Re:Everyone should speak and write Latin
on
A Transmeta Couplet
·
· Score: 2
Latin is great for talking about religion, and Caesar's conquests in Gaul, but since it is a dead language, it would be kind of hard to use it to discuss the latest in laptop technology.
Re:Human Translation of the german article.
on
A Transmeta Couplet
·
· Score: 2
The difference between post #15 and #28 on Slashdot, in time, is nearly non-existent. I'm quite sure post #15 wasn't there when Ashran began his translation.
Also, I found the translation in post #28 much easier to read due to better formatting and more natural-sounding English (sounded less like a literal translation than #15).
The 'claims' may have been taken slightly out of context. Remember that Michael Tiemann comes from Cygnus, and before that he worked with FSF/GNU.
It may be that he meant 'we' as in himself (he -- Michael -- definately gets more credit from me than ESR does) and those individuals he has worked with throughout the years.
Feel free to ignore me if the exact quote (which I couldn't find in context) implies that RED HAT is truly the fountainhead of the Open Source movement.
As far as I know C++ code will always be 'unsafe'.
Well, you're wrong. C++ that is compiled to run on native processors is generally unsafe but security is traded in for efficiency, but there isn't any 'unsafety' built into the language.
There are a few C++ interpreters that use a byte-code virtual machine similar to Java that are just as safe as Java (in both cases, you have to assume the VM programmers did a good job on implementing the security sandbox).
Of course, with interpreted C++, you lose efficiency vs compiled C++, but that's no different than with Java.
After reading the Salon article, I honestly can't say I feel badly for the tech companies involved. If they really feel the whole thing is a sham, they should just pull out of the effort and announce they won't support the standard in their future products.
If they don't have the balls to do that, they deserve to waste millions implementing useless copy protection hardware.
What the RIAA doesn't understand is that the minor sound quality lost by the conversion to analog then back to digital wouldn't be a problem for the vast majority of people, and certainly not those who trade (often poor quality) mp3s on Napster now.
And..you only need to go digital->analog->digital once. Once you get it back into digital form (mp3 or vorbis, etc), you can then make as many perfect digital copies of the very slightly degraded (not detectable by 95% of the population.. if done properly) sound image as you like...and can send it to as many people as you like (technically, if not legally).
It'll be a while yet. The Japanese/USA launches are slated for mid to late 2001... I havent heard any info on the Euro launch... Of course, keep in mind that Nintendo is known for missing/slipping dates, often by a wide margin.
Dreamcast has had a keyboard since release. Its an extra purchase, of course, but its easy enough to get. PS2 and Xbox will also have optional keyboards.
This whole post is a bunch of bullshit. Why does Slashdot post half-truths that are posted by an egomaniaical dickwad to a Linux mailing list simply because they imply that Microsoft might take legal action against someone that is in some way (not really) related to Linux?
The actual situation here is so ridiculously misintrepreted in the article writeup above I can scarely believe it.
Re:And the point of all this is...?
on
Geocaching
·
· Score: 3
I'd keep the bucket there but remove all the contents in it. Then I'd write a new "First Post" on a piece of scrap paper and toss it in. Then I'd toss in some pictures of Natalie Portman. Then I'd pour in some hot grits. Then I'd buy some buckets of the same type, string them together with shoelaces and label them "Beowulf Cluster of Buckets".
Your arguments are mostly true.. But you neglect to acknowledge the importance of marketing to developers. If you convince enough developers that your machine is going to be a huge hit you can get enough of them onboard that statistically at least some of them should make a great game or two. So your machine becomes a hit, fulfilling its own prophecy.
Sonic is somewhat of a bad example to use (as you did) because it was produced by an in-house Sega team. Indrema has no in-house games team that I know of, so they need somebody outside to create the killer game app.
