&a != &b will always return TRUE!!!!! Stop telling shit you... nevermind! Can't fix the world!
I have three counterexamples for you... one which demonstrates the letter of what you're saying is wrong, and two which demonstrate the spirit of what you're saying is wrong. Please learn the language before you start spouting off like you know something.
Plus, that's not actually what Infocom did, for the similar reason that 128K game saves wouldn't have been acceptable back then.
Actually, it is almost exactly what Infocom did. The only place the grandparent is stretching the truth was that only the volatile memory of the virutal machine was written to disk. Everything after a certain address in the Infocom VM is ROM. Of course this part of the VM data didn't have to be saved in the state files. Other than that, the original save files were indeed a dump of the RAM portion of the VM's memory.
The area of RAM in the Infocom VM is actually rather small, which is why this worked.
Ragnarok Online uses the same mechanism. The overall map is split up into large squares. You walk off one square and you go to a different server when you appear on the next square.
Though it's not a "game" in the traditional sense, Second Life does the exact same thing.
...Linux zealots are going to run in defense of the [Linux] kernel. Come on guys, anything created by man will always have defects.
Now why did you put the word Linux in brackets? Is this because you're quoting yourself, and you wanted to make your quote clearer out of context? Wait, that doesn't make any sense.
Oh, you're a pompus ass? That makes much more sense. Thanks.
I don't get it. Did the editors edit everyone's joke comments when they edited the title as well? Or was it simply that they failed to capitalize "Nintendo"?
There's some danger ahead, so the rover shut its wheels off. It's becoming sentient, you see.
(I learned this kind of science from Star Trek: TNG.)
Re:Word To You, Bro
on
Word Up
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Unless the UNIX computer was his brain, the article makes no mention of his use an anagram finder...
From the article:
So, in the weeks leading up to the competition, I crammed. Nightly, you could find me awake at 2 a.m. typing strings of letters into a Unix-based program that would quiz me on their anagrams. I took these quizzes until the wee hours of the morning, while my girlfriend slept soundly next to me.
To each his own, of course. The purpose of this point is not to convince you that you really do like backtracking (you don't), but to explain why I do.
The reason I like this aspect of Metroid is how non-linear it can make a linear game feel. Whenever you get a new ability in Metroid Prime, three or four missile packs as well as the next big powerup become accessible. What's great is the obsticles were right out in the open... the game teases you with spider tracks for the first hour until you get a spider ball, for example. Get the spider ball and the world opens up all over the map (though to a very small degree near most of the tracks). Backtracking (to me) doesn't feel so tedious when you're trying to get to five points on the map at once, and you don't know which one is the "important" one.
All of the new GBA Metroid games (and Metroid Prime if you don't explicitly go into the options and turn it off) have an annoying hint system, which highlight a portion of the map and tell you to "go here next". This completely ruins the otherwise open-world feel that all previous Metroid games enjoyed. Playing Metroid Prime with help turned off is a must, and certainly you should pass up any of the new GBA offerings.
Also on our radar screens should be the fact that the US PSTN numbering scheme keeps getting more lines and is coming closer to the point that the (xxx)-yyy-zzzz numbering format is about to hit the wall. The rule that declared the center digit of an area code had to be 0 or 1 fell years ago.
Once ten-digit dialing becomes the rule everywhere, the restriction that the first digit of an exchange (the yyy part) cannot be a 0 or 1 can go away, extending the pool of phone numbers by 25%.
Not that this is a long term solution to the problem, but I disagree that we're "about to" hit the wall.
[Source code] doesn't get much more available than being in the public domain.
Of course not. But public domain is not viral. People can and do make closed-source apps based on public-domain code. The fact that the PocketNES is open-source doesn't magically make Jaleco's cart based on it open-source.
I know this is how the BSD license works. That, the MIT license, and true public domain were what I was thinking of when I wrote "public-domain-style licenses" in my original post. This is my favorite style of open-source licensing, and I don't like the Stallman "software-as-religion" approach, so I'm sort of surprised that we're having this debate. "Closed-source" is not a slur. I'm not insulting this GBA game, I'm just calling it what it is.
