"Still, programmers are privileging speed and efficiency over security..."
Speed and efficiency of *development*, maybe.
No, it was right the first time. Java is several orders of magnitude more secure by default than any random C or C++ program. Yet mention Java on a forum like, say, Slashdot, and you'll hear no end to how much Java sucks because "it's slow". (Usually ignoring the massive speedups that have happened since they last tried it 1996.) It doesn't matter that the tradeoff for that speed is flexibility, security, and portability. They want things to be fast for some undefined quantity of fast.
In fact, I predict that someone will be along to argue just how slow Java is in 3... 2... 1...
Ever tried reverse engineering the MAPI "protocol"? It's all serialized COM objects being shunted across the network. The client and the server are tied, making any attempts at reverese engineering an exercise in feature-chasing frustration.
There are still plenty of businesses that use alternative servers like Lotus Notes. (Though only God knows why.) That should tell the market that an alternative communications stack should be viable in the corporate market. All you need is an email server and client with features that are competitive with Outlook/Exchange, and an operating system that doesn't automatically sell the customer on using a "unified software provider" for all their OS, Email, and Office needs.
I don't know of anyone who has ever beaten the 2nd level. In all my years gaming, I've never gotten past that point.
Second level of... California Raisins? Seriously? I know I passed at least 6 levels, and I believe I actually beat the game. (Though I could be making that up.) Of course, it was painfully slow on the hardware I played it on, so I had a LOT of time to respond to traps.;)
Roger that, but for some reason even DOSBox doesn't like to restrict California Raisins' game speed.
California Raisins was all over the map on the original hardware. (I played it on a few different computers.) So its speed is going to be a bit wacky on DOSBox as well. What you want to do is use CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12 to decrease or increase the number of virtual cycles per second until you find a game speed that's reasonable. For games tuned to the original 4.77 MHz, this seems to be about 450 cycles/sec. I use that setting on Crossfire, and it works spectacularly well.:)
The MAJOR difference between 1980s consoles and 2000s consoles are the graphics. Thats why people get new consoles. When graphics become photorealistic and upgrades don't add anything to the visual experience, you can look to something other than graphics as driving sales. I don't think that merely upgrading graphics are the problem.
The difference is that previous graphics upgrades had notable effects on the gameplay experience. For example:
Each of those steps was a rather major improvement over the previous generation. The games didn't just look better, they played better thanks to abilities that were previously unavailable to developers. Now we're sitting on a situation where improvements to the graphics doesn't actually change the gameplay by much, if at all. Only Nintendo seems to have realized this, and focused on innovation in other areas.:)
Happy cows don't really come from California as the commercial states, overheated, dead cows come from California. Good thing we learned that last summer though so they can stop running that stupid ad (I'm from Wisconsin by the way)
Not to mention that Wisconsin makes better cheese. We care about our curds, man!;-)
Too bad CitiBank was bought out by Bank of America. When that happened, for a while the website didn't work at all - which meant I wasn't able to pay my bills online (and customer service wouldn't do squat to help me out, since my information somehow disappeared during the migration); now they have resorted to some lame iframing around the original site so they can brand it with BoA's logo.
I think you're confusing Citibank with MBNA. I agree that the MBNA/BoA merger was less than stellar. But that's par for the course with BoA as they've always been the first to drop the ball. (IMHO) Citibank will be bought out by Bank of America shortly after the reanimated corpse of Hitler resumes a successful Blitzkrieg against Europe. (i.e. Not gonna happen)
Battlecruiser 3000AD was the definitive piece of PC "vapourware" until Duke Nukem Forever came along. It was eventually kicked out the door by the publisher, against the programmer's wishes. Had the programmer had his way, it would probably have stayed in development in perpetuity.
Thus in modern terms, it is considered "correct" to use vapourware for a product that has not been delivered according to promises. Especially if new promises are continually made and broken. i.e. "Battlecruiser 3000AD was vapourware for seven years!"
Actually the X-33 never flew, the project was cancelled when the prototype was 85% complete.
You're correct. I was confusing the hydrogen tank explosion as having happened during the scheduled 1999 test flight. Replace X-33 with the DC-X, however, and you have the same result.
