I had a discussion with a (less technically minded) friend the other day. Her contention was that "someone" (ISP's, presumably) should be in control of all the porn content online. This way, the ISP would be able to offer two services: (1) all the internet in its pr0n glory and, (2) the "friendly" internet without the pr0n.
The discussion went back and forth, her perspective mainly being, "it doesn't matter how technically infeasible it is. I am a consumer. I'll pay big bucks for it." I was arguing against the idea from a technical feasibility standpoint -- the scale of filtering would be massive, and automated filtering would produce all sorts of errors (false positives and negatives).
But, the great firewall of China is an interesting argument for the other side of the coin. If something this massive has actually been successful, isn't the great pr0n filter a feasible idea, too?
I recall some discussion earlier on/. that talked about how OS X-on-NetBSD wasn't as clean as many thought. In fact, it turned out that the/etc was pretty much bare except for some file structure that was like a Windows registry (except for it was for Mac). Can someone verify this?
This makes sense... In the same way, it's easier to write a paper given a template (of "what's expected", for instance)... Part of the thinking is already done -- even if it's wrong or only tangentially related.
What's funny is that these kinds of predictions (about AI) were made by Herbert Simon way back in the 60's or so. Even he, one of the great proponents of AI has recanted many of his predictions.
This is quite funny from a social psyc perspective. Geeks have a superiority complex as is often seen here on/. Sometimes, you'll see a thread that goes down 60 deep, and it's just two guys arguing back and forth. Us geeks have a tendency to rail on and on about obscure things, showing off, telling each other we're wrong, etc. We do that because it makes us feel smarter and such. It's not very funny when you're in the midst of it, but when you step back, it's kind of amusing, really.
Actually yeah, I missed that VERY important aspect in my post. NO unit building and no worries about "resource management". I disliked that a lot -- it took away from the actual "warfare" which I thought was MUCH more interesting. Not to take away from those kinds of games (and people that play them) -- that's strategy too.
But my passion has always been "how is it that one team wins in a battle." In Red ALert, we'd try this by just having a mano-a-mano kind of match (no buildings or anything), but what ends up happening is that whoever has more units wins. In Myth, that's totally not the case. It's whoever knows how to control their units best that wins.
You learn to use the terrain, the strengths of your units, and formations to win.
People coming straight from Starcraft often get pummeled in Myth -- simply because they've learned how to throw all their men in at once. That works in SC, because it's all about "overwhelming force." In Myth, that kind of thing is suicide.
Myth 2 (and it's predecessor Myth 1) is a great game. I make sure to use "is" as opposed to "was" simply because it was groundbreaking in truly unique way. Tactical battle in Myth 2 is something that has never been equaled in another game, IMHO. Myth brought the idea that unit positioning matters, and that's something that's rare to see in RTS games.
If your soldier is right up against an enemy, and you have another soldier behind him, he can't do squat in terms of attack -- he's got to walk around. Team formation is something that is thus extremely important for success in this game. Most RTS that I've played haven't exactly figured this out yet, and just how much fun it is. True, it's kind of a pain, but once you've gotten over the learning curve, it starts to make sense "which general should win" given the tactics s/he uses.
The use of land formations was revolutionary for its time. "High ground" really meant something in terms of firing range. Your dwarves can fire almost the entire screen length if they're tossing into a valley. Your archers start to look pretty good, too.
And then there was the idea of veterans. This was pretty cool. Essentially, you'd get "your team" from the last battle (if you'd won), and they'd get shields for each of their kills. The more shields, the more accurate they'd be when killing again. Of course, the "newbies" are hilarious (and frustrating, too): sometimes, you'd get a dwarf that would desimate (sp) his entire team by chucking a grenade straight up! LOL
I never got particularly good at multiplayer Myth, because I came into the scene about a year after the game had been released; instead, I contented myself by beating other newbies.:D
I haven't tried Myth 3 either, so I can't speak for it. Myth 2 is a great game. If you can find it for $10, give it a go -- it's worth it.
