Date posted: 12/23/01 at 03:30:12
I've got Quake II ported to the Pocket PC platform. It will be a couple days before release, because there are details yet to clean up (GAPI drawing and input controls). I've only tried it in the emulator, so I can't give you an indication of the speed. It runs 100% on my 300 mhz laptop in emulator, but that of course is no indication of what I'll see on the StrongARM. The main problem at this time is the shareware pak file is 48 MB. I don't know if I'll have gZip compression ready for the initial release or not. The way I implemented compression for Quake I is so freaking slow that at this point I'm considering something more advanced so the loading won't be so compromised. I only have 16 MB CF Cards, so I'm going to have to strip everything out of the pak I can to get it to install on my hardware.
Here's a screen shot. This is in the Pocket PC emulator, using a non-standard resolution of 240x180 (same as Pocket Quake I in portrait).
Dan East
Last modification: Dan East - 12/23/01 at 03:30:12
----
note: i am not dan east... another unrelated dan.
Isn't this what robots.txt is for? You disallow all search engines apart from your own from indexing pages that you don't really think people outside your department will want to see. Think how long it would take to put excluded words into every page of your site when a single line in robots.txt would suffice:)
Porn sites who promote (through a variaty of means) the words "free, porn, sex" and the like and then demote "pay, fee, membership, credit card".
This proposal will not make the indexing of sites more reliable. If anything it will add to the common confusion associated with meta keywords. Yes it is quite a nice idea in theory but I can't see anyone wanting to exclude words from being searched. The main point in the proposal was that the author felt guilty about pulling in people who had entered search terms that appeared on his page. One would ask why he is publishing information on the internet if he doesn't want people to look at it. A better solution would be to get people to use search engines properly. As an example I will use the stalking on the internet term. If people put these words into google and come up with his page then prehaps they should have modified their query to something like "stalking on the internet" and they may not have found his page. On the other hand if his page contains the phrase "stalking on the internet" it migh be just what the seaker was looking for.
Yep, that works in two ways... they are a small price for us to pay to use software, but they also pay a small price to the developers... very small. I doubt they are getting paid on a per impression basis, more likely on a per click. As no one clicks on adverts any more incorporating adverts alone into a software product is useless. Therefore (apply paranoia now) there is a very strong motivation to introduce spyware as this is likely to provide a higher return to the developers.
You gets what you pays for. If the developers can't afford to support and run software, be it high bandwidth requirements or just needing to feed their kids then they need to find money somewhere. Adverts != money. Spyware == money. Registration fee == money.
I have spent the past three years studying at Exeter University in the UK, graduating this summer. For the past 4 or so years Exeter had been running a cashless scheme called Mondex in association with Natwest bank. This consisted of a 'smart' card that could be loaded up with money that was debited from your current account at a number of ATM like machines. The smart card acted as our university identity card, library card, and also gave us access to some buildings and therefore every student at the university carried one and every student had the opportunity to load it with e-cash. All the shops, restaurants, cafeterias, and bars on campus were fitted with retailer terminals which transferred e-cash from our cards onto the retailer's card which, at the end of the day, could be taken to one of these ATM like machines and the money taken during the day 'uploaded' into the retailers bank account. This system was used by a lot of students for a number of reasons:
1) It was relatively secure. While you didn't need a pin number to spend money you could only spend what was on the card and you needed a pin number to put more money on the card. The card had a photo on it to prove it was you.
2) It was convenient. Instead of trying to work out if you had enough coppers to afford a pint you just slapped your card into your balance reader (a small LCD display with a slot in it that could be hung from a key ring) and it would give you a readout of how much you had left. Also you didn't have to carry around loads of heavy shrapnel like change.
3) Many students said it helped them to manage their money. This may just have been a psychology thing but for many it seamed to work.
The system worked very well (apart from when the ATM machines went down or ate your card) and was relatively beer proof (play sink or swim with your cards and you soon find out how long they last) until Natwest was bought by The Royal Bank of Scotland and the contract was up for renegotiation. Shame really, I quite liked the e-cash idea... it was more convenient for me at any rate.
.biz.info.somemoneymakingtld will never, in the mind of the public, be as sexy as a.com. How can it be?.com is the internet to so many people the same way that if you don't start a web address with www. then they will put it on regardless.