The A380 is not vapourware - its in production, the delays are due to production problems and not technical issues with the concept itself.
Production delays are still delays. Until the first fully operational craft is delivered to a customer, it is still vaporware. I have no doubt that it will happen eventually, but that doesn't stop the vapor phase from occurring.
[A380] is already flying. Just because it is not in commercial use yet, doesn't make it vapor ware.
The X-33 flew as well, but that was total vaporware. Until someone accepts delivery of an A380, it will remain as vaporware as Airbus continues to delay shipments in order to "work out the bugs".
Compared to the terrible port Nintendo made for Intellivision the Colecovision version was pure gold.
Dude, Coleco made that port. That's why Donkey Kong is on the wrong side in that version too. The Mattel guys were actually pretty upset about the quality and wanted to do their own version to show it could be done right. That's probably why IMagic did Beauty and the Beast.
Not too shabby for the COnnecticut LEather COmpany.
Actually, it was a travesty. But players were just happy to have Donkey Kong, so they enjoyed it anyway. Sort of like the 2600 Pacman.;)
Colecovision's Burgertime was a much better arcade port. As was Mr. Do.
The whole "video game" crash still seems like revisionist history to me.
There was nothing revisionist about it. It just wasn't obvious to consumers.
From a 50,000 foot level, what happened is that game consoles had been flooding the market with new hardware and titles at an unsustainable rate. At the same time, console makers had been trying to turn their consoles into full computers in an attempt to make their systems more appealing. Commodore attempted to improve the computer market by advertising that computers could be both for serious work AND games. To top it all off, retailers had long believed that Video Games were just a fad.
All this added up to a powder keg that was ready to go off. About the same time, Commodore started a price war with Texas Instruments, Atari manufactured more E.T. cartridges than their were systems, E.T. was poorly received, and retailers ended up with too much console product on their shelves. So they did what any console maker would do: They reduced the prices on the console stuff to clear it out faster so they could focus on the computer stuff. This was picked up on by the public (who already were being told that computers were superior) and the market for console stuff disappeared overnight.
*CRASH*
The bright side of this is that there are still tons of sealed games for the old systems just waiting to be found. They've been sitting in warehouses, attics, backrooms, and all kinds of other interesting places for the last 20+ years. Even today, I can still get sealed games for the 2600 and Intellivision for barely a couple of dollars. You just have to know where to look.:)
Just about every other "history" article as of late has jumped from the 2600 to the NES, ignoring the rich history in between. PC World deserves a pat on the back for changing this. That being said...
For a while, superior graphics and sound made Mattel's $300 Intellivision (and a succession of rebadged versions) the major competitor to the Atari VCS. Mattel's product was the first console to use a 16-bit microprocessor, but poor controllers and--more importantly--a lack of third-party games limited its success.
The Intellivision wasn't lacking third party titles. Everyone from Activision, to IMagic, to Atari (!) released games for the system. You can see a full list of games over on IntellivisionLives.
While Intellivision focused more on thinking games rather than arcade action*, it was pretty much successful right up until the Video Game Crash of '83/84. At that point, Mattel Electronics died, but the Intellivision lived on as part of the newly formed INTV Corp. Some of the best games were produced under INTV (Diner, Thin Ice, Thunder Castle, Hover Force, etc.), and they didn't close their doors until 1991. (IIRC)
And many [Colecovision] units came bundled with a near-arcade-quality port of Nintendo's Donkey Kong.
Except for the fact that Donkey Kong was on the wrong side of the screen.:-/
Suprisingly, not that many players noticed this little gaff.
Previewed at the 1983 Consumer Electronic Show (CES), the Odyssey 3 Command Center held out the promise of an improved keyboard, a built-in joystick holder, a voice synthesizer, and a 300-baud modem.
Not entirely true. It was released in Europe as the Phillips Videopac+. It took collectors a while to realize that the Videopac+ (O^3) was different than the Videopac (O^2), and that the new console had actually been released. Albeit in small quantities. Of course, the extra hardware enhancements the article talks about (like the modem) were not in the European release.
