"They just need to install a blow-dryer in this baby and we'll be all set."
You forgot the auto-adjust feature... can't leave that one out.;]
This is interesting, though. What if clothes do get electronic features integrated into them in the future? Will it really be for the better? Nowdays you can put on a wooly jumper and feel a natural warmth, but to me the idea of a completely synthetic piece of clothing which relies on electronic heating just seems to have something lacking. It's not natural. I don't want to feel like I'm wearing a computer (despite my obsession with computers and electronics).
Why would a developer want to use this when they will have to develop for other platforms anyway? IMHO, using SDL is the best thing a developer can do as far as minimizing porting time goes. SDL allows programs to compile on most of the major platforms provided they don't use other external platform-dependant libraries.
It just seems useless to use a Mac only library when you'll probably do a Win32 and Linux version anyway and then the Mac one on top of that. Why not kill an entire flock of birds with one stone using SDL?
"See how fascist governments control the flow of information? Aren't you glad our government doesn't do this? Oh... Wait..."
The difference is that China doesn't try to hide the fact that they screen e-mails. They tell everyone that they will monitor their e-mails and people can decide what to say based on that. The US is much more secretive about it.
Another question that hasn't yet been specifically answered: Were you ORDERED by the court to provide the mailing list or was it just Microsoft asking for you to provide it?
I notice that they still have a link to joining the mailing list? Is that stupid or is that stupid?
Anyone notice how the website doesn't say that the email addresses were given to Microsoft by order of the court? It seems they just gave them to Microsoft after being put under some pressure or something. I can't think of a single reason why people on a mailing list along with their personal details would be relevant in a lawsuit over trademark issues. It seems to me that there's something very dodgy going on here.
Sadly... I very much doubt this effort will result in the TA source code being released to the public. Whilst the source code probably isn't much use to Infogrames anymore, they have no reason to release it.
Perhaps this being posted on Slashdot will conjure up enough momentum to sway Infogrames into releasing it, but if you look at the petition it's quite apparrent that it's not going anywhere really fast with comments like "FREE THE DAMN CODE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "AHHH!!! FrEe ThE DaMn CoDe MaN!!!!".
It's not much of a convincing argument and I hate to sound negative but this seems like a lost cause. Infogrames would only ever release the source code out of good will, and unfortunately good will is something that large companies inherently lack (even Philips with their fight against copy protection have a motive other than good will).
Either way, I'm off to sign the petition... at least only good can come from at least trying!
The level editor that came with UT is the exact same one that Epic use to make the game. Any shortcomings of it, they had to deal with in the development process. So clearly, it is a very usable editor since the game was released and was also pretty popular!
It definately isn't one of the easiest editors to use though. I suggest checking here if you want to learn more about how to use UnrealEd efficiently.
Hahaha.
I did actually think a little about Trespasser when I was writing that post. I suppose that could be an example of a game that tried what I suggest is needed, but they obviously didn't implement it very well and the other parts of game design as well as code integrity failed the game.
In some ways though, Trespasser was quite innovative. If you look at what the developers were TRYING to do with it, they were way ahead of their time and the rest of the genre. Some of the things they tried to do were definately steps in the right direction and yet have still not appeared in other games.
It is possible to do sound simulation on a higher level than molecular! Consider if each material in a game had a sound assigned to it, and when hit with another material, the sounds were combined and some echo effects were calculated. Perhaps even that is a little simple, but modelling realistic sounds on a molecular level is quite unnecessary.
Also, I would like to point out that IT IS technically possible to model the universe within a game! Consider that the real universe has virtually infinite cycles per second. You can take a given amount of time and continually halve it and never reach zero. A game only ever needs to perform a maximum of say... 60 cycles per second. So the key to emulating the universe is making a CPU small enough and getting the frequency high enough. Of course, since as far as any human can tell, the universe has no boundaries, it may be infinite and hence no emulation can be performed. But that is all quite redundant when it comes to games. In a game we deal with a relatively very small universe, and it is very possible to emulate that to a decent level of accuracy.
It's similar to how we haven't found the boundaries of our own universe. Whilst they are not defined and the boundaries of game universes are, the boundaries of how realistic games may get still remain undefined.
