Remember this site? Kids in college had an assignment to come up with a fake gaming site. This Phantom (akin to Vapor-war) is obviously exactly the same thing.
TogetherSoft has a Mac OS X version of their Control Center product. I believe there's a free trial if you wanna check it out. Developers here are using it now for Java work, albeit on Windows and Linux.
Startup times are annoyingly slow. If we need to deploy a new context, then restarting tomcat brings with it a 30-45 second outage. But other than that, it's fine.
Don't count on any BEA Weblogic outages to be any faster than this, though. In my experience at my company (Weblogic in production, Tomcat in development), Weblogic can take 5 minutes to shutdown and startup. It all depends on the number and complexity of your web application(s).
There are also manager apps for Tomcat, (at least bundled with Tomcat version 4 and up) to re-deploy content without restarting, that are nearly instantaneous.
Do keep in mind that Tomcat can't deal with EJB's, and so you'll need JBoss oran instance of Weblogic somewhere to handle those. But if you're just serving up plain JSPs, go for it. Tomcat is beautiful in its simplicity!
It became apparent to anyone following the situation that Bioware's recent utter silence regarding the non-Windows clients means they had fallen behind. The company has been in a huge push to get the game out (as well as changing publishers), and so of course the first things to fall off the radar are going to be the Mac and Linux clients when in a crunch.
The NWN Gold press release yesterday mentioned the Linux client would be out *after* the Windows version, confirming the statement above. So there goes any hybrid Mac/PC/Linux idea.
If the Mac client is some indetermined length of time older than the Windows, someone's going to have to go back and get it up-to-date.
Therefore, if the hybrid box idea is shot, it makes *much* more sense for MacSoft (another Inforgrames label) to do the Mac-specific marketing, QA, and even try and port the toolset (a beast in itself) so Mac users don't pay the same price for half the game. This is a *much* better idea than Bioware (who has never published a Mac game themselves) to try and do all this themselves.
And for those wanting Omni to do it, MacSoft has stated to Insidemacgames.com that the porting house has not been decided yet. It could be them, Westlake, or some other programmers they often use for their work.
If the record labels were smart, they would allow you to download an album at a reduced price (maybe $10), PLUG pay another $5 (shipping included) to have a CD sent to you.
A lot of people like liner notes, and this would get the impulse buys of everyone who wants a song or album *now*, as well as up the total cost to just about that of a normal CD.
Interesting article, except this quote at the end is really bad:
several of his animators, once rebellious, have now bowed to Emperor Lucas. ''Some of them came with their hats in their hands afterward,'' Coleman reports, ''and said, 'Okay, we were wrong. Sign us up for the next one.'''
But just ONE paragraph above, they admit Yoda was replacing the horrible duo of Portman/Christensen in the previews (which is the other 90% of the movie!):
He even became the star of the ads, which dropped romantic-lead costars Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen for him.
How you can bow to "Emporor Lucas" for botching 90% of the movie? They shouldn't be bowing, they should be chastising him for not being able to make the rest of the movie worth watching.
If only that Yoda scene was at the beginning, I probably go again, just so I could take my girlfriend to see it and then leave before the "romance" and "dialog" begins.
Many OS X users (like me) have been frustrated with MS's lack of a true Exchange client. The current client they have in Office X is Entourage, doesn't support any Outlook functionality. After reading the glowing review of Evolution and doing a little Google searching, it seems there may be an OS X port of Evolution soon!
According to the Evolution hacker list, there is a port underway, though no posts have been made in the last month.
It would be sweet irony if OS X users got 1) an email client for OS X that could deal with Exchange but not from MS, that 2) was better than Outlook itself.
One thing I'm not clear on is Evolution's functionality. Can it handle all of Exchange's functions like being able to schedule meeting rooms and other resources, tasks, etc? If so, I could see a large number of users in my company dump their OS 9/Windows boxes and pick up new Macs running OS X...
