Does anyone know about any other competitions, or similar AI programming games?
Terrarium is an AI programming game where developers write herbivorous and carnivorous bugs (and plants) in any.NET language, then let them try to survive in a P2P "terrarium" of other bugs and plants. Microsoft holds periodic contests (US contests and International contests) for Terrarium bugs, and there seems to be a fairly active community around the whole thing. And the best part is that you're learning.NET, while at the same time having fun.
Please, no! The singing! Make RMS stop!
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"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 1
They should just work on a way and make music Opensource under the GPL license.
In which case, the only music we would have would be RMS playing his recorder and singing his terrible song about hackers. Or ESR playing his flute.
That's cool. I have a reliable source to feed my big-ass XBox controller addiction, so I'll be okay. If at any point I hear that the original controller is going to be discontinued, I'll have to make a run on my source and stock up...
... cause the developers don't have to work as hard to produce games (windows ce ports).
Just a nitpick, but XBox isn't Windows CE. It's based on a stripped down Windows 2000 kernel. Perhaps you're thinking of the Dreamcast, which did support CE? (few games actually used CE, but it was an option). Anyway, your port argument will only be valid for the first generation or two of XBox games. Since the XBox is static hardware (ie, it's a console, regardless of what Slashbots say about it), most developers will write their own in-house libraries that are thin layers over the hardware itself, rather than using something bulkier like DirectX. Once they do this, PC-to-XBox ports will no longer be trivial, and vice versa.
And also, I hate the X-box. Because of the reason microsoft got into the market: only to cash in, not to make quality games. Because of the lack of good games for it. Because of the controllers.
Odd you say XBox has a "lack of good games", considering it had the strongest launch line-up of any console since I don't know when (definitely not the PS2 or Gamecube, PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, or even the Genesis and SNES). And before you ding me for still talking about the launch line-up, let me state that the XBox isn't even a year old yet. It's still completely valid to consider those games. I'll grant you that many of the games that came later haven't been that great, but there have been quite a few good ones (Rallisport Challenge, Jet Set Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie (hard, but fun), Crazy Taxi 3, etc). As well, more good games are being released right now, like Turok (last month), Sega GT 2002, Soccer Slam (ported from GameCube, but with extra features and supposedly better graphics and sound), Dead to Rights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (laugh if you will, but it's supposedly a rather good action game), with quite a few more to come soon like Shenmue II, Quantum Redshift, Blinx, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and more. Maybe none of those are your thing (ie, if you're loyal to certain game lines like Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, or Gran Turismo), and that's cool. However, just because the XBox doesn't have those certain franchises doesn't mean it has a lack of good games (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I'm just suggesting a possible reason for why you may be overlooking some good games).
As for the controller issue, try again. Personally, I like the larger original controller (it just "fits right" in my hands), as do a number of my friends, but I've got one friend that swears by the smaller S controller. Both are good, high-quality, durable controllers. Neither will give you "game cramps" that you get with Sony's controllers (or, I get that, anyway).
Re:Covad's Motto... If it don't work, sucks for yo
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Covad On The Mend
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· Score: 1
Covad has virtually none of these options, as those that they can ask the ILEC to perform cost so much that they'll never make a profit on your service.
The solution, then, is for Covad to pass these costs on to the consumer. Worst case, they lose a customer. Best case, the customer gets pissed, asks Covad what he can do about it, Covad tells him it's because of the monopoly held by the ILEC, and the customer gets together other Covad customers who have been similarly screwed and files a class-action against the ILEC. More likely, most people will fall somewhere in between, meaning they'll pay Covad's fee, and be happy about it, because at least they don't have to deal with the slimy ILEC directly.
Covad good, Speakeasy not so good
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Covad On The Mend
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· Score: 4, Informative
Being a customer of both Covad and Speakeasy, I have to say that I do like Covad. Speakeasy, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Maybe it's just me, but the problems I've had with them have been significant and costly.
It all started a year ago, when Covad filed for bankruptcy. At the time, I was on XO's network (having been grandfathered in, since I was a residential customer of Concentric, before they changed to XO and dropped residential offerings). I truly liked XO, but with Covad's Chap11 scare, I needed some sort of reliability, and XO couldn't give it to me. They had a fall-back plan for their business customers if Covad would kick the bucket, but we remaining residential customers were out of luck. Therefore, I began looking for a new ISP. Having heard good things about Speakeasy, it was a natural choice to switch.
This is where things started to get hairy. I went through the whole ISP switch process at Speakeasy, but somehow they neglected to complete my switch. My $90/mo 1.5mbps/386kbps line through Covad that I had with XO was switched over to Speakeasy, and they even started billing me for the extra IPs and domain hosting service I ordered. However, they didn't start billing me for what they intially told me was a $90/mo line, same as what I had with XO. (note: This is the first place I screwed up. I didn't get the 1.5/384 @ $90/mo offer in writing, since it was clearly listed on their website. This came back to haunt me later.)
After several months, I decided I didn't want to get charged a huge lump sum for back-charges, so I notified Speakeasy that they never completely provisioned my account. They were quite nice about it, and promptly finished the provisioning order. However, since August when I switched and October when I notified them about the billing problem, they replaced the 1.5/384 straight ADSL @ $90/mo offering with a 1.5/128 line-sharing RADSL @ $90/mo offering. Imagine my surprise, then, when I get my next bill and see not a $90*4 charge, but a $250*4 charge! All of a sudden, my $90/mo line had turned into a $250/mo line. Obviously this was unacceptable, and I spent the next two weeks getting passed around among the various customer service representatives at Speakeasy, all of whom promised to figure out the problem and solve it, but none of whom actually did. (note: Had I gotten the original offer in writing at the time of switch, they'd have had no choice but to give me the 1.5/384 line @ $90/mo like it was when I signed up. But I didn't. c'est la vie.)
