost upgrading from RISC workstations to Linux PCs during Star Wars: Episode II. 'The old system was so slow that the clones firing lasers appear to be throwing javelins,' says Weaver. 'We've seen about a 5x speed improvement in Linux. I'd say Linux is one of the most successful efforts we've had. I can't say enough good things about it. It is intuitive, incredibly stable, and we can get stuff fixed at a moment's notice.'"
In other words, they were using now incredibly slow SGI boxes with RISC MIPS processors before and then switched to much faster PC's with x86 processors. The speed difference was caused not only by software but also hardware changes.
or the source code of Softimage, Lightwave, 3ds max, Photoshop, After Effects, Flame, Inferno, Houdini, Avid etc.?
Nope, none of them are open source, and each is used by at least one major studio. And if by "access to the source code" assumes monetary compensation in exchange, then by that definition pretty much every piece of software has accessible source code.
While the X-33 spacecraft itself never got off the ground, ground tests of the X-33's linear aerospike engine were quite successful. The reason the project was canceled dealt with the repeated failures of the composite fuel tanks.
Dell R&D developed a very quiet processor cooling system using a ducted low-RPM fan, dedicated to the processor. The sound is very close to silent. They developed the first heat pipe cooling solution for laptop processors as well.
You do realize that Half-Life's physics engine isn't actually Half-Life's, don't you? It is the HAVOK physics engine, long used in the 3ds max plugin known as reactor.
As for whether it is more functional than the physics simulation contained within the Doom 3 engine; in my opinion, it is too soon to tell.
" What I've always wondered about the Doom series is what is it about the series that appeals to so many people?" Should be "appealed". You admit that you have never played Doom. Why don't you try it? Is it so hard to download a demo and find out for yourself?
Or do you just like posting really stupid pseudo-intellectual comments?
I wonder if or how Apple Computer, Inc. will modify its marketing efforts. Will it continue to ignore AMD like they did with G4 ads, neglecting the fact that the "megahertz myth" had existed for years in the PC world in the competition between the Athlon and Pentium processors? Which led to numerous Mac users enlightening us lowly PC peons about how processor clock alone does not determine processor performance, a fact which many of us had been aware of long before the release of the Motorola G4.
It is true that the G5 was the first 64bit desktop computer processor. Now there is a second. Apple should show some G5 vs. Athlon 64 benchmarks, which should be a much more competitive comparison price-performance wise than one dealing with G5's and Xeons. And much more realistic, with both catering to (roughly) the same market.
Not until the software that people use make it necessary for them to purchase said processors. Significant price drops on the lower end CPU's would only be appropriate if demand for those processors significantly declined, with a corresponding increase in demand of the Athlon 64 and P4EE. The Athlon 64 and P4EE will always be more expensive than their weaker models of course, and without the need of consumers to upgrade (at this time), there will be little shift in focus to these new processors.
And with consumer interest remaining with those lower end CPU's, so shall the prices.
People don't seem to realize that there has been no escalation in the chances of earth being struck by a signficantly sized asteroid now than there was in the thousands of years we have gone without being hit. There was the Tunguska explosion, in which an asteroid struck in an unpopulated area (which I'm estimating describes over 87% of the earth, taking into account the ~70% covered in water), but other than that what else?
If an asteroid was large enough sure, it wouldn't matter where it hit, the effects would be globally catastrophic. But when was the last time an asteroid like that hit, much less a smaller one like that involved in the Tunguska explosion? A pretty long time ago I'm sure. And I see no reason why, suddenly now we have to prepare for asteroid collisions, when we are no more likely to be hit than we were 50, 100 or 1000 years ago.
Anti-asteroid measures should be kept on the backburner if at all, not only to prevent hysteria but because there are much better ways to use the scientific and monetary resources.
2600 only informed me of the concept of a password bag application. By the time I actually felt the need to acquire such an application, I had forgotten any specific software titles mentioned in the article. I discovered Password Safe on my own. And like any open source application, exploits should be discovered by those "many eyes" (of course that is not to say that being open source shields it from any longstanding exploits, but it does assist I think).
A reduced sonic boom has obvious civil purposes, but the aim of this program is to improve the designs of military aircraft. A reduced sonic boom would make supersonic aircraft in enemy airspace less noticeable.
Of course aircraft cannot be tracked using aural emissions, but it only takes sound to wake up an airbase full of sleeping pilots or snoozing radar operators...
"Here's a story from Spaceflight Now about a new test aircraft that can travel at supersonic speeds [with a lessened sonic boom]. The technology works by modifying the shape of the [sonic boom]. Although it's been believed to be possible for a long time, this is the first actual flight test, barring black projects I suppose."