Apart from the CC domains which are good for country specific sites these new tld's don't really trip off the tongue that easily either..biz just sounds a bit unprofessional i guess. As for.museum and.coop why can't they use.info and.org seeing as that is what they are. and why is there a.pro when they could use the new.name for a personal site or.org/.com for a professional ORGanisation or commercial site. Ok, so.com is overloaded but thats just tough, come up with something origional damn you marketing people.
So, to summerise my post....com is the only thing the masses recognise and these new tld's just sound a bit shoddy when you say them out loud.
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years
on
Dorm Storm?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
You are showing your age. I have just graduated with a degree in CS from Exeter University (UK).
Almost all course notes were placed online as well as information about coursework and the end of year projects. There was always one module a year that didn't go online because either the prof didn't make notes or didn't like computers but the majority were online.
Also email replaced using a notice board to check if a lecture was cancelled or if some other important announcement (eg price of beer fell) needed to be made.
Dialup was not an option thanks to a contract that the University made with some weird phone company that meant that data phone calls cost almost double the price of what someone in a normal residential house off campus would pay.
If everyone who needed to use a computer or even a networked computer had used the computer labs then it would have been impossible to get in them, the contention ratio was impressively high. It was bad enough when everyone was reaching a coursework deadline and had to print out stuff... there was only electronic submission for code, not documentation.
And then there is all the warez and IRC and/. and not forgetting things like amihotornot.com;)
--dan
Why is SMS best for really instant messages
on
SMS vs. E-mail?
·
· Score: 2
SMS is so popular here in the UK because it lets people who don't sit in front of their computers 24 hours a day to communicate with each other cheaply and efficiently from anywhere in the country and to a certain extent abroad. Here are some scenarios to try to explain why the non-geek community love it so much:
If you are sitting in a club and wondering where the friend you came out with has gone off to you send them a short text message "where r u?" to their phone. Because their phone not only beeps but also vibrates when they receive a message they look at their phone and respond with "busy flirting" you know not to bother trying to find them.
You are sitting in a pub with a few friends and remember you were going to invite your best mate James along to join you. He wanted to know when you got to the pub as he lives close by. Do you:
a) Leave your drink on the table with your friends and go to James' house to get him. Note that you could come back to find that your drink was drunk (some mates those are) or spiked (I only had the one officer). Note that you also loose valuable drinking time here.
b) Phone James from your mobile and attempt to have a conversation with him even though you have been drinking for a while and you start on one of your hour long drunken rambles about how wonderful/depressing the world is.
c) Send James a quick text message to get him down here quick.
Most people in the UK with a phone (and that is quite a lot of people) would now choose C.
You met some gorgeous looking girl/guy last night and want to know if they want to come out for lunch today. You haven't got the guts to actually phone them because you didn't really think they were that interested in you but you don't want to give up that easily. You send them a text message "Would you like to come out for a drink? - dunos" and wait for a reply. SMS is also used a lot for flirting and you can sit for ages sending messaged back and fourth.
You want to ask a lot of your friends out to lunch. You could phone them all but this could mean between 5 and 10 minutes to each person, which could use a lot of your time. Instead you send a "group message" to all your friends from your phone. Everyone gets the message and they all come to lunch and you only spent a minute or two writing the message.
SMS messaging can be seen as a rather "sad" way to communicate and is amazingly annoying when you are sitting on a train and everyone's mobiles are bleeping all the time. However it is also very useful and until you actually use it you do not realise how useful it really is. It is also very easy because if you have someone's phone number in your address book you can send them a message. You don't need to worry about what carrier they are with or how to convert their number into an email address or anything like that.
In light of this/. Article here are some questions to ponder before people berate ISP's for newsgroup culling. It is fairly obvious as seen by other posters that removing selected alt.binaries.* groups not only appeases the worlds various recording and motion picture associations but it also reduces the cost of the data transfer for said ISP's.
Was Usenet designed, perhaps a better word would be conceived, for file sharing?
Are there better systems and protocols available for file sharing?
Should you be allowed to download a copyrighted movie or mp3 from a newsgroup when the copyright holder has not given consent?
Is it censorship when the police raid a car-boot sale and remove any trader selling a bootlegged copy of some music or a video?
Is it censorship when the police or other legal body remove access to a newsgroup that is notorious for "dealing" in bootlegged material?
Could Usenet improve if there was more control over the content it contained?
Note that these questions do not necessarily reflect my views and I am as guilty as the next person for listening to "illegal" mp3's however they are intended as discussion points.