Who is writing games for Indrema now? Micrsoft (and this mirrors the PS2 and Dreamcast before it) has a slew of 3rd party developers hard at work producing enough games that at X-Box launch the system will seem attactive enough for gamers to buy. Is anyone (other than perhaps Loki -- haven't heard much about their involvement either way?) even working on titles for the Indrema yet? If not, they are already doomed.
yeah, while everyone else is playing Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2 and Halo, little Johnny who's dad is a Linux sysadmin will be playing xbill and xminesweeper for free on his Indrema console!!! He'll be the envy of every kid!!!
They've said repeatedly that you won't be able to get a command line on the Indrema...They sort of expect someone to eventually hack in, but as shipped they intend it to be "locked down".
All in all, I was originally excited about this project but more and more..what with content controls, etc, etc... it sounds like 'Just Another Console' (but from a company that can't afford $5 billion on the marketing push).
I agree! I had to reread most of the paragraphs 5 or more times before I could parse what it was the guy was trying to say. And even after that, there was nothing of interest to be had in the article.
From what little information there was in the article, it seems that both of the patents are still pending and thus you aren't going to find references to them in online databases.
Open Source has nothing to do with patent issues, other than that bad patents tend to unfairly interfere with software projects (both closed and open).
Just because you Open Source your project doesn't mean you are immune from patent infringment claims. In fact, it is widely believed that you may actually be opening yourself up more fully to patent claims (witness NVidia vs 3dfx) because its easier to prove that you are in violation of the bad patent when the source code is easily available to the company that might sue you.
Its from Pi. Potentially the most overrated movie ever created (it sucked ass, even if you ignore the low production values that were due to the fact that it was created on a shoestring budget).
I addressed the problem of mod makers in a different post (a reply to the first post).
But I also wanted to sound off a bit on the changing of the physics.
In his.plan, Robert Duffy said:
Splash damage through floors was a bug. It is fixed, live with it.
I think this is a particularly bad attitude. I play Quake3, and when I first learned (the hard way) that you can take damage through thin floors and thin walls (for those not familiar with it, basically, world geometry isn't used as an occluder vs rocket radius damage) I thought it was slightly stupid. But, like most players, I have adapted to it and it has grown almost into another dimension of gameplay. Sure, it might be a bit confusing to people who are new to the game, but I think the trade-off of allowing a deeper game play experience later is worth it. Much of the same argument applies to strafe-jumping....
The fact that these issues weren't intentional doesn't mean they should be fixed if that isn't what the people playing the game want. Rocket jumping, if what I've heard time and time again is true, wasn't intentional...And that's lasted all throughout the Quake series because the players found it created a deeper game. So, in short, Duffy's explaination is just lacking. You can't just say it had to be fixed because it was unintentional, you need to give a more solid argument on why this change was needed.
In any case, it seems like a real bad idea to change all this stuff now....Didn't John Carmack semi-publicly reprimand Zoid for changing physics late into Quake2's release? And yet they do the same for Quake3.. Oh well.
This is incorrect. You clearly haven't written any mods for Quake2 or Quake3, so I'm not sure why you thought it would be a good idea to comment as if you knew what the problems being faced are.
I haven't worked much with mod making for Quake3, but I did program the Gamers Extreme (GXMOD) modification for Quake2, and what I do know of Quake3 mods leads me to believe they are pretty much the same, just with the added option of the QVM.
The basic problem is that the modification code, as shipped, in not particularly designed for clean and easy extention and only uses a basic form of object orientation (in ANSI C). To make meaningful modifications, you have to go into id's source and actually change things around. When they themselves change this base source code to supply bug fixes and new features, you're now stuck doing diffs against what you started with before and what you have now and then figuring out how to repatch the patches you made to the original source to the new source. Given that your code is strewn about id's code, this can be a lot of changes, and many of them may be incompatible as you might have already fixed bugs id is just fixing now, and perhaps you fixed them in a different way. In any case, its far from just a recompile.
Now, to be sure, good coding practics should have lead people to isolate and comment their changes as much as possible (this saved me on a couple of point releases for GXMOD, enabling a turn around of only a couple of days when new patches were released), but its still far from trivial, even in those cases.
