I had my hotmail address spoofed and when I got bounced messages I simply forwarded them to the FBI. I claimed it was identity theft. I'm not sure if the FBI saw it that way but so far it hasn't happened again.
Ben
Re:Who gets the float...as if I need to ask
on
Cashless Society
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· Score: 1
The point is, when it's on the card you don't get interest for it you would have gotten had you not put it on the card.
Ads don't work. Any site that tries to make money off of ads is going to be out of business. However that doesn't justify circumventing ads just because you don't like them.
In exchange for their service, you watch ads. Simple as that. TV ads pay the network whether you actively watch or not. On-line it doesn't work that way. If you like their site, help support it passivly or you'll be forced to help costs actively.
Personally I've found memberships work a whole lot better at bringing in money for my site. In 9 months I never made a dime even after 65,000+ impressions. With memberships I started making money the first day.
What will probably happen with these sites is that ads will be fed to you in an even more annoying way since you couldn't deal with the current method.
It costs money to run a quality site. Get used to helping offset the cost in some way. You have as much a right to an ad free consumer experience as companies have to shove ads down your throat.
Don't like it, don't visit. They'll be better off without you. I had no qualms about cutting off the leaches at my site by requiring a membership for certain areas and my site has been all the better because of it. Better to not have a visitor and no money than no money and a visitor sucking up resources.
I thought my GeForce 2 MX couldn't handle UT2 at better than 640x480. Then I upgraded my CPU from 700Mhz to 1.2Ghz. That was $75 vs a couple hundred for a TI which wouldn't have benefited me any more than the processor upgrade.
Price vs Performance with the current batch of games makes a TI very much overkill still. I'll buy a nice TI when the price drops and I have the extra money.
And, as others have mentioned, consoles now beat the pants off of a PC in the graphics area for the price.
GeForce 2 MX or N64? Graphics card wins. GeForce TI vs GameCube, PS2, or X-Box? Console wins.
MS does follow the standards. But they also go beyond them. That's why some sites have different pages for different browsers; to take advantage of the little extras of specific browsers.
If Mozilla/Opera can't be bothered to invent a little like MS is doing then oh well. Their loss. If MS didn't support all the basics then I'd care. But since they do and then some I use IE and cater my site to IE and occasionally care that it doesn't look exactly the same in Mozilla.
Then I guess you're not too shocked that Linux isn't being accepted by the mass market.
"Users need to get over the idea that a computer is easy to use"
Computers are easy to use. An OS shouldn't make it unneccessarily difficult like Linux is doing. Cars are complicated machines but it doesn't take much to learn how to drive it.
AOL (scary but yes it is easy to use), Windows, ect all make the PC easy to use. Until Linux can do the same, Linux will never be mass market.
"Command-lines are better for some things"
What mass market product would benefit from a command line? None.
Doesn't matter. You can't force the user to use the overly complicated Linux when Windows and Mac based PCs do more and do it more easily.
Windows does everything I want it to do and more and more easily so I'm sticking with it. Linux users like yourself need to get a clue or you're just going to continue holding back Linux's progress.
There's absolutly no reason why at this point Linux doesn't have a GUI for everything with the option of using other methods like a command prompt or directly editable config file.
Fine, use your command line, but forcing everyone else to is just stupid. But it's exactly the prevelant attitude among the Linux community. And that's why it will always fail in the mass market until the attitude changes.
Even if MS is copying features from you (and frankly Linux has been stealing most of their ideas from MS and sucking at implementing them) they're doing a far better job implementing them than the open source crowd.
"There are times when the command-line is flat-out better than any other interface"
And? At least MS has the common sense to make it an option not a requirement. The problem I mentioned was that Linux developers don't know when to use a command line or a config file, when to use a gui and when to have all the options.
I use CMD only on rare occassion and never because I have to. The biggest use of the command line I use is to use XCOPY to backup my server onto a second HD once a month. It's a number of hours faster than doing the copy through Windows Explorer. And all I have to do is double click the little bat file in explorer to do it.
Somebody else was talking about there being an app to allow resolution changes in Linux without using the config file. How long has that taken and it's STILL not a default? Heck they can't even manage to tell the user upfront they can use the config file to change the res. MS has had that "no duh" feature since at least Window 95. Win 3.x I don't think had it because video cards didn't really have much in the way of resolutions back then. 8 years later and Linux is just now getting around to it? How out of touch are you people?