After two weeks of bullshit and getting the run-around, I decided I would split the difference and convert up to 768 SDSL ($160/mo), if Speakeasy would reduce the $250/mo back charges to $90/mo. After another week of negotiating this deal, I finally got a useful rep, and was able to get my back charges reduced and the new line provisioned. (note: It took another several days to iron out this conversion, because first I was told my initial ADSL line, being a straight connection and not line-sharing, would be sufficient for SDSL. Then I was told it wouldn't, and I'd need to go through the whole order process again.)
In the end, I had to have Verizon and Covad both come out to run a new loop. Verizon was surprisingly prompt, arriving two days after I completed my order, and Covad, while scheduled for a week later, actually noticed that Verizon finished their work promptly and notified me that they would be out the very next day. Go Covad! At that point, I had my new loop, but I had to fight with Speakeasy for another week for them to get it provisioned and into their system, and give me back my previous IPs (easier to do that than it would be to change DNS records and wait 24 hours for them to fully propogate).
Moral of the story: When dealing with Speakeasy, get everything in writing. Document who you talk to and when, and what promises they made. If they don't keep those promises (even if it's something as trivial as them saying they'll call you in a day, and they don't), call them on it. And don't be lulled into thinking they're a good company simply because the reps act supportive. They'll lie to you through their teeth, making promises they never intend to keep.
Oh well, only a couple months left on this contract. Maybe I need to research another ISP switch. Sigh...
I am still trying to buy the original quake version, but cannot seem to find it in any stores. Anyone know of any stores still selling it?
Ultimate Quake includes Q1, Q2, and Q3a. Maybe it's a waste of money if you already have Q2 or Q3a separately, but $30 isn't bad, and it's the only way I've seen lately to get Q1.
Actually, nevermind -- I just checked id's site, and you can buy Quake 1 by itself for $30 (as a download, you get no official media). At that price, you'd be better off picking up Ultimate Quake and giving away the Q2 and Q3a disks if you don't need them. For the same $30, you actually get the games on CD.
And with Sony actively developing the PS3, who's going to want MS's offering?
With nVidia actively developing the GeForce 5, who's going to want ATI's offering? With Intel actively developing the IA64, who's going to want AMD's 64-bit offering? I think you've missed the point. You've got several options here (assumption -- you'll buy at least one console. second assumption -- I'm ignoring Nintendo, and focusing on Sony v. Microsoft):
Buy an XBox, ignore the PS3 FUD. Result? You get to play games on your XBox right now.
Don't buy an XBox, and wait for the PS3. Result? You have to wait two years before you can play games.
Don't buy an XBox, and buy a PS2/already have a PS2. Result? You can play PS2 games now.
See what Sony's doing? They're not saying, "Go buy a PS2, because the PS2 still has fun games and can hold its own against the XBox." Instead, their line is, "Wow! PS3! Look at that! Why would you buy an XBox when you could have one of these? (fine print: the PS3 won't be available for another two years, and when it is available likely won't be anywhere near as powerful as we're claiming right now. But hey, at least you didn't buy an XBox, right?)" It's FUD, plain and simple.
Ultimately, this boils down to the problem anybody who likes technology will have at some point -- Do I buy now, or do I wait for the next whiz-bang widget in 6 months/a year/I don't know when, but they said soon? And when that new whiz-bang widget is out, inevitably there will be something better just over the horizon. Do you finally buy, or keep waiting? How long do you wait?
Re:A complete waste of cash.
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XBox Linux HOWTOs
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· Score: 5, Informative
Buying an XBox is a complete waste of cash. In case you haven't noticed, XBox sales are tanking compared to the PS2.
And with Sony actively developing the PS3, who's going to want MS's offering?
FUD. The PS3 is at least two years out from now, if not more. Sony is simply trying to do to Microsoft what they did to Sega (ie, when the Dreamcast started doing well, they began flooding the media with PS2 announcements, even though you wouldn't see the console for another year and some months).
The XBox had zilch, just some games that were "exclusives" only because MS bought up their producers for that reason.
And yet, the XBox library is growing quite well. The first run of games (Halo, Gotham, Amped, DOA3, etc) did quite well, with a number of them topping sales of 1 million. The next round was mostly filler (like all consoles, there is always a lot of filler -- even more so if the console is looking to increase its library size. the PSX has a bunch of filler crap, as does the PS2), with a few gems like Rallisport, Gunvalkyrie, and Crazy Taxi 3. There are a number of great games being released this month now, too. Sega GT 2002, Sega Soccer Slam (yes, a Gamecube port), the next rev of sports titles (NFL Fever 2003 in August, Madden 2003, NFL 2K3, etc), Dead to Rights, Quantum Redshift, and more. What's my point? A console can develop a great library even if it doesn't have the benefit of being backwards-compatible with something else. Hell, the SNES did quite well, even though it wasn't backwards-compatible with the NES. Same for the Genesis and SMS (though there was an adaptor there). And of course the PSX did quite well, even though it was Sony's first machine (after Square decided to get on board, of course).
If there's ever an X2, knowing MS, it probably won't be retro-happy. How else would they suck our wallets dry?
You just like making stuff up, right? Did you forget the 10+ years of backwards compatibility in Windows? The backwards compatibility in Office (new Office versions can read old Office files)? The simple truth is, Microsoft has proven that they value backwards compatibility in their other products, so why would you even think that they wouldn't with the XBox and theoretical XBox2?