Also, I'm surprised that id hasn't realized by now (a similiar sort of broken mod syndrome occured during the 3.14 version era of Quake2) that they MUST release the modification source at the same time as the binary patches! I could understand the business decision to get the patch out now for everyone and worry about the mod users later if the mod users were a tiny majority of people. THEY AREN'T!! Look at HalfLife/CounterStrike/TFC, look at Quake3/RA3/WFA/Q3F/etc. A huge number of people (in some cases a majority) playing these FPS games
are doing it mostly through mods. Please take that into account next time, and clean up and package the code and release it at least at the same time as the binary patches!! A few days or a week previous would be even better!
Why should he have learned any lessons? Because you, personally, didn't like it? Episode 1 was the second highest grossing movie of all time. What lessons are there to learned from that, from a capitalistic point of view, other than to give people more of the same?
Slashdot Mirror
Latin is great for talking about religion, and Caesar's conquests in Gaul, but since it is a dead language, it would be kind of hard to use it to discuss the latest in laptop technology.
Also, I found the translation in post #28 much easier to read due to better formatting and more natural-sounding English (sounded less like a literal translation than #15).
So maybe you could shut up? Thanks.
It seems to be mostly an advertisement link for his site, which despite how its labelled has nothing to do with Bill Gates being dead.
It may be that he meant 'we' as in himself (he -- Michael -- definately gets more credit from me than ESR does) and those individuals he has worked with throughout the years.
Feel free to ignore me if the exact quote (which I couldn't find in context) implies that RED HAT is truly the fountainhead of the Open Source movement.
Well, you're wrong. C++ that is compiled to run on native processors is generally unsafe but security is traded in for efficiency, but there isn't any 'unsafety' built into the language.
There are a few C++ interpreters that use a byte-code virtual machine similar to Java that are just as safe as Java (in both cases, you have to assume the VM programmers did a good job on implementing the security sandbox).
Of course, with interpreted C++, you lose efficiency vs compiled C++, but that's no different than with Java.
If they don't have the balls to do that, they deserve to waste millions implementing useless copy protection hardware.
And..you only need to go digital->analog->digital once. Once you get it back into digital form (mp3 or vorbis, etc), you can then make as many perfect digital copies of the very slightly degraded (not detectable by 95% of the population.. if done properly) sound image as you like...and can send it to as many people as you like (technically, if not legally).
It'll be a while yet. The Japanese/USA launches are slated for mid to late 2001... I havent heard any info on the Euro launch... Of course, keep in mind that Nintendo is known for missing/slipping dates, often by a wide margin.
If nicks are used, of course they will be the AOL ones, because ICQ nicks aren't unique even among ICQ users. Only the UIN needs to be unique in ICQ.
Dreamcast has had a keyboard since release. Its an extra purchase, of course, but its easy enough to get. PS2 and Xbox will also have optional keyboards.
The actual situation here is so ridiculously misintrepreted in the article writeup above I can scarely believe it.
Thanks for repeating exactly the same links that appear in the article write-up. You sure helped a lot of people that way.
Sonic is somewhat of a bad example to use (as you did) because it was produced by an in-house Sega team. Indrema has no in-house games team that I know of, so they need somebody outside to create the killer game app.
Who is writing games for Indrema now? Micrsoft (and this mirrors the PS2 and Dreamcast before it) has a slew of 3rd party developers hard at work producing enough games that at X-Box launch the system will seem attactive enough for gamers to buy. Is anyone (other than perhaps Loki -- haven't heard much about their involvement either way?) even working on titles for the Indrema yet? If not, they are already doomed.
yeah, while everyone else is playing Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 2 and Halo, little Johnny who's dad is a Linux sysadmin will be playing xbill and xminesweeper for free on his Indrema console!!! He'll be the envy of every kid!!!
All in all, I was originally excited about this project but more and more ..what with content controls, etc, etc... it sounds like 'Just Another Console' (but from a company that can't afford $5 billion on the marketing push).