I recently attended a FlashMX presentation from Macromedia and left amazed that Sorenson was bundled within the application itself. Essentially all your website users need is the Flash 6 plug-in to be able to view Sorenson-encoded movies in a Flash file. Only after seeing the lawsuit did I realize how harmful this could be to Apple's QuickTime technology. I hope for Apple's sake that they have a good exclusive contract in place...
My company is looking to use FlashMX's video capabilities *specifically* because then users won't have to download the QuickTime plug-in as well. This attitude could seriously be a detriment to Apple's already-struggling fight against Real and Windows Media Player. Even if the quality is better, this is just another reason to not download their plug-in.
Because you have no idea what you're talking about. Don't listen to this slashdot 'review', wait and play it yourself. It's so much more than WC2 it's scary. Check out this reader review for a much better look at the game.
Did you not see the first Mummy? Were you thinking this was a serious documentary on Egyptian culture?
The movie isn't *that* bad. I don't think anyone who saw one of the trailers was expecting a real brain-buster of a movie. It's big, loud, mindless fun and shouldn't be taken for anything more than that. And the characters were self-effacing enough to make the 'bigness' of it all funny. I was actually surprised they did try and throw some little story twists in there. (And please don't bring up George Lucas, he's still on my hit list for that last horrible horrible mistake.) At least the kid is this one can read his lines and isn't just there for the cuteness value.
The CG is done well (albeit overdone in some parts). The ending is weak, but *eh* who really cares. I think most Slashdotters would find the movie to their liking, so long as they're not expecting Jane Austin going into it.
Oh and about those previews. Yes, they did have some nice ones of Fast and Furious and Final Fantasy. But how can you be looking forward to Pearl Harbor or Jurassic Park III? The former is obvious follow-the-bomb-mush, and the latter is such a tired plot, even star William H. Macy is now dogging it.
On the Mummy: get some friends, go to a late showing, laugh at the Rock, and have some fun.
While LinuxPPC may be great for Mac users wanting to dangle their toes in the Linux world, the higher price of Apple's hardware is tough for many x86 users to swallow. Is the LinuxPPC group working with any companies to develop a lower-cost motherboard/machine setup based on IBM's open PowerPC specs? Or is the goal to make LinuxPPC such compelling server solution that x86 users won't mind paying the extra bucks to squeeze a few Cubes onto a rack? I realize a 3rd party PPC setup would only cater to a very small group, but is anyone working on using IBM's design at all?
A few posts to comp.sys.mac.games.action from the premier porting house for Mac games, Westlake Interactive, clears up the situation a bit. Here's a post from president Mark Adams:
Of course porting "difficult" code is what we get paid to do. And we've dealt with many more Direct3D only games recently (TR:TLR, The Sims, etc.), so we're pretty confidant we're keeping our engine re-writing skills up.
Kenn Cobb (also from Westlake) had this to say:
Not a big problem. We port D3D titles all the time now (TR4, The Sims, currently). It really depends how they use D3D. There are various approaches to take with D3D, and some are easier to port than others.
3dfx themselves are phasing out Glide, so I can understand Epic dropping it. I'm disappointed about OpenGL, but from a PC-only viewpoint I can see the argument. Most OpenGL drivers on the PC are designed primarily for Quake. Even though fuller implementations have been coming out, they are generally not as mature (ie, optimized, bug-free) as the D3D drivers. There are far more D3D games than OpenGL on the PC, so this only makes sense. Still, it would be nice if there were two major fronts pushing OpenGL (Epic and id) instead of just one.
So, while it may not be a great situation, atleast Mac users won't be shut out entirely. Westlake knows what's up...
Uh. Hmm. I'd agree that the iMacs and iBooks aren't for everyone. But can you really call that Powerbook a toy? Does Sony's Vaio have a Rage 128 chip in it? I mean, I'd take one if given to me, but can it even do 3D? Is it interesting to anyone else how a toy company can affect so much of the industry? Besides the color thing, there's USB adoption, Firewire, and Mac OS X around the corner. I don't see Fisher Price supporting opensource projects like Darwin, do you? Man, buy the thing and throw LinuxPPC 2000 on it, if you want. Apple is far from perfect. I've had to work with them, so believe me, I know. But it's just amazing to me how old, unfounded grudges don't die.