First person shooters have something holding them back from being ultra-realistic and that is the bubble that surrounds the player. The degree of seperation between the player and the world. What am I talking about? Take a look at this screenshot. Notice how the gun is JUST to the right of the player's eye whilst the clown is very seperate. The clown can never interact with that gun and can never come between the player and the end of the gun. In my opinion, as the graphics get more and more realistic this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in getting the player immersed in the game. The gun example is just an example, what I am trying to say is that the player is very seperated from the environment in first person shooters and that is becoming a major problem. Notice also how the player can never see their own feet.
Think this is a small issue? Well, imagine a game where the player COULD see their feet and enemies COULD come inbetween the player, the player's gun and the player's feet. Right now, first person shooters make the player feel like a gun floating in mid-air and shooting at things in the environment. DOOM didn't quite do that, it used view-bobbing and other techniques to prevent that feel. A newish game that has the same level of immersion is Medal Of Honour. Whilst I don't think you can see your feet in that or enemies can interact largely with the player, the player still gets immersed by things like view bobbing, realistic sounds and other activity keeping the player occupied.
Yeah, it could be immune to keyloggers but it would open up (in my opinion) a much larger security flaw in that anyone watching can see the picture combo you're using. Text passwords had the advantage of being able to type the password fast enough that noone can tell which keys you are pressing.
How is this meant to be secure?!?
In the old days it was possible to say to someone "Don't look at my password!" as you typed it, and even if they did look they probably couldn't get it unless you typed it too slowly.
Now we're selecting pictures on the screen with a mouse? It just won't work!!
Well, there's only 4 different sources and the accuracy is still off by 2%, I don't think google can be representative of much for something which supposedly has 1%.
Try it!
The pings literally double!
My cable connection has a max 15 k/sec upload and perhaps it just ran out of capacity when the 7th player joined or perhaps it was something else, but there was a VERY noticable difference.
And the game is incredibly fun until it gets lagged, and then the fun decreases exponentially.
I realize that I am responding to a troll but I decided to take the chance to expand upon my previous post.
Whether or not the game is good or bad wholly depends on the connection speed. When there is no lag this game is pure brilliance! Incredibly fun! When the ping drops, however, it's not really worth bothering with. With a bad ping, it's hard to hit people and the movement is jerky and kindof replays over and over (from your viewpoint) until the server has acknowledged any movement.
Hopefully they can straighten out the lag issues before the game's release, but for now to lessen lag, I recommend that any cable servers have a maximum of 6 players. I was hosting a game and when the players jumped from 6 to 7, everyone's ping doubled instantly. When there were only 6 player's again, things returned to normal.
I still can't believe that after having that posted on a public website, the DCMA didn't go and arrest Junis for downloading copyrighted movies. Just because his country is in ruins doesn't give him the right to rob artists of their income.
I'm suprised Katz actually sat and watched this movie. I would have thought he would have took one look at the title, and then illegally (He's such a rebel!) gone and seen a different movie!
Your point would be valid if you justified it with some logic... but exactly how is this idea of Mr Packer's possible? I didn't say that he woke up one morning and decided to do it, I said that the idea seems so whacked and unrealistic that it SEEMS like that.
But since you've reassured us of the obvious, how do you visualize the idea working out?
Maybe Kerry Packer has enough money now that he doesn't need to think. Maybe he focussed on economics in school rather than taking biology. I don't know. Mr Packer seems pretty clued up when it comes to money but whats he doing now?!?
There's a food chain and an ecosystem. Mr Packer wants to isolate an ecosystem with some sort of fence. The food chain goes down to tiny organisms which can easily pass through his fence. Either the food chain will have significant gaps which cause this idea not to work, or there will be some mixing between ecosystems.
If the ecosystems mix, then he risks unbalancing nature's balance within the Australian ecosystem. If he leaves gaps in the food chain, then it's possible that Australian organisms may fill them but then how does Mr Packer expect to contain birds with his fence?!? What about plant life? It's part of the ecosystem too... birds can spread plant seeds and plants can probably spread through Mr Packer's fence.
I don't take biology as a subject but there are problems preventing this from being feasible that are incredibly obvious. Has Mr Packer thought about this idea at all? It seems as if he had the dream last night and started working on the press release just after he woke up.