Keylogging is, in fact, a tool that is used in usability. On a mass scale like this, I doubt keylogging will be of much utility given (a) the diverse number and types of users, and (b) the diverse number of applications that are being used.
It might be kind of cool to see if you could empirically generate different/classes/ of users (for instance, the heavy keyboard vs. the heavy mouse users), or whatever for different applications. Or perhaps differentation between classes of applications by the amount of key usage, etc. Unfortunately, I don't think the protocol of this thing does that; moreover, the only people that will install this thing are geeks.;)
AudioGalaxy's [audiogalaxy.com] software unfortunately now installs VX2 by default. We didn't know this when we installed AG, and were subject to a pop-up ad so frequently, it was unbelievable. At first, I suspected the sites we were visiting, but they were even coming up on Google!
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2 [vx2.cc].
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
For those of you who got a real kick out of this thing, you may want to read Cuckoo's Egg. Cuckoo's Egg is a little older (he talks about using the teletype), and follows a real life story of an admin who went and tracked a bad hacker (or thief? -- sorry it's been a while). It has the same sort of "you out-think me, i'll out-think you!" back and forth flavour to it. Give it a read, you won't be disappointed.
Interesting. The HCI group at Cornell has done some work in this area. Their project involved GPS as well, and allowed students to "tag" objects with information. The project, called "CampusAware" was conceived as a system for tours; that is, a person on a tour could bring around a device, and it would beep when one came around a "tagged" area. A button press would reveal the information that was tagged there.
The idea was that students could tag places as they saw fit.
You can read more about the projects here, and here.
AOL depends heavily right now on Windows. Their whole platform runs on it. What better way to beat MS than to sever relations and get its own OS?
Developing AOL on Linux, and then distributing AOL+Linux on a CD would give ANY person access to AOL without need for MS! If they could do this, then they would own the ENTIRE user experience (Internet + OS) -- much like MS is trying to do. MS is trying to do this with MSN, and they have a head start. AOL gets RedHat, and AOL gets their own OS too.
This is not true at all. People/migrating/ from Windows environment lack the knowledge that you might be able to assume in a "hacker." I mean, it's a burgeoning hacker, right?
Besides, some like to deploy linux without wanting to/know/ exactly how to compile a kernel. After all, it may not be necessary. Someone could deploy linux because they want to run their own webserver, or code assignments from school, or code their own little pet projects.
I have a friend who just came into the linux world. Couldn't figure out how to change the resolution in X... "The option wasn't anywhere in the menus!" Of course not, but he didn't know that, and how could have? He just moved over! He's still learning.
I agree with one of the first posts: "Why is this an issue at all? Increasing accessibility is/always/ a good thing."
Is 2.4.x really as bad as this author makes it sound? I mean you'd think that the stuff he's complaining about -- it sounds kind of common -- you'd figure that people would have run into it during 2.3.x?
There's something weird about driving around in a car that has this many interconnected computers. One bug, and who knows what might happen. Fault tolerance should be zero on this thing
Good point. I think though that the level of immersion would need to be carefully thought out. I mean, thinking about the ways in which the body could interact with the environment would need to be very careful. You could get carried away with one idea, and the dividends could end up being minimal.
Remember in Q2 when id upped the bar by letting you have "destructable walls"? That was going to be all the rage. Unfortunately, how often do we see those today? It's hard to put them in levels because it's not like you can make an/entire wall/ destructable, and there's no good reason for a player to fire at a wall if it's not always going to blow up anyway.
How much does it add to the gameplay? Minimal, at best. Though I bet it was a big head-scratch problem at id, and its solution was met with many cheers in the fanbase.
Yet its impact has only been minimal.
Same deal with "you can blow up these trees" in some outdoors games. It's kind of cool, but it doesn't add too much to gameplay.
