A strategy war simulation game, that can be played among a group of people. Each player starts with a set of territories, which form a country or a kingdom, or an empire, depending on what you want to call it. And the player is the leader of that country. The rest of the planet is occupied by a other countries (which may or may not have a player). The goal is to capture territories (for the aggressive), or protect yourself from being eaten up. Obviously, you want to make the game as realistic as possible, by taking into consideration your resources, your population, your military, etc. You are the chief, so you can issue orders to move your army/navy/air force, to attack, to defend, to do research on specific topics, etc. Your subordinates will send you reports, memos, etc.
The interface you need for this game is very minimal, just text. But the game must be hosted on a server somewhere. You send orders and receive reports thru wireless messages on your handheld.
This kind of game can be played on for months, even years.
Actually, in the early 90's, we used to play it thru email. You signed up thru email, you send command thru email, you receive report thru email. The game was hosted on a.mil server (forgot the server name).
It was very addicting. Now make the game go beyond planet Earth....
There's no way you can convince a geek to get an old model toy, dude. We are geek, and there's no way we leave ourself behind. We NEED the latest model, at all cost. How are you supposed to show your geekiness if you don't have the latest model?
Everyone seems to jump on the gun to say this is old news, blah blah...
If it's such an old news, how come no one on/. has come up with a solution to fix it? Or better yet, a better architecture and protocol?
I didn't get a chance to read the whole paper, as it stalled half way thru (usual/. effect!). But it looks like a quite serious analysis paper to me. We should at least give him credit for that, there's not many OSS developers who write serious analysis papers, after all.
I doesn't have to be a real business operation. I had a web site before, but it has expired for more than a year now as I don't want to continue it anymore. The web site got nothing to do with business. And the only sytem I'm using is Linux. And I also got one of these stupid cards for the "business" that does not even exist.
Would you want to be personally responsible for any GPL'ed code you wrote?
I would, if I gotta charge the same insane amount of money that other commercial software companies charge. The fact that people can get this software for free should make me exempt of all liabilities. Now, ask GM or Ford to give a car for free, I sure wouldn't sue them if something happens.
When you pay for something, you'd expect the thing to work it's supposed to. When you get it for free, you have the choice to not take it. If you take it, you are on your own.
Ok, I've never used a Mac (besides playing on it at Fry's), and probably won't be interested by it in the near future. But I heard this, on the radio, a few days ago, while sitting in my friend's car (sorry, can't remember the name of the guy, nor the radio station):
This thing is more like for teenage girls. Look at the design, it's like the plastic mirror for kids. If you have teenage girls in your house, you know what I mean. For the wrong market, that is, geeks like us, this reminds me of a plastic mirror on a scoop of cow shit!
In our company, computers are not even allowed to have sound card, coz:
Employees are sitting too close to each other, sound card would just disturb other people
Everyone is in one big room (for better communication between employees, that's what we're told), so no sound insulation
Sound card does not add any value to coding and debugging
The company is against pirating music from Napster
The company is against sound pollution
The company is a software development house, not a music content creator
You are supposed to work, not listen to radio during company's time
It saves money for the company. When the company makes profits, everyone will be better off (last time I checked, the company's making profit, and those who are better off seem to all have pointy hair. Well, we don't have snacks anymore, as this is not healthy. So I guess we are better off too...)
...someone is caught breaking into your house, offers to repair the
damage instead of going to jail, and states that everything in your house now belongs to him, and if you want to add anything to your house, it will belong to him too.And you kids belong to him too.
There's a consumer electronic manufacturer association, but why are they letting RIAA/MPAA bully them around with DMCA? They are the ones making devices. By making devices that, although complying to DMCA, no one likes, why don't they fight DMCA and make devices that people want?
There may be a conflict as some manufacturer is also a member of RIAA/MPAA (e.g. Sony), but the majority are just making consumer electronics.
I'm sure it makes more business sense for manufacturer to have, say, standard encoding scheme for the whole planet, instead of that stupid regional coding scheme for DVD. This regional coding scheme adds nothing but cost, overhead, consumer dissatisfaction, critiques, etc. It's not in their best interest. And devices that allow people to do whatever they want, including making backup copy and creating their own audio/video contents, will only sell more devices, and more related (or even unrelated) devices too. Would you think there's a market for MP3 players if none of the music CDs can be ripped? Me think not.
Obviously, you haven't worked in a company where engineers only have Unix machines to develop softwares (obvious), and the marketroids all Windows laptops. And under disguise that marketing/sales and engineering should have more communication, you receive all kinds of emails, all in.doc attachment. And 99% of the time, the contents of the mail is a 5-line text.
When you send them polite reply that they should send normal email in text format, attach only pre-written documents if there's no way to convert into another format that engineers can read. The next thing you know, you get a review of having a bad attitude and you don't want to cooperate. And you know where that comments come from, right?
It's a royal pain in the butt when you have one Windows machine shared between 20 engineers all working on Unix.