They've been nearly 100% anti-Linux (as much as they are anti-competitive despite the DoJ rulings) and will probably go crying to the courts if it happens.
First off, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being "100% anti-Linux". It's simply not comparable to being "anti-competitive". (hell, for Microsoft to be anti-linux, that means they're acting competitively, so they can't be both anti-linux and anti-competitive, right? anti-competitive != anti-competition, since the goal of being competitive is to wipe our your competition.) Anyway, once again you've failed to apply past evidence to your argument -- namely, Microsoft generally uses the courts as a very last resort (unlike some other companies *cough*ORACLE*cough*, *cough*SUN*cough*, *cough*NETSCAPE*cough* who run to court if Microsoft bats an eyelash at them). In other words, I doubt you'll see Microsoft taking anybody to court over Linux on the XBox unless things start to get really bad.
Anyone who's out to "stick it to the man" (whether that's their motive or not) is OK in my book.
It simply amazes me that you can call Microsoft "the man" while at the same time praising Sony. Sony is just as "bad" as Microsoft, if not worse, but because their name isn't "Microsoft", I guess that doesn't really matter, does it?
So effectively, what we have, is the same old game, which now looks tired and primitive, with some, well, for want of a better description, shadows !
Or, you have a vehicle that allows you to play around with 3D graphics programming without having to go through the whole hassle of writing your own engine, creating some programmer art test data, etc. This guy could've written his own engine, but then it'd be a couple years before we'd see anything, if we ever did (not to mention, that wouldn't show up on Slashdot -- there are quite a few people that dabble in this area). He could've added it to one of the already-existing open source engines, like Crystal Space, but then he'd have to go to the trouble of generating test data (and few programmers are also artists, so it would be more difficult to impress people because they'd get hung up on the bad programmer art and not look past it to the neat effects he's made). Or, he could use the existing Quake 1 engine, leveraging the existing models, maps, textures, AI code, etc, and bolt on his enhancements. The latter is the best option if you're just playing around with some neat ideas you've read about. The first option is good if you want to learn how to write an engine. The second is probably best if your goal is to write a game.
And the kicker is, it'll only work on GeForce cards and will run slowly on anything below a GeForce2 GTS - Wonderful !
You complain that he's modified old software with new techniques, and then you complain that it doesn't run well on old hardware. Face it -- the anything older than the GeForce2 is old hardware. Get over it. Given a sufficiently powerful CPU (say, a p3-1GHz) and a sufficiently low screen resolution (800x600 or less), I'm sure you'd get playable speeds from this. You wouldn't want to compete online with this client, but then it's not a qw client anyway. Plus, it's still Quake, so all of your old Quake speed-related optimizations will still work.
(the numbering is mine, not the original poster's)
I'll be happy when they finally make the characters move around more realistically (i.e. 1) not having the same dumb expression on their face, 2) other realistic human-like movements, 3) not allowing other objects and characters to be able to penetrate walls, etc.).
So have at it. Let's break it down by points what you would need to do:
This is easily fixed -- modify the texture for the model. Since Q1 supports skins, I'm sure you can find a skin that doesn't have a dumb expression. Oh, wait, you mean you want dynamic facial expressions? Been done in other games already. (hey, what do you expect? Quake1 is something like 7 years old!)
Setup a motion capture rig, capture the movements of a person going through the various actions of the Q1 marine, and create new model animations. Plug the model back into Quake. Done. Alternatively, modify the Quake model loading/rendering code to support skeletal animation and inverse kinematics (or whatever, eh?), "ragdoll" physics, etc.
The source code is available, and there are research papers out there on continuous collision detection (here, for example). Combine the two! Or if that's too performance-intensive, I'm sure you can come up with a better collision detection algorithm than what Q1 currently uses.
As for "etc", well, there are literally hundreds of things you could do to advance the state of the Quake code. Add a better particle engine. Revamp the models with more polys. Rearchitect the engine so it doesn't bog down so much when there are a lot of polys on-screen. Id kindly released the source code, so you could do these things if you want.
For example, "like" can be a hedge, when the speaker is not quite sure what he or she is about to say is accurate. (Example: "He has, like, six sisters.")
At least this time they got the new features right. Last time, they were touting the vis-patched transparent water, of all things! That's anything but unique to this hack, given that transparent water (with the proper vis calculations, thus the need to vis-patch pre-made maps) was a feature of the original glquake back in 1997 or so.
Mozilla, Internet Explorer popup killer (for all flavors of windows).
NoPopIE, proving that anything Mozilla can do, IE can do as well. As for only supporting Win2K/XP, I don't have any Win9x boxes around for testing, nor do I care to.
CRTs are inherently analog in their signaling. The RAMDACs on graphics cards convert the digital output into analog signal levels (thus DAC, digital->analog conversion) which then go along your video cable. If the DAC was capable of converting 16-bit inputs, and the graphics card fed it 16-bits/color, you could have effectively 48-bit color.
Right, what I meant to say was: Is are the phosphors (sp?) used to actually display the colors responsive enough to make 48bpp/64bpp worthwhile? It's all well and good if the video card and RAMDAC can handle the higher bpp, but if the phosphors can't handle the added granularity, what's the point? RGB(0xFFFF, 0xFFFF, 0xFFFF) will look exactly the same as RGB(0xFFFF, 0xFFFF, 0xFFFE) if the phosphors can't handle such a minute difference.