Same deal with the chairs in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Cool to shoot at, but nothing really more than an annoyance. And, why can I shoot the chairs, but not be able to destroy the filing cabinets? Why does my TNT blow up only parts of the wall, etc.?
Interaction with the environment in of itself does not solve the problem of immersion entirely, simply because "what should be interactable?" is a very tough problem.
I think the idea of "illusory" immersion, that you were talking about, is a pretty reasonable idea (e.g. head-bobbing -- really, gun-bobbing). Head-bobbing is IN some of the newer games, but largely, many have done away with it (leaving it around only minimally) so that those that get nausea from it can still play the FPS's..;)
AudioGalaxy's software unfortunately now installs VX2 by default. We didn't know this when we installed AG, and were subject to a pop-up ad so frequently, it was unbelievable. At first, I suspected the sites we were visiting, but they were even coming up on Google!
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2.
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
Cexx's site - VERY informative -- tells you everything you need to know about vx2
I recommend downloading some of the software that's already been mentioned (e.g. adaware) -- they do a very good job of getting rid of all sorts of garbage.
This is not too surprising. Like a few of the posters already, it's absolutely true: most younger CS students have a vague notion about linux and expound on how "great" it is like there's no tomorrow; unfortunately, most have difficult saying exactly/what/ the difference is, or why the differences are substantial/interesting. It's like media hype, except from students.
Many of these students have never intimately touched a unix prompt (e.g. scripting), let alone play around with a linux box. It's an extraordinarily small portion of CS students that actually venture out and play with the various unices, and it's high time that/.'ers realize that (without raising such a big kerfuffle). Even amongst geeks, we are a/unique/ bunch of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like GamePC's website isn't running one of these babies yet.
:(
Slashdotted already.
I had a discussion with a (less technically minded) friend the other day. Her contention was that "someone" (ISP's, presumably) should be in control of all the porn content online. This way, the ISP would be able to offer two services: (1) all the internet in its pr0n glory and, (2) the "friendly" internet without the pr0n.
The discussion went back and forth, her perspective mainly being, "it doesn't matter how technically infeasible it is. I am a consumer. I'll pay big bucks for it." I was arguing against the idea from a technical feasibility standpoint -- the scale of filtering would be massive, and automated filtering would produce all sorts of errors (false positives and negatives).
But, the great firewall of China is an interesting argument for the other side of the coin. If something this massive has actually been successful, isn't the great pr0n filter a feasible idea, too?
Think of the commercial implications!
I recall some discussion earlier on /. that talked about how OS X-on-NetBSD wasn't as clean as many thought. In fact, it turned out that the /etc was pretty much bare except for some file structure that was like a Windows registry (except for it was for Mac). Can someone verify this?
I disagree. Counterexample: me. At Christmas. *mmm.. turkey*
This makes sense... In the same way, it's easier to write a paper given a template (of "what's expected", for instance)... Part of the thinking is already done -- even if it's wrong or only tangentially related.
Mod this parent up. The bit about disillusionment is still very salient to me -- years after my last AI class.
In particular, the late Herbert Simon suggested computers would catch up in a mere 20 years if not fewer. That would place computer AI to match humans by about the 80's.
Unfortunately, AI has languished for the past while. The big hey-day for AI was back in the 60's and 70's.
This is quite funny from a social psyc perspective. Geeks have a superiority complex as is often seen here on /. Sometimes, you'll see a thread that goes down 60 deep, and it's just two guys arguing back and forth. Us geeks have a tendency to rail on and on about obscure things, showing off, telling each other we're wrong, etc. We do that because it makes us feel smarter and such. It's not very funny when you're in the midst of it, but when you step back, it's kind of amusing, really.
Actually yeah, I missed that VERY important aspect in my post. NO unit building and no worries about "resource management". I disliked that a lot -- it took away from the actual "warfare" which I thought was MUCH more interesting. Not to take away from those kinds of games (and people that play them) -- that's strategy too.