I'm really not religious about this thing, but I believe your categorization of the Jaleco product is definitionally wrong. If I release binaries without making the source open, then the binaries are not open-source. This has nothing to do with politics or software-religion.
They are selling an emulator based on PUBLIC DOMAIN code. This is no more closed source than any GPL project.
The emulator is public domain, but the main thing they're selling is their collection of five closed-source games.
Putting that aside, who knows what changes or improvements they may have made to PocketNES? Perhaps they didn't make any, but if they did, they never have to share the source with anybody. As you might gather from my grandparent post, I don't think this is a problem. But it's certainly not open-source.
I followed the link to the PocketNES site, and sent the author a small cash contribution, just because it's so refreshing to see somebody act and respond so magnanimously.
Things here worked out brilliantly. The PocketNES folks put out a great piece of free software that many people enjoy, video game fans get to legally play some old classics, and Jaleco employees get some cash.
Those people who champion the GPL because they believe proprietary software is inherently wrong, I have respect for. (Though the subset of those champions who make their living writing proprietary software, well...) Stallman's plan certainly worked; look at all the excellent GPL-licensed software out there. It's a huge codebase that will never make its way into closed-source software -- mission accomplished. And it certainly was a clever plot to use copyright to keep software open.
But I'm not so politically motivated. Public-domain-style licenses are just fine for most open-source purposes. This situation was a perfect example why. Nobody gets hurt! Like I said above, things here worked out great for Jaleco, for PocketNES (which certainly gets more respect and attention for this), and for the Japanese video-game-playing public in general.
The only "injuries" are that Jaleco is selling more closed-source software, and that the PocketNES author doesn't get a cut. But the author knew full well this could happen, and he didn't care, because it didn't hurt him! He wasn't motivated by greed.
So the only remaining "injury" is that the body of closed-source software has once again grown. Again, for those of you who think this is a Bad Thing, I respect you and your views. But I disagree, and I suspect many of you do, too. GPL is overkill, most of the time.
As for the PocketPC, if they win the PDA wars it will be by default. Palm has the potential of being much better if they can "unfuck" themselves. Don't blame declining PDA sales on the concept of the PDA when the management of these companies are to blame.
I'm curious if you could elaborate here. You say that PocketPC is completely mismanaged but you don't say why you think so.
I disagree that PocketPCs can only win by default. I've used both and I much prefer PocketPCs (though I admit the UI is flawed... you have to download a couple of third party tools to make it truly usable.)
It still gets a slow trickle of traffic (with, surprise, a huge spike this morning.) Usually it's just (.Y.) or 8===D up there, but sometimes people put entertaining stuff up there. My favorite in recent history was:
In the first castles, I bet a common mistake was putting the torture room next to the master bedroom. Boy, you're just not going to get the good sleep that way
I probably glance at it every morning getting ready for work, and sometimes it's good for a laugh.
Out of curiosity, what's to prevent the DM from sending an IM to the player telling him what number to say?:-)
Nothing. Really, my idea here is that the DM can always cheat if he wants to. The players should never be able to cheat (certainly not with the networking tools), but the players do need to feel secure in the fact that their dice are fair.
I can't speak as much for role-playing-heavy D&D, but in hack and slash dungeon crawls, the dice rolls are a big part of the fun. Pen and paper would lose a lot if the DM always rolled for you behind the DM screen. "I attack the ogre." "Sorry, you miss." Under the real system, the players roll but don't know exactly what number they need. But a 2 or 3 is probably a miss, and an 18 or 19 is probably a hit. (And honestly, rolling a 15 or so and finding out you missed does a pretty good job of conveying the difficulty of an enemy to you. It's the kind of metagaming I approve of, since in "real life" you would realize "man, this is a tough critter to hit," but in a different way.)
You would tend to be suspicious that the DM was cheating if he rolled your dice for you. This principle applies in netplay as much as local pen-and-paper.