Ah well.
-doenermord Don't blame the games. It takes a village to screw up a child.
One of the biggest reasons I CANNOT stand the Macintrash is that (on the version of the Finder I used last) when you had a long enough file name, the end of it got hidden under the file size, and that you cannot (could not?) resize the individual columns.
Gads man, calm down. This is the reason you don't like an operating system? When was the last time you used a Mac? I think this capability has been there since 8.0 or 8.5 atleast.
On other topics, looks like the page has been slashdotted already. I like the other link to the Lisa page at http://galena.tjs.org/tom/. Someone mentioned they had a Lisa in a closet, anyone got one that still runs?
-doenermord Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
Jeez, then you best be getting a Powerbook, or holding out for Apple's new "Pismo" line, which should be out soon. Rumor has is that they will have the ATI Rage 128 mobile chip (which is also rumored to be holding up the line's production), which is gonna be about the best you'll find available in a portable. The current line only has a Rage Pro, which is the bare minimum required to run Q3A without all the "pretties" turned on...
Of course, I'm sure you'll be finding Rob using a PB about the same time Hemos picks up his iBook, but...;)
-doenermord Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
Issue #1- The Software: It is much easier to pirate games on a moded Playstation unit, than on the CVGS. So everyone's agreed this will only help Sony. Connectix was planning, and is now rolling with the Windoze version, which will even help expand the user base even more. It requires a decent computer, but can emulate the games well for those who (like myself) don't own Playstations, yet want to play Grand Turismo.
This seems to be a reason for emulation.
Issue #2- The Hardware: It is not known that Sony loses any money on the consoles (atleast it's doubtful they do anymore). While Sony would never say for sure, at the beginning, they probably took a hit on the console to get it out the door. Especially with all the problems/revisions they've had. Now, after such a long prouction, they are likely making a decent profit off every unit.
This seems to be a reason against emulation.
So we have a couple of puny reasons, some would to point for, and some against Sony wanting this emulation software. But what are we overlooking?
Issue #3- Control and The Future: This is the one everybody is missing. Look at the PSX2, people. This isn't just a gaming console, there are a lot of expansion possibilities on this baby. They don't want to make a PCI version to play its games with your PC. They want you to hook it up to your Sony TV through your Sony VCR and have all the Sony branded media stream right on through. The CVGS and Bleem! set a bad precedent for them losing control of a major part of this process. Big companies like control. It makes them feel good to have you buy all of the Sony add-on USB controllers and hook up your Sony digicam to the Firewire port. Noone knows exactly where Sony wants to take the PSX2. But they are holding the keys. (unintentional Matrix reference) And the PSX2 is going to be a very powerful machine which a wide variety of people (Newbies and Slashdotters alike) are likely to plunk a few hundred down on. We can poo-poo web access on a TV forever, but it they already own a PSX2, don't have a PC, and can pay $50 to hook it up to the web, what's going to stop people?
I'm not saying PSX2 or Sony is evil. But they want control of their vast dream. Emulators made by other people (or even a theoretical PSX emulator made by Sony for other hardware) takes that control away. Look for them to rigorously oppose the CVGS for as long as they can. Throwing around money at Sony to help further along their larger picture would be nothing new.
-doenermord Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
I agree the idea of knowing the ending can add to the tragedy, and doesn't necessarily ruin a movie at all. How many people watch plays or musicals over and over, but know them by heart? The ending of PM isn't the big deal.
The problem is this: I'm sitting in a theater opening night for the show. (For reference, I'm not the biggest SW fan out there. I don't own any videos, but would buy 4, 5, and 6 on DVD when I get one.) Waiting in the line and then later in the theater was a blast. People got up front (as we had a good three hours until 12:01) and started doing SW trivia for gummybears. It was an amazing mood that was only ruined by the movie itself...