The PRS (Performing Rights Society) [ http://www.prs.co.uk ] will only demand fees if you "perform" (intresting word) music to the consumer. This could be through a webcast or by putting clips of music (of any length) on a website. Therefore if someone runs either a website offering previews of ringtones or a telephone service offering previews of ringtones and said service is operated from the UK then they should be licenced by the PRS. Charges differ depending on the ammount of use and how much money the user may generate. The "tarrif" can be seen here: http://www.prs.co.uk/prs.nsf/sitepages/musiconnet
After dealing with the PRS you then have to contact the MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) [ http://www.mcps.co.uk/ ] who will sell you a licence allowing your consumers to download or receive music. A mobile ring tone would probably come under the description of a "novelty" product and therefore their rules and regulations are thus: http://www.mcps.co.uk/802566AC003A37F2/lookup/Nove lty%20Products.html
My immediate reaction after reading this article was not to create some sort of killer robot that would slash humans to death in an attempt to rule the world, akin to the Terminator movie, but to use this technology to power the Sony Aibo. It would make it even more realistic in replicating "dog behaviour" than it is now because it would eat and poop!
I was trying to be too special with my first ever post on/.
Here are the links from my above post that will work without you having to monkey about with them:
In the UK there are essentially two bodies who goven music licencing. They are the MCPS and the PRS. They will both charge UK music users if they publish audio on the web that requires a licence (for eg, music not owned by the publisher although there are other exceptions) however the PRS state on their website that software such as Napster is not to blame because they are not the content providers..
Where there is broadband available in the UK the amount of mp3 swapping between individuals can be very high. Take the University that I attend as an example. On the residential network (the network running around student halls of residence) the number of people sharing mp3's via Microsoft Networking is very high indeed and that doesn't take into account those people who set up their own FTP servers and alike. Software like Napster and websites that publish links to mp3 files just make it easier for people to share and download music whether it has been authorised by the copyright holder or not. If these services did not exist then the semi-underground movement of sharing mp3's (or bootleg tapes, or CD's, or any other form of music carrying media) would continue.
Another good website which deals with copyright issues within the UK is run by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Although it is a bit backward with regards to specific information on digital and Internet copyright issues it does give the raw facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Dan East
PocketQuake Developer
Posts: 1742
Date posted: 12/23/01 at 03:30:12
I've got Quake II ported to the Pocket PC platform. It will be a couple days before release, because there are details yet to clean up (GAPI drawing and input controls). I've only tried it in the emulator, so I can't give you an indication of the speed. It runs 100% on my 300 mhz laptop in emulator, but that of course is no indication of what I'll see on the StrongARM. The main problem at this time is the shareware pak file is 48 MB. I don't know if I'll have gZip compression ready for the initial release or not. The way I implemented compression for Quake I is so freaking slow that at this point I'm considering something more advanced so the loading won't be so compromised. I only have 16 MB CF Cards, so I'm going to have to strip everything out of the pak I can to get it to install on my hardware.
Here's a screen shot. This is in the Pocket PC emulator, using a non-standard resolution of 240x180 (same as Pocket Quake I in portrait).
Dan East
Last modification: Dan East - 12/23/01 at 03:30:12
----
note: i am not dan east... another unrelated dan.
Isn't this what robots.txt is for? You disallow all search engines apart from your own from indexing pages that you don't really think people outside your department will want to see. Think how long it would take to put excluded words into every page of your site when a single line in robots.txt would suffice :)
Porn sites who promote (through a variaty of means) the words "free, porn, sex" and the like and then demote "pay, fee, membership, credit card".
This proposal will not make the indexing of sites more reliable. If anything it will add to the common confusion associated with meta keywords. Yes it is quite a nice idea in theory but I can't see anyone wanting to exclude words from being searched. The main point in the proposal was that the author felt guilty about pulling in people who had entered search terms that appeared on his page. One would ask why he is publishing information on the internet if he doesn't want people to look at it. A better solution would be to get people to use search engines properly. As an example I will use the stalking on the internet term. If people put these words into google and come up with his page then prehaps they should have modified their query to something like "stalking on the internet" and they may not have found his page. On the other hand if his page contains the phrase "stalking on the internet" it migh be just what the seaker was looking for.
To this proposal I say nay. or prehaps oink.
10 print "Software Patents are bad, M'kay?"
20 goto 10
You gets what you pays for. If the developers can't afford to support and run software, be it high bandwidth requirements or just needing to feed their kids then they need to find money somewhere. Adverts != money. Spyware == money. Registration fee == money.
we could just ban music. that appears to be the common denominator here.
