Remember, this was in 1994-1995..... At that time, people would still ran MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0; CD-Rom drives were not common yet, CD-Writers did not exist for consumers unless you didn't mind spending $1000's and not everybody had a network card either. In fact, being networked was a big deal at the time, and people even managed to work without the Internet:)
Some pretty insightful comments are attached the the story suggesting that SLS may still have been used by some users at that time, such as #1676775 or #1676797 (there are probably more).
The whole thing has a weird sensation of deja-vu and old memories revisited !
Between the initial announcement and now, surely the masses must have flocked to Wallmart to get their Lindows machine. By now, all these guys will be wondering, "Wait a moment, this looks like Windows, sounds like Windows, doesn't work like windows and cannot run my Windows apps, err,..... (silence)"
The first version of Slackware was based on SLS which I used at the time. The first Slaskware 1.x used to fit on ~30 floppies as you describe, and the later versions of the distro would require ~80.
In the lot, there was always one or two floppies with bad sectors. So when we planned our install nights, it was always an event split in 2 parts! (We'd come back the following days with the missing/fixed floppies).
A quick Google search revealed that some sites have (or rather, had) kept the historic distribution here. If you look at the directory structure, the relationship with Slackware is striking (it's the same tree).
But the bad news is towards the end of the article, when it comes to availability. Isn't it always the case with new products thatr look darn cool, and pre-announcements to make them even more desirable?
The Gigabeat MEG50JS will go on sale in Japan on June 22.[...]
Toshiba said it has plans to put the Gigabeat on sale in the U.S. and then Europe although the company has not decided on a schedule for an overseas launch.
Dammit, why are none of my friends in Japan for the World Cup. If only....
Allow me to better understand your fresh perspective by rephrasing:
You're basically saying that because the software sold to the US Navy couldn't handle properly a trivial exception (division by zero) generated after data input by an operator, a US Navy warship was a sitting duck for 3 hours, and that this could have cost the lives of hundred of your peers if the vessel had been at war at the time.
For some reason, the article reminded me of the incident with Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown that took place back in 1998.
"The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk."
Yes I have to admit, I am somewhat out of the consoles loop:)
I didn't know that all final Fantasy previous to FFX were only released on the original PS. I suppose that this largely explains the beefed-up PC specs then !
Anyone can comment on my last point ? (if there a chance to be able to extract the real-time animations for spells in fights)...
The story doesn't go on with the human rights. We know that China doesn't stand clean for civil rights, but this is not what the article was about.
I was about to craft a more elaborate answer to your comment, but I just found someone posting this (+5, Insightful) and I must agree 110% with the poster on this one.
I did not mean to criticise the human rights or whatever. It is just too bad that the fire was worsened by the fact that the place was toughened like a bunker, and that this essentially what made the story what it is...
Actually, I believe there are regulations. Chinese just want Internet Cafés so bad that they just can't and won't go by the rules.
IMHO the mayor's attempt at controlling the situation (Internet cafés spreading like wildfire--no play on words intended) seems more like something he said to save face in the light of the tragedy (24 dead). Still, I would be surprised if this atually changed anything now that the Chinese have become Internet addicts.
What makes the story fascinating to the Slashdot readers (and to the editors who posted it in the first place) is that it is a cybercafë which burned down. So what.
If that would have been any other kind of building in town, nobody else would care.
The reality is that, "Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.
There is something in the equation which I fail to understand.
FF7, FF8, FF9, etc were all games originally for the PS2, later ported to the PC. The original ports to the PC ran fine on a modest setup; in my case I had a Pentium 200 and a 3Dfx Voodoo2 card at the time, and FF7 ran beautifully.
So, my point is, why do the PC specs inflate so much, whereas the games run on the same original hardware for years (a PS2 from 3 years ago is still basically the same PS2 today, right ?)
What blew me away in FF7 on the PC, was the beauty of the animations when you "cast spells", you know, the invocation thing.
