What kind of impact will this have? It's a Java port of a 15+ year old game!
This might come as a shock to you.
This will not have any impact! That's right! None! The world will spin just as it ever has! You will go to work tomorrow, just as you did today! Your coffee will taste exactly the same tomorrow as it did yesterday!
Except that Slashdot isn't "Earth-shattering news for nerds". It's just things that nerds find fairly interesting. "Stuff that matters" doesn't mean "stuff with insane gravity." Just stuff that piques the interest of a few guys.
I'm betting the guy who simply runs every morning is going to last longer than the nerd and the guy who broke every major bone in his body playing football.
Ironically, it's been calculated that if you jog for 30 minutes every day, you will live two years longer than everyone else. You will also have spent two years of your life jogging.:)
Unless you absolutely, positively never use anything but Google, you'll likely bump into Overture.
Nobody in my dorm ever uses anything but Google. Seriously. Their mindshare is insane. "Search" isn't even a verb in common parlance here. One "Googles for" a web page now.
Actually, I file all bank statements (Which are just as good as receipts since I pay for everything with a CheckCard) for one full year.
Technically, in the USA, I think that you're supposed to keep those records for five (e.g., The Man can legally subpoena up to five years worth of financial records, and you're supposed to have 'em). So find a shoebox someplace and toss those old bank statements in there. It's really not too big a deal.
...a behemoth running Linux. Contrary to what you would believe the machine was fast enough to support 35 students programming (in text mode) vi, emacs and running gcc.
My God. That must have been one behemoth indeed. It takes dual Pentium 4s SMPing to get even two instances of emacs running most of the time.:)
At Cornell, for example, if you transfer more than 27 GB over a 72 hour period (which, frankly, is insane...) they cap you to some small bandwidth amount for a period of time... Do it too many times, and they terminate your account.
Most other colleges have some similar system in effect where X traffic in Y period automatically makes your router rate-limit you.
Indeed, why should I care which company is "in the lead?"
The fact that so many slashdotters are "rooting" for Google brings up an interesting, and probably long-forgotten concept to mind: brand loyalty.
Today's economy has been drawing lines between corporations (or producers, if you will), and us mere mortals, dubbed "consumers" by the marketroids. Do you feel like a number in America? That's because you're treated like one. You're a statistic. Just another wallet to suck out of. That's why nobody cares if they steal music and movies over the Internet. They use you when it's convenient, so you use them when it's convenient. Fair's fair and all.
But Google did something different -- they didn't sell out and make you need to subscribe or deal with in-your-face ads all over -- they actually thought about "what makes people like not just our product, but us?"
They've been rewarded with an almost religious zeal from hundreds of thousands, if not millions of geeks. It's a story that many companies should probably take a lesson from.
You assume that there is such a thing as an "unsolvable" game. This is not, as far as I know, established. This is not, as far as I know, established.
Sure it has. I'll give you an unsolvable game right now.
The source code to an entire program is written out by a game master. Two copies of the source are printed out. Two players are then each given an identical copy of the source, and a set of arguments that would be passed to the source were it compiled & executed. The goal is to determine if the program will exit correctly, or if it will halt in the middle. The first player to show either a) where it will halt or b) that it won't halt, wins.
This is a game version of the halting problem. It's been mathematically proven intractable; that is, there's no deterministic (e.g., algorithmic or procedural) method of doing this. You cannot write a computer program that will execute a set series of steps every time and determine what's the case here.
Is this game fun? Probably not.:) But that doesn't take away from the fact that an intelligent human could look at a source printout and figure out if it halted or not, but no general algorithm can be deduced that would do so. Thus, for a computer to win at this game, it would actually have to show intelligence, and not raw computational skill.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the whole PC graphics market has gotten well ahead of their consumers and software (i.e. games)?
Just wait 'til Doom III comes out. I, erm, might have, possibly, uh, "acquired" the E3 preview version:) and let me tell you, it looks simply incredible. That having been said, it ground a GeForce 4 Ti to a halt. Yes, it's only a preview. The final release will be probably around 300% more efficient. But still, tomorrow's games will *definitely* need the newest hardware today.