I came up with a secure dice protocol, so that both the roller and the DM know that neither side is cheating. I am probably reinventing the wheel here, but ah well. The protocol to simulate a 6-sided die roll (it extends to any size):
1. DM's computer randomly sorts the numbers 1 through 6 and puts them in a comma separated list. After the list, there is a space and random salt characters, for instance: 1,4,3,5,6,2 AIQJCE
2. DM's computer generates the MD5 digest for this string and sends it over the wire to the player's computer. adc4f4c66858ab4f5e1d03dc22bb92b3
3. Player's computer chooses a random number between 0 and 5 and sends that number back to the DM's computer. 3
4. That number is used as an index into the generated list, so in this case the player rolled a 5. The DM's computer sends that result over the wire, as well as the original string.
The player can verify that the list was generated before he picked his number by checking that the md5 digest of the string matches. The DM likewise knows the player didn't have the string when he chose the number, because it wasn't sent over the wire.
No algorithm is needed to generate private DM rolls; he can just roll them. Sure, he could fudge the numbers, but he could do that in pen-and-paper.
Slashdot Mirror
D. J. Bernstein has a really nice page that explains why the current IPv6 transition plans are a joke. It's worth a read if you're interested in IPv6.
Man, I was so disappointed when that link didn't work.
...I only bought the PSP for the articles.
Anyone have any examples of modern sequels redoing levels from their predecessors with the new engines?
t ml
More a curiosity than anything else, but Sands of Time has the original Prince of Persia levels in it, using the new game's 3D engine. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/code/589718.h
#include
#define b1 a1
union
{ int a2; char b2; } x;
struct s
{ char b3; };
void printTrueOrFalse(int i)
{ printf("%s\n", i ? "true" : "false"); }
int main()
{
int a1;
struct s a3;
printTrueOrFalse(&a1!=&b1);
printTrueOrFalse(&(x.a2)!=&(x.b2));
printTrueOrFalse(&a3!=&(a3.b3));
}
false
false
false
Well look at that!
The area of RAM in the Infocom VM is actually rather small, which is why this worked.
Though it's not a "game" in the traditional sense, Second Life does the exact same thing.
Oh, you're a pompus ass? That makes much more sense. Thanks.
I don't get it. Did the editors edit everyone's joke comments when they edited the title as well? Or was it simply that they failed to capitalize "Nintendo"?
The NYT must be cracking down; the first dozen logins from bugmenot.com didn't work for me.
No problem, I found a copy of the NYT article on Lee Iacocca's page. (Hopefully the server holds up.) Enjoy.
There's some danger ahead, so the rover shut its wheels off. It's becoming sentient, you see.
(I learned this kind of science from Star Trek: TNG.)
From the article:
To each his own, of course. The purpose of this point is not to convince you that you really do like backtracking (you don't), but to explain why I do.
The reason I like this aspect of Metroid is how non-linear it can make a linear game feel. Whenever you get a new ability in Metroid Prime, three or four missile packs as well as the next big powerup become accessible. What's great is the obsticles were right out in the open... the game teases you with spider tracks for the first hour until you get a spider ball, for example. Get the spider ball and the world opens up all over the map (though to a very small degree near most of the tracks). Backtracking (to me) doesn't feel so tedious when you're trying to get to five points on the map at once, and you don't know which one is the "important" one.
All of the new GBA Metroid games (and Metroid Prime if you don't explicitly go into the options and turn it off) have an annoying hint system, which highlight a portion of the map and tell you to "go here next". This completely ruins the otherwise open-world feel that all previous Metroid games enjoyed. Playing Metroid Prime with help turned off is a must, and certainly you should pass up any of the new GBA offerings.
Not that this is a long term solution to the problem, but I disagree that we're "about to" hit the wall.
I know this is how the BSD license works. That, the MIT license, and true public domain were what I was thinking of when I wrote "public-domain-style licenses" in my original post. This is my favorite style of open-source licensing, and I don't like the Stallman "software-as-religion" approach, so I'm sort of surprised that we're having this debate. "Closed-source" is not a slur. I'm not insulting this GBA game, I'm just calling it what it is.
I'm really not religious about this thing, but I believe your categorization of the Jaleco product is definitionally wrong. If I release binaries without making the source open, then the binaries are not open-source. This has nothing to do with politics or software-religion.