I was playing on a modest PC (200Mhz processor, 3Dfx Voodoo2 card) and frankly I an still in awe when I see the artwork which was put in these sequences.
I wish they would release each of these spells into a separate.exe file which one could launch at will, without having to be in the game, very much like what direct-3D demos show nowadays.
To comment on the following extract from the article:
In fact, Jebara said, within the next five to 10 years the system will be better than the world's best player. Jebara is confident that it will be able to judge the table-top situation more accurately and precisely than the human mind.
There are 2 different statements here:
a) that "the system" (I'm assuming an average player operating the system here) will be able to beat a pro.
This is rubbish. A crappy player that doesn't know how to handle a billiard stick properly, and still won't be able to shoot properly even with the system. Even if the computer maths are elaborate, too many variables are left to the player skills: spin control, precise control of the force applied to the cue ball, etc. At best, an average player using the system will get the general direction where to point at and why, but that's about it.
b) It is true that the computer may be able to model accurately the problem, but it doesn't make it a better player than a human for all the reasons in a) and others.
Computer chess is a prime example that machine does not always beat man, and here the difference is even more striking because the system ultimately rely on the skills of whoever is operating the stick. You just can't approximate this margin of error.
FYI: His answer to the overwhelming email
on
P2P Roaming Chat
·
· Score: 2
This poped-in my inbox this morning. I am sharing it with the rest of the community for those who would like a follow-up.
From: "Brendan Reville" <brendan@brendanreville.com> Subject: Welcome to BrendanLand Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002
hi there,
thanks very much for your interest in BrendanLand! It goes without saying
that the response, particularly due to slashdot.org, has been overwhelming.
There are too many emails to respond to any individually, so this mail has
been automatically sent to you.
If you've surfed through the BrendanLand.com site, you'll probably realise
that this was just an evening hobby project, done mostly to prove a concept
to myself. BrendanLand has known bugs, many things could have been done
better with hindsight, and the master server isn't that tough. But it's
occasionally cool:). I'm going to spend a little while toughening up the
master server before I release the product.
I'm going to make future announcements about BrendanLand via the Yahoo Group
named brendanlandgroup. If you are interested in trying out BrendanLand,
please subscribe to this group:
The download instructions will appear in this group shortly.
Only I can post to the group at this stage, but I might open it up later.
If you don't want to receive individual emails, you can choose to read the
group on the website only. You can unsubscribe at any time, too.
I apologise for not having the chance to respond to individual emails. If
you really need to talk to me without receiving this message automatically,
in response, then mail support@brendanland.com. To answer some of the more
frequently asked questions, it's Windows/DirectX for now, the source is not
open at the moment (don't worry, you'd learn more about what *not* to do:),
and while there are a lot of good ideas out there for improving this
system,, I have a job, other projects, and A Real Life to maintain, so I
hadn't planned to expand BrendanLand too much further.
I'm really excited to have so many people interested in hanging out in
BrendanLand. It's going to be interesting.
Sign up to that Yahoo Group, and keep your eyes peeled; I'll have news soon.
Following your every move sounds a bit dramatic and exagerated, but it is true that I like to check on to friends whom I consider to be dear to me in their own way:)
Gosh I hadn't realised that I'm already up to 800 friends. Am I really that far away ? I thought I might have 100 or 200 or something. I haven't been adding scores like you have ! How many do you have anyway ? Well over 1000 or 2000 I suppose. Perhaps more, I could be very wrong.
I don't use any IM system unfortunately; but my/. username is forged;)
Regarding private messages: this would be beneficial, or we could just use each other's journal to allow fellow users to communicate in a semi-public way (like on BBS).
For the moment, my techique of writing was inspired by sllort's Modbombing Disable HOWTO. I like finding old and obscure comments to some story in which the/. mob has lost interest for, and using these to reply to and post "private" messages to friends. It's less risky to so so because
a) I choose to stay very close to the archival event horizon (under section 2.1), and,
b) it lessens the number of people who care to read old comments.