It's almost as if he just finished watching Jurassic Park for the first time, thought it was a good idea whilst remaining ignorant to the problems and issues and decided he had nothing better to do with his money!
For starters, I think the environment/climate would be very different. Even though at first glance Australia appears similar to Africa in that it's hot with large planes and fields of dry grassy areas, Africa is much more moist than the harsh, dry Australian desert.
There's no way a Hippo could survive in oz, for example.
The logic behind this sequel is that at the end of Terminator 2, Sarah Connor says "The unknown future rolls toward us..." and explains that if "a machine, a terminator, can learn the value of human life: maybe we can too...". Apart from what James Cameron was implying about humans, this narrative also tells us something extra about the storyline. If Skynet didn't exist in the future, that would mean that none of the terminators would ever have gotten sent back and hence Sarah Connor wouldn't have any memory of them and could not offer us this narrative. But because she does remember, this means that somehow, somewhere along the line they failed and Skynet still exists in the future. This also allows the movie to make sense regarding time travel logic.
I've never tried a GameCube so I'm not agreeing/dis-agreeing with you, but you seem to be picking out that the games are challenging... and I hate to break it to you, but they're meant to be!
Also consider the genre of games that you like and whether or not the GameCube was a wise purchase for you. You seem to hate a lot of genres which will be very dominant on the GC (Sports, Star-Anything, arcadey games, etc).
You also described Crazy Taxi as "Completely pointless"... Crazy Taxi is widely accepted as a very fun game and perhaps you haven't realized but when you play a game the only point of playing it is to waste away time and have some fun. All games are "Completely pointless" and 100% unproductive, but they're fun.
Who's gonna listen?
on
Hacker U.
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
They're teaching the fine art of "hacking", which is according to them, "breaking into systems". The true term for that is "cracking", and if they don't know the proper name of what they are teaching, how can anyone possibly take them seriously about the content they are teaching?
Also, I would think that "the fine art of hacking" would cost more to learn than a mere $60.
Slashdot Mirror
"They just need to install a blow-dryer in this baby and we'll be all set."
;]
You forgot the auto-adjust feature... can't leave that one out.
This is interesting, though. What if clothes do get electronic features integrated into them in the future? Will it really be for the better? Nowdays you can put on a wooly jumper and feel a natural warmth, but to me the idea of a completely synthetic piece of clothing which relies on electronic heating just seems to have something lacking. It's not natural. I don't want to feel like I'm wearing a computer (despite my obsession with computers and electronics).
593.89 days?!? I sure hope they have commercial/toilet breaks!
Why would a developer want to use this when they will have to develop for other platforms anyway? IMHO, using SDL is the best thing a developer can do as far as minimizing porting time goes. SDL allows programs to compile on most of the major platforms provided they don't use other external platform-dependant libraries.
It just seems useless to use a Mac only library when you'll probably do a Win32 and Linux version anyway and then the Mac one on top of that. Why not kill an entire flock of birds with one stone using SDL?
"See how fascist governments control the flow of information? Aren't you glad our government doesn't do this? Oh... Wait..."
The difference is that China doesn't try to hide the fact that they screen e-mails. They tell everyone that they will monitor their e-mails and people can decide what to say based on that. The US is much more secretive about it.
Another question that hasn't yet been specifically answered: Were you ORDERED by the court to provide the mailing list or was it just Microsoft asking for you to provide it?
I notice that they still have a link to joining the mailing list? Is that stupid or is that stupid?
Anyone notice how the website doesn't say that the email addresses were given to Microsoft by order of the court? It seems they just gave them to Microsoft after being put under some pressure or something. I can't think of a single reason why people on a mailing list along with their personal details would be relevant in a lawsuit over trademark issues. It seems to me that there's something very dodgy going on here.
13 additions to the petition since the story was posted half an hour ago
/. effect.
I guess the lazy effect kicked in and overwhelmed the
BATTLE OF THE EFFECTS!
Sadly... I very much doubt this effort will result in the TA source code being released to the public. Whilst the source code probably isn't much use to Infogrames anymore, they have no reason to release it.
Perhaps this being posted on Slashdot will conjure up enough momentum to sway Infogrames into releasing it, but if you look at the petition it's quite apparrent that it's not going anywhere really fast with comments like "FREE THE DAMN CODE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "AHHH!!! FrEe ThE DaMn CoDe MaN!!!!".