True, the graphics market might have gotten ahead in the race for now, but then again, how would Carmack be able to test how his game runs on what the rest of us will be running next year, unless he's got that technology this year?
I once laughed when I thought about the impossible power of a 1 GHz processor. Now, such a thing is entry-level, and any modern game will require at least that much horsepower.
Demand does not now exist for an insanely powerful graphics card, because games have not been written yet that take advantage of such hardware. But sooner or later, games will come out that require the latest GeForce or Radeon, and the hardware makers will set their sights on the next horizon, always one step ahead.
The last flight I took was cruising at nearly 40,000 feet. That's about 7 1/2 miles away from the nearest cell tower.
Cell phones are not much of a problem at 40,000 feet. Nor are they any problem over the ocean. You would simply get no reception at all, so it would make no sense to turn your phone on.
But if you're flying New York to Detroit, you're never gonna get above 20,000, because by the time you've risen, it's practically time to descend. In the mean time, you've consumed far more cell tower resources than you should've.
A cell phone operating in analog transmit mode can see for a few miles. Three or four. The problem is, when you're on the ground, that means that maybe you'll see five or so cell towers, max.
This means you occupy one of a finite number of slots on each of five towers. No problem. But when you're way up in the air, you can see dozens of cell towers within a four mile as-the-crow-flies radius of yourself. Now you're using up about ten times more resources than you're supposed to, and effectively are DoSing the cell system. Furthermore, one of the most expensive parts of the cell phone network is the "handoff". (When one cell tower lets go of you, and another one picks you up.) When you are flying at 400 miles per hour, you cause handoffs to occur at a far higher rate, which racks up the costs to the cell phone companies far beyond what they'd planned on, too. (And there's no mechanism to pass the cost of those added handoffs back to you, so the cell company just loses out).
As for jail time? I'm not sure why. During takeoff/landing, there's a lot of sensitive electronics that need calibrating, so you're definitely not allowed to use one then. During flight? Well, people are paranoid these days. *shrug*
I've used a computer since the late 80s, and have never used the scroll lock key once. I assume it has legacy purposes dating back to before that... but what were they? Anyone?
DDR is definitely playable in the home. I have two pads and I have a great time playing with the big-screen TV.
That having been said, the DDR machine in the arcade *always* has a line in front of it. DDR's fun to play with a friend or two. But it's really fun to show off in front of a crowd of other people if you're really good at it. (Remember Back In The Day (tm) when you could draw a large crowd by kicking ass at Space Invaders? Yea, same concept.)
Furthermore, arcade DDR machines have a very nice sound system in them that's usually better than whatever you've got in your house, which makes them attractive for that reason too.
The profit off of a DDR machine in the local arcade probably carries a half-dozen other games along with it.
Okay. This might sound far-fetched, but here goes:
To hell with blocking software. It doesn't work.
But consider this: nothing physically prevents you from bringing a copy of Penthouse into the library, sitting down in a nice reading chair, spreading it open, and eyeing the pages. Yet, nobody does this. Why not? Oh, because people would raise a stink!
So here's a solution. Take all the computers in the library. And put them in view of the circulation desk. That way, if the old granny librarian behind the counter sees two eight year old boys giggling over pages of porn, she can walk over there and shut off the screen or something.
Tada! Problem solved.
The "accidentally stumbles" argument is bullcrap. I mean, let's face it. It is *hard* to "accidentally stumble" on porn. The possible exception would be if you go to a warez site. They sometimes redirect you to porn. But, uhm, why would you go to a warez site in the library either?
If you're in a library and using a computer, you're not playing games and looking at porn. You're there to do work. Research. Look for books. File tax returns online. Typing in the name of the latest Harry Potter book to get more info about it is hardly going to lead to kids seeing porn.
If you put people in a public place, they're not going to act indecently. If they do, you kick 'em out and don't invite them back. But just as there's nothing tangible preventing you from bringing dead-tree smut into a library, there's no need for anything that censors the 'net either.