I know expectations were high, but I don't think anyone took Lucas on his word when he said PM was made for 10 year old boys. The only 10 year old kid in the place was the only one laughing at Jar Jar's fart jokes. Myself, I was cringing, thinking "OMG, I can't believe they made SW into this!" Much of the rest of the movie was very cool, but between JJ Binks himself, and Anakins' inability to realistically deliver a line, much less form a bond with the princess, I'm not concerned anymore about knowing the ending. Any sort of realism is already lost for me. The special effects are great, but I'm not worried about either the VHS or DVD version of PM, as it won't be a part of my collection. Just needed to get that off my chest, so no need to start flaming. thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.mavav.org/
Remember this site? Kids in college had an assignment to come up with a fake gaming site. This Phantom (akin to Vapor-war) is obviously exactly the same thing.
http://www.togethersoft.com/
TogetherSoft has a Mac OS X version of their Control Center product. I believe there's a free trial if you wanna check it out. Developers here are using it now for Java work, albeit on Windows and Linux.
Startup times are annoyingly slow. If we need to deploy a new context, then restarting tomcat brings with it a 30-45 second outage. But other than that, it's fine.
Don't count on any BEA Weblogic outages to be any faster than this, though. In my experience at my company (Weblogic in production, Tomcat in development), Weblogic can take 5 minutes to shutdown and startup. It all depends on the number and complexity of your web application(s).
There are also manager apps for Tomcat, (at least bundled with Tomcat version 4 and up) to re-deploy content without restarting, that are nearly instantaneous.
Do keep in mind that Tomcat can't deal with EJB's, and so you'll need JBoss oran instance of Weblogic somewhere to handle those. But if you're just serving up plain JSPs, go for it. Tomcat is beautiful in its simplicity!
It became apparent to anyone following the situation that Bioware's recent utter silence regarding the non-Windows clients means they had fallen behind. The company has been in a huge push to get the game out (as well as changing publishers), and so of course the first things to fall off the radar are going to be the Mac and Linux clients when in a crunch.
The NWN Gold press release yesterday mentioned the Linux client would be out *after* the Windows version, confirming the statement above. So there goes any hybrid Mac/PC/Linux idea.
If the Mac client is some indetermined length of time older than the Windows, someone's going to have to go back and get it up-to-date.
Therefore, if the hybrid box idea is shot, it makes *much* more sense for MacSoft (another Inforgrames label) to do the Mac-specific marketing, QA, and even try and port the toolset (a beast in itself) so Mac users don't pay the same price for half the game. This is a *much* better idea than Bioware (who has never published a Mac game themselves) to try and do all this themselves.
And for those wanting Omni to do it, MacSoft has stated to Insidemacgames.com that the porting house has not been decided yet. It could be them, Westlake, or some other programmers they often use for their work.
If the record labels were smart, they would allow you to download an album at a reduced price (maybe $10), PLUG pay another $5 (shipping included) to have a CD sent to you.
A lot of people like liner notes, and this would get the impulse buys of everyone who wants a song or album *now*, as well as up the total cost to just about that of a normal CD.
InsideMacGames.com is reporting there should be more news about the Mac OS version tomorrow.
http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/
But just ONE paragraph above, they admit Yoda was replacing the horrible duo of Portman/Christensen in the previews (which is the other 90% of the movie!):
How you can bow to "Emporor Lucas" for botching 90% of the movie? They shouldn't be bowing, they should be chastising him for not being able to make the rest of the movie worth watching.
If only that Yoda scene was at the beginning, I probably go again, just so I could take my girlfriend to see it and then leave before the "romance" and "dialog" begins.
Many OS X users (like me) have been frustrated with MS's lack of a true Exchange client. The current client they have in Office X is Entourage, doesn't support any Outlook functionality. After reading the glowing review of Evolution and doing a little Google searching, it seems there may be an OS X port of Evolution soon!