As out of touch as Rick Berman. I know someone who was all about open source and even moved his server to Linux. A day or two later he ended up doing the same thing I did: format and return to Windows.
Time for Linux developers to get a clue. So MS is stealing from you. Steal ideas from them. But stop sucking at implementing them. Then maybe the mass market will start to take Linux seriously.
What Linux really needs right now is a market analyst. Somebody to figure out what the mass market wants and to order them by importance. Then the Linux community needs to buckle down and start implementing them right as easy to use defaults.
This half assed "hunt down and install some obscurely named third party app" crap is not going to get Linux anywhere but the recycle bin.
"Windows has never been much more user friendly than Linux on desktop"
Um...
Linux is the epitimy of unfriendliness. I don't think there's an OS out there that makes you do more to accomplish less. DOS is dead. STOP OBSESSING OVER THE COMMAND LINE. The mass market does not care to have to type in lines of commands to do something. They want to click.
Windows is just click click click and you're done. Linux developers still havn't figured out when a config file is appropriate, when a GUI is appropriate and when to have both. And even when they do use a GUI they're completly lost when it comes to what should be on it and how to organize it.
Linux is as userfriendly as Windows? Have you even USED Windows? Even the most basic stuff like opening a file in Linux is a pain in the ass.
Who was the genius that decided that by default (at least in KDE) clicking on a file should open it in an uneditable form?
It's geniuses like that which are going to prevent Linux from ever becomming mainstream.
And don't tell me KDE isn't Linux because without a desktop Linux will never make it to the mass market. To the mass market the desktop IS Linux. And if the desktop sucks, Linux sucks.
And no, I'm not going to dick around getting a stupid file opened in an editable form when I could format the drive and install Windows and avoid that and the numerous other headaches Linux likes to impose on it's users who for the most part are so full of themselves they don't have a clue why the mass market doesn't give a rats ass about Linux.
The fact the original artical was called insightful just adds to the irony of a Rick Berman article being on here and everyone going on and on about how out of touch he is.
Windows is king of the hill because Microsoft got everything the mass market wanted right. Linux isn't competition in the mass market because Linux developers don't know what the mass market wants and when they tell them, they ignore them and call them lamers.
I could learn Linux. But you know what? I've used it enough to know it's not worth the effort. Why learn a cheap imitation of Windows that does less than Windows in a less userfriendly way when I could use Windows and do everything I want and more easily?
Windows has gotten my money numerous occassions and will continue to do so. Every time I see these articles on Slashdot it's the same "revelations" over and over and over. Time to get in touch with what the mass market wants. Otherwise Linux will never come close to touching Windows in that market.
Maybe when the Slashdot community is done telling Rick Berman how to make a movie that appeals to the mass market, Rick Berman can explain how the Slashdot community can go about making an OS that appeals to the mass market.
I happily paid $128 for Windows 2K at a store that was going out of business.
I downloaded Linux for free and it sucked. It turned my $1000 computer into a page serving brick. $120 for software that allows me to do anything with my $1000 computer while it's also acting as my web-server or free software that reduces my $1000 computer to a useless brick. Hmmm...tough choice.
If MS lowers their price to less than $100 for XP I'll definitly pick myself up a copy. I havn't heard anything that would justify it's current cost seeing as I have 2K and it's been flawless.
This is a win for consumers if anything. Not Linux. Linux still has the same problems that don't make it worth free.
Since many sites are too dense to use ads in a non visitor annoying fashion and many visitors are too stupid/ignorant to accept the fact that it costs money to run a quality web-site and passivly help offset the costs by putting up with the ads on their favorite sites, many major web-sites are forcing visitors to take an active role in paying for costs or forcing them away. The method of choice seems to be subscriptions of some form or another with a crippled free service.
Pick your poison: suck up the ads or start getting used to paying up.
I switched IcarusIndie.com over to a subscription model at the beginning of the year for the most bandwidth intensive sections and it was probably the best thing I could have done for the site. My Alexa ranking is up, bandwidth costs are being offset significantly, bandwidth usage has been drastically reduced.