I think (not that I'm really qualified to do so on this topic, but anywho) that there's a sort of paradox involved...
Because it's impossible to get "out there", there is no "out there" to consider, just like there's no concept of time "before time started at the big bang."
This concept of multiple universes makes absolutely no sense to me; doesn't, by definition, the universe mean "everything"? Hence, if multiple time/space continuums existed, they would just constitute different parts of the same universe?
The best way to think about it is to imagine a balloon. Blow the balloon up. See the inner walls of it? That's the universe. You can place a pebble anywhere on those walls and roll it around, and it's pretty much trapped there.
Our universe (theoretically, anyway) is a special, 3-d balloon wall. Supposing the inner walls of the balloon were 3d, you could travel around in there, but never escape.
Now take hold of some of the balloon in one hand, so you've pinched off a sub-balloon. Give the pinch-point a small twist so it stays that way. A pebble rolling around on the inner surface of that pinched off bubble will never make it into the original balloon inner-space. They're connected, but it is impossible to get from one "universe" to the other. This is what is meant by the multiple universes sprouting off from each other theory. Singularities in space, etc, cause baby universes to "pinch off" from the one we know and love.
Disclaimer: IANAPP (I am not a particle physicist), but I've read a few books / magazines on the subject:)
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of impact will this have? It's a Java port of a 15+ year old game!
:)
This might come as a shock to you.
This will not have any impact! That's right! None! The world will spin just as it ever has! You will go to work tomorrow, just as you did today! Your coffee will taste exactly the same tomorrow as it did yesterday!
Except that Slashdot isn't "Earth-shattering news for nerds". It's just things that nerds find fairly interesting. "Stuff that matters" doesn't mean "stuff with insane gravity." Just stuff that piques the interest of a few guys.
So, lighten up. Smile. Download the free game.
Dave, this is your boss.
Don't bother showing up Monday. You are fired.
- Mike.
I'm betting the guy who simply runs every morning is going to last longer than the nerd and the guy who broke every major bone in his body playing football.
:)
Ironically, it's been calculated that if you jog for 30 minutes every day, you will live two years longer than everyone else. You will also have spent two years of your life jogging.
Unless you absolutely, positively never use anything but Google, you'll likely bump into Overture.
Nobody in my dorm ever uses anything but Google. Seriously. Their mindshare is insane. "Search" isn't even a verb in common parlance here. One "Googles for" a web page now.
Actually, I file all bank statements (Which are just as good as receipts since I pay for everything with a CheckCard) for one full year.
Technically, in the USA, I think that you're supposed to keep those records for five (e.g., The Man can legally subpoena up to five years worth of financial records, and you're supposed to have 'em). So find a shoebox someplace and toss those old bank statements in there. It's really not too big a deal.
...a behemoth running Linux. Contrary to what you would believe the machine was fast enough to support 35 students programming (in text mode) vi, emacs and running gcc.
:)
:)
My God. That must have been one behemoth indeed. It takes dual Pentium 4s SMPing to get even two instances of emacs running most of the time.
(flame on, it's a joke.
It won't run DN Forever...
:)
But the slashdot stories covering the E3 press releases regarding DN Forever's "forthcoming" release will load hella fast
Many do.
At Cornell, for example, if you transfer more than 27 GB over a 72 hour period (which, frankly, is insane...) they cap you to some small bandwidth amount for a period of time... Do it too many times, and they terminate your account.
Most other colleges have some similar system in effect where X traffic in Y period automatically makes your router rate-limit you.
I can't imagine the NEXT release
The next release will follow traditional Anime-series naming conventions, e.g., naming them after the main character and his attributes:
Brilliant Video Card Radeon!
Is Google a big brother monopolist or a scrappy underdog?
:) (*ducks*)
Ok people, one last time:
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Google is the scrappy underdog, whereas Apple is the evil faceless corporation.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, the reverse is true.
Every day is Linux-is-good-day, except on Friday, when we all denounce RedHat for actually charging for some service they provide.
Oh. And vi is always better than emacs.