* Don't get me wrong. The Intellivision had some great action games. Dreadnaught Factor is one of my favorites, as is Space Spartans.
By 1 time limit, I mean that if you have been elected as the governor of a state, that's the last time you get to be governor period, in any state.
Absolutely not. Governors are responsible for the ongoing management of their state. If you cut their ability to serve, you'll cut off the ability for a state to function. Congressmen are nothing more than representatives of the governor (Senators are not required to be elected by the people) and the people of a state to ensure that their wishes are being met at a federal level. It was never the intent to take power away from the states by regularly passing consolidated laws for the entire nation.
In fact, the whole setup was supposed to put everyone's interests at odds with each other. The state governor's representation was supposed to be at odds with the represenation of the people, which was at odds with other states, which was to ensure that congress would only do something if they could all agree on it. Otherwise, congress wasn't supposed to do anything.
By making Senators just like representatives, we subjected ourselves to the Tyranny of the Masses.
Stores have been getting regular shipments of PS3s every couple of days all of december and online stores have been getting huge batches of PS3s. Stores are not getting any significant new supplies of Wiis like they are with PS3s. That is why you can't buy a Wii right now.
You're only half right. The PS3 supply problem has been mostly sorted out, but both consoles are being regularly resupplied. The difference is that the Wiis are disappearing the moment the store opens, while the PS3s just... aren't. (Remember, the Wii has several times as many consoles out as the PS3.)
Scary as it may sound, most people know the exact dates that the Wii will arrive, and thus show up to acquire them. I few dates I was aware of:
November 24th (Black Friday supply) December 2nd (First occurance of consoles being held until Sunday in order to list it in the flyers) December 6th (Walmart held theirs until this date because their flyers are on a different schedule) December 9th (Most stores cancelled this release to stockpile for the 17th) December 17th (huge dump of stockpiled consoles) December 22nd (last shipment before Christmas)
Each of these dates represented a significant number of units for nearly every major retailer. The fewest I've heard of was 9 for a given store. EB Games appear to get their shipments in a more ad-hoc fashion, so reports on specific dates have been sketchy for those.
In comparison, the PS3s are usually Fex-Exed to the stores in bundles of 3 to 5 units. Delivery is ad-hoc and unpredictable. Surprisingly, the consoles don't appear to immediately sell out. I know several people (one personally) who were there at the time of a PS3 restock. There simply wasn't much interest from the shoppers.
My opinion is that the old politicians simply push around the rookies. He is absolutely right that rookie politicians just can't get as much done.
Which is not such a bad thing. The market already has plenty of solutions, checks, and balances for just about every ill facing our country. When congress gets involved, all they do is pass laws that f**k up the solutions already in place.
Ever play SimCity? Did you ever notice that things seem to go best when you're not trying to make major changes to your city every year? Same thing with politics. The nation runs mostly on automatic. We need congressmen who will stop trying to micromanage the government. The only issues that should be acted upon are the ones with clear solutions staring us in the face.
To get rid of career politicians, you really need to get rid of political parties, or at least prevent the parties themselves from employing anyone.
Agreed. The parties have become the power behind the power, acting as gatekeepers for all who wish to enter politics.
Yeah, how about congressional salary caps that bring them down to the median income in the US? That way, if they want a raise, they have to improve the quality of life for all people.
That's definitely fair, as long as you allow for various congressional expenses to be charged back to the congressional budget. Expenses such as travel and running their office are too expensive to come out of pocket, and we wouldn't want them running to outside money at the first opportunity. Of course, such an expense account opens up other possibilities for fraud (need I remind anyone of the congressional postal abuse scandal?) so it's not a perfect solution.
In the end, we need a set of changes that would convince the cheaters that politics isn't worth it, and that the only reason to get into office is if you want to see something changed. One has to wonder, how much better would politics be if we dissolved the parties backing these politicians?
Um, I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask this. But how in the hell does this prove that you are not the FBI, Secret Service, Police or whoever?