If a significant number of users stop viewing the ads on Slashdot I wouldn't be surprised if you had to start paying the membership fee to see everything.
If you were actually interested in playing FPS games with a head mounted display you would already own a 3D headset and have it plugged into your PC. For a decent set it's only a few hundred dollars. Probably less than a company could reasonably be expected to release such a console for. Asking a company to produce the console and the glasses is like expecting companies to include a 27" TV with their current system for $200 or less.
Red Alarm for the Virtual Boy was the only real FPS shooter for the system and it used wireframe because the system couldn't handle filled polygons well and with only a few shades of red it would have been horrible looking anyway. It's quite the experience playing it in actual 3D. With the HMD VB it was even better.
The fact is that the technology has been available for years. I own a VictorMaxx Stuntmaster (unfortunatly it's old, doesn't work well and only has one screen anyway) and modified it to take any video input through an standard RCA jack. Playing UT with it is kinda cool but the underlit nature of FPSs on a screen that's dim as it is doesn't work out as well as it could.
If you want HMD FPSs the tech is there. Just not in one package. It will probably be never or a very long time before it ever is again.
I'd just like to see a console with dual video out to support 3rd party glasses. If the company comes out with it's own headset, oh goody. Maybe they can do it for cheaper.
That was really what it needed: to be head mounted. And it wasn't difficult to do. Seperating the system from the display was impossible due to what I assume was the timing (when I extended the wires the mirrors couldn't sync up). Fortunatly there was enough unneccessary crap that could be removed to lessen the weight enough to make it wearable.
I have many of the games and two systems (one is HMD now). I don't think console makers will take the plunge again though until little LCDs can display the quality of a full size LCD at a reasonable price.
With dirt cheap little LCD monitors comming out I don't think it's too far off. It's really the next logical step. I think Nintendo just took it too soon.
They should just have a dual video out for their next console and offer 3D glasses as an option. That would be nice. Trying to embed it all together is just a bad idea.
Ben
Re:School, instructions, study... none of the abov
on
How to be a Programmer
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· Score: 2, Informative
Like any profession you're born with some inate abilities to do things which schooling can then direct and improve towards being skills you can use to make a living.
Some people are born to be athletic but without the proper training those people will never reach their full potential and make a living out of it.
I overslept on a jury duty day and as I was frantically trying to call them I got a page from the court reporter despite never ever giving them that number.
Fortunatly the trial was delayed but on the last day I was "randomly" selected to be the extra juror and the court reporter asked for my number to call to let me know what the verdict was.
"official" uptime statistics. It says my max was 39 days but my network connection was up for 46. But whatever.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&m od e_w=on&site=www.icarusindie.com
Or was that too difficult for you?
"YOU are not worth your salt, any way you take that lie."
Way to go. You sure got me. I never said I was on a shedule. Next time, recognize the fact there are many many ways to verify what people say instead of just butchering the English language.
Not too bad after only 2 years. My goal is to break 100,000 by the end of the year.
Script Kiddies can't pull those kinds of numbers.
Ben
MS works fine, you just don't know how to use it
on
Apache 2.0.44 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You're a pretty crappy admin then.
I run Apache 1.3.26 on Windows 2K and have been for the past 2 years. The only time a BSOD happened was when the HD cable came loose from all the heating and cooling. I had my server running 100% for 46 days and only rebooted because I was trying out some new SMTP (not MS) software which turned out to be complete and utter crap and a wasted reboot. It's now been going again for 15 days without a single issue. I've never had a Windows issue. On average I do a reboot once a month for software updates or whatever but never because I have to.
If your Windows machine has issues it's because your hardware is crap or you've loaded crappy software/drivers on it. I have 4 Win2K machines of various configurations that never have issues.
If you have security issues it's because you havn't clued into the fact that MS doesn't include much of a firewall. I have no security issues because I have an excellent hardware solution. There are plenty of excellent software solutions like ZoneAlarm.
If you're actually a netadmin/webmaster worth their salt I'm wondering why in the world you'd have security issues with any OS. Are you plugging the line directly into the computer? And if so, what do you expect? I wouldn't put Linux right on the wire either.
IIS has known exploits and if you're actually worth your salt you'd know how to prevent them from being used. If you NEED APACHE then you probably have no idea how to deal with and correct security issues. I like Apache because it's simple and effective.
