FilePlanet *used* to be good - until the dotcom crunch started and Gamespy felt they had to make a profit. So, by taking full advantage of revolutionary electronic distribution, they cut the number of servers, requires you to have a GameSpy ID (which they spam you without an opt-out link) implemented 'waiting lines, and turned the front page into a huge Java/JavaScript/Flash monstrosity. They then push their cheesy 'Personal Server' on you at every turn - they even have to back it up with Testimonials.
What's even worse is the GameSpy policy requiring *all* files on GameSpy-hosted networks to be on a FilePlanet server - this even applies to sites which are indirectly hosted by GameSpy (like skins.counter-strike.net). What's with the Penny Arcade art?
GameSpy are a bunch of money-grubbing bastards. Thanks for killing off halflife.net
I've been in the dark as far as Internet access goes since Saturday. My cable modem continually flashes one single light - Power - indicating that it is indeed trying to sync up with something, if anything. AT&T has announced that all of their customers should be online within the next two to ten days, and that for every day I lose internet service, they'll credit me with two days.
In the meantime, I've been experiencing symptoms of Internet withdrawal. Like a drug addict, I've been having fits of convultion when I realize that I can't brush up on my Counter-Strike skillz. We do have a dial-up connection back at home, but it started to refuse to authenticate my username and pass sometime around May, so I've been spending the entire weekend offline. At least with a drug IV you can _feel_ the pain of the needle prick.
Ikari Warriors? *shiver*
on
Farewell to SNK
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That game would have to be one of SNK's worst.
Their port to the NES of this rather classic arcade game was messed up. IIRC, you had a gun, four lives, and baddies ambushing you from everywhere. Sure, you could get into a tank - until it ran out of fuel. It was nearly impossible to dodge the flying bullets and IIRC, you died with one shot.
You thought CONTRA was hard? Ikari Warriors makes Contra look like Barney's Hide 'n' Seek in terms of difficulty. Levels are ridiculously long, to the point where the music is like sandpaper to your ears. If you didn't know the continue code, the game was IMPOSSIBLE to beat on a normal NES. And, to further insult the player, they made the continue code 'ABBA'
I actually slogged through this game. I fought through wave after wave of pallet-swapped enemies, entrenched machine guns, grenades..
I got to the third level, which consisted of cyan platforms and black water or oil. I slogged through it, and as I approached the end, I took a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. See, SNK's programmers had learned how to make the screen scroll UP, but not how to scroll the screen DOWN.
so I was stuck there.
I still have the cartridge. It glows with an evil red aura.
AT&T recently sent my folks a letter informing them that prices had gone up to $50 per month. This caused them to seriously consider the worth of the cable service. Two weeks later, the statement arrives - my folks had overpaid $5, and it was refunded to their account.
And just today, during a SSH session at school, the SSH session went dead for no good reason. When I got home, I discovered that the cable modem lights were syncing again and again and again and again. Once lights were finally synced up, I went online to discover a network outage, no doubt.
Then there's the odd issue of their DHCP servers. My address includes a DHCP server address, but updating it doesn't really do anything - in March 2001, my IP address shifted from 24.*.*.* to 65.*.*.*.
Bleem died for a number of reasons, but one that particularly stands out in my mind is their complete arrogance towards people who bought the PC version of bleem. They stopped updating for compatibility with newer games, their forums were closed because of 'a technical error' and when the Bleem page was finally updated, it was to announce Bleemcast, leaving PC owners in the dust. They told people to write 'BLEEM!' on the registration cards for new PSX games and send it in to Sony to prove that Bleem boosted PSX sales. Obviously it didn't work.
Maybe -- just maybe -- had they adopted UltraHLE's policy of emulating the BEST GAMES FIRST, they wouldn't be in this mess. In my opinion, UltraHLE is still one of the best emulators due to its compatibilty with the best games. Games such as Final Fantasy 8 didn't work right, and Bleem's only response was basically 'update your drivers, wait for an updated version, or screw off'
Anyone wanting to charge for an emulator better learn from Bleem's example.
Bleem! (the PC product) failed because it was exploiting a niche market - there was a lack of quality PSX emulators waay back in 1999. IIRC, the PSEmu team quit working on the project over some spat and there weren't any quality emulators.
Bleem! 'leaked' a demo to the public. Wow! It could play all the popular releases! I'd buy the real version!. Bleem! claimed this demo was unauthorized and ordered everybody to yank it. All the big sites (Zophar's) complied while all the smaller sites hung on to it.