It's not much of a convincing argument and I hate to sound negative but this seems like a lost cause. Infogrames would only ever release the source code out of good will, and unfortunately good will is something that large companies inherently lack (even Philips with their fight against copy protection have a motive other than good will).
Either way, I'm off to sign the petition... at least only good can come from at least trying!
The level editor that came with UT is the exact same one that Epic use to make the game. Any shortcomings of it, they had to deal with in the development process. So clearly, it is a very usable editor since the game was released and was also pretty popular!
It definately isn't one of the easiest editors to use though. I suggest checking here if you want to learn more about how to use UnrealEd efficiently.
Hahaha.
I did actually think a little about Trespasser when I was writing that post. I suppose that could be an example of a game that tried what I suggest is needed, but they obviously didn't implement it very well and the other parts of game design as well as code integrity failed the game.
In some ways though, Trespasser was quite innovative. If you look at what the developers were TRYING to do with it, they were way ahead of their time and the rest of the genre. Some of the things they tried to do were definately steps in the right direction and yet have still not appeared in other games.
It is possible to do sound simulation on a higher level than molecular! Consider if each material in a game had a sound assigned to it, and when hit with another material, the sounds were combined and some echo effects were calculated. Perhaps even that is a little simple, but modelling realistic sounds on a molecular level is quite unnecessary.
Also, I would like to point out that IT IS technically possible to model the universe within a game! Consider that the real universe has virtually infinite cycles per second. You can take a given amount of time and continually halve it and never reach zero. A game only ever needs to perform a maximum of say... 60 cycles per second. So the key to emulating the universe is making a CPU small enough and getting the frequency high enough. Of course, since as far as any human can tell, the universe has no boundaries, it may be infinite and hence no emulation can be performed. But that is all quite redundant when it comes to games. In a game we deal with a relatively very small universe, and it is very possible to emulate that to a decent level of accuracy.
It's similar to how we haven't found the boundaries of our own universe. Whilst they are not defined and the boundaries of game universes are, the boundaries of how realistic games may get still remain undefined.
First person shooters have something holding them back from being ultra-realistic and that is the bubble that surrounds the player. The degree of seperation between the player and the world. What am I talking about? Take a look at this screenshot. Notice how the gun is JUST to the right of the player's eye whilst the clown is very seperate. The clown can never interact with that gun and can never come between the player and the end of the gun. In my opinion, as the graphics get more and more realistic this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in getting the player immersed in the game. The gun example is just an example, what I am trying to say is that the player is very seperated from the environment in first person shooters and that is becoming a major problem. Notice also how the player can never see their own feet.
Think this is a small issue? Well, imagine a game where the player COULD see their feet and enemies COULD come inbetween the player, the player's gun and the player's feet. Right now, first person shooters make the player feel like a gun floating in mid-air and shooting at things in the environment. DOOM didn't quite do that, it used view-bobbing and other techniques to prevent that feel. A newish game that has the same level of immersion is Medal Of Honour. Whilst I don't think you can see your feet in that or enemies can interact largely with the player, the player still gets immersed by things like view bobbing, realistic sounds and other activity keeping the player occupied.
Forget graphics, NOW is the time for immersion!
Yeah, it could be immune to keyloggers but it would open up (in my opinion) a much larger security flaw in that anyone watching can see the picture combo you're using. Text passwords had the advantage of being able to type the password fast enough that noone can tell which keys you are pressing.
How is this meant to be secure?!?
In the old days it was possible to say to someone "Don't look at my password!" as you typed it, and even if they did look they probably couldn't get it unless you typed it too slowly.
Now we're selecting pictures on the screen with a mouse? It just won't work!!
93 + 4 + 1 + 4 = 102%
Well, there's only 4 different sources and the accuracy is still off by 2%, I don't think google can be representative of much for something which supposedly has 1%.
Try it!
The pings literally double!
My cable connection has a max 15 k/sec upload and perhaps it just ran out of capacity when the 7th player joined or perhaps it was something else, but there was a VERY noticable difference.
And the game is incredibly fun until it gets lagged, and then the fun decreases exponentially.
I realize that I am responding to a troll but I decided to take the chance to expand upon my previous post.