On topic, I'll care about Apache 2.whatever when PHP is no longer broken. Apache 1.3.x is kinda the old reliable. Until 2.x can match it, there's no real burning need to upgrade.
Why do we need additional laws? If I could charge a spammer with harassment well then we have all the law we need. Last I checked every state has laws against people who harass other people.
If I tell a spammer to stop and then don't stop I should be able to call 911 on their ass. If they don't give me the ability to say stop (if you gag a rape victim is suddenly not rape because they didn't say "stop?") because they give a false return address shouldn't I beable to press even more serious charges? By that point they're basically stalkers.
I should get one opt out attempt and after that they get hauled off to jail.
Or is your analogy just a vain attempt to gain Karma? Personally I like the idea of charging spammers with harrassement. But how well would it hold up in court?
Maybe we should just stop calling it spam and looking for spam laws and just call it what it is: harassment. We could start taking names and kicking ass immediatly if that were the case.
When ZIP first came out it was parallel port only. Then later came the USB and intenal versions.
Mass market likes USB because mass market doesn't like opening up their computer and fiddling with cables so USB it is.
Once they make enough money to justify the cost to cater to the smaller market, then you'll see an internal version. Or maybe if we're lucky they'll come out with both at the same time.
If an Athiest stated that God exists, he wouldn't be an athiest now would he?
If you have an opinion, you're biased. It's stupid to dismiss people for what they believe simply because they believe it. Which is basically what the parent post is doing.
You may have identified the "logic" but it's the most illogical form of logic I've ever seen. And yet in the magical world on Slashdot where logic doesn't matter, it gets modded up as insightful.
If you have an opinion you're biased. Claiming someone isn't credible simply because they believe what they're saying is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a discussion.
You can download RealPlayer 8 at ftp://www.icarusindie.com in the apps folder. It's the last version before they shit all over themselves.
Also, thanks to the US government I tend to be Under 13 quite a bit. It's a lot easier than unclicking all those stupid boxes. I'd also like to thank Real for not verifying my moo@cow.com e-mail address and that my name is not actually FUCK OFF.
Seriously though, why are we complaining? You're not required to put valid information in those fields. Even if you feel moraly obligated not to lie, at least sign up for a junk Hotmail account to use when you fill out various forms.
If some site/program actually has the balls to force valid information out of me I go somewhere else. Unless I'm paying you, fuck off.com. Real.com can have my real name and address when I pay for their software. Until then I'm under 13 and live in Uganda.
How about the AUTHOR decide how long they want to keep it copyrighted?
Your post makes absolutly no sense whatsoever. Just typical paranoid ranting. No one is being forced to keep their material in copyright forever and ever. It's only an OPTION.
If I write a book and make millions of dollars it's perfectly within my rights to tell my family to make their own fortune and put my works in the public domain upon my death or whenever I feel like it.
Oh no, we can't use Mickey Mouse. What will we ever do?
Same thing we've been doing for thousands of years, Pinky: come up with our own ideas.
The few anal retentive bastards who can't let things go when they're done with them (and Disney is far from done with Mickey Mouse so get over the fact they still have copyright) are not going to affect the world in any significant manner.
There are millions of people who are happy to let their things go to make up for the few who aren't.
My site is running on a 256K DSL connection and survived the beating. Sure it was running at 600bytes per second but I could still access it. People just need to make their pages more bandwidth friendly. From acceptance to front page my story took about a day to be posted. That's plenty of time to rework a page if it's too bulky.
However, if weren't possible to make it bandwidth friendly, Slashdot needs to take advantage of resources out there like their own server or SourceForge and work a deal to use temporary space upon request of the owner of the linked site. The owner could easily package up the relavent portion of the site and e-mail it over to be put up at the temporary location.
If nothing else it would at least eliminate all the stupid "hey look it's slashdotted" posts.
Currently, Slashdot is just a link site with commentary. If it's keeps killing all it's stories it's going to be a pretty irrelevent link site at that.
Slashdot Mirror
I had my hotmail address spoofed and when I got bounced messages I simply forwarded them to the FBI. I claimed it was identity theft. I'm not sure if the FBI saw it that way but so far it hasn't happened again.
Ben
The point is, when it's on the card you don't get interest for it you would have gotten had you not put it on the card.