Putting that aside, who knows what changes or improvements they may have made to PocketNES? Perhaps they didn't make any, but if they did, they never have to share the source with anybody. As you might gather from my grandparent post, I don't think this is a problem. But it's certainly not open-source.
I followed the link to the PocketNES site, and sent the author a small cash contribution, just because it's so refreshing to see somebody act and respond so magnanimously.
Things here worked out brilliantly. The PocketNES folks put out a great piece of free software that many people enjoy, video game fans get to legally play some old classics, and Jaleco employees get some cash.
Those people who champion the GPL because they believe proprietary software is inherently wrong, I have respect for. (Though the subset of those champions who make their living writing proprietary software, well...) Stallman's plan certainly worked; look at all the excellent GPL-licensed software out there. It's a huge codebase that will never make its way into closed-source software -- mission accomplished. And it certainly was a clever plot to use copyright to keep software open.
But I'm not so politically motivated. Public-domain-style licenses are just fine for most open-source purposes. This situation was a perfect example why. Nobody gets hurt! Like I said above, things here worked out great for Jaleco, for PocketNES (which certainly gets more respect and attention for this), and for the Japanese video-game-playing public in general.
The only "injuries" are that Jaleco is selling more closed-source software, and that the PocketNES author doesn't get a cut. But the author knew full well this could happen, and he didn't care, because it didn't hurt him! He wasn't motivated by greed.
So the only remaining "injury" is that the body of closed-source software has once again grown. Again, for those of you who think this is a Bad Thing, I respect you and your views. But I disagree, and I suspect many of you do, too. GPL is overkill, most of the time.
I disagree that PocketPCs can only win by default. I've used both and I much prefer PocketPCs (though I admit the UI is flawed... you have to download a couple of third party tools to make it truly usable.)
It still gets a slow trickle of traffic (with, surprise, a huge spike this morning.) Usually it's just (.Y.) or 8===D up there, but sometimes people put entertaining stuff up there. My favorite in recent history was:
In the first castles, I bet a common mistake was putting the torture room next to the master bedroom. Boy, you're just not going to get the good sleep that way
I probably glance at it every morning getting ready for work, and sometimes it's good for a laugh.
I need to add some edits to your code.
15 GOSUB 1000
1000 PRINT "You fail it!"
1010 RETURN
My point was that this method lets your players know that their dice are not rigged. A dicebot owned by the DM doesn't provide this assurance.
I can't speak as much for role-playing-heavy D&D, but in hack and slash dungeon crawls, the dice rolls are a big part of the fun. Pen and paper would lose a lot if the DM always rolled for you behind the DM screen. "I attack the ogre." "Sorry, you miss." Under the real system, the players roll but don't know exactly what number they need. But a 2 or 3 is probably a miss, and an 18 or 19 is probably a hit. (And honestly, rolling a 15 or so and finding out you missed does a pretty good job of conveying the difficulty of an enemy to you. It's the kind of metagaming I approve of, since in "real life" you would realize "man, this is a tough critter to hit," but in a different way.)
You would tend to be suspicious that the DM was cheating if he rolled your dice for you. This principle applies in netplay as much as local pen-and-paper.
I came up with a secure dice protocol, so that both the roller and the DM know that neither side is cheating. I am probably reinventing the wheel here, but ah well. The protocol to simulate a 6-sided die roll (it extends to any size):
1. DM's computer randomly sorts the numbers 1 through 6 and puts them in a comma separated list. After the list, there is a space and random salt characters, for instance:
1,4,3,5,6,2 AIQJCE
2. DM's computer generates the MD5 digest for this string and sends it over the wire to the player's computer.
adc4f4c66858ab4f5e1d03dc22bb92b3
3. Player's computer chooses a random number between 0 and 5 and sends that number back to the DM's computer.
3
4. That number is used as an index into the generated list, so in this case the player rolled a 5. The DM's computer sends that result over the wire, as well as the original string.
The player can verify that the list was generated before he picked his number by checking that the md5 digest of the string matches. The DM likewise knows the player didn't have the string when he chose the number, because it wasn't sent over the wire.
No algorithm is needed to generate private DM rolls; he can just roll them. Sure, he could fudge the numbers, but he could do that in pen-and-paper.