I have spent the past three years studying at Exeter University in the UK, graduating this summer. For the past 4 or so years Exeter had been running a cashless scheme called Mondex in association with Natwest bank. This consisted of a 'smart' card that could be loaded up with money that was debited from your current account at a number of ATM like machines. The smart card acted as our university identity card, library card, and also gave us access to some buildings and therefore every student at the university carried one and every student had the opportunity to load it with e-cash. All the shops, restaurants, cafeterias, and bars on campus were fitted with retailer terminals which transferred e-cash from our cards onto the retailer's card which, at the end of the day, could be taken to one of these ATM like machines and the money taken during the day 'uploaded' into the retailers bank account. This system was used by a lot of students for a number of reasons:
1) It was relatively secure. While you didn't need a pin number to spend money you could only spend what was on the card and you needed a pin number to put more money on the card. The card had a photo on it to prove it was you.
2) It was convenient. Instead of trying to work out if you had enough coppers to afford a pint you just slapped your card into your balance reader (a small LCD display with a slot in it that could be hung from a key ring) and it would give you a readout of how much you had left. Also you didn't have to carry around loads of heavy shrapnel like change.
3) Many students said it helped them to manage their money. This may just have been a psychology thing but for many it seamed to work.
The system worked very well (apart from when the ATM machines went down or ate your card) and was relatively beer proof (play sink or swim with your cards and you soon find out how long they last) until Natwest was bought by The Royal Bank of Scotland and the contract was up for renegotiation. Shame really, I quite liked the e-cash idea... it was more convenient for me at any rate.
.biz .info .somemoneymakingtld will never, in the mind of the public, be as sexy as a .com. How can it be? .com is the internet to so many people the same way that if you don't start a web address with www. then they will put it on regardless.
.biz just sounds a bit unprofessional i guess. As for .museum and .coop why can't they use .info and .org seeing as that is what they are. and why is there a .pro when they could use the new .name for a personal site or .org/.com for a professional ORGanisation or commercial site. Ok, so .com is overloaded but thats just tough, come up with something origional damn you marketing people.
.com is the only thing the masses recognise and these new tld's just sound a bit shoddy when you say them out loud.
Apart from the CC domains which are good for country specific sites these new tld's don't really trip off the tongue that easily either.
So, to summerise my post...
ok. bad post but it is late here ok.
There was a very good news article by BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson on the BBC website covering very much what you just stated:
w n_correspondent/newsid_1544000/1544749.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_o
Which could be of interest.
You are showing your age. I have just graduated with a degree in CS from Exeter University (UK).
/. and not forgetting things like amihotornot.com ;)
Almost all course notes were placed online as well as information about coursework and the end of year projects. There was always one module a year that didn't go online because either the prof didn't make notes or didn't like computers but the majority were online.
Also email replaced using a notice board to check if a lecture was cancelled or if some other important announcement (eg price of beer fell) needed to be made.
Dialup was not an option thanks to a contract that the University made with some weird phone company that meant that data phone calls cost almost double the price of what someone in a normal residential house off campus would pay.
If everyone who needed to use a computer or even a networked computer had used the computer labs then it would have been impossible to get in them, the contention ratio was impressively high. It was bad enough when everyone was reaching a coursework deadline and had to print out stuff... there was only electronic submission for code, not documentation.
And then there is all the warez and IRC and
--dan
SMS is so popular here in the UK because it lets people who don't sit in front of their computers 24 hours a day to communicate with each other cheaply and efficiently from anywhere in the country and to a certain extent abroad. Here are some scenarios to try to explain why the non-geek community love it so much:
If you are sitting in a club and wondering where the friend you came out with has gone off to you send them a short text message "where r u?" to their phone. Because their phone not only beeps but also vibrates when they receive a message they look at their phone and respond with "busy flirting" you know not to bother trying to find them.
You are sitting in a pub with a few friends and remember you were going to invite your best mate James along to join you. He wanted to know when you got to the pub as he lives close by. Do you:
a) Leave your drink on the table with your friends and go to James' house to get him. Note that you could come back to find that your drink was drunk (some mates those are) or spiked (I only had the one officer). Note that you also loose valuable drinking time here.
b) Phone James from your mobile and attempt to have a conversation with him even though you have been drinking for a while and you start on one of your hour long drunken rambles about how wonderful/depressing the world is.
c) Send James a quick text message to get him down here quick.