Ben
Ads don't work. Any site that tries to make money off of ads is going to be out of business. However that doesn't justify circumventing ads just because you don't like them.
In exchange for their service, you watch ads. Simple as that. TV ads pay the network whether you actively watch or not. On-line it doesn't work that way. If you like their site, help support it passivly or you'll be forced to help costs actively.
Personally I've found memberships work a whole lot better at bringing in money for my site. In 9 months I never made a dime even after 65,000+ impressions. With memberships I started making money the first day.
What will probably happen with these sites is that ads will be fed to you in an even more annoying way since you couldn't deal with the current method.
It costs money to run a quality site. Get used to helping offset the cost in some way. You have as much a right to an ad free consumer experience as companies have to shove ads down your throat.
Don't like it, don't visit. They'll be better off without you. I had no qualms about cutting off the leaches at my site by requiring a membership for certain areas and my site has been all the better because of it. Better to not have a visitor and no money than no money and a visitor sucking up resources.
Ben
Because they're cheap and work great maybe?
I thought my GeForce 2 MX couldn't handle UT2 at better than 640x480. Then I upgraded my CPU from 700Mhz to 1.2Ghz. That was $75 vs a couple hundred for a TI which wouldn't have benefited me any more than the processor upgrade.
Price vs Performance with the current batch of games makes a TI very much overkill still. I'll buy a nice TI when the price drops and I have the extra money.
And, as others have mentioned, consoles now beat the pants off of a PC in the graphics area for the price.
GeForce 2 MX or N64? Graphics card wins. GeForce TI vs GameCube, PS2, or X-Box? Console wins.
Ben
MS does follow the standards. But they also go beyond them. That's why some sites have different pages for different browsers; to take advantage of the little extras of specific browsers.
If Mozilla/Opera can't be bothered to invent a little like MS is doing then oh well. Their loss. If MS didn't support all the basics then I'd care. But since they do and then some I use IE and cater my site to IE and occasionally care that it doesn't look exactly the same in Mozilla.
Ben
You can see how webpages react to various browsers at www.wannabrowser.com
I'm not going to bother posting the results here but it's easy enough to see for yourself what the differences are.
Ben
"I don't really care about the mass market."
Then I guess you're not too shocked that Linux isn't being accepted by the mass market.
"Users need to get over the idea that a computer is easy to use"
Computers are easy to use. An OS shouldn't make it unneccessarily difficult like Linux is doing. Cars are complicated machines but it doesn't take much to learn how to drive it.
AOL (scary but yes it is easy to use), Windows, ect all make the PC easy to use. Until Linux can do the same, Linux will never be mass market.
"Command-lines are better for some things"
What mass market product would benefit from a command line? None.
Doesn't matter. You can't force the user to use the overly complicated Linux when Windows and Mac based PCs do more and do it more easily.
Windows does everything I want it to do and more and more easily so I'm sticking with it. Linux users like yourself need to get a clue or you're just going to continue holding back Linux's progress.
There's absolutly no reason why at this point Linux doesn't have a GUI for everything with the option of using other methods like a command prompt or directly editable config file.
Fine, use your command line, but forcing everyone else to is just stupid. But it's exactly the prevelant attitude among the Linux community. And that's why it will always fail in the mass market until the attitude changes.
Ben
Even if MS is copying features from you (and frankly Linux has been stealing most of their ideas from MS and sucking at implementing them) they're doing a far better job implementing them than the open source crowd.
"There are times when the command-line is flat-out better than any other interface"
And? At least MS has the common sense to make it an option not a requirement. The problem I mentioned was that Linux developers don't know when to use a command line or a config file, when to use a gui and when to have all the options.
I use CMD only on rare occassion and never because I have to. The biggest use of the command line I use is to use XCOPY to backup my server onto a second HD once a month. It's a number of hours faster than doing the copy through Windows Explorer. And all I have to do is double click the little bat file in explorer to do it.
Somebody else was talking about there being an app to allow resolution changes in Linux without using the config file. How long has that taken and it's STILL not a default? Heck they can't even manage to tell the user upfront they can use the config file to change the res. MS has had that "no duh" feature since at least Window 95. Win 3.x I don't think had it because video cards didn't really have much in the way of resolutions back then. 8 years later and Linux is just now getting around to it? How out of touch are you people?