- hackers/2002-April/004332.html
According to the Evolution hacker list, there is a port underway, though no posts have been made in the last month.
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution
It would be sweet irony if OS X users got 1) an email client for OS X that could deal with Exchange but not from MS, that 2) was better than Outlook itself.
One thing I'm not clear on is Evolution's functionality. Can it handle all of Exchange's functions like being able to schedule meeting rooms and other resources, tasks, etc? If so, I could see a large number of users in my company dump their OS 9/Windows boxes and pick up new Macs running OS X...
I recently attended a FlashMX presentation from Macromedia and left amazed that Sorenson was bundled within the application itself. Essentially all your website users need is the Flash 6 plug-in to be able to view Sorenson-encoded movies in a Flash file. Only after seeing the lawsuit did I realize how harmful this could be to Apple's QuickTime technology. I hope for Apple's sake that they have a good exclusive contract in place...
My company is looking to use FlashMX's video capabilities *specifically* because then users won't have to download the QuickTime plug-in as well. This attitude could seriously be a detriment to Apple's already-struggling fight against Real and Windows Media Player. Even if the quality is better, this is just another reason to not download their plug-in.
Because you have no idea what you're talking about. Don't listen to this slashdot 'review', wait and play it yourself. It's so much more than WC2 it's scary. Check out this reader review for a much better look at the game.
8 064
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=29873&cid=320
Did you not see the first Mummy? Were you thinking this was a serious documentary on Egyptian culture?
The movie isn't *that* bad. I don't think anyone who saw one of the trailers was expecting a real brain-buster of a movie. It's big, loud, mindless fun and shouldn't be taken for anything more than that. And the characters were self-effacing enough to make the 'bigness' of it all funny. I was actually surprised they did try and throw some little story twists in there. (And please don't bring up George Lucas, he's still on my hit list for that last horrible horrible mistake.) At least the kid is this one can read his lines and isn't just there for the cuteness value.
The CG is done well (albeit overdone in some parts). The ending is weak, but *eh* who really cares. I think most Slashdotters would find the movie to their liking, so long as they're not expecting Jane Austin going into it.
Oh and about those previews. Yes, they did have some nice ones of Fast and Furious and Final Fantasy. But how can you be looking forward to Pearl Harbor or Jurassic Park III? The former is obvious follow-the-bomb-mush, and the latter is such a tired plot, even star William H. Macy is now dogging it.
On the Mummy: get some friends, go to a late showing, laugh at the Rock, and have some fun.
While LinuxPPC may be great for Mac users wanting to dangle their toes in the Linux world, the higher price of Apple's hardware is tough for many x86 users to swallow. Is the LinuxPPC group working with any companies to develop a lower-cost motherboard/machine setup based on IBM's open PowerPC specs? Or is the goal to make LinuxPPC such compelling server solution that x86 users won't mind paying the extra bucks to squeeze a few Cubes onto a rack? I realize a 3rd party PPC setup would only cater to a very small group, but is anyone working on using IBM's design at all?
Kenn Cobb (also from Westlake) had this to say:
So, while it may not be a great situation, atleast Mac users won't be shut out entirely. Westlake knows what's up...
-doenermord
Ok, I'll bite.
Uh. Hmm. I'd agree that the iMacs and iBooks aren't for everyone. But can you really call that Powerbook a toy? Does Sony's Vaio have a Rage 128 chip in it? I mean, I'd take one if given to me, but can it even do 3D? Is it interesting to anyone else how a toy company can affect so much of the industry? Besides the color thing, there's USB adoption, Firewire, and Mac OS X around the corner. I don't see Fisher Price supporting opensource projects like Darwin, do you? Man, buy the thing and throw LinuxPPC 2000 on it, if you want. Apple is far from perfect. I've had to work with them, so believe me, I know. But it's just amazing to me how old, unfounded grudges don't die.
Ah well.