But when Bleem! was released, it *really* sucked. Many of its much-touted features (ability to play in a higher resolution, better graphics, better sound) were offset by the fact that many games had huge graphical errors, big slowdowns, and some wouldn't even play at all. Randy (the coder of bleem) blamed these problems on drivers and no, it wasn't the fault of Bleem. Never mind that if one had the latest up-to-the-minute reference drivers, Bleem still sucked ass. Bleem! promised frequent updates right on the box, but the last 'frequent' update was in:
November 1999.
Sounds pretty frequent. I mean, heaven forbid you should update the emulator to work with the latest games. When I pay for an emulator, I expect quality work, not the half-finished crudshow that Bleem! was. Bleem! was largely dead by the time ePSXe came out - ePSXe did all that bleem! could, and it didn't require that you have a CDKey and you could *get this* save states, unlike Bleem. And ePSXe was updated fairly frequently and had a better compatibility list than Bleem had.
So, good riddance. When you release an emulator to the public, it had damn well better be good, and it had better be updated frequently.
On an odd note, updating from 1.4 to 1.5a actually slowed down FMV playing. Bleem never bothered to rectify this.
The deal is that the ratings are often assigned by people with hardly any background in gaming. Many have never even picked up a video game controller in their life, and yet they decide what is and what isn't appropriate for millions of gamers. As more stores adopt these ratings as law, you should really be questioning this practice.
How does the ESRB rate games?
Three people are randomly chosen from a pool of 'trained' reviewers. Instead of actually playing the game to see if anything objectional is in there, these people will watch videotape footage of potentionally objectional scenes and will also review the script to a game. They then assign a rating without ever meeting each other, or actually playing the game. This kind of system leads to ratings like 'T' on Chrono Chross because it has 'suggestive elements'.
Prove to the owner of this company (warning: flash-based) that SCSI is faster than IDE. He claims that 'Superdell's Personal Model' is the absolute fastest Windows-based machine on the planet and it has top of the line parts, and if you can tell him how to make it better, he'll pay you $1000. Click on the right arrow twice where it says 'Dang Fast P4 model' and then click 'More Info'.
Okay. Whatever. Even in his highest-end servers he uses a RAID setup with IDE.
I'd sure like to burn this guy out of his $1K. He's really obnoxious; he insults the other two competitors in town as well as Dell, Sony, etc., and, in an act of either supreme arrogance or stupidity, he put up a HUGE BILLBOARD proclaiming that he 'beat the dentist and the Better Business Beauru'.
There are a number of anti-backup technologies available for the content producers to use. The most common ones, according to gamecopyworld.com, are:
- SafeDisc
- SecuROM
- LaserLock
- CopyLock
Re:I don't understand
on
GNU Emacs 21
·
· Score: 1
The best text editor I have ever used is, out of all things, DOS's EDIT
Why?
It combines two things: speed and user friendliness. I haven't been able to find a clone for Linux, which is sad really. VI would be good if you didn't have to memorize all the secret codes. EMACS would be good if I can get gpm to cooperate with it.
I use nano for text editing, but having to hit CTRL, as well as horrible word wrapping, are relly annoying..
WARNING: Unreal is too retarded to find libglide2x.so
WARNING: Unreal has found libglide2x.so, but it is a cursed version
WARNING: X sucks for 3D gaming
error: DRI is enabled, but it wasn't compiled by the programmer's girlfriend.
WARNING: Detected posts on Slashdot proclaiming Linux gaming to be the key to mainstream acceptance. Would you like to post as an AC refuting these claims? (Y/Y)
Mandrake: Linux Gamer edition
just double-click the Unreal icon. Just like Windows
Personally, I think that Orrin Hatch is a clown. He always seems to be on the side of big corporations, like when he sponsored the DMCA. His view on the whole Napster debate was that of the corporations - those evil music pirates must be stopped.
The worst part is that I can't vote because I'm underage, and even if I did, he'd probably get reelected because he's Orrin Hatch. I've wanted to write my reps about the SSSCA, but why listen to someone who's a minor?
I've been following IceWM rather closely for the past year, and it's at 1.0.9 - released a week or so ago, IIRC.
Really, though, what features are there to add to window managers? If you add too many features, then you end up like Enlightenment, which IMO is more like a desktop environment than a window manager.
I'd like to know how you can rubberize your laptop like that. My cousin recently dropped my dad's laptop three feet and it survived the fall. Well, the notebook itself did, anyway, the hard drive's head was knocked out of alignment as evidenced by the loud clicking noise when the laptop is turned on.
The notebook in question was a ThinkPad 600X that felt delicate to begin with. Now that my dad's getting another laptop, are there any rugged models that can survive a 1 meter plunge?