As out of touch as Rick Berman. I know someone who was all about open source and even moved his server to Linux. A day or two later he ended up doing the same thing I did: format and return to Windows.
Time for Linux developers to get a clue. So MS is stealing from you. Steal ideas from them. But stop sucking at implementing them. Then maybe the mass market will start to take Linux seriously.
What Linux really needs right now is a market analyst. Somebody to figure out what the mass market wants and to order them by importance. Then the Linux community needs to buckle down and start implementing them right as easy to use defaults.
This half assed "hunt down and install some obscurely named third party app" crap is not going to get Linux anywhere but the recycle bin.
Ben
"Windows has never been much more user friendly than Linux on desktop"
Um...
Linux is the epitimy of unfriendliness. I don't think there's an OS out there that makes you do more to accomplish less. DOS is dead. STOP OBSESSING OVER THE COMMAND LINE. The mass market does not care to have to type in lines of commands to do something. They want to click.
Windows is just click click click and you're done. Linux developers still havn't figured out when a config file is appropriate, when a GUI is appropriate and when to have both. And even when they do use a GUI they're completly lost when it comes to what should be on it and how to organize it.
Linux is as userfriendly as Windows? Have you even USED Windows? Even the most basic stuff like opening a file in Linux is a pain in the ass.
Who was the genius that decided that by default (at least in KDE) clicking on a file should open it in an uneditable form?
It's geniuses like that which are going to prevent Linux from ever becomming mainstream.
And don't tell me KDE isn't Linux because without a desktop Linux will never make it to the mass market. To the mass market the desktop IS Linux. And if the desktop sucks, Linux sucks.
And no, I'm not going to dick around getting a stupid file opened in an editable form when I could format the drive and install Windows and avoid that and the numerous other headaches Linux likes to impose on it's users who for the most part are so full of themselves they don't have a clue why the mass market doesn't give a rats ass about Linux.
The fact the original artical was called insightful just adds to the irony of a Rick Berman article being on here and everyone going on and on about how out of touch he is.
Windows is king of the hill because Microsoft got everything the mass market wanted right. Linux isn't competition in the mass market because Linux developers don't know what the mass market wants and when they tell them, they ignore them and call them lamers.
I could learn Linux. But you know what? I've used it enough to know it's not worth the effort. Why learn a cheap imitation of Windows that does less than Windows in a less userfriendly way when I could use Windows and do everything I want and more easily?
Windows has gotten my money numerous occassions and will continue to do so. Every time I see these articles on Slashdot it's the same "revelations" over and over and over. Time to get in touch with what the mass market wants. Otherwise Linux will never come close to touching Windows in that market.
Ben
Maybe when the Slashdot community is done telling Rick Berman how to make a movie that appeals to the mass market, Rick Berman can explain how the Slashdot community can go about making an OS that appeals to the mass market.
Ben
I happily paid $128 for Windows 2K at a store that was going out of business.
I downloaded Linux for free and it sucked. It turned my $1000 computer into a page serving brick. $120 for software that allows me to do anything with my $1000 computer while it's also acting as my web-server or free software that reduces my $1000 computer to a useless brick. Hmmm...tough choice.
If MS lowers their price to less than $100 for XP I'll definitly pick myself up a copy. I havn't heard anything that would justify it's current cost seeing as I have 2K and it's been flawless.
This is a win for consumers if anything. Not Linux. Linux still has the same problems that don't make it worth free.
Ben
Since many sites are too dense to use ads in a non visitor annoying fashion and many visitors are too stupid/ignorant to accept the fact that it costs money to run a quality web-site and passivly help offset the costs by putting up with the ads on their favorite sites, many major web-sites are forcing visitors to take an active role in paying for costs or forcing them away. The method of choice seems to be subscriptions of some form or another with a crippled free service.
Pick your poison: suck up the ads or start getting used to paying up.
I switched IcarusIndie.com over to a subscription model at the beginning of the year for the most bandwidth intensive sections and it was probably the best thing I could have done for the site. My Alexa ranking is up, bandwidth costs are being offset significantly, bandwidth usage has been drastically reduced.
If a significant number of users stop viewing the ads on Slashdot I wouldn't be surprised if you had to start paying the membership fee to see everything.
