That's 10 simultaneos connections. Not great, but not bad for a small web server. However, I'm also that special provision will be made in the EULA for unlimited Internet/intranet connections. MS SQL Server, for instance, has a special Internet licence allowing such unlimited connections.
Call me dumb but I can't see the difference between the two points of view. On the one hand the first article states that AI in games is comming of age with the incorporation of new `alife' techiques. Whereas the second article is slating games for not incorporating alife techniques, but points to their future incorporation.
And both are wrong.
First (pedantic), `alife' is the _wrong_ term to use for modular/threaded programming techniques (Brooks' subsumption architechture etc.) The former refers to virus simulation/evolution, the latter being a methodology inspired by the modular nature of the brain.
Second, if games programmers can do "cheap tricks" instead of coding some modular, threaded architechture to control the actions of assailants, then good for them. Academics in AI make dodgy hybrid systems all the time and still claim to be high and mighty. (Brooks and the COG project)
The bottom line is: who cares how it's implemented. If your game behaves realisticly then no-one can slate you for your methods. Neural nets and threads are v. expensive. if... else statements are cheap.
NS4 will crash on many DHTML sites. Thus the problem is not backwards compatibility with deprecated DOM extensions (which were rarely used), but backwards compatiblity with (soon to be obselete) NS4 browsers trying to render sites that it can't. Lets all hope that most people move to NS5 as soon as it's out and stable. Given the nightmare of supporting IE3 for all these years, NS4 could provide many more headaches.
I don't know how much support is needed for a game. Probably not much. But they could give the client software away for free and charge people to use their servers. Q3 is useless without a server.
The server software could be kept seperate and never sold or distributed, and a system of franchises put in place with strict secrecy contacts for the server software. That way the copyright laws would never be needed (I think).
Maybe not Q3 as it is a small(ish) executable with some small maps, but other single player games seem to have enormous map files which would be too expensive to download (+300Mb). So long as the boxed game is cheaper/easier to buy than to DL, then allowing for some pirating and copying, retail games would continue to be feasible. And remember: DVD is round the corner. Imagine trying to download a 10Gb file!
You can run it in software mode. I did it today: the results are barely worth the effort, but it has to be done:
This is by no means authoritive (in other words I bodged it but got something working). Get q3test rpm installed and get the Mesa rpm as well. Then run linuxq3test with the command which reads something like "+set libMesa-3.0" (check README for syntax). I got it running at work today, hence the rush job! I'm running Win98 at the moment so I can't give you an accurate syntax...
However, if you don't have hardware acceleration you'll never be able to run q3 properly unless you have ~5,000 MHz machine:)
Speed is perhaps the main factor in buying any machine, and Java looses out here. Even with a decent Java chipset/runtime interpreter, a java system could never beat native code. Who wants to buy a slow system?
Any hybrid system of Java & native code would defeat the purpose of using Java in the first place (platform independence, low software development costs etc.)
Linux lends itself nicely to new or unusual forms of deployment since there is stacks of (free)info/advice available.
Java seems to be dead these days. Apart from academic use (in AI) and the occasional (annoying) applet, it seems extinct. A shame really...
The article was in The Independent, the most pro-recreational drug broadsheet in the UK. (Recently they ran a lengthy, high profile campaign for the legalisation of canabis.) So I'd be wary of classing the article as "...typical anti-drug FUD".
Granted, the article was a bit wishy-washy, with some sketchy evidence from a doctor regarding giving monkeys four doses of ecstacy.
But on the whole I think the article raised a valid issue - for the UK. My experience as a programmer in a lively town in the UK bears testomony to what the article has to say.
I think the situation in the US and elsewhere is different, but the UK has a thriving mainstream drug culture.
Use of canabis in IT jobs here is common place, sure, but the use of "class A's" is prevailant too. Mainly practiced at weekends by recent graduates.
As for myself, I'm growing tired of most of that now, and look for more healthy ways to get my kicks. But I've still had many cases of "presenteeism" in my time!