But my passion has always been "how is it that one team wins in a battle." In Red ALert, we'd try this by just having a mano-a-mano kind of match (no buildings or anything), but what ends up happening is that whoever has more units wins. In Myth, that's totally not the case. It's whoever knows how to control their units best that wins.
You learn to use the terrain, the strengths of your units, and formations to win.
People coming straight from Starcraft often get pummeled in Myth -- simply because they've learned how to throw all their men in at once. That works in SC, because it's all about "overwhelming force." In Myth, that kind of thing is suicide.
Myth 2 (and it's predecessor Myth 1) is a great game. I make sure to use "is" as opposed to "was" simply because it was groundbreaking in truly unique way. Tactical battle in Myth 2 is something that has never been equaled in another game, IMHO. Myth brought the idea that unit positioning matters, and that's something that's rare to see in RTS games.
:D
If your soldier is right up against an enemy, and you have another soldier behind him, he can't do squat in terms of attack -- he's got to walk around. Team formation is something that is thus extremely important for success in this game. Most RTS that I've played haven't exactly figured this out yet, and just how much fun it is. True, it's kind of a pain, but once you've gotten over the learning curve, it starts to make sense "which general should win" given the tactics s/he uses.
The use of land formations was revolutionary for its time. "High ground" really meant something in terms of firing range. Your dwarves can fire almost the entire screen length if they're tossing into a valley. Your archers start to look pretty good, too.
And then there was the idea of veterans. This was pretty cool. Essentially, you'd get "your team" from the last battle (if you'd won), and they'd get shields for each of their kills. The more shields, the more accurate they'd be when killing again. Of course, the "newbies" are hilarious (and frustrating, too): sometimes, you'd get a dwarf that would desimate (sp) his entire team by chucking a grenade straight up! LOL
I never got particularly good at multiplayer Myth, because I came into the scene about a year after the game had been released; instead, I contented myself by beating other newbies.
I haven't tried Myth 3 either, so I can't speak for it. Myth 2 is a great game. If you can find it for $10, give it a go -- it's worth it.
(I don't work for Bungie, I'm just a big fan.)
Keylogging is, in fact, a tool that is used in usability. On a mass scale like this, I doubt keylogging will be of much utility given (a) the diverse number and types of users, and (b) the diverse number of applications that are being used.
/classes/ of users (for instance, the heavy keyboard vs. the heavy mouse users), or whatever for different applications. Or perhaps differentation between classes of applications by the amount of key usage, etc. Unfortunately, I don't think the protocol of this thing does that; moreover, the only people that will install this thing are geeks. ;)
It might be kind of cool to see if you could empirically generate different
AudioGalaxy's [audiogalaxy.com] software unfortunately now installs VX2 by default. We didn't know this when we installed AG, and were subject to a pop-up ad so frequently, it was unbelievable. At first, I suspected the sites we were visiting, but they were even coming up on Google!
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2 [vx2.cc].
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
For those of you who got a real kick out of this thing, you may want to read Cuckoo's Egg. Cuckoo's Egg is a little older (he talks about using the teletype), and follows a real life story of an admin who went and tracked a bad hacker (or thief? -- sorry it's been a while). It has the same sort of "you out-think me, i'll out-think you!" back and forth flavour to it. Give it a read, you won't be disappointed.
The idea was that students could tag places as they saw fit.
You can read more about the projects here, and here.
AOL depends heavily right now on Windows. Their whole platform runs on it. What better way to beat MS than to sever relations and get its own OS?
Developing AOL on Linux, and then distributing AOL+Linux on a CD would give ANY person access to AOL without need for MS! If they could do this, then they would own the ENTIRE user experience (Internet + OS) -- much like MS is trying to do. MS is trying to do this with MSN, and they have a head start. AOL gets RedHat, and AOL gets their own OS too.
Note: That should read "ice-water" synchronized swimming since this is the winter olympics.