Anyway, I play Halo, for Xbox alot and noticed that there is color banding. If you stop moving, it instantly disappears (in other words you stop noticing it). But it's pretty bad, I mean, I'm not particularly sensitive, as far as I know. So I assumed Halo has 32 bit color, and it almost certainly has alpha. So what's the deal? I guess the only conclusion is that Halo must be only 16 bit, with 4 bits alpha. As much as I love Halo, the color depth and the low resolution (television) ruins it for me. Actually, it's not so much the low resolution, but the jaggies that come with low res. Effective anti-aliasing (mmmm radio 6x sampling) would take care of it pretty well, but unfortunately the Xbox doesn't do anti aliasing without taking a big hit. From what I see it looks like the anti alias only certain polygon edges, but there are still jaggies (big ones!) EVERYWHERE. Whatever.
You need to tell me how you're connecting the XBox to your TV. Are you using composite (single RCA jack for video), S-video (4-pin din plug), or component (3 RCA jacks for video)? Are you playing on a TV that supports progressive scan output? (like 480p on an HDTV) Given that composite is bottom-of-the-barrel quality, and s-vid isn't much better, you're going to see artifacts and general crappiness with both of those, regardless of the bpp being used. Plus, those both run interlaced, so your vertical resolution is basically halved when you move around (turn your "head" side to side). Component is much better, and allows you to use 480p (assuming your TV supports it, and you enable it in the XBox dashboard). Even so, you still may see banding, simply from the aliasing of pixels from a limited resolution (you're essentially playing in 640x480, so there's only so many pixels available to make up the screen). No XBox games that I know of do FSAA yet, nor 1080i (I heard there was one game either out now or out soon that does 1080i, but it didn't sound interesting), but when games start using one or the other, you'll see image quality improve even more (I wouldn't expect both FSAA and 1080i -- at 16x9 aspect ratios, 1080i has more pixels than a 1600x1200 PC display, and FSAA even on the most advanced PC vid cards still chugs along at that res).
Anyway, as far as bpp goes, if you only notice the color banding when you're moving, then it's likely not an artifact of low bpp (you'd notice it when stopped, or even in screenshots, if that were the case). As I said above, I'd be willing to suggest that what you're seeing is aliasing effects from low resolution combined with an interlaced picture. As an example, watch an indy car race on TV some time, and look at the stands as the cars wizz by with the camera moving to follow them. You'll see a kind of moire pattern show up, but if the camera were to stop moving, the stands would look just fine. Halo running on my 46" Mits 16:9 RPTV looks great at 480p, though like you I would like a higher resolution. Never really notice too many jaggies, though.
And whoever thinks that the difference between 12 bit color and 16 bit color is just for bragging rights, I suggest they play video games. Even with 32 bit color, if alpha is using some of those bits, you will *still* see color banding, especially in motion. The next generation of videocards is working on 64-bit color (although, they're not actually displaying at 64 bits, just 64 bits are used for calculations, to minimize cumulative color distortion through multiple passes).
Just a small nitpick, but 32bpp has a built-in 8 bits for alpha, so you're not sacrificing any color quality by using it. 32bpp means 8 bits red, 8 bits green, 8 bits blue, and 8 bits alpha, or 24bpp + alpha. Yes, you may still see color banding (not as much as you would with 16bpp, of course), but I really doubt you'll notice it so much. As far as the upcoming 64bpp cards go, you're absolutely right -- they'll still only display 24 bit color, but the added bits will allow for greater precision during multiple rendering passes (mmm... 16 bit red, 16 bit green, 16 bit blue, and 16 bit alpha). If display technology were to catch up to video cards (is that possible? can CRTs do better than 24 bit color? I'd bet LCDs could, but that'll initially be very expensive), then we could actually display 64bpp. Of course, that still wouldn't shut up the people that complain that even though 24bpp allows for 16million colors, there are still colors it can't display (uniform steps between each 256 shades of r, g, and b means that there are some subtle shades that nobody will miss but photo professionals, if even them).
I can make over 16 million colors using only red, green, and blue, so I'd say they're telling the truth.
Uh... no. You can make over 16 million colors for a single pixel using varying levels of red, green, and blue in that single pixel (16777216 colors, to be exact, with a 24-bit display, giving 8 bits per red, green, and blue, or 256 shades of each merged together using the color properties of light to blend a new color). Palm has 12bpp to work with for a single pixel, or 4 bits per red, green, and blue. That's 16 shades of each, for a combinatorial total of 4096 different, unique colors. Their "blending" involves dithering (if I have a block of four pixels, and set the top left and bottom right to blue, and the top right and bottom left to white, then from a far enough distance, it looks like I have a blue that's 50% lighter than normal blue...), or using various sub-pixel techniques (if I want a brighter red, I could adjust the red subpixels next to the pixel I'm dealing with and it will look brighter, but it will also be blurrier and could sacrifice the colors in the adjacent pixels), and such (I don't know what else they could do, really). In other words, your "mixing" of red, green, and blue is different than the "mixing" they're doing.
Would you return your pda because it only displays 58000 colours instead of 65000? I mean, unless you are doing photo editing on it, it doesn't really matter. Besides, not having to display the extra 7000 colours saves energy.
The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.
In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.
Not quite the entire taskbar. The systray area still requires precision mousing, but then you're generally not going down there very often, and when you are you're probably trying get a tooltip (say, of the time and date), and so will be moving the mouse around carefully. The Quick Launch bar (and therefore, probably other toolbars) also seems to not have infinite borders. And of course you can change the size of the taskbar so that you end up with multiple rows of buttons, at which point only the "bottom" (assuming taskbar at the bottom, of course) row has an infinite border. But hey, at least some of it works! Now if only I used the mouse that much, rather than hitting my Window key, alt-tab, Window-R, Window-M, etc . ..