Slashdot Mirror
That's 10 simultaneos connections. Not great, but not bad for a small web server. However, I'm also that special provision will be made in the EULA for unlimited Internet/intranet connections. MS SQL Server, for instance, has a special Internet licence allowing such unlimited connections.
Call me dumb but I can't see the difference between the two points of view. On the one hand the first article states that AI in games is comming of age with the incorporation of new `alife' techiques. Whereas the second article is slating games for not incorporating alife techniques, but points to their future incorporation.
And both are wrong.
First (pedantic), `alife' is the _wrong_ term to use for modular/threaded programming techniques (Brooks' subsumption architechture etc.) The former refers to virus simulation/evolution, the latter being a methodology inspired by the modular nature of the brain.
Second, if games programmers can do "cheap tricks" instead of coding some modular, threaded architechture to control the actions of assailants, then good for them. Academics in AI make dodgy hybrid systems all the time and still claim to be high and mighty. (Brooks and the COG project)
The bottom line is: who cares how it's implemented. If your game behaves realisticly then no-one can slate you for your methods. Neural nets and threads are v. expensive. if... else statements are cheap.
NS4 will crash on many DHTML sites. Thus the problem is not backwards compatibility with deprecated DOM extensions (which were rarely used), but backwards compatiblity with (soon to be obselete) NS4 browsers trying to render sites that it can't. Lets all hope that most people move to NS5 as soon as it's out and stable. Given the nightmare of supporting IE3 for all these years, NS4 could provide many more headaches.
No.
(there is a Perl util called the `demoroniser' which will fix `moronised' web pages...)
v. good point!
I don't know how much support is needed for a game. Probably not much. But they could give the client software away for free and charge people to use their servers. Q3 is useless without a server.
The server software could be kept seperate and never sold or distributed, and a system of franchises put in place with strict secrecy contacts for the server software. That way the copyright laws would never be needed (I think).
Rather like the secret formula for Coca-Cola...?
Maybe not Q3 as it is a small(ish) executable with some small maps, but other single player games seem to have enormous map files which would be too expensive to download (+300Mb). So long as the boxed game is cheaper/easier to buy than to DL, then allowing for some pirating and copying, retail games would continue to be feasible. And remember: DVD is round the corner. Imagine trying to download a 10Gb file!
You can run it in software mode. I did it today: the results are barely worth the effort, but it has to be done:
:)
This is by no means authoritive (in other words I bodged it but got something working). Get q3test rpm installed and get the Mesa rpm as well. Then run linuxq3test with the command which reads something like "+set libMesa-3.0" (check README for syntax). I got it running at work today, hence the rush job! I'm running Win98 at the moment so I can't give you an accurate syntax...
However, if you don't have hardware acceleration you'll never be able to run q3 properly unless you have ~5,000 MHz machine
Speed is perhaps the main factor in buying any machine, and Java looses out here. Even with a decent Java chipset/runtime interpreter, a java system could never beat native code. Who wants to buy a slow system?
Any hybrid system of Java & native code would defeat the purpose of using Java in the first place (platform independence, low software development costs etc.)
Linux lends itself nicely to new or unusual forms of deployment since there is stacks of (free)info/advice available.
Java seems to be dead these days. Apart from academic use (in AI) and the occasional (annoying) applet, it seems extinct. A shame really...
The article was in The Independent, the most pro-recreational drug broadsheet in the UK. (Recently they ran a lengthy, high profile campaign for the legalisation of canabis.) So I'd be wary of classing the article as "...typical anti-drug FUD".
Granted, the article was a bit wishy-washy, with some sketchy evidence from a doctor regarding giving monkeys four doses of ecstacy.
But on the whole I think the article raised a valid issue - for the UK. My experience as a programmer in a lively town in the UK bears testomony to what the article has to say.
I think the situation in the US and elsewhere is different, but the UK has a thriving mainstream drug culture.
Use of canabis in IT jobs here is common place, sure, but the use of "class A's" is prevailant too. Mainly practiced at weekends by recent graduates.
As for myself, I'm growing tired of most of that now, and look for more healthy ways to get my kicks. But I've still had many cases of "presenteeism" in my time!
Swamp