I consider other Slashdot users like heroes, such as sllort (activist) or Klerck (troll/crapflooder) but not for the same reasons:) In the latter case, for researching exploits and bugs in the system, which is a quest in itself, and too bad if some people abuse it. It'll make the system better eventually..
However I don't talk quite as much as with the other users as we do. I'm normally a quiet person.
So, for the evening, goodbye and write to you some time.
I've found myself writing more and more smaller apps using PHP
In case that wasn't obvious in the first place, I've italicized the smaller portion for you:) I fully agree, btw. I wouldn't consider embedding SQL in html or php in html (or vice-versa) for projects > 2K lines.
I don't mean to criticize Perl, since it's my favourite language for medium to complex applications for years. You just can't beat the power of regexps:)
Yet, I've found myself writing more and more smaller apps using PHP instead of perl. It's by the Apache group and essentially merges into the www server, making it very quick. You can still use mod_perl for perl apps.
Along with your preferred SQL database, progranmming in PHP is a breeze. Basically, write html pages and add the commands you need embedded inside.
The best PHP book I have on that topic is PHP and MySQL Web Development (ISBN: 0672317842) second to none.
This page has more details, and some pictures of the Japanese Shinkansen E2, and also of the French TGV (which holds the conventional train speed record with 515kph since 1990) and of the French/British Eurostar.
The Times article is nice and gives a good feel of what new generations trains will feel for passengers in a distant future, however the technology and the various experimental versions of high speed levitating trains are not exactly new.
Maglev research started in 1962, and by 1970 studies of electrodynamic levitation systems using superconducting magnets took shape. The first test run took place in 1979. In December 1986, a 3-car train registered 352.4 kph (220 mph). In December 1997, a manned MLX01 attained 531 kph (331 mph), and unmanned, attained 550 kph (344 mph). The following year, a test of two trains passing each other at a relative speed of 966 kph was run successfully. In March 1999, an unmanned five-car MLX01 reached 548 kph (342 mph). In April, the manned five-car MLX01 set a fabulously fast world speed record at 552 kph (345 mph).
We can see that the Japanese aren't ready for commercial deployment yet, as the article reads on:
A Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry official said there are many problems to be resolved before the maglev can be put into practical use...
Europeans daily experience high speed trains for the last decade, with the Eurostar and the TGV cruising commercially at over 300 kph (188 mph). The German have the ICE, which reaches 330 kph (206 mph).
The Spanish Talgo is in the works and will do 350 kph (218 mph).
Slashdot Mirror
Remember, this was in 1994-1995 ..... At that time, people would still ran MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0; CD-Rom drives were not common yet, CD-Writers did not exist for consumers unless you didn't mind spending $1000's and not everybody had a network card either. In fact, being networked was a big deal at the time, and people even managed to work without the Internet :)
Slashdot announcement of Linux turning 8 years old.
Some pretty insightful comments are attached the the story suggesting that SLS may still have been used by some users at that time, such as #1676775 or #1676797 (there are probably more).
The whole thing has a weird sensation of deja-vu and old memories revisited !
You get the idea 8-)
In the lot, there was always one or two floppies with bad sectors. So when we planned our install nights, it was always an event split in 2 parts! (We'd come back the following days with the missing/fixed floppies).
A quick Google search revealed that some sites have (or rather, had) kept the historic distribution here. If you look at the directory structure, the relationship with Slackware is striking (it's the same tree).
But the bad news is towards the end of the article, when it comes to availability. Isn't it always the case with new products thatr look darn cool, and pre-announcements to make them even more desirable?
Dammit, why are none of my friends in Japan for the World Cup. If only ....
You're basically saying that because the software sold to the US Navy couldn't handle properly a trivial exception (division by zero) generated after data input by an operator, a US Navy warship was a sitting duck for 3 hours, and that this could have cost the lives of hundred of your peers if the vessel had been at war at the time.