Ben
No you wouldn't.
If you were actually interested in playing FPS games with a head mounted display you would already own a 3D headset and have it plugged into your PC. For a decent set it's only a few hundred dollars. Probably less than a company could reasonably be expected to release such a console for. Asking a company to produce the console and the glasses is like expecting companies to include a 27" TV with their current system for $200 or less.
Red Alarm for the Virtual Boy was the only real FPS shooter for the system and it used wireframe because the system couldn't handle filled polygons well and with only a few shades of red it would have been horrible looking anyway. It's quite the experience playing it in actual 3D. With the HMD VB it was even better.
The fact is that the technology has been available for years. I own a VictorMaxx Stuntmaster (unfortunatly it's old, doesn't work well and only has one screen anyway) and modified it to take any video input through an standard RCA jack. Playing UT with it is kinda cool but the underlit nature of FPSs on a screen that's dim as it is doesn't work out as well as it could.
If you want HMD FPSs the tech is there. Just not in one package. It will probably be never or a very long time before it ever is again.
I'd just like to see a console with dual video out to support 3rd party glasses. If the company comes out with it's own headset, oh goody. Maybe they can do it for cheaper.
Ben
The Head Mounted Display Virtual Boy
That was really what it needed: to be head mounted. And it wasn't difficult to do. Seperating the system from the display was impossible due to what I assume was the timing (when I extended the wires the mirrors couldn't sync up). Fortunatly there was enough unneccessary crap that could be removed to lessen the weight enough to make it wearable.
I have many of the games and two systems (one is HMD now). I don't think console makers will take the plunge again though until little LCDs can display the quality of a full size LCD at a reasonable price.
With dirt cheap little LCD monitors comming out I don't think it's too far off. It's really the next logical step. I think Nintendo just took it too soon.
They should just have a dual video out for their next console and offer 3D glasses as an option. That would be nice. Trying to embed it all together is just a bad idea.
Ben
Like any profession you're born with some inate abilities to do things which schooling can then direct and improve towards being skills you can use to make a living.
Some people are born to be athletic but without the proper training those people will never reach their full potential and make a living out of it.
Ben
I think Dig Dug finally dug himself into a hole he couldn't get out of while valiently attempting to do something that would excite players.
Sad really.
Ben
I overslept on a jury duty day and as I was frantically trying to call them I got a page from the court reporter despite never ever giving them that number.
Fortunatly the trial was delayed but on the last day I was "randomly" selected to be the extra juror and the court reporter asked for my number to call to let me know what the verdict was.
Apparently her voodoo only worked on Monday's.
Ben
"official" uptime statistics. It says my max was 39 days but my network connection was up for 46. But whatever.
m od e_w=on&site=www.icarusindie.com
l s? q=&p=Det_W_t_40_L1&url=www.icarusindie.com
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&
Or was that too difficult for you?
"YOU are not worth your salt, any way you take that lie."
Way to go. You sure got me. I never said I was on a shedule. Next time, recognize the fact there are many many ways to verify what people say instead of just butchering the English language.
and as an added bonus: site ranking
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detai
Not too bad after only 2 years. My goal is to break 100,000 by the end of the year.
Script Kiddies can't pull those kinds of numbers.
Ben
You're a pretty crappy admin then.
I run Apache 1.3.26 on Windows 2K and have been for the past 2 years. The only time a BSOD happened was when the HD cable came loose from all the heating and cooling. I had my server running 100% for 46 days and only rebooted because I was trying out some new SMTP (not MS) software which turned out to be complete and utter crap and a wasted reboot. It's now been going again for 15 days without a single issue. I've never had a Windows issue. On average I do a reboot once a month for software updates or whatever but never because I have to.
If your Windows machine has issues it's because your hardware is crap or you've loaded crappy software/drivers on it. I have 4 Win2K machines of various configurations that never have issues.
If you have security issues it's because you havn't clued into the fact that MS doesn't include much of a firewall. I have no security issues because I have an excellent hardware solution. There are plenty of excellent software solutions like ZoneAlarm.
If you're actually a netadmin/webmaster worth their salt I'm wondering why in the world you'd have security issues with any OS. Are you plugging the line directly into the computer? And if so, what do you expect? I wouldn't put Linux right on the wire either.