Movie destops also have an excessive amount of animation. Trust me, you'd hate any desktop that worked that way -- it'd run like absolute molasses.
Kinda like Mac OS X, eh? Yeah, yeah, it's getting better, but it's still pretty slow compared to other operating systems with less flash.
The user experience I've had that most closely resembles a movie desktop is application built using Flash, like you find on web sites and enhanced CDs. These apps try to emulate the look and feel of movie desktops.
Interestingly, most of those movie GUIs are built using Macromedia Director (or similar), so building the same thing out of Flash makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those movie web sites actually took most of the code directly from the mock-up made for the movie itself. It shouldn't be difficult to do.
Personally, I like usability with a bit of flash. Something like Window Maker, while very useable (it should be, since it's based on NeXT), is rather boring. Enlightenment, while flashy, isn't that useable in my opinion. In that vein, I'm pretty happy with Windows XP. It's themeable (link is down at the moment, but according to the notice it should be back up in a half an hour -- I doubt that, but check back in a day or two), so I can get my eye candy, but it's also very useable. Say what you will, Microsoft has spent a small fortune on useability testing, and most of what they've done works well. Brush it off as familiarity if you will, but there are concrete examples of Windows useability getting better (small example: the Start button now has infinite borders, just like the Apple menu in Mac OS -- throw the mouse down to the lower left and click, you'll get the start menu).
Learning, backlit, programmable out the wazoo, controls 10 devices, and did I mention learning?
Let me first say that I don't have an MX-500, nor do I know much about them (though with what you've said, I may be in the market for one soon...). However, one of the super-parent's major gripes was the learning part. Sure, the MX-500 can learn 10 devices, but that takes time. What would be better is if the remote had some way to save and load profiles. That way, the manufacturer or enthusiasts can make new profiles available, and all you have to do is find the right set for your model and load it up. If your model's not available yet, make a profile and publish it. The MX-500 may do that, and if it does that's pretty sweet, but as I said before I don't know much about the remote in question. Other universal remotes have pre-programmed support for various devices and models, but loading and saving profiles would make the device future-proof.
Anyway, I think it's time for me to go research the MX-500.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrarium is an AI programming game where developers write herbivorous and carnivorous bugs (and plants) in any .NET language, then let them try to survive in a P2P "terrarium" of other bugs and plants. Microsoft holds periodic contests (US contests and International contests) for Terrarium bugs, and there seems to be a fairly active community around the whole thing. And the best part is that you're learning .NET, while at the same time having fun.
In which case, the only music we would have would be RMS playing his recorder and singing his terrible song about hackers. Or ESR playing his flute.
Try the "far side of the moon", since there is no dark side of the moon.
That's cool. I have a reliable source to feed my big-ass XBox controller addiction, so I'll be okay. If at any point I hear that the original controller is going to be discontinued, I'll have to make a run on my source and stock up ...
Just a nitpick, but XBox isn't Windows CE. It's based on a stripped down Windows 2000 kernel. Perhaps you're thinking of the Dreamcast, which did support CE? (few games actually used CE, but it was an option). Anyway, your port argument will only be valid for the first generation or two of XBox games. Since the XBox is static hardware (ie, it's a console, regardless of what Slashbots say about it), most developers will write their own in-house libraries that are thin layers over the hardware itself, rather than using something bulkier like DirectX. Once they do this, PC-to-XBox ports will no longer be trivial, and vice versa.
Odd you say XBox has a "lack of good games", considering it had the strongest launch line-up of any console since I don't know when (definitely not the PS2 or Gamecube, PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, or even the Genesis and SNES). And before you ding me for still talking about the launch line-up, let me state that the XBox isn't even a year old yet. It's still completely valid to consider those games. I'll grant you that many of the games that came later haven't been that great, but there have been quite a few good ones (Rallisport Challenge, Jet Set Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie (hard, but fun), Crazy Taxi 3, etc). As well, more good games are being released right now, like Turok (last month), Sega GT 2002, Soccer Slam (ported from GameCube, but with extra features and supposedly better graphics and sound), Dead to Rights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (laugh if you will, but it's supposedly a rather good action game), with quite a few more to come soon like Shenmue II, Quantum Redshift, Blinx, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and more. Maybe none of those are your thing (ie, if you're loyal to certain game lines like Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, or Gran Turismo), and that's cool. However, just because the XBox doesn't have those certain franchises doesn't mean it has a lack of good games (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I'm just suggesting a possible reason for why you may be overlooking some good games).
As for the controller issue, try again. Personally, I like the larger original controller (it just "fits right" in my hands), as do a number of my friends, but I've got one friend that swears by the smaller S controller. Both are good, high-quality, durable controllers. Neither will give you "game cramps" that you get with Sony's controllers (or, I get that, anyway).
The solution, then, is for Covad to pass these costs on to the consumer. Worst case, they lose a customer. Best case, the customer gets pissed, asks Covad what he can do about it, Covad tells him it's because of the monopoly held by the ILEC, and the customer gets together other Covad customers who have been similarly screwed and files a class-action against the ILEC. More likely, most people will fall somewhere in between, meaning they'll pay Covad's fee, and be happy about it, because at least they don't have to deal with the slimy ILEC directly.
Being a customer of both Covad and Speakeasy, I have to say that I do like Covad. Speakeasy, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Maybe it's just me, but the problems I've had with them have been significant and costly.
It all started a year ago, when Covad filed for bankruptcy. At the time, I was on XO's network (having been grandfathered in, since I was a residential customer of Concentric, before they changed to XO and dropped residential offerings). I truly liked XO, but with Covad's Chap11 scare, I needed some sort of reliability, and XO couldn't give it to me. They had a fall-back plan for their business customers if Covad would kick the bucket, but we remaining residential customers were out of luck. Therefore, I began looking for a new ISP. Having heard good things about Speakeasy, it was a natural choice to switch.