Who's the moron now .....
"The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk."
Find the complete article here: Windows NT Cripples US Navy Cruiser.
So, closed source, anyone ? :-)
I didn't know that all final Fantasy previous to FFX were only released on the original PS. I suppose that this largely explains the beefed-up PC specs then !
Anyone can comment on my last point ? (if there a chance to be able to extract the real-time animations for spells in fights)...
I was about to craft a more elaborate answer to your comment, but I just found someone posting this (+5, Insightful) and I must agree 110% with the poster on this one.
I did not mean to criticise the human rights or whatever. It is just too bad that the fire was worsened by the fact that the place was toughened like a bunker, and that this essentially what made the story what it is...
IMHO the mayor's attempt at controlling the situation (Internet cafés spreading like wildfire--no play on words intended) seems more like something he said to save face in the light of the tragedy (24 dead). Still, I would be surprised if this atually changed anything now that the Chinese have become Internet addicts.
If that would have been any other kind of building in town, nobody else would care.
The reality is that, "Investigators blamed the high death toll on locked emergency exits. " This is all there is to the story.
Shit happens.
FF7, FF8, FF9, etc were all games originally for the PS2, later ported to the PC. The original ports to the PC ran fine on a modest setup; in my case I had a Pentium 200 and a 3Dfx Voodoo2 card at the time, and FF7 ran beautifully.
So, my point is, why do the PC specs inflate so much, whereas the games run on the same original hardware for years (a PS2 from 3 years ago is still basically the same PS2 today, right ?)
I was playing on a modest PC (200Mhz processor, 3Dfx Voodoo2 card) and frankly I an still in awe when I see the artwork which was put in these sequences.
I wish they would release each of these spells into a separate .exe file which one could launch at will, without having to be in the game, very much like what direct-3D demos show nowadays.
For the URL-impaired; this is the link to the original story, posted by Michael on Saturday.
Go here to discuss and encourage people to discuss about your topic. Enjoy user-created discussions !
There are 2 different statements here:
a) that "the system" (I'm assuming an average player operating the system here) will be able to beat a pro.
This is rubbish. A crappy player that doesn't know how to handle a billiard stick properly, and still won't be able to shoot properly even with the system. Even if the computer maths are elaborate, too many variables are left to the player skills: spin control, precise control of the force applied to the cue ball, etc.
At best, an average player using the system will get the general direction where to point at and why, but that's about it.
b) It is true that the computer may be able to model accurately the problem, but it doesn't make it a better player than a human for all the reasons in a) and others.
Computer chess is a prime example that machine does not always beat man, and here the difference is even more striking because the system ultimately rely on the skills of whoever is operating the stick. You just can't approximate this margin of error.
It's a few minutes past 17:00 CET and I'm up & ru
From: "Brendan Reville" <brendan@brendanreville.com>
Subject: Welcome to BrendanLand
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002
hi there,
thanks very much for your interest in BrendanLand! It goes without saying that the response, particularly due to slashdot.org, has been overwhelming.
There are too many emails to respond to any individually, so this mail has been automatically sent to you.
If you've surfed through the BrendanLand.com site, you'll probably realise that this was just an evening hobby project, done mostly to prove a concept to myself. BrendanLand has known bugs, many things could have been done better with hindsight, and the master server isn't that tough. But it's occasionally cool :). I'm going to spend a little while toughening up the
master server before I release the product.
I'm going to make future announcements about BrendanLand via the Yahoo Group named brendanlandgroup. If you are interested in trying out BrendanLand, please subscribe to this group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/brendanlandgroup/
The download instructions will appear in this group shortly.
Only I can post to the group at this stage, but I might open it up later. If you don't want to receive individual emails, you can choose to read the group on the website only. You can unsubscribe at any time, too.