I've never used Keychain so I'm not exactly sure what it's functionality is like. Many months ago an article in 2600 magazine informed me of "password bag" applications, software that stores multiple passwords in a file which is only accessible through a master password. Perhaps this is somewhat like Keychain?
One such application for Windows is Password Safe. It is free and open source. It stores all of a user's passwords in an encrypted database that is accessed with a "safe combination" (just another password). It then displays a table of all the stored accounts with accompanying usernames (it does not display the passwords by default). The user double clicks an entry and the corresponding password is copied to the clipboard. It can also generate passwords with some options to set their parameters (only uppercase letters, use symbols etc.).
I've been using Password Safe for several months and have found it incredibly convenient and well designed. Since it never actually displays the passwords on the screen, I can use it in public environments, and the encrypted database file can be easily transferred using a floppy.
P.S. I've found it unwise to use a different password for everything, relying of Password Safe for each one. I've now switched to using different passwords for things involving money, and for stuff like slashdot, gamespy and various messageboard accounts using a single password.
"System Shock 2, Thief, Deus Ex-- these are the games that are consistently lauded as the masterpieces of the genre, and are as consistently re-played as id's mindless mousekillers."
Replayed by who? You only have evidence of you yourself replaying them. And the "genre" is arguable. I would not put Deus Ex or Thief into the same first person shooter genre as Quake 3 or System Shock 2. Thief was much more about sneaking around rather than shooting (in fact the hardest difficulty required that you killed no one). Gameplay was totally different in Thief. Deus Ex was more of a shooter-RPG hybrid-- it wasn't about combat and puzzles as much as an involved story with a focus on character interaction and player stats development. System Shock 2 was a "true" first person shooter in my opinion (it did not try to merge multiple genres too much), but it was very much a sleeper hit due to its complexity and release during the multiplayer boom (and throughout SS2 I always felt this intense loneliness that multiplayer gaming was the polar opposite of). The 4 player coop patch didn't do much to change that. SS2 was unique for its RPG elements but at its heart was a plain "survival" type shooter with simple AI, annoying maze-like levels and tedious objective-based gameplay (how much did you have to do before activating those ship generators?). I loved SS2 for the fear one felt and the story, but not for the crux of its gameplay which was as simple as Quake I.
The only masterpiece of the "true" single player shooter was in my opinion Half-Life, and for multiplayer it is Tribes 2. Both took what was the essence of each genre and brought it to the next level. For Half-Life as a single player game it was a cool premise, good map puzzles, awesome AI, creative weapons and an overall immersive environment. For Tribes 2 as an excellent multiplayer game it was the value of teamwork, integration of different combat types and strategies, and efficient netcode. Neither tried to merge genres, as Deus Ex did with the rpg elements, and both were at their hearts first person shooters, unlike Thief which was a first person sneaker if you had to give the genre a name.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure IBM's engineers have IQ's that are at least 25.
The RFID's were visible behind the due date card slot glued to the inside of the back cover. There was only one entrance and exit to the library which was bordered by RFID checking gates. If a person walked through them carrying a book he shouldn't have (or at least the actual RFID, which could be removed from the book and discreetly deposited in an unsuspecting student's backpack) a loud beeping would go off.
Anyways, the system worked fine.
Falcon 4.0, a landmark achievement in consumer flight simulation technology had its full source code leaked several years ago. What happened aftewards?
Nothing for several months. People went about playing Falcon 4.0 as they did before. Then a user posted a single screenshot to the combatsim.com fora. It showed the Falcon 4.0 options menu, except with some rather peculiar options-- 3dnow! support, 32 bit textures, object texture filtering, DirectX 7 support, and some others. Falcon 4.0 did not ship with support for said features, so either it was an edited screenshot or the user had modified the source code. Then the actual executable was released. It was real, the engine enhancements worked.
Development of the leaked source code exploded shortly after that. A team known as eTeam (the executable was called eFalcon) was created to work on it, devoted to closing the numerous memory leaks, and improving the overall realism and performance of the game. The improvements were incredible, bringing a game released in 1998 to a 2001 state, competitive (or far superior, which was most people's opinions) to simulations released that year. The game's publisher ignored this for a few years.