This is where things started to get hairy. I went through the whole ISP switch process at Speakeasy, but somehow they neglected to complete my switch. My $90/mo 1.5mbps/386kbps line through Covad that I had with XO was switched over to Speakeasy, and they even started billing me for the extra IPs and domain hosting service I ordered. However, they didn't start billing me for what they intially told me was a $90/mo line, same as what I had with XO. (note: This is the first place I screwed up. I didn't get the 1.5/384 @ $90/mo offer in writing, since it was clearly listed on their website. This came back to haunt me later.)
After several months, I decided I didn't want to get charged a huge lump sum for back-charges, so I notified Speakeasy that they never completely provisioned my account. They were quite nice about it, and promptly finished the provisioning order. However, since August when I switched and October when I notified them about the billing problem, they replaced the 1.5/384 straight ADSL @ $90/mo offering with a 1.5/128 line-sharing RADSL @ $90/mo offering. Imagine my surprise, then, when I get my next bill and see not a $90*4 charge, but a $250*4 charge! All of a sudden, my $90/mo line had turned into a $250/mo line. Obviously this was unacceptable, and I spent the next two weeks getting passed around among the various customer service representatives at Speakeasy, all of whom promised to figure out the problem and solve it, but none of whom actually did. (note: Had I gotten the original offer in writing at the time of switch, they'd have had no choice but to give me the 1.5/384 line @ $90/mo like it was when I signed up. But I didn't. c'est la vie.)
After two weeks of bullshit and getting the run-around, I decided I would split the difference and convert up to 768 SDSL ($160/mo), if Speakeasy would reduce the $250/mo back charges to $90/mo. After another week of negotiating this deal, I finally got a useful rep, and was able to get my back charges reduced and the new line provisioned. (note: It took another several days to iron out this conversion, because first I was told my initial ADSL line, being a straight connection and not line-sharing, would be sufficient for SDSL. Then I was told it wouldn't, and I'd need to go through the whole order process again.)
In the end, I had to have Verizon and Covad both come out to run a new loop. Verizon was surprisingly prompt, arriving two days after I completed my order, and Covad, while scheduled for a week later, actually noticed that Verizon finished their work promptly and notified me that they would be out the very next day. Go Covad! At that point, I had my new loop, but I had to fight with Speakeasy for another week for them to get it provisioned and into their system, and give me back my previous IPs (easier to do that than it would be to change DNS records and wait 24 hours for them to fully propogate).
Moral of the story: When dealing with Speakeasy, get everything in writing. Document who you talk to and when, and what promises they made. If they don't keep those promises (even if it's something as trivial as them saying they'll call you in a day, and they don't), call them on it. And don't be lulled into thinking they're a good company simply because the reps act supportive. They'll lie to you through their teeth, making promises they never intend to keep.
Oh well, only a couple months left on this contract. Maybe I need to research another ISP switch. Sigh ...
Ugh. I quoted the wrong line from the poster. Oh well, I still make a valid argument.
Ultimate Quake includes Q1, Q2, and Q3a. Maybe it's a waste of money if you already have Q2 or Q3a separately, but $30 isn't bad, and it's the only way I've seen lately to get Q1.
Actually, nevermind -- I just checked id's site, and you can buy Quake 1 by itself for $30 (as a download, you get no official media). At that price, you'd be better off picking up Ultimate Quake and giving away the Q2 and Q3a disks if you don't need them. For the same $30, you actually get the games on CD.
With nVidia actively developing the GeForce 5, who's going to want ATI's offering? With Intel actively developing the IA64, who's going to want AMD's 64-bit offering? I think you've missed the point. You've got several options here (assumption -- you'll buy at least one console. second assumption -- I'm ignoring Nintendo, and focusing on Sony v. Microsoft):
See what Sony's doing? They're not saying, "Go buy a PS2, because the PS2 still has fun games and can hold its own against the XBox." Instead, their line is, "Wow! PS3! Look at that! Why would you buy an XBox when you could have one of these? (fine print: the PS3 won't be available for another two years, and when it is available likely won't be anywhere near as powerful as we're claiming right now. But hey, at least you didn't buy an XBox, right?)" It's FUD, plain and simple.
Ultimately, this boils down to the problem anybody who likes technology will have at some point -- Do I buy now, or do I wait for the next whiz-bang widget in 6 months/a year/I don't know when, but they said soon? And when that new whiz-bang widget is out, inevitably there will be something better just over the horizon. Do you finally buy, or keep waiting? How long do you wait?
Funny, I've heard the opposite.
FUD. The PS3 is at least two years out from now, if not more. Sony is simply trying to do to Microsoft what they did to Sega (ie, when the Dreamcast started doing well, they began flooding the media with PS2 announcements, even though you wouldn't see the console for another year and some months).
And yet, the XBox library is growing quite well. The first run of games (Halo, Gotham, Amped, DOA3, etc) did quite well, with a number of them topping sales of 1 million. The next round was mostly filler (like all consoles, there is always a lot of filler -- even more so if the console is looking to increase its library size. the PSX has a bunch of filler crap, as does the PS2), with a few gems like Rallisport, Gunvalkyrie, and Crazy Taxi 3. There are a number of great games being released this month now, too. Sega GT 2002, Sega Soccer Slam (yes, a Gamecube port), the next rev of sports titles (NFL Fever 2003 in August, Madden 2003, NFL 2K3, etc), Dead to Rights, Quantum Redshift, and more. What's my point? A console can develop a great library even if it doesn't have the benefit of being backwards-compatible with something else. Hell, the SNES did quite well, even though it wasn't backwards-compatible with the NES. Same for the Genesis and SMS (though there was an adaptor there). And of course the PSX did quite well, even though it was Sony's first machine (after Square decided to get on board, of course).