-doenermord
Don't blame the games. It takes a village to screw up a child.
Gads man, calm down. This is the reason you don't like an operating system? When was the last time you used a Mac? I think this capability has been there since 8.0 or 8.5 atleast.
On other topics, looks like the page has been slashdotted already. I like the other link to the Lisa page at http://galena.tjs.org/tom/. Someone mentioned they had a Lisa in a closet, anyone got one that still runs?
-doenermord
Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
Jeez, then you best be getting a Powerbook, or holding out for Apple's new "Pismo" line, which should be out soon. Rumor has is that they will have the ATI Rage 128 mobile chip (which is also rumored to be holding up the line's production), which is gonna be about the best you'll find available in a portable. The current line only has a Rage Pro, which is the bare minimum required to run Q3A without all the "pretties" turned on...
;)
Of course, I'm sure you'll be finding Rob using a PB about the same time Hemos picks up his iBook, but...
-doenermord
Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
This seems to be a reason for emulation.
Issue #2- The Hardware: It is not known that Sony loses any money on the consoles (atleast it's doubtful they do anymore). While Sony would never say for sure, at the beginning, they probably took a hit on the console to get it out the door. Especially with all the problems/revisions they've had. Now, after such a long prouction, they are likely making a decent profit off every unit.
This seems to be a reason against emulation.
So we have a couple of puny reasons, some would to point for, and some against Sony wanting this emulation software. But what are we overlooking?
Issue #3- Control and The Future: This is the one everybody is missing. Look at the PSX2, people. This isn't just a gaming console, there are a lot of expansion possibilities on this baby. They don't want to make a PCI version to play its games with your PC. They want you to hook it up to your Sony TV through your Sony VCR and have all the Sony branded media stream right on through. The CVGS and Bleem! set a bad precedent for them losing control of a major part of this process. Big companies like control. It makes them feel good to have you buy all of the Sony add-on USB controllers and hook up your Sony digicam to the Firewire port. Noone knows exactly where Sony wants to take the PSX2. But they are holding the keys. (unintentional Matrix reference) And the PSX2 is going to be a very powerful machine which a wide variety of people (Newbies and Slashdotters alike) are likely to plunk a few hundred down on. We can poo-poo web access on a TV forever, but it they already own a PSX2, don't have a PC, and can pay $50 to hook it up to the web, what's going to stop people?
I'm not saying PSX2 or Sony is evil. But they want control of their vast dream. Emulators made by other people (or even a theoretical PSX emulator made by Sony for other hardware) takes that control away. Look for them to rigorously oppose the CVGS for as long as they can. Throwing around money at Sony to help further along their larger picture would be nothing new.
-doenermord
Don't blame the games, it takes a village to screw up a child.
I agree the idea of knowing the ending can add to the tragedy, and doesn't necessarily ruin a movie at all. How many people watch plays or musicals over and over, but know them by heart? The ending of PM isn't the big deal.
The problem is this: I'm sitting in a theater opening night for the show. (For reference, I'm not the biggest SW fan out there. I don't own any videos, but would buy 4, 5, and 6 on DVD when I get one.) Waiting in the line and then later in the theater was a blast. People got up front (as we had a good three hours until 12:01) and started doing SW trivia for gummybears. It was an amazing mood that was only ruined by the movie itself...
I know expectations were high, but I don't think anyone took Lucas on his word when he said PM was made for 10 year old boys. The only 10 year old kid in the place was the only one laughing at Jar Jar's fart jokes. Myself, I was cringing, thinking "OMG, I can't believe they made SW into this!" Much of the rest of the movie was very cool, but between JJ Binks himself, and Anakins' inability to realistically deliver a line, much less form a bond with the princess, I'm not concerned anymore about knowing the ending. Any sort of realism is already lost for me. The special effects are great, but I'm not worried about either the VHS or DVD version of PM, as it won't be a part of my collection. Just needed to get that off my chest, so no need to start flaming. thanks.