The game's publisher then put its foot down. It said that all development of the leaked source code had to be ceased. Quickly though the community reached an agreement. It managed to convince the publisher to allow continued development of the leaked source code, as long as the publisher maintained all rights to all of the community's work and was not required to compensate the actual contributors. The result was the Falcon 4.0 Unified Team, composed of most of the eTeam members (not all though, some refused to join because of the constrictive agreement) as well as many from the Realism Patch group, a non-source code team focusing mostly on realism enhancements. The F4UT has succeeded in making hundreds if not thousands of changes to Falcon 4.0, ranging from technical (graphics engine, campaign engine, AI, sound engine, etc.) to gameplay (new flyable aircraft, dogfight AI improvements, numerous miscellaneous tweaks etc.) to other content (re-done textures, models, sound effects, completely new cockpit art, etc.). The F4UT finally brought Falcon 4.0 to what its original developers intended, not only simulation of F-16 combat, but a true military aviation experience taking place in a dynamic computer simulated war.
How does this relate to Half-Life 2's source code being leaked? Well, sometimes leaked source code can lead to greater things. After the Falcon 4.0 source code happenings, the full source code, including the graphics engine, network code etc. of a few simulations (Enemy Engaged Comanche Vs. Hokum, MiG Alley, maybe some others) have been released to the public. Maybe this practice could spread to other game genres.
if you had omitted the closing tag, this could've been a great troll.
you have failed by declaring what was already obvious.
"Back at ILM, sequence supervisor Robert Weaver noticed a tremendous performance boost upgrading from RISC workstations to Linux PCs during Star Wars: Episode II. 'The old system was so slow that the clones firing lasers appear to be throwing javelins,' says Weaver. 'We've seen about a 5x speed improvement in Linux. I'd say Linux is one of the most successful efforts we've had. I can't say enough good things about it. It is intuitive, incredibly stable, and we can get stuff fixed at a moment's notice.'"
In other words, they were using now incredibly slow SGI boxes with RISC MIPS processors before and then switched to much faster PC's with x86 processors. The speed difference was caused not only by software but also hardware changes.
"(and recently Apple dropped the price of the Apple version of Shake so much that the Apple computer to run it seemed free)"
Shake for Mac OS X: $4,950
Cheapest 1.6GHz G5: $1,999
I'm not sure how anything could make that $1,999 seem to be $0.
or the source code of Softimage, Lightwave, 3ds max, Photoshop, After Effects, Flame, Inferno, Houdini, Avid etc.?
Nope, none of them are open source, and each is used by at least one major studio. And if by "access to the source code" assumes monetary compensation in exchange, then by that definition pretty much every piece of software has accessible source code.
...is also 2 years old.
While the X-33 spacecraft itself never got off the ground, ground tests of the X-33's linear aerospike engine were quite successful. The reason the project was canceled dealt with the repeated failures of the composite fuel tanks.
Just like how when you play Quake 2 on a P4 2.4GHz it plays the game at six times the speed at which a P2 400MHz plays it.
Oh, wait...
Dell R&D developed a very quiet processor cooling system using a ducted low-RPM fan, dedicated to the processor. The sound is very close to silent. They developed the first heat pipe cooling solution for laptop processors as well.
The buttons may look "cheap", but I'm sure they still "just work".
You do realize that Half-Life's physics engine isn't actually Half-Life's, don't you? It is the HAVOK physics engine, long used in the 3ds max plugin known as reactor.
As for whether it is more functional than the physics simulation contained within the Doom 3 engine; in my opinion, it is too soon to tell.
" What I've always wondered about the Doom series is what is it about the series that appeals to so many people?"
Should be "appealed". You admit that you have never played Doom. Why don't you try it? Is it so hard to download a demo and find out for yourself?
Or do you just like posting really stupid pseudo-intellectual comments?
I wonder if or how Apple Computer, Inc. will modify its marketing efforts. Will it continue to ignore AMD like they did with G4 ads, neglecting the fact that the "megahertz myth" had existed for years in the PC world in the competition between the Athlon and Pentium processors? Which led to numerous Mac users enlightening us lowly PC peons about how processor clock alone does not determine processor performance, a fact which many of us had been aware of long before the release of the Motorola G4.
It is true that the G5 was the first 64bit desktop computer processor. Now there is a second. Apple should show some G5 vs. Athlon 64 benchmarks, which should be a much more competitive comparison price-performance wise than one dealing with G5's and Xeons. And much more realistic, with both catering to (roughly) the same market.
Not until the software that people use make it necessary for them to purchase said processors. Significant price drops on the lower end CPU's would only be appropriate if demand for those processors significantly declined, with a corresponding increase in demand of the Athlon 64 and P4EE. The Athlon 64 and P4EE will always be more expensive than their weaker models of course, and without the need of consumers to upgrade (at this time), there will be little shift in focus to these new processors.
And with consumer interest remaining with those lower end CPU's, so shall the prices.
People don't seem to realize that there has been no escalation in the chances of earth being struck by a signficantly sized asteroid now than there was in the thousands of years we have gone without being hit. There was the Tunguska explosion, in which an asteroid struck in an unpopulated area (which I'm estimating describes over 87% of the earth, taking into account the ~70% covered in water), but other than that what else?