Well, that's an interesting point.
Indeed, why should I care which company is "in the lead?"
The fact that so many slashdotters are "rooting" for Google brings up an interesting, and probably long-forgotten concept to mind: brand loyalty.
Today's economy has been drawing lines between corporations (or producers, if you will), and us mere mortals, dubbed "consumers" by the marketroids. Do you feel like a number in America? That's because you're treated like one. You're a statistic. Just another wallet to suck out of. That's why nobody cares if they steal music and movies over the Internet. They use you when it's convenient, so you use them when it's convenient. Fair's fair and all.
But Google did something different -- they didn't sell out and make you need to subscribe or deal with in-your-face ads all over -- they actually thought about "what makes people like not just our product, but us?"
They've been rewarded with an almost religious zeal from hundreds of thousands, if not millions of geeks. It's a story that many companies should probably take a lesson from.
What's this? A troll! Eh, I'll bite.
:)
Nope. But then again, I never claimed that I could win any chess match versus any grandmaster, either.
You assume that there is such a thing as an "unsolvable" game. This is not, as far as I know, established. This is not, as far as I know, established.
:) But that doesn't take away from the fact that an intelligent human could look at a source printout and figure out if it halted or not, but no general algorithm can be deduced that would do so. Thus, for a computer to win at this game, it would actually have to show intelligence, and not raw computational skill.
Sure it has. I'll give you an unsolvable game right now.
The source code to an entire program is written out by a game master. Two copies of the source are printed out. Two players are then each given an identical copy of the source, and a set of arguments that would be passed to the source were it compiled & executed. The goal is to determine if the program will exit correctly, or if it will halt in the middle. The first player to show either a) where it will halt or b) that it won't halt, wins.
This is a game version of the halting problem. It's been mathematically proven intractable; that is, there's no deterministic (e.g., algorithmic or procedural) method of doing this. You cannot write a computer program that will execute a set series of steps every time and determine what's the case here.
Is this game fun? Probably not.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the whole PC graphics market has gotten well ahead of their consumers and software (i.e. games)?
:) and let me tell you, it looks simply incredible. That having been said, it ground a GeForce 4 Ti to a halt. Yes, it's only a preview. The final release will be probably around 300% more efficient. But still, tomorrow's games will *definitely* need the newest hardware today.
Just wait 'til Doom III comes out. I, erm, might have, possibly, uh, "acquired" the E3 preview version
True, the graphics market might have gotten ahead in the race for now, but then again, how would Carmack be able to test how his game runs on what the rest of us will be running next year, unless he's got that technology this year?
I once laughed when I thought about the impossible power of a 1 GHz processor. Now, such a thing is entry-level, and any modern game will require at least that much horsepower.
Demand does not now exist for an insanely powerful graphics card, because games have not been written yet that take advantage of such hardware. But sooner or later, games will come out that require the latest GeForce or Radeon, and the hardware makers will set their sights on the next horizon, always one step ahead.
The last flight I took was cruising at nearly 40,000 feet. That's about 7 1/2 miles away from the nearest cell tower.
Cell phones are not much of a problem at 40,000 feet. Nor are they any problem over the ocean. You would simply get no reception at all, so it would make no sense to turn your phone on.
But if you're flying New York to Detroit, you're never gonna get above 20,000, because by the time you've risen, it's practically time to descend. In the mean time, you've consumed far more cell tower resources than you should've.
Not to mention two marvels of modern civilization: Penicillin, and Microwave cooking.
Cell phones in planes are a big problem.
A cell phone operating in analog transmit mode can see for a few miles. Three or four. The problem is, when you're on the ground, that means that maybe you'll see five or so cell towers, max.
This means you occupy one of a finite number of slots on each of five towers. No problem. But when you're way up in the air, you can see dozens of cell towers within a four mile as-the-crow-flies radius of yourself. Now you're using up about ten times more resources than you're supposed to, and effectively are DoSing the cell system. Furthermore, one of the most expensive parts of the cell phone network is the "handoff". (When one cell tower lets go of you, and another one picks you up.) When you are flying at 400 miles per hour, you cause handoffs to occur at a far higher rate, which racks up the costs to the cell phone companies far beyond what they'd planned on, too. (And there's no mechanism to pass the cost of those added handoffs back to you, so the cell company just loses out).