You just like making stuff up, right? Did you forget the 10+ years of backwards compatibility in Windows? The backwards compatibility in Office (new Office versions can read old Office files)? The simple truth is, Microsoft has proven that they value backwards compatibility in their other products, so why would you even think that they wouldn't with the XBox and theoretical XBox2?
First off, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being "100% anti-Linux". It's simply not comparable to being "anti-competitive". (hell, for Microsoft to be anti-linux, that means they're acting competitively, so they can't be both anti-linux and anti-competitive, right? anti-competitive != anti-competition, since the goal of being competitive is to wipe our your competition.) Anyway, once again you've failed to apply past evidence to your argument -- namely, Microsoft generally uses the courts as a very last resort (unlike some other companies *cough*ORACLE*cough*, *cough*SUN*cough*, *cough*NETSCAPE*cough* who run to court if Microsoft bats an eyelash at them). In other words, I doubt you'll see Microsoft taking anybody to court over Linux on the XBox unless things start to get really bad.
It simply amazes me that you can call Microsoft "the man" while at the same time praising Sony. Sony is just as "bad" as Microsoft, if not worse, but because their name isn't "Microsoft", I guess that doesn't really matter, does it?
Or, you have a vehicle that allows you to play around with 3D graphics programming without having to go through the whole hassle of writing your own engine, creating some programmer art test data, etc. This guy could've written his own engine, but then it'd be a couple years before we'd see anything, if we ever did (not to mention, that wouldn't show up on Slashdot -- there are quite a few people that dabble in this area). He could've added it to one of the already-existing open source engines, like Crystal Space, but then he'd have to go to the trouble of generating test data (and few programmers are also artists, so it would be more difficult to impress people because they'd get hung up on the bad programmer art and not look past it to the neat effects he's made). Or, he could use the existing Quake 1 engine, leveraging the existing models, maps, textures, AI code, etc, and bolt on his enhancements. The latter is the best option if you're just playing around with some neat ideas you've read about. The first option is good if you want to learn how to write an engine. The second is probably best if your goal is to write a game.
You complain that he's modified old software with new techniques, and then you complain that it doesn't run well on old hardware. Face it -- the anything older than the GeForce2 is old hardware. Get over it. Given a sufficiently powerful CPU (say, a p3-1GHz) and a sufficiently low screen resolution (800x600 or less), I'm sure you'd get playable speeds from this. You wouldn't want to compete online with this client, but then it's not a qw client anyway. Plus, it's still Quake, so all of your old Quake speed-related optimizations will still work.
(the numbering is mine, not the original poster's)
So have at it. Let's break it down by points what you would need to do:
As for "etc", well, there are literally hundreds of things you could do to advance the state of the Quake code. Add a better particle engine. Revamp the models with more polys. Rearchitect the engine so it doesn't bog down so much when there are a lot of polys on-screen. Id kindly released the source code, so you could do these things if you want.
Linquists examine the changing meaning of the word "Like" and its uses in modern speech. You appear to be using the "hedging" form:
At least this time they got the new features right. Last time, they were touting the vis-patched transparent water, of all things! That's anything but unique to this hack, given that transparent water (with the proper vis calculations, thus the need to vis-patch pre-made maps) was a feature of the original glquake back in 1997 or so.
Never claimed to be valid CSS, just valid HTML 4.0 (which it is).
NoPopIE, proving that anything Mozilla can do, IE can do as well. As for only supporting Win2K/XP, I don't have any Win9x boxes around for testing, nor do I care to.
Right, what I meant to say was: Is are the phosphors (sp?) used to actually display the colors responsive enough to make 48bpp/64bpp worthwhile? It's all well and good if the video card and RAMDAC can handle the higher bpp, but if the phosphors can't handle the added granularity, what's the point? RGB(0xFFFF, 0xFFFF, 0xFFFF) will look exactly the same as RGB(0xFFFF, 0xFFFF, 0xFFFE) if the phosphors can't handle such a minute difference.
You need to tell me how you're connecting the XBox to your TV. Are you using composite (single RCA jack for video), S-video (4-pin din plug), or component (3 RCA jacks for video)? Are you playing on a TV that supports progressive scan output? (like 480p on an HDTV) Given that composite is bottom-of-the-barrel quality, and s-vid isn't much better, you're going to see artifacts and general crappiness with both of those, regardless of the bpp being used. Plus, those both run interlaced, so your vertical resolution is basically halved when you move around (turn your "head" side to side). Component is much better, and allows you to use 480p (assuming your TV supports it, and you enable it in the XBox dashboard). Even so, you still may see banding, simply from the aliasing of pixels from a limited resolution (you're essentially playing in 640x480, so there's only so many pixels available to make up the screen). No XBox games that I know of do FSAA yet, nor 1080i (I heard there was one game either out now or out soon that does 1080i, but it didn't sound interesting), but when games start using one or the other, you'll see image quality improve even more (I wouldn't expect both FSAA and 1080i -- at 16x9 aspect ratios, 1080i has more pixels than a 1600x1200 PC display, and FSAA even on the most advanced PC vid cards still chugs along at that res).