This is not true at all. People /migrating/ from Windows environment lack the knowledge that you might be able to assume in a "hacker." I mean, it's a burgeoning hacker, right?
/know/ exactly how to compile a kernel. After all, it may not be necessary. Someone could deploy linux because they want to run their own webserver, or code assignments from school, or code their own little pet projects.
/always/ a good thing."
Besides, some like to deploy linux without wanting to
I have a friend who just came into the linux world. Couldn't figure out how to change the resolution in X... "The option wasn't anywhere in the menus!" Of course not, but he didn't know that, and how could have? He just moved over! He's still learning.
I agree with one of the first posts: "Why is this an issue at all? Increasing accessibility is
Is 2.4.x really as bad as this author makes it sound? I mean you'd think that the stuff he's complaining about -- it sounds kind of common -- you'd figure that people would have run into it during 2.3.x?
Dude, it's all about the crontabs. It's the viewing that's gonna be hard.
There's something weird about driving around in a car that has this many interconnected computers. One bug, and who knows what might happen. Fault tolerance should be zero on this thing
http://www.xboxemu.fr.fm/... I think that someone suggested the screenshots were cut-and-pasted digicam pictures. ;)
Rule 'o' Thumb: If it's on the internet, it must be true!
Good point. I think though that the level of immersion would need to be carefully thought out. I mean, thinking about the ways in which the body could interact with the environment would need to be very careful. You could get carried away with one idea, and the dividends could end up being minimal.
/entire wall/ destructable, and there's no good reason for a player to fire at a wall if it's not always going to blow up anyway.
;)
Remember in Q2 when id upped the bar by letting you have "destructable walls"? That was going to be all the rage. Unfortunately, how often do we see those today? It's hard to put them in levels because it's not like you can make an
How much does it add to the gameplay? Minimal, at best. Though I bet it was a big head-scratch problem at id, and its solution was met with many cheers in the fanbase.
Yet its impact has only been minimal.
Same deal with "you can blow up these trees" in some outdoors games. It's kind of cool, but it doesn't add too much to gameplay.
Same deal with the chairs in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Cool to shoot at, but nothing really more than an annoyance. And, why can I shoot the chairs, but not be able to destroy the filing cabinets? Why does my TNT blow up only parts of the wall, etc.?
Interaction with the environment in of itself does not solve the problem of immersion entirely, simply because "what should be interactable?" is a very tough problem.
I think the idea of "illusory" immersion, that you were talking about, is a pretty reasonable idea (e.g. head-bobbing -- really, gun-bobbing). Head-bobbing is IN some of the newer games, but largely, many have done away with it (leaving it around only minimally) so that those that get nausea from it can still play the FPS's..
The big throw was that the ads that were being served up always seemed to come from different places. One day, I decided to look into it, and discovered that all the ads were being downloaded from VX2.
VX2 is a very devious piece of sofwtare, logging every one of the sites you visit, and then popping an ad every once in a while. If you surf quickly, throttles itself; surf slowly, and it pops for every site. Quite devious, really.
I recommend downloading some of the software that's already been mentioned (e.g. adaware) -- they do a very good job of getting rid of all sorts of garbage.
I think you're going off a bit too much. After all, most of the bandwidth suckage is probably the video, don't you think?
Also, popunders usually come from somewhere else, which wouldn't have hurt adcritic that much.
This is not too surprising. Like a few of the posters already, it's absolutely true: most younger CS students have a vague notion about linux and expound on how "great" it is like there's no tomorrow; unfortunately, most have difficult saying exactly /what/ the difference is, or why the differences are substantial/interesting. It's like media hype, except from students.
/.'ers realize that (without raising such a big kerfuffle). Even amongst geeks, we are a /unique/ bunch of them.
Many of these students have never intimately touched a unix prompt (e.g. scripting), let alone play around with a linux box. It's an extraordinarily small portion of CS students that actually venture out and play with the various unices, and it's high time that