If an asteroid was large enough sure, it wouldn't matter where it hit, the effects would be globally catastrophic. But when was the last time an asteroid like that hit, much less a smaller one like that involved in the Tunguska explosion? A pretty long time ago I'm sure. And I see no reason why, suddenly now we have to prepare for asteroid collisions, when we are no more likely to be hit than we were 50, 100 or 1000 years ago.
Anti-asteroid measures should be kept on the backburner if at all, not only to prevent hysteria but because there are much better ways to use the scientific and monetary resources.
Fucking christ. asobala already mentioned this. Asshole.
2600 only informed me of the concept of a password bag application. By the time I actually felt the need to acquire such an application, I had forgotten any specific software titles mentioned in the article. I discovered Password Safe on my own. And like any open source application, exploits should be discovered by those "many eyes" (of course that is not to say that being open source shields it from any longstanding exploits, but it does assist I think).
A reduced sonic boom has obvious civil purposes, but the aim of this program is to improve the designs of military aircraft. A reduced sonic boom would make supersonic aircraft in enemy airspace less noticeable.
Of course aircraft cannot be tracked using aural emissions, but it only takes sound to wake up an airbase full of sleeping pilots or snoozing radar operators...
Or they could use any of the current or still in development aircraft that still produce significant sonic booms.
"Here's a story from Spaceflight Now about a new test aircraft that can travel at supersonic speeds [with a lessened sonic boom]. The technology works by modifying the shape of the [sonic boom]. Although it's been believed to be possible for a long time, this is the first actual flight test, barring black projects I suppose."
I've never used Keychain so I'm not exactly sure what it's functionality is like. Many months ago an article in 2600 magazine informed me of "password bag" applications, software that stores multiple passwords in a file which is only accessible through a master password. Perhaps this is somewhat like Keychain?
One such application for Windows is Password Safe. It is free and open source. It stores all of a user's passwords in an encrypted database that is accessed with a "safe combination" (just another password). It then displays a table of all the stored accounts with accompanying usernames (it does not display the passwords by default). The user double clicks an entry and the corresponding password is copied to the clipboard. It can also generate passwords with some options to set their parameters (only uppercase letters, use symbols etc.).
I've been using Password Safe for several months and have found it incredibly convenient and well designed. Since it never actually displays the passwords on the screen, I can use it in public environments, and the encrypted database file can be easily transferred using a floppy.
P.S. I've found it unwise to use a different password for everything, relying of Password Safe for each one. I've now switched to using different passwords for things involving money, and for stuff like slashdot, gamespy and various messageboard accounts using a single password.
You can change the Windows XP GUI to Classic mode which makes it look exactly like 2k/98.
"System Shock 2, Thief, Deus Ex-- these are the games that are consistently lauded as the masterpieces of the genre, and are as consistently re-played as id's mindless mousekillers."
Replayed by who? You only have evidence of you yourself replaying them. And the "genre" is arguable. I would not put Deus Ex or Thief into the same first person shooter genre as Quake 3 or System Shock 2. Thief was much more about sneaking around rather than shooting (in fact the hardest difficulty required that you killed no one). Gameplay was totally different in Thief. Deus Ex was more of a shooter-RPG hybrid-- it wasn't about combat and puzzles as much as an involved story with a focus on character interaction and player stats development. System Shock 2 was a "true" first person shooter in my opinion (it did not try to merge multiple genres too much), but it was very much a sleeper hit due to its complexity and release during the multiplayer boom (and throughout SS2 I always felt this intense loneliness that multiplayer gaming was the polar opposite of). The 4 player coop patch didn't do much to change that. SS2 was unique for its RPG elements but at its heart was a plain "survival" type shooter with simple AI, annoying maze-like levels and tedious objective-based gameplay (how much did you have to do before activating those ship generators?). I loved SS2 for the fear one felt and the story, but not for the crux of its gameplay which was as simple as Quake I.
The only masterpiece of the "true" single player shooter was in my opinion Half-Life, and for multiplayer it is Tribes 2. Both took what was the essence of each genre and brought it to the next level. For Half-Life as a single player game it was a cool premise, good map puzzles, awesome AI, creative weapons and an overall immersive environment. For Tribes 2 as an excellent multiplayer game it was the value of teamwork, integration of different combat types and strategies, and efficient netcode. Neither tried to merge genres, as Deus Ex did with the rpg elements, and both were at their hearts first person shooters, unlike Thief which was a first person sneaker if you had to give the genre a name.
P.S. I doubt you'll find as many people replaying those games as Quake 3 which constantly has thousands of players online.