As for jail time? I'm not sure why. During takeoff/landing, there's a lot of sensitive electronics that need calibrating, so you're definitely not allowed to use one then. During flight? Well, people are paranoid these days. *shrug*
Thanks! That makes sense. :)
+2 invisible karma points for responding within 10 minutes, too
What *is* the Scroll Lock key for?
I've used a computer since the late 80s, and have never used the scroll lock key once. I assume it has legacy purposes dating back to before that... but what were they? Anyone?
Thanks!
DDR is definitely playable in the home. I have two pads and I have a great time playing with the big-screen TV.
That having been said, the DDR machine in the arcade *always* has a line in front of it. DDR's fun to play with a friend or two. But it's really fun to show off in front of a crowd of other people if you're really good at it. (Remember Back In The Day (tm) when you could draw a large crowd by kicking ass at Space Invaders? Yea, same concept.)
Furthermore, arcade DDR machines have a very nice sound system in them that's usually better than whatever you've got in your house, which makes them attractive for that reason too.
The profit off of a DDR machine in the local arcade probably carries a half-dozen other games along with it.
Okay. This might sound far-fetched, but here goes:
To hell with blocking software. It doesn't work.
But consider this: nothing physically prevents you from bringing a copy of Penthouse into the library, sitting down in a nice reading chair, spreading it open, and eyeing the pages. Yet, nobody does this. Why not? Oh, because people would raise a stink!
So here's a solution. Take all the computers in the library. And put them in view of the circulation desk. That way, if the old granny librarian behind the counter sees two eight year old boys giggling over pages of porn, she can walk over there and shut off the screen or something.
Tada! Problem solved.
The "accidentally stumbles" argument is bullcrap. I mean, let's face it. It is *hard* to "accidentally stumble" on porn. The possible exception would be if you go to a warez site. They sometimes redirect you to porn. But, uhm, why would you go to a warez site in the library either?
If you're in a library and using a computer, you're not playing games and looking at porn. You're there to do work. Research. Look for books. File tax returns online. Typing in the name of the latest Harry Potter book to get more info about it is hardly going to lead to kids seeing porn.
If you put people in a public place, they're not going to act indecently. If they do, you kick 'em out and don't invite them back. But just as there's nothing tangible preventing you from bringing dead-tree smut into a library, there's no need for anything that censors the 'net either.
.... and 0.6% missing? :)
I think (not that I'm really qualified to do so on this topic, but anywho) that there's a sort of paradox involved...
Because it's impossible to get "out there", there is no "out there" to consider, just like there's no concept of time "before time started at the big bang."
This concept of multiple universes makes absolutely no sense to me; doesn't, by definition, the universe mean "everything"? Hence, if multiple time/space continuums existed, they would just constitute different parts of the same universe?
:)
The best way to think about it is to imagine a balloon. Blow the balloon up. See the inner walls of it? That's the universe. You can place a pebble anywhere on those walls and roll it around, and it's pretty much trapped there.
Our universe (theoretically, anyway) is a special, 3-d balloon wall. Supposing the inner walls of the balloon were 3d, you could travel around in there, but never escape.
Now take hold of some of the balloon in one hand, so you've pinched off a sub-balloon. Give the pinch-point a small twist so it stays that way. A pebble rolling around on the inner surface of that pinched off bubble will never make it into the original balloon inner-space. They're connected, but it is impossible to get from one "universe" to the other. This is what is meant by the multiple universes sprouting off from each other theory. Singularities in space, etc, cause baby universes to "pinch off" from the one we know and love.
Disclaimer: IANAPP (I am not a particle physicist), but I've read a few books / magazines on the subject
That's how I think about it, anyway.
This is why modern WinNT's make you press ctrl+alt+del to bring up the login prompt. You can't intercept that key combo.