Most people in the UK with a phone (and that is quite a lot of people) would now choose C.
You met some gorgeous looking girl/guy last night and want to know if they want to come out for lunch today. You haven't got the guts to actually phone them because you didn't really think they were that interested in you but you don't want to give up that easily. You send them a text message "Would you like to come out for a drink? - dunos" and wait for a reply. SMS is also used a lot for flirting and you can sit for ages sending messaged back and fourth.
You want to ask a lot of your friends out to lunch. You could phone them all but this could mean between 5 and 10 minutes to each person, which could use a lot of your time. Instead you send a "group message" to all your friends from your phone. Everyone gets the message and they all come to lunch and you only spent a minute or two writing the message.
SMS messaging can be seen as a rather "sad" way to communicate and is amazingly annoying when you are sitting on a train and everyone's mobiles are bleeping all the time. However it is also very useful and until you actually use it you do not realise how useful it really is. It is also very easy because if you have someone's phone number in your address book you can send them a message. You don't need to worry about what carrier they are with or how to convert their number into an email address or anything like that.
In light of this /. Article here are some questions to ponder before people berate ISP's for newsgroup culling. It is fairly obvious as seen by other posters that removing selected alt.binaries.* groups not only appeases the worlds various recording and motion picture associations but it also reduces the cost of the data transfer for said ISP's.
Was Usenet designed, perhaps a better word would be conceived, for file sharing?
Are there better systems and protocols available for file sharing?
Should you be allowed to download a copyrighted movie or mp3 from a newsgroup when the copyright holder has not given consent?
Is it censorship when the police raid a car-boot sale and remove any trader selling a bootlegged copy of some music or a video?
Is it censorship when the police or other legal body remove access to a newsgroup that is notorious for "dealing" in bootlegged material?
Could Usenet improve if there was more control over the content it contained?
Note that these questions do not necessarily reflect my views and I am as guilty as the next person for listening to "illegal" mp3's however they are intended as discussion points.
AllYourSucksAreBelongToUs.com
(sorry, couldn't help myself)
The PRS (Performing Rights Society) [ http://www.prs.co.uk ] will only demand fees if you "perform" (intresting word) music to the consumer. This could be through a webcast or by putting clips of music (of any length) on a website. Therefore if someone runs either a website offering previews of ringtones or a telephone service offering previews of ringtones and said service is operated from the UK then they should be licenced by the PRS. Charges differ depending on the ammount of use and how much money the user may generate. The "tarrif" can be seen here: http://www.prs.co.uk/prs.nsf/sitepages/musiconnet
e lty%20Products.html
After dealing with the PRS you then have to contact the MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) [ http://www.mcps.co.uk/ ] who will sell you a licence allowing your consumers to download or receive music. A mobile ring tone would probably come under the description of a "novelty" product and therefore their rules and regulations are thus: http://www.mcps.co.uk/802566AC003A37F2/lookup/Nov
My immediate reaction after reading this article was not to create some sort of killer robot that would slash humans to death in an attempt to rule the world, akin to the Terminator movie, but to use this technology to power the Sony Aibo. It would make it even more realistic in replicating "dog behaviour" than it is now because it would eat and poop!
I was trying to be too special with my first ever post on /.
Here are the links from my above post that will work without you having to monkey about with them:
MCPS
PRS
PRS - music on the web
Copyright Licensing Agency
In the UK there are essentially two bodies who goven music licencing. They are the MCPS and the PRS. They will both charge UK music users if they publish audio on the web that requires a licence (for eg, music not owned by the publisher although there are other exceptions) however the PRS state on their website that software such as Napster is not to blame because they are not the content providers..
Where there is broadband available in the UK the amount of mp3 swapping between individuals can be very high. Take the University that I attend as an example. On the residential network (the network running around student halls of residence) the number of people sharing mp3's via Microsoft Networking is very high indeed and that doesn't take into account those people who set up their own FTP servers and alike. Software like Napster and websites that publish links to mp3 files just make it easier for people to share and download music whether it has been authorised by the copyright holder or not. If these services did not exist then the semi-underground movement of sharing mp3's (or bootleg tapes, or CD's, or any other form of music carrying media) would continue.
Another good website which deals with copyright issues within the UK is run by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Although it is a bit backward with regards to specific information on digital and Internet copyright issues it does give the raw facts.
--Dan.