And you already had a proof-of-concept virus before you have a proof-of-concept application? Now, you have to wonder if this.NET framework was developed for applications or for virus. Or there's no distinction between the two, as far as.NET is concerned?
Sun spent money and effort to buy OpenOffice and put resources to improve and develop it. From the impression that we get as outsider, Sun seems to want OO to compete with MS Office.
However, another impression that we have is that Sun wants other companies to use it, but Sun does not. I met quite a few people from Sun, and they don't use OO at all. A few Sun developers have downloaded it and played with it, and went back to MS Office. Funny thing is, those Sun presenters make jokes about Microsoft during their presentation, but they are all using MS Office and MS Windows. For that, I think it's not even funny.
Is this OO initiative a political game only, or is Sun serious about pushing OO to the enterprise environment? What are the efforts inside Sun to push OO as the standard office tools? What office tools do you use? Same for Scott McNealy.
What's so hard to grab some screenshots and put them up there? I've used the NeXT machines before, and have used WindowsMaker, so I know what to expect. But still, I'd like to see screenshots. And if it looks ugly, I won't even bother. And I want to see the boot up screen too.
And you can get more users to try it out too, if they can see something before they download that 110MB of data. Even at that "small size", it's still a lot, for people like me who don't have access to high speed internet.
just remember, if someone violates the laws of another country from their country, the offended country must extradite them in order to prosecute
No, that only applies to "offended" countries that are strong enough, or have something to leverage. Then the "offending" country may "comply".
A columbian drug dealer who sends drug to the US might be in trouble coz the US government does not like that. A USian traffic weapons (guess where is the source of 50% of world arms trade?) to a poor country is just fine, and in the US, he may be a very respectable business man and a patriot too, as he has contributed to the US economy. And what can the poor country government do, beside being told by the US government to go to hell?
Everytime an old technology dies out or is retired, we have this pissing game on/. to see who is the geekiest, the most senior, the oldest, the longest beard, etc.
Poor people who grew up with the boring DOS have no interesting story, I guess. There's a gap of one generation of people who grew up with the mainframe, and those who grew up with Linux. Now, those who grew up with DOS, what are you gonna do?
I always love this metaphore. And how true that describes the situation of Microsoft's customers. You keep on putting in more efforts, keep on running, but you are going nowhere.
Nah, me think the feature is there specifically for this purpose: to see which employee is "more loyal" to the company, and always does what the management is asking.
If this feature did not exist, how the hell does the management know who in the company goes the extra mile?
I think they are out temporarily to conserve their cash, as they are not getting as much business as they would like to. So, it's basically a survival tactics.
As soon as the economy is back, and the online ad business is back, you can bet that they'll be back in business again.
Huh? You meant, Canadian cities have denser population than cities in the US? I've lived
in Montreal for 10 years, and now living in San Jose, California. As far as I know, Montreal population density is not around the same as in San Jose. All my friends in Montreal suburbs have real fast DSL, and I have NO other choice in San Jose than the 28K modem.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not necessary.
.mil server (forgot the server name).
Imagine a game like this:
A strategy war simulation game, that can be played among a group of people. Each player starts with a set of territories, which form a country or a kingdom, or an empire, depending on what you want to call it. And the player is the leader of that country. The rest of the planet is occupied by a other countries (which may or may not have a player). The goal is to capture territories (for the aggressive), or protect yourself from being eaten up. Obviously, you want to make the game as realistic as possible, by taking into consideration your resources, your population, your military, etc. You are the chief, so you can issue orders to move your army/navy/air force, to attack, to defend, to do research on specific topics, etc. Your subordinates will send you reports, memos, etc.
The interface you need for this game is very minimal, just text. But the game must be hosted on a server somewhere. You send orders and receive reports thru wireless messages on your handheld.
This kind of game can be played on for months, even years.
Actually, in the early 90's, we used to play it thru email. You signed up thru email, you send command thru email, you receive report thru email. The game was hosted on a
It was very addicting. Now make the game go beyond planet Earth....
If it's such an old news, how come no one on
I didn't get a chance to read the whole paper, as it stalled half way thru (usual
I doesn't have to be a real business operation. I had a web site before, but it has expired for more than a year now as I don't want to continue it anymore. The web site got nothing to do with business. And the only sytem I'm using is Linux. And I also got one of these stupid cards for the "business" that does not even exist.
Would you want to be personally responsible for any GPL'ed code you wrote?
I would, if I gotta charge the same insane amount of money that other commercial software companies charge. The fact that people can get this software for free should make me exempt of all liabilities. Now, ask GM or Ford to give a car for free, I sure wouldn't sue them if something happens.
When you pay for something, you'd expect the thing to work it's supposed to. When you get it for free, you have the choice to not take it. If you take it, you are on your own.