I tried installing Mandrake 8.0 on my machine, and the results were spectacular. The installer did NOT like my machine one bit. Never a dull moment when the installer decided to tell me to go to hell by segfaulting and hanging about a third of a way through the installation.
The installer crashed because I had not provided any keyboard input at the "Networking" section". I tried text-only, lores, etc. etc. No dice. Removing memory helped somewhat but it wasn't enough to get me through the installer.
When I finally did get it installed, it turned out that the RPM database had been magically corrupted. Fsck also decided to run for no reason at all.
... as a 16-year-old, I've been having a lot of trouble finding a job. Everyone is:
-not hiring
-wants an MCSE or a CNE or any other BS certification
-wants a college degree for tech suppr0t
I've sent my resume out to five different companies and haven't heard back from one. I've had my friends check their connections to different people. No one is hiring. Drives me nuts.
Really, only Katz thinks that 15-year-olds are the leaders of the Net. I think that everyone is working against me.:P While I was a bit arrogant at 15, I certainly didn't filter out anybody I didn't like.
Strange. Port 80 here in Salt Lake City isn't filtered yet, but it could be only a matter of time.
How else do you stop a Code Red worm, however? I think this is one of those situations that, in order to stop, you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Paula Houston, who was elected the porn czar of Utah, seems to be on a moral crusade to restrict pr0n from minors. Granted, that's her job, but she tramples on the rights of others in the process. Surprisingly enough, I haven't seen any filters in my local library yet, but it's just a matter of time.
Slashdot Mirror
DNS stopped responding every other day for me.
I finally said "screw it" and used Verizon's DNS servers. I haven't had any problems since.
The DNS servers are
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
Nice, simple, and easy to remember.
this is OLD news. AT&T has been capping their bandwidth for a month now.
AT&T has been providing quality service for all your needs
FilePlanet *used* to be good - until the dotcom crunch started and Gamespy felt they had to make a profit. So, by taking full advantage of revolutionary electronic distribution, they cut the number of servers, requires you to have a GameSpy ID (which they spam you without an opt-out link) implemented 'waiting lines, and turned the front page into a huge Java/JavaScript/Flash monstrosity. They then push their cheesy 'Personal Server' on you at every turn - they even have to back it up with Testimonials.
What's even worse is the GameSpy policy requiring *all* files on GameSpy-hosted networks to be on a FilePlanet server - this even applies to sites which are indirectly hosted by GameSpy (like skins.counter-strike.net). What's with the Penny Arcade art?
GameSpy are a bunch of money-grubbing bastards. Thanks for killing off halflife.net
jerks
Indeed.
Slashdot engages in massive copyright infringement every day - don't believe me? Go to SLASHDOT'S L33T WAREZ SECTION FOR GAMEZ AND APPZ
By the way, there are some programs that deserve to be pirated
(for the humor impaired, warez.slashdot.org resolves to 127.0.0.1)
I've been in the dark as far as Internet access goes since Saturday. My cable modem continually flashes one single light - Power - indicating that it is indeed trying to sync up with something, if anything. AT&T has announced that all of their customers should be online within the next two to ten days, and that for every day I lose internet service, they'll credit me with two days.
In the meantime, I've been experiencing symptoms of Internet withdrawal. Like a drug addict, I've been having fits of convultion when I realize that I can't brush up on my Counter-Strike skillz. We do have a dial-up connection back at home, but it started to refuse to authenticate my username and pass sometime around May, so I've been spending the entire weekend offline. At least with a drug IV you can _feel_ the pain of the needle prick.
That game would have to be one of SNK's worst.
Their port to the NES of this rather classic arcade game was messed up. IIRC, you had a gun, four lives, and baddies ambushing you from everywhere. Sure, you could get into a tank - until it ran out of fuel. It was nearly impossible to dodge the flying bullets and IIRC, you died with one shot.
You thought CONTRA was hard? Ikari Warriors makes Contra look like Barney's Hide 'n' Seek in terms of difficulty. Levels are ridiculously long, to the point where the music is like sandpaper to your ears. If you didn't know the continue code, the game was IMPOSSIBLE to beat on a normal NES. And, to further insult the player, they made the continue code 'ABBA'
I actually slogged through this game. I fought through wave after wave of pallet-swapped enemies, entrenched machine guns, grenades..
I got to the third level, which consisted of cyan platforms and black water or oil. I slogged through it, and as I approached the end, I took a wrong turn and wound up at a dead end. See, SNK's programmers had learned how to make the screen scroll UP, but not how to scroll the screen DOWN.
so I was stuck there.
I still have the cartridge. It glows with an evil red aura.
