This book has been reviewed on Slashdot here, and was rated 9/10.
It sounds exactly like what I need. I've been dropped in at the painful end of a project that's seen a dozen or so programmers hacking away for two years on a project with no code design whatsoever. I guess I must have annoyed someone.
There's a lot of really good articles on this site, and I recommend anyone who's involved in software development to take the time to go along and have a read through. You might not agree with it all, but there's plenty of useful tips and heaps of common sense, which is so often lost in the corporate world. Start in the archives here.
Try Planetarion. This is a free web-based game where you take control of a planet, build up your resources, attack other planets for their resources. Attacks, research, building and so on are timed in hours (anything between 4 and 72) and the game runs 24/7. It's highly addictive and I've been stuck in there for over a year now.
They started off rather small - just ran the thing on a couple of ISDN lines on a pc in one of the creators' front room. The game has become so popular that serious industrial strength hosting is now required, as well as round the clock care.
Banner adverts have always been used, with frequent reminders to get players to click them. Apparently only a small proportion (less than 10%?) regularly clicked them, so income was extremely limited. I remember them having problems with a particular banner-ad agency that was recommended to them, that saw the income drop even further. Now, they've added a voluntary donation option, where you can give between $10-$100 via a credit card, which brought in four-figure sums within a few days of being introduced, and there's also merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, etc).
Soon they'll be running a parallel "universe", a pay-to-play version where you are guaranteed a certain level of performance. Even now the game is hosted by Chello, it can slow down during the busier times of day, so the supposedly hourly updates in resources, travelled distances and so on, can take maybe 90 mins or more.
Go have a look. They used to have some articles on how the game started up, but I can't find them at the mo.
I first tried Tesco's online shopping four years ago. It wasn't available to me then, due to delivery areas, and isn't available to me now for the same reason. I'm only nine miles from the nearest warehouse according to the website, for heaven's sake. If this is the state nationwide, it can only be a minority that can use the service.
I remember the arguments from magazine publishers about the BBC - who are funded by the tv licence fees, and run no independent commercials - running adverts for the BBC's own TV listings magazine, "Radio Times", on its own channels. It was resolved by them merely adding the phrase "Other TV listings magazines are available", in small print in the corner of the screen for a few seconds.
Maybe they'll get around this one in a similar way.
...a project proposed when I was at university to use radio interference from network traffic on the ethernet cabling to provide a crude paging service. A remote device would listen to the interference, recognise id codes and read messages - not the actual network traffic, but the buzzes created by sending alternate blocks of data. Or something like that. I don't know if they actually got around to trying it, but I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.
There was an interesting article in a recent Acorn User magazine, about developing computers for use in third world countries. One of the main concerns with regular (ie. x86 based) pc's was the power consumption, and their use in areas where the power supply was extremely limited. The solution was small, ARM processor based machines, which ran on a tiny fraction of the power compared to their x86 counterparts. I believe they were getting the consumption so low, they could run the machine off a small solar panel. Good news for countries with plenty of sunshine and not so many power outlets...
Ok, drifting off-topic a little. I wish I had the magazine with me so I could find a link or two. Anyone care to oblige?:)
Add a render test that tries drawing a supposedly opaque poly over various coloured backgrounds and test the result in the screen buffer? If the result changes with each different background, then you know that "opaque" isn't, due to a driver hack or whatever, and refuses to start the game or connect to the server.
Patch the affected games (TFC, CS, Q3, whatever) and update the server to only accept newer game versions.
A friend of mine is into Counter Strike and lan gaming in a big way. He tried the transparent wall hack on a public server recently, and could immediately spot those others who were also using the cheat. They were watching him move around while he was behind a wall, waiting for him to pop his head around the corner. Apparently there were quite a lot of them...
I'll stay clear for now. I'm bad enough at these games already.
Re:There is use for a table in zero-gravity ?
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Home Improvement
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I wasn't prepared for the long blank screen bit at the beginning of the dvd. Came home after one too many beers at the pub, decided to watch 2001 using my pc's dvd drive and spent ages fiddling with driver settings trying to work out why I wasn't getting a picture. Not a good thing in that condition...
Is the job purely for pocket money, as the dept suggests, or to gain experience? Or are you trying to kill both birds with one stone?
If it's programming you're particularly interested in and you are simply trying to gain experience, you might want to spend the time working from home. Helping out on an open source project, or develop something of your own with relevance to the area you wish to work in. When I'm reviewing CVs, this kind of activity helps me judge how the candidate works - whether they can set goals and see them through to completion, purely off their own back.
If the money is essential, you could always get a non comp-sci job to tide you over.:)
I'd love to see how this looks in action. When it switches between images as the projection screen turns, does it instantly flick from one image to the next, making sharp edges to the voxels, or does it or can it blend between the images? Maybe it's too small and fast to perceive the difference, anyway. Also, the 3d resolution, or density of voxels will decrease the further from the centre of the fishbowl you get, because a point on the projection screen is moving further between images. How does this affect the 3d image? I'm assuming it's projecting a uniform 2d image.. or is it?
I registered my interest in the cable modem service through the NTL website, but so long ago I can't remember if it was last year or the year before. Finally, I got letter a couple of weeks ago announcing the availability of the service and how I should phone this number to make enquiries about getting cable modem access. The letter was addressed to the previous occupant, despite the fact I've been there for years now, but that's beside the point. I phoned them to arrange installation, but after checking my postcode, I was told that the cable service is fully subscribed in my area, and that I couldn't have cable installed until either they upgraded the local connection box, or someone else around the doors disconnected. Ack! So close, yet so far! They had no idea of when this might be.. weeks, months, who knows? They must have really cut corners when installing cable in ny area, because I'm sure the people without cable still outnumber those with.