I apologise for not having the chance to respond to individual emails. If you really need to talk to me without receiving this message automatically, in response, then mail support@brendanland.com. To answer some of the more frequently asked questions, it's Windows/DirectX for now, the source is not open at the moment (don't worry, you'd learn more about what *not* to do :),
and while there are a lot of good ideas out there for improving this
system,, I have a job, other projects, and A Real Life to maintain, so I
hadn't planned to expand BrendanLand too much further.
I'm really excited to have so many people interested in hanging out in BrendanLand. It's going to be interesting.
Sign up to that Yahoo Group, and keep your eyes peeled; I'll have news soon.
- Brendan
Gosh I hadn't realised that I'm already up to 800 friends. Am I really that far away ? I thought I might have 100 or 200 or something. I haven't been adding scores like you have ! How many do you have anyway ? Well over 1000 or 2000 I suppose. Perhaps more, I could be very wrong.
I don't use any IM system unfortunately; but my /. username is forged ;)
Regarding private messages: this would be beneficial, or we could just use each other's journal to allow fellow users to communicate in a semi-public way (like on BBS).
For the moment, my techique of writing was inspired by sllort's Modbombing Disable HOWTO. I like finding old and obscure comments to some story in which the /. mob has lost interest for, and using these to reply to and post "private" messages to friends. It's less risky to so so because
a) I choose to stay very close to the archival event horizon (under section 2.1), and,
b) it lessens the number of people who care to read old comments.
I consider other Slashdot users like heroes, such as sllort (activist) or Klerck (troll/crapflooder) but not for the same reasons :) In the latter case, for researching exploits and bugs in the system, which is a quest in itself, and too bad if some people abuse it. It'll make the system better eventually..
However I don't talk quite as much as with the other users as we do. I'm normally a quiet person. So, for the evening, goodbye and write to you some time.
Oh, btw: you're famous.
You bet this is needed. Think of all these posts which could be slapped (-1, Offtopic)
Btw your fans list has grown quite a bit lately. Neat! Check mine out, too :)
(This is being done so that we can manage the size of the community.)
I have two words for you Sir: Good Luck.
Seriously though, unless the guys either
a) bounces all emails for the next 24 hours
b) store them on some large capacity HDD
c) buys some bandwidth,
I'm under the impression that he will ge a lot more requests for download that he normally gets !!!
Enjoy being Slashdotted to death :-)
In case that wasn't obvious in the first place, I've italicized the smaller portion for you :) I fully agree, btw. I wouldn't consider embedding SQL in html or php in html (or vice-versa) for projects > 2K lines.
Yet, I've found myself writing more and more smaller apps using PHP instead of perl. It's by the Apache group and essentially merges into the www server, making it very quick. You can still use mod_perl for perl apps.
Along with your preferred SQL database, progranmming in PHP is a breeze. Basically, write html pages and add the commands you need embedded inside. The best PHP book I have on that topic is PHP and MySQL Web Development (ISBN: 0672317842) second to none.
The Times article is nice and gives a good feel of what new generations trains will feel for passengers in a distant future, however the technology and the various experimental versions of high speed levitating trains are not exactly new.
Maglev research started in 1962, and by 1970 studies of electrodynamic levitation systems using superconducting magnets took shape. The first test run took place in 1979. In December 1986, a 3-car train registered 352.4 kph (220 mph). In December 1997, a manned MLX01 attained 531 kph (331 mph), and unmanned, attained 550 kph (344 mph). The following year, a test of two trains passing each other at a relative speed of 966 kph was run successfully. In March 1999, an unmanned five-car MLX01 reached 548 kph (342 mph). In April, the manned five-car MLX01 set a fabulously fast world speed record at 552 kph (345 mph).
We can see that the Japanese aren't ready for commercial deployment yet, as the article reads on:
Europeans daily experience high speed trains for the last decade, with the Eurostar and the TGV cruising commercially at over 300 kph (188 mph). The German have the ICE, which reaches 330 kph (206 mph). The Spanish Talgo is in the works and will do 350 kph (218 mph).
It got better after I uninstalled Quicktime. Go figure :-/