Anyway, as far as bpp goes, if you only notice the color banding when you're moving, then it's likely not an artifact of low bpp (you'd notice it when stopped, or even in screenshots, if that were the case). As I said above, I'd be willing to suggest that what you're seeing is aliasing effects from low resolution combined with an interlaced picture. As an example, watch an indy car race on TV some time, and look at the stands as the cars wizz by with the camera moving to follow them. You'll see a kind of moire pattern show up, but if the camera were to stop moving, the stands would look just fine. Halo running on my 46" Mits 16:9 RPTV looks great at 480p, though like you I would like a higher resolution. Never really notice too many jaggies, though.
Just a small nitpick, but 32bpp has a built-in 8 bits for alpha, so you're not sacrificing any color quality by using it. 32bpp means 8 bits red, 8 bits green, 8 bits blue, and 8 bits alpha, or 24bpp + alpha. Yes, you may still see color banding (not as much as you would with 16bpp, of course), but I really doubt you'll notice it so much. As far as the upcoming 64bpp cards go, you're absolutely right -- they'll still only display 24 bit color, but the added bits will allow for greater precision during multiple rendering passes (mmm ... 16 bit red, 16 bit green, 16 bit blue, and 16 bit alpha). If display technology were to catch up to video cards (is that possible? can CRTs do better than 24 bit color? I'd bet LCDs could, but that'll initially be very expensive), then we could actually display 64bpp. Of course, that still wouldn't shut up the people that complain that even though 24bpp allows for 16million colors, there are still colors it can't display (uniform steps between each 256 shades of r, g, and b means that there are some subtle shades that nobody will miss but photo professionals, if even them).
Uh ... no. You can make over 16 million colors for a single pixel using varying levels of red, green, and blue in that single pixel (16777216 colors, to be exact, with a 24-bit display, giving 8 bits per red, green, and blue, or 256 shades of each merged together using the color properties of light to blend a new color). Palm has 12bpp to work with for a single pixel, or 4 bits per red, green, and blue. That's 16 shades of each, for a combinatorial total of 4096 different, unique colors. Their "blending" involves dithering (if I have a block of four pixels, and set the top left and bottom right to blue, and the top right and bottom left to white, then from a far enough distance, it looks like I have a blue that's 50% lighter than normal blue ...), or using various sub-pixel techniques (if I want a brighter red, I could adjust the red subpixels next to the pixel I'm dealing with and it will look brighter, but it will also be blurrier and could sacrifice the colors in the adjacent pixels), and such (I don't know what else they could do, really). In other words, your "mixing" of red, green, and blue is different than the "mixing" they're doing.
The problem is not that it can display only "58000" colors, but that it can really only display 4000 colors. That 58,000 number is arrived at by "using a variety of techniques--including turning pixels on and off and combining nearby pixels." (News.com article) So yeah, if Palm advertised that the m130 could display 65536 (16bpp) and it can only do 4096 (12bpp), then I would be complaining. HP had the same problem with earlier Jornadas they released, because they advertised 16bpp and only supported 12bpp (the crazy thing here is that they call the problem a "glitch", when it's a simple fact that the screens they used only supported 12bpp -- sounds like a glitch in the manufacturing process by choosing to use a cheaper screen). Compaq didn't have this problem, because they always advertised at 12bpp, not 16bpp.
In other words, the issue here isn't that the PDA can only do 12bpp, but that Palm advertised it at 16bpp and was caught out in their lie.
Not quite the entire taskbar. The systray area still requires precision mousing, but then you're generally not going down there very often, and when you are you're probably trying get a tooltip (say, of the time and date), and so will be moving the mouse around carefully. The Quick Launch bar (and therefore, probably other toolbars) also seems to not have infinite borders. And of course you can change the size of the taskbar so that you end up with multiple rows of buttons, at which point only the "bottom" (assuming taskbar at the bottom, of course) row has an infinite border. But hey, at least some of it works! Now if only I used the mouse that much, rather than hitting my Window key, alt-tab, Window-R, Window-M, etc . . .
Kinda like Mac OS X, eh? Yeah, yeah, it's getting better, but it's still pretty slow compared to other operating systems with less flash.
Interestingly, most of those movie GUIs are built using Macromedia Director (or similar), so building the same thing out of Flash makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those movie web sites actually took most of the code directly from the mock-up made for the movie itself. It shouldn't be difficult to do.
Personally, I like usability with a bit of flash. Something like Window Maker, while very useable (it should be, since it's based on NeXT), is rather boring. Enlightenment, while flashy, isn't that useable in my opinion. In that vein, I'm pretty happy with Windows XP. It's themeable (link is down at the moment, but according to the notice it should be back up in a half an hour -- I doubt that, but check back in a day or two), so I can get my eye candy, but it's also very useable. Say what you will, Microsoft has spent a small fortune on useability testing, and most of what they've done works well. Brush it off as familiarity if you will, but there are concrete examples of Windows useability getting better (small example: the Start button now has infinite borders, just like the Apple menu in Mac OS -- throw the mouse down to the lower left and click, you'll get the start menu).
Let me first say that I don't have an MX-500, nor do I know much about them (though with what you've said, I may be in the market for one soon ...). However, one of the super-parent's major gripes was the learning part. Sure, the MX-500 can learn 10 devices, but that takes time. What would be better is if the remote had some way to save and load profiles. That way, the manufacturer or enthusiasts can make new profiles available, and all you have to do is find the right set for your model and load it up. If your model's not available yet, make a profile and publish it. The MX-500 may do that, and if it does that's pretty sweet, but as I said before I don't know much about the remote in question. Other universal remotes have pre-programmed support for various devices and models, but loading and saving profiles would make the device future-proof.
Anyway, I think it's time for me to go research the MX-500.