AT&T recently sent my folks a letter informing them that prices had gone up to $50 per month. This caused them to seriously consider the worth of the cable service. Two weeks later, the statement arrives - my folks had overpaid $5, and it was refunded to their account.
And just today, during a SSH session at school, the SSH session went dead for no good reason. When I got home, I discovered that the cable modem lights were syncing again and again and again and again. Once lights were finally synced up, I went online to discover a network outage, no doubt.
Then there's the odd issue of their DHCP servers. My address includes a DHCP server address, but updating it doesn't really do anything - in March 2001, my IP address shifted from 24.*.*.* to 65.*.*.*.
# make menuconfig
<snip compiling stuff>
Cannot find ncurses, please install it on your system (paraphrased)
#rpm -q ncurses
ncurses-5.2-16mdk
This is on a Mandrake 8.1 system. What is wrong with the kernel?
Bleem died for a number of reasons, but one that particularly stands out in my mind is their complete arrogance towards people who bought the PC version of bleem. They stopped updating for compatibility with newer games, their forums were closed because of 'a technical error' and when the Bleem page was finally updated, it was to announce Bleemcast, leaving PC owners in the dust. They told people to write 'BLEEM!' on the registration cards for new PSX games and send it in to Sony to prove that Bleem boosted PSX sales. Obviously it didn't work.
Maybe -- just maybe -- had they adopted UltraHLE's policy of emulating the BEST GAMES FIRST, they wouldn't be in this mess. In my opinion, UltraHLE is still one of the best emulators due to its compatibilty with the best games. Games such as Final Fantasy 8 didn't work right, and Bleem's only response was basically 'update your drivers, wait for an updated version, or screw off'
Anyone wanting to charge for an emulator better learn from Bleem's example.
Bleem! (the PC product) failed because it was exploiting a niche market - there was a lack of quality PSX emulators waay back in 1999. IIRC, the PSEmu team quit working on the project over some spat and there weren't any quality emulators.
Bleem! 'leaked' a demo to the public. Wow! It could play all the popular releases! I'd buy the real version!. Bleem! claimed this demo was unauthorized and ordered everybody to yank it. All the big sites (Zophar's) complied while all the smaller sites hung on to it.
But when Bleem! was released, it *really* sucked. Many of its much-touted features (ability to play in a higher resolution, better graphics, better sound) were offset by the fact that many games had huge graphical errors, big slowdowns, and some wouldn't even play at all. Randy (the coder of bleem) blamed these problems on drivers and no, it wasn't the fault of Bleem. Never mind that if one had the latest up-to-the-minute reference drivers, Bleem still sucked ass. Bleem! promised frequent updates right on the box, but the last 'frequent' update was in:
November 1999.
Sounds pretty frequent. I mean, heaven forbid you should update the emulator to work with the latest games. When I pay for an emulator, I expect quality work, not the half-finished crudshow that Bleem! was. Bleem! was largely dead by the time ePSXe came out - ePSXe did all that bleem! could, and it didn't require that you have a CDKey and you could *get this* save states, unlike Bleem. And ePSXe was updated fairly frequently and had a better compatibility list than Bleem had.
So, good riddance. When you release an emulator to the public, it had damn well better be good, and it had better be updated frequently.
On an odd note, updating from 1.4 to 1.5a actually slowed down FMV playing. Bleem never bothered to rectify this.
The deal is that the ratings are often assigned by people with hardly any background in gaming. Many have never even picked up a video game controller in their life, and yet they decide what is and what isn't appropriate for millions of gamers. As more stores adopt these ratings as law, you should really be questioning this practice.
How does the ESRB rate games?
Three people are randomly chosen from a pool of 'trained' reviewers. Instead of actually playing the game to see if anything objectional is in there, these people will watch videotape footage of potentionally objectional scenes and will also review the script to a game. They then assign a rating without ever meeting each other, or actually playing the game. This kind of system leads to ratings like 'T' on Chrono Chross because it has 'suggestive elements'.
Prove to the owner of this company (warning: flash-based) that SCSI is faster than IDE. He claims that 'Superdell's Personal Model' is the absolute fastest Windows-based machine on the planet and it has top of the line parts, and if you can tell him how to make it better, he'll pay you $1000. Click on the right arrow twice where it says 'Dang Fast P4 model' and then click 'More Info'.
Okay. Whatever. Even in his highest-end servers he uses a RAID setup with IDE.
I'd sure like to burn this guy out of his $1K. He's really obnoxious; he insults the other two competitors in town as well as Dell, Sony, etc., and, in an act of either supreme arrogance or stupidity, he put up a HUGE BILLBOARD proclaiming that he 'beat the dentist and the Better Business Beauru'.