To add insult to injury, today I received my cable modem software and serial number. Thanks, NTL! Looks like the only broadband I'm having is from the base of my coffee mug on this shiny new coaster...
Spawned from now deceased UK computer producer, Acorn, ARM processors are fast, have low power consumption and are now found in a whole range of devices. All sorts, including Acorn-compatible desktop computers, Psion's palmtops, tv set-top boxes, mobile phones, Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and Sega Dreamcast.
How many of the portable mp3 players currently available support reflashing of the software to support new formats like this? Odds are that a new format with better compression and quality will come along and replace mp3 as the popular choice sooner or later. Have many or any of the manufacturers taken this into account with the design of their player?
The company I work for decided on making royalty payments instead of paying overtime. Potentially these can be very high but in practice, once everyone above has taken their cut, they've been ridiculously low. When the royalties finally came in for the last project I worked on, I was delighted to work out that I was paid much less than 1 uk pound per hour for my evenings and weekends. Now I leave at 5:30pm on the dot every night.
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It sounds exactly like what I need. I've been dropped in at the painful end of a project that's seen a dozen or so programmers hacking away for two years on a project with no code design whatsoever. I guess I must have annoyed someone.
Time to head over to the bookshop...
There's a lot of really good articles on this site, and I recommend anyone who's involved in software development to take the time to go along and have a read through. You might not agree with it all, but there's plenty of useful tips and heaps of common sense, which is so often lost in the corporate world. Start in the archives here.
They started off rather small - just ran the thing on a couple of ISDN lines on a pc in one of the creators' front room. The game has become so popular that serious industrial strength hosting is now required, as well as round the clock care.
Banner adverts have always been used, with frequent reminders to get players to click them. Apparently only a small proportion (less than 10%?) regularly clicked them, so income was extremely limited. I remember them having problems with a particular banner-ad agency that was recommended to them, that saw the income drop even further. Now, they've added a voluntary donation option, where you can give between $10-$100 via a credit card, which brought in four-figure sums within a few days of being introduced, and there's also merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, etc).
Soon they'll be running a parallel "universe", a pay-to-play version where you are guaranteed a certain level of performance. Even now the game is hosted by Chello, it can slow down during the busier times of day, so the supposedly hourly updates in resources, travelled distances and so on, can take maybe 90 mins or more.
Go have a look. They used to have some articles on how the game started up, but I can't find them at the mo.
Bah. I'll be sticking to the Co-op, then...
Sorry.
Maybe they'll get around this one in a similar way.
...a project proposed when I was at university to use radio interference from network traffic on the ethernet cabling to provide a crude paging service. A remote device would listen to the interference, recognise id codes and read messages - not the actual network traffic, but the buzzes created by sending alternate blocks of data. Or something like that. I don't know if they actually got around to trying it, but I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.
Ok, drifting off-topic a little. I wish I had the magazine with me so I could find a link or two. Anyone care to oblige? :)
Patch the affected games (TFC, CS, Q3, whatever) and update the server to only accept newer game versions.
Job done. Er, maybe.
Sheesh... here I am, stating the obvious again. :)
I'll stay clear for now. I'm bad enough at these games already.
The duct tape - they placed it sticky side up.
I wasn't prepared for the long blank screen bit at the beginning of the dvd. Came home after one too many beers at the pub, decided to watch 2001 using my pc's dvd drive and spent ages fiddling with driver settings trying to work out why I wasn't getting a picture. Not a good thing in that condition...
If it's programming you're particularly interested in and you are simply trying to gain experience, you might want to spend the time working from home. Helping out on an open source project, or develop something of your own with relevance to the area you wish to work in. When I'm reviewing CVs, this kind of activity helps me judge how the candidate works - whether they can set goals and see them through to completion, purely off their own back.
If the money is essential, you could always get a non comp-sci job to tide you over. :)
I'd love to see how this looks in action. When it switches between images as the projection screen turns, does it instantly flick from one image to the next, making sharp edges to the voxels, or does it or can it blend between the images? Maybe it's too small and fast to perceive the difference, anyway. Also, the 3d resolution, or density of voxels will decrease the further from the centre of the fishbowl you get, because a point on the projection screen is moving further between images. How does this affect the 3d image? I'm assuming it's projecting a uniform 2d image.. or is it?
Just need training in deep sea diving, rather than that space stuff.
To add insult to injury, today I received my cable modem software and serial number. Thanks, NTL! Looks like the only broadband I'm having is from the base of my coffee mug on this shiny new coaster...
I love 'em, I do. Lovely processor to work on. :)
Ok.. what about players not mentioned in the article?
How many of the portable mp3 players currently available support reflashing of the software to support new formats like this? Odds are that a new format with better compression and quality will come along and replace mp3 as the popular choice sooner or later. Have many or any of the manufacturers taken this into account with the design of their player?
The company I work for decided on making royalty payments instead of paying overtime. Potentially these can be very high but in practice, once everyone above has taken their cut, they've been ridiculously low. When the royalties finally came in for the last project I worked on, I was delighted to work out that I was paid much less than 1 uk pound per hour for my evenings and weekends. Now I leave at 5:30pm on the dot every night.
*Sigh*, off on a rant again...
Sheesh. And to think yesterday they let me play at moderating.
Not to be confused with http://dashdot.dash/ - the homepage for the Morse code enthusiasts club, of course.
Erm, sorry.
Push and pop? *shudder* No thanks! I'll stick to
STMFD r13!,{r4,r5,r14}
...blah...
LDMFD r13!,{r4,r5,pc}
Ta very much!
That's no trick of the lighting. The real fun bit is they went to all the trouble of constructing a 6 foot long pen for this photo.
For the benefit of those like myself who've never heard of "Kuro5hin", could someone tell me what it is/was?