IIS has known exploits and if you're actually worth your salt you'd know how to prevent them from being used. If you NEED APACHE then you probably have no idea how to deal with and correct security issues. I like Apache because it's simple and effective.
On topic, I'll care about Apache 2.whatever when PHP is no longer broken. Apache 1.3.x is kinda the old reliable. Until 2.x can match it, there's no real burning need to upgrade.
Ben
Why do we need additional laws? If I could charge a spammer with harassment well then we have all the law we need. Last I checked every state has laws against people who harass other people.
If I tell a spammer to stop and then don't stop I should be able to call 911 on their ass. If they don't give me the ability to say stop (if you gag a rape victim is suddenly not rape because they didn't say "stop?") because they give a false return address shouldn't I beable to press even more serious charges? By that point they're basically stalkers.
I should get one opt out attempt and after that they get hauled off to jail.
Or is your analogy just a vain attempt to gain Karma? Personally I like the idea of charging spammers with harrassement. But how well would it hold up in court?
Maybe we should just stop calling it spam and looking for spam laws and just call it what it is: harassment. We could start taking names and kicking ass immediatly if that were the case.
Ben
When ZIP first came out it was parallel port only. Then later came the USB and intenal versions.
Mass market likes USB because mass market doesn't like opening up their computer and fiddling with cables so USB it is.
Once they make enough money to justify the cost to cater to the smaller market, then you'll see an internal version. Or maybe if we're lucky they'll come out with both at the same time.
Ben
If an Athiest stated that God exists, he wouldn't be an athiest now would he?
If you have an opinion, you're biased. It's stupid to dismiss people for what they believe simply because they believe it. Which is basically what the parent post is doing.
You may have identified the "logic" but it's the most illogical form of logic I've ever seen. And yet in the magical world on Slashdot where logic doesn't matter, it gets modded up as insightful.
If you have an opinion you're biased. Claiming someone isn't credible simply because they believe what they're saying is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a discussion.
Ben
You can download RealPlayer 8 at ftp://www.icarusindie.com in the apps folder. It's the last version before they shit all over themselves.
.com. Real.com can have my real name and address when I pay for their software. Until then I'm under 13 and live in Uganda.
Also, thanks to the US government I tend to be Under 13 quite a bit. It's a lot easier than unclicking all those stupid boxes. I'd also like to thank Real for not verifying my moo@cow.com e-mail address and that my name is not actually FUCK OFF.
Seriously though, why are we complaining? You're not required to put valid information in those fields. Even if you feel moraly obligated not to lie, at least sign up for a junk Hotmail account to use when you fill out various forms.
If some site/program actually has the balls to force valid information out of me I go somewhere else. Unless I'm paying you, fuck off
Ben
How about the AUTHOR decide how long they want to keep it copyrighted?
Your post makes absolutly no sense whatsoever. Just typical paranoid ranting. No one is being forced to keep their material in copyright forever and ever. It's only an OPTION.
If I write a book and make millions of dollars it's perfectly within my rights to tell my family to make their own fortune and put my works in the public domain upon my death or whenever I feel like it.
Oh no, we can't use Mickey Mouse. What will we ever do?
Same thing we've been doing for thousands of years, Pinky: come up with our own ideas.
The few anal retentive bastards who can't let things go when they're done with them (and Disney is far from done with Mickey Mouse so get over the fact they still have copyright) are not going to affect the world in any significant manner.
There are millions of people who are happy to let their things go to make up for the few who aren't.
Ben
My site is running on a 256K DSL connection and survived the beating. Sure it was running at 600bytes per second but I could still access it. People just need to make their pages more bandwidth friendly. From acceptance to front page my story took about a day to be posted. That's plenty of time to rework a page if it's too bulky.
However, if weren't possible to make it bandwidth friendly, Slashdot needs to take advantage of resources out there like their own server or SourceForge and work a deal to use temporary space upon request of the owner of the linked site. The owner could easily package up the relavent portion of the site and e-mail it over to be put up at the temporary location.
If nothing else it would at least eliminate all the stupid "hey look it's slashdotted" posts.
Currently, Slashdot is just a link site with commentary. If it's keeps killing all it's stories it's going to be a pretty irrelevent link site at that.
Ben