Whether or not the game is good or bad wholly depends on the connection speed. When there is no lag this game is pure brilliance! Incredibly fun! When the ping drops, however, it's not really worth bothering with. With a bad ping, it's hard to hit people and the movement is jerky and kindof replays over and over (from your viewpoint) until the server has acknowledged any movement.
Hopefully they can straighten out the lag issues before the game's release, but for now to lessen lag, I recommend that any cable servers have a maximum of 6 players. I was hosting a game and when the players jumped from 6 to 7, everyone's ping doubled instantly. When there were only 6 player's again, things returned to normal.
I still can't believe that after having that posted on a public website, the DCMA didn't go and arrest Junis for downloading copyrighted movies. Just because his country is in ruins doesn't give him the right to rob artists of their income.
I'm suprised Katz actually sat and watched this movie. I would have thought he would have took one look at the title, and then illegally (He's such a rebel!) gone and seen a different movie!
Merry Christmas Windows users!!! (A free patch from Microsoft!)
Your point would be valid if you justified it with some logic... but exactly how is this idea of Mr Packer's possible? I didn't say that he woke up one morning and decided to do it, I said that the idea seems so whacked and unrealistic that it SEEMS like that.
But since you've reassured us of the obvious, how do you visualize the idea working out?
Maybe Kerry Packer has enough money now that he doesn't need to think. Maybe he focussed on economics in school rather than taking biology. I don't know. Mr Packer seems pretty clued up when it comes to money but whats he doing now?!?
There's a food chain and an ecosystem. Mr Packer wants to isolate an ecosystem with some sort of fence. The food chain goes down to tiny organisms which can easily pass through his fence. Either the food chain will have significant gaps which cause this idea not to work, or there will be some mixing between ecosystems.
If the ecosystems mix, then he risks unbalancing nature's balance within the Australian ecosystem. If he leaves gaps in the food chain, then it's possible that Australian organisms may fill them but then how does Mr Packer expect to contain birds with his fence?!? What about plant life? It's part of the ecosystem too... birds can spread plant seeds and plants can probably spread through Mr Packer's fence.
I don't take biology as a subject but there are problems preventing this from being feasible that are incredibly obvious. Has Mr Packer thought about this idea at all? It seems as if he had the dream last night and started working on the press release just after he woke up.
It's almost as if he just finished watching Jurassic Park for the first time, thought it was a good idea whilst remaining ignorant to the problems and issues and decided he had nothing better to do with his money!
For starters, I think the environment/climate would be very different. Even though at first glance Australia appears similar to Africa in that it's hot with large planes and fields of dry grassy areas, Africa is much more moist than the harsh, dry Australian desert.
There's no way a Hippo could survive in oz, for example.
The logic behind this sequel is that at the end of Terminator 2, Sarah Connor says "The unknown future rolls toward us..." and explains that if "a machine, a terminator, can learn the value of human life: maybe we can too...". Apart from what James Cameron was implying about humans, this narrative also tells us something extra about the storyline. If Skynet didn't exist in the future, that would mean that none of the terminators would ever have gotten sent back and hence Sarah Connor wouldn't have any memory of them and could not offer us this narrative. But because she does remember, this means that somehow, somewhere along the line they failed and Skynet still exists in the future. This also allows the movie to make sense regarding time travel logic.
I assume this forms the basis for Terminator 3.
I've never tried a GameCube so I'm not agreeing/dis-agreeing with you, but you seem to be picking out that the games are challenging... and I hate to break it to you, but they're meant to be!
Also consider the genre of games that you like and whether or not the GameCube was a wise purchase for you. You seem to hate a lot of genres which will be very dominant on the GC (Sports, Star-Anything, arcadey games, etc).
You also described Crazy Taxi as "Completely pointless"... Crazy Taxi is widely accepted as a very fun game and perhaps you haven't realized but when you play a game the only point of playing it is to waste away time and have some fun. All games are "Completely pointless" and 100% unproductive, but they're fun.
They're teaching the fine art of "hacking", which is according to them, "breaking into systems". The true term for that is "cracking", and if they don't know the proper name of what they are teaching, how can anyone possibly take them seriously about the content they are teaching?
Also, I would think that "the fine art of hacking" would cost more to learn than a mere $60.