Oh well.
I agree! I had to reread most of the paragraphs 5 or more times before I could parse what it was the guy was trying to say. And even after that, there was nothing of interest to be had in the article.
From what little information there was in the article, it seems that both of the patents are still pending and thus you aren't going to find references to them in online databases.
Just because you Open Source your project doesn't mean you are immune from patent infringment claims. In fact, it is widely believed that you may actually be opening yourself up more fully to patent claims (witness NVidia vs 3dfx) because its easier to prove that you are in violation of the bad patent when the source code is easily available to the company that might sue you.
Its from Pi. Potentially the most overrated movie ever created (it sucked ass, even if you ignore the low production values that were due to the fact that it was created on a shoestring budget).
But I also wanted to sound off a bit on the changing of the physics.
In his .plan, Robert Duffy said:
Splash damage through floors was a bug. It is fixed, live with it.
I think this is a particularly bad attitude. I play Quake3, and when I first learned (the hard way) that you can take damage through thin floors and thin walls (for those not familiar with it, basically, world geometry isn't used as an occluder vs rocket radius damage) I thought it was slightly stupid. But, like most players, I have adapted to it and it has grown almost into another dimension of gameplay. Sure, it might be a bit confusing to people who are new to the game, but I think the trade-off of allowing a deeper game play experience later is worth it. Much of the same argument applies to strafe-jumping....
The fact that these issues weren't intentional doesn't mean they should be fixed if that isn't what the people playing the game want. Rocket jumping, if what I've heard time and time again is true, wasn't intentional...And that's lasted all throughout the Quake series because the players found it created a deeper game. So, in short, Duffy's explaination is just lacking. You can't just say it had to be fixed because it was unintentional, you need to give a more solid argument on why this change was needed.
In any case, it seems like a real bad idea to change all this stuff now....Didn't John Carmack semi-publicly reprimand Zoid for changing physics late into Quake2's release? And yet they do the same for Quake3.. Oh well.
I haven't worked much with mod making for Quake3, but I did program the Gamers Extreme (GXMOD) modification for Quake2, and what I do know of Quake3 mods leads me to believe they are pretty much the same, just with the added option of the QVM.
The basic problem is that the modification code, as shipped, in not particularly designed for clean and easy extention and only uses a basic form of object orientation (in ANSI C). To make meaningful modifications, you have to go into id's source and actually change things around. When they themselves change this base source code to supply bug fixes and new features, you're now stuck doing diffs against what you started with before and what you have now and then figuring out how to repatch the patches you made to the original source to the new source. Given that your code is strewn about id's code, this can be a lot of changes, and many of them may be incompatible as you might have already fixed bugs id is just fixing now, and perhaps you fixed them in a different way. In any case, its far from just a recompile.
Now, to be sure, good coding practics should have lead people to isolate and comment their changes as much as possible (this saved me on a couple of point releases for GXMOD, enabling a turn around of only a couple of days when new patches were released), but its still far from trivial, even in those cases.
Also, I'm surprised that id hasn't realized by now (a similiar sort of broken mod syndrome occured during the 3.14 version era of Quake2) that they MUST release the modification source at the same time as the binary patches! I could understand the business decision to get the patch out now for everyone and worry about the mod users later if the mod users were a tiny majority of people. THEY AREN'T!! Look at HalfLife/CounterStrike/TFC, look at Quake3/RA3/WFA/Q3F/etc. A huge number of people (in some cases a majority) playing these FPS games are doing it mostly through mods. Please take that into account next time, and clean up and package the code and release it at least at the same time as the binary patches!! A few days or a week previous would be even better!
Even when the box office numbers are adjusted for inflation/ticket price increases, Episode 1 is #2 behind Titanic.
Why should he have learned any lessons? Because you, personally, didn't like it? Episode 1 was the second highest grossing movie of all time. What lessons are there to learned from that, from a capitalistic point of view, other than to give people more of the same?