Ok, I've never used a Mac (besides playing on it at Fry's), and probably won't be interested by it in the near future. But I heard this, on the radio, a few days ago, while sitting in my friend's car (sorry, can't remember the name of the guy, nor the radio station):
This thing is more like for teenage girls. Look at the design, it's like the plastic mirror for kids. If you have teenage girls in your house, you know what I mean. For the wrong market, that is, geeks like us, this reminds me of a plastic mirror on a scoop of cow shit!
No, it's like
...someone is caught breaking into your house, offers to repair the
damage instead of going to jail, and states that everything in your house now belongs to him, and if you want to add anything to your house, it will belong to him too.And you kids belong to him too.
There may be a conflict as some manufacturer is also a member of RIAA/MPAA (e.g. Sony), but the majority are just making consumer electronics.
I'm sure it makes more business sense for manufacturer to have, say, standard encoding scheme for the whole planet, instead of that stupid regional coding scheme for DVD. This regional coding scheme adds nothing but cost, overhead, consumer dissatisfaction, critiques, etc. It's not in their best interest. And devices that allow people to do whatever they want, including making backup copy and creating their own audio/video contents, will only sell more devices, and more related (or even unrelated) devices too. Would you think there's a market for MP3 players if none of the music CDs can be ripped? Me think not.
When you send them polite reply that they should send normal email in text format, attach only pre-written documents if there's no way to convert into another format that engineers can read. The next thing you know, you get a review of having a bad attitude and you don't want to cooperate. And you know where that comments come from, right?
It's a royal pain in the butt when you have one Windows machine shared between 20 engineers all working on Unix.
Because there's nothing to milk from KDE hackers. What is this Gravenreuth going to get sueing a bunch of poor hackers?
Sun spent money and effort to buy OpenOffice and put resources to improve and develop it. From the impression that we get as outsider, Sun seems to want OO to compete with MS Office.
However, another impression that we have is that Sun wants other companies to use it, but Sun does not. I met quite a few people from Sun, and they don't use OO at all. A few Sun developers have downloaded it and played with it, and went back to MS Office. Funny thing is, those Sun presenters make jokes about Microsoft during their presentation, but they are all using MS Office and MS Windows. For that, I think it's not even funny.
Is this OO initiative a political game only, or is Sun serious about pushing OO to the enterprise environment? What are the efforts inside Sun to push OO as the standard office tools? What office tools do you use? Same for Scott McNealy.
What's so hard to grab some screenshots and put them up there? I've used the NeXT machines before, and have used WindowsMaker, so I know what to expect. But still, I'd like to see screenshots. And if it looks ugly, I won't even bother. And I want to see the boot up screen too.
And you can get more users to try it out too, if they can see something before they download that 110MB of data. Even at that "small size", it's still a lot, for people like me who don't have access to high speed internet.
..., and if you do you can't sue about not being able to watch it.
Yeah, maybe. But I can put the disc under my ass and fart on it, can't I?
But then again, I wouldn't do that, as that's a waste of my energy on something I disdain. Well, even farting requires energy, so...
just remember, if someone violates the laws of another country from their country, the offended country must extradite them in order to prosecute
No, that only applies to "offended" countries that are strong enough, or have something to leverage. Then the "offending" country may "comply".
A columbian drug dealer who sends drug to the US might be in trouble coz the US government does not like that. A USian traffic weapons (guess where is the source of 50% of world arms trade?) to a poor country is just fine, and in the US, he may be a very respectable business man and a patriot too, as he has contributed to the US economy. And what can the poor country government do, beside being told by the US government to go to hell?
Everytime an old technology dies out or is retired, we have this pissing game on /. to see who is the geekiest, the most senior, the oldest, the longest beard, etc.
Poor people who grew up with the boring DOS have no interesting story, I guess. There's a gap of one generation of people who grew up with the mainframe, and those who grew up with Linux. Now, those who grew up with DOS, what are you gonna do?
I always love this metaphore. And how true that describes the situation of Microsoft's customers. You keep on putting in more efforts, keep on running, but you are going nowhere.
Nah, me think the feature is there specifically for this purpose: to see which employee is "more loyal" to the company, and always does what the management is asking.
If this feature did not exist, how the hell does the management know who in the company goes the extra mile?
Our company has 40k employees and whenever there is a big poll somewhere involving any of our products....
Hmm, let see. How many software companies have around 40k employees:
MS : 47,000
Oracle: 42,000
IBM: 300,000
Sun: 43,000
SAP: 25,000
hmm....
Any scripting language that is allowed to get out of its sand box only.
I think they are out temporarily to conserve their cash, as they are not getting as much business as they would like to. So, it's basically a survival tactics.
As soon as the economy is back, and the online ad business is back, you can bet that they'll be back in business again.
So breathe while you can.
in Montreal for 10 years, and now living in San Jose, California. As far as I know, Montreal population density is not around the same as in San Jose. All my friends in Montreal suburbs have real fast DSL, and I have NO other choice in San Jose than the 28K modem.
Makes you wonder...