There are a number of anti-backup technologies available for the content producers to use. The most common ones, according to gamecopyworld.com, are:
- SafeDisc
- SecuROM
- LaserLock
- CopyLock
The best text editor I have ever used is, out of all things, DOS's EDIT
Why?
It combines two things: speed and user friendliness. I haven't been able to find a clone for Linux, which is sad really. VI would be good if you didn't have to memorize all the secret codes. EMACS would be good if I can get gpm to cooperate with it.
I use nano for text editing, but having to hit CTRL, as well as horrible word wrapping, are relly annoying..
I'm also excited about this. Maybe, finally, I can actually RUN Unreal Tournament! Imagine:
standard linux attempt at launching Unreal
[dopple@c851470-a dopple] unreal
WARNING: Unreal has detected that you want to launch Unreal Would you like a headache? (Yes/Yes)y
WARNING: Missing dependencies
libyousuck.so
libhaha.so
libObscureVoodooDriver.so
WARNING: Unreal is too retarded to find libglide2x.so
WARNING: Unreal has found libglide2x.so, but it is a cursed version
WARNING: X sucks for 3D gaming
error: DRI is enabled, but it wasn't compiled by the programmer's girlfriend.
WARNING: Detected posts on Slashdot proclaiming Linux gaming to be the key to mainstream acceptance. Would you like to post as an AC refuting these claims? (Y/Y)
Mandrake: Linux Gamer edition
just double-click the Unreal icon. Just like Windows
When I try to run it on Mandrake 8.1, it doesn't give me any errors - it just quits.
Thanks, AOL
Personally, I think that Orrin Hatch is a clown. He always seems to be on the side of big corporations, like when he sponsored the DMCA. His view on the whole Napster debate was that of the corporations - those evil music pirates must be stopped.
The worst part is that I can't vote because I'm underage, and even if I did, he'd probably get reelected because he's Orrin Hatch. I've wanted to write my reps about the SSSCA, but why listen to someone who's a minor?
Just one of the many perks of living in Utah.
I've been following IceWM rather closely for the past year, and it's at 1.0.9 - released a week or so ago, IIRC.
Really, though, what features are there to add to window managers? If you add too many features, then you end up like Enlightenment, which IMO is more like a desktop environment than a window manager.
In addition to the mirrors listed above, here's one that gives me 83K/sec
ftp://ftp.du.se/mandrake/iso/
I'd like to know how you can rubberize your laptop like that. My cousin recently dropped my dad's laptop three feet and it survived the fall. Well, the notebook itself did, anyway, the hard drive's head was knocked out of alignment as evidenced by the loud clicking noise when the laptop is turned on.
The notebook in question was a ThinkPad 600X that felt delicate to begin with. Now that my dad's getting another laptop, are there any rugged models that can survive a 1 meter plunge?
I tried installing Mandrake 8.0 on my machine, and the results were spectacular. The installer did NOT like my machine one bit. Never a dull moment when the installer decided to tell me to go to hell by segfaulting and hanging about a third of a way through the installation.
The installer crashed because I had not provided any keyboard input at the "Networking" section". I tried text-only, lores, etc. etc. No dice. Removing memory helped somewhat but it wasn't enough to get me through the installer.
When I finally did get it installed, it turned out that the RPM database had been magically corrupted. Fsck also decided to run for no reason at all.
One wacky system, indeed.
... as a 16-year-old, I've been having a lot of trouble finding a job. Everyone is:
:P While I was a bit arrogant at 15, I certainly didn't filter out anybody I didn't like.
-not hiring
-wants an MCSE or a CNE or any other BS certification
-wants a college degree for tech suppr0t
I've sent my resume out to five different companies and haven't heard back from one. I've had my friends check their connections to different people. No one is hiring. Drives me nuts.
Really, only Katz thinks that 15-year-olds are the leaders of the Net. I think that everyone is working against me.
Strange. Port 80 here in Salt Lake City isn't filtered yet, but it could be only a matter of time.
How else do you stop a Code Red worm, however? I think this is one of those situations that, in order to stop, you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It was fun running a webserver while it lasted..
Paula Houston, who was elected the porn czar of Utah, seems to be on a moral crusade to restrict pr0n from minors. Granted, that's her job, but she tramples on the rights of others in the process. Surprisingly enough, I haven't seen any filters in my local library yet, but it's just a matter of time.
What can you expect from a state that has students rallying against porno and a porn czar who seems to imply that ISPs should be more responsible for porn?
from the webpage:
<A previous attempt had been made around Halloween, to steal this computer. It was partially moved off of my front step>
Hmm, I wonder why Halloween, and not other holidays? Damn punk kids.