They were just messing with him. They were playing on the whole "hacker movie" stereotypes of being able to do anything with even the slightest bit of information*. The request to get a sign or buildings in the background was to solidify the idea that they wanted this information for verification purposes. They probably wanted him to believe they could zoom in from a live satellite and see the location he photographed.
They continued to jerk his chain with email exchanges like this one:
Have had a chance to set up a couple of IDS/IPS evasion bots, perimeter scanning came up clean. Small SQL injection issue merged with XSS shows that the backend database may be either 768-bit encrypted or a simple 3DES matter, but a little more time should take care of that issue. Once the tables are writable to sa, should be ready to jump in and jump out with no problem. One of their systems caught an early sniff, but was shut down with a smurf.
It sounds good (lots'o techno-jargon), but it's obviously nonsense to anyone who knows better.
* I don't watch 24, but I've heard some rather amusing takes on their entire "hacker" philosophy. In particular, they seem to be able to do the impossible without blinking an eye, just by wrapping it up in some techno-babble that's intended to sound good to the average joe.
todd... no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK everything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute back to one of the hosts we had set up after that, straight DOWNHILL. i've already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity, some other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they have everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me access all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD
I'm sorry, I keeled over laughing from that part. They really had him strung along with the whole thing. Although, I think he started to catch on after the "bust":
I was getting serious cold feet and going to tell you to abort until I saw your last email. To that end, I have spoken about this to no one as we agreed and I will not speak of it in the future. As a gesture of good faith, I was hoping you guys would remove our correspondence from your web site. Isn't that risky for all of us to have it up there?
Honestly, the more I see of this stuff, the more I wonder if it isn't time for a congress reform rather than any of the billion other little "reforms" that congress proposes. The original intent of the founding fathers was that regular people would run for office and represent the best interests of their constituents; in the tradition of Cincinnatus They certainly never intended for the "career" politicians we see today. Too much money, organized crime, and generally dispicable people getting into office.
The only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office? Perhaps the terms of office should be limited? That would certainly help discourage careering. Limits on advertising budgets would be good, but difficult to police. Any other ideas?
Porting the full Sun Java to the PS3 would be great, but for real development you'd need Sony (or NVidia)'s help getting the OpenGL acceleration working.
More precisely, you'd just need the development kit. (Which, granted, is a pretty exclusive club.) Sony already support the micro version of OpenGL, so it shouldn't prove too difficult to port JOGL or LWJGL. Of course, my understanding is that a lot of the graphics programmers develop their own drivers for the consoles. So that part would probably remain unchanged, but with Java thunks. (Unless someone ports Java to the GPU, that is...)
I play Wurm Online, a fairly involved persistent online fantasy simulator which runs in Java and JOGL and games like it could easily be made to work on the PS3 with PS3Linux, if the OpenGL acceleration were available.
In theory, it should already run on PS3 Linux; albeit a bit slow. I'm thinking more along the lines of running the game directly from a game disc.
BTW, Markus has already submitted his 4K entry for this year. Looks like he decided to do a Zuma clone this time around.:)
And I also want this running on the Super Nintendo this time tomorrow, *snap *snap
To be serious for a moment, I honestly hope that this encourages ports to the Wii, XBox 360, and PS3. Java is an extremely capable game programming language at this point, and could potentially save programmers a great deal of development and debugging time. In fact, the only thing that's been holding developers back from using Java is that it doesn't port to the major consoles. If that were to change...
JW: Going to the chapel, going to get buried. Me: What did you just quote and why?
Looks like the programmer was having a little fun. (Apparently at your expense.) Jabberwacky is quoting a silly reincarnation of the oldie song, "Goin' to the chapel, and we're... gonna get maaaaarried. [...] Goin', to the Chapel, of Love.":P
Slashdot Mirror
No, it was right the first time. Java is several orders of magnitude more secure by default than any random C or C++ program. Yet mention Java on a forum like, say, Slashdot, and you'll hear no end to how much Java sucks because "it's slow". (Usually ignoring the massive speedups that have happened since they last tried it 1996.) It doesn't matter that the tradeoff for that speed is flexibility, security, and portability. They want things to be fast for some undefined quantity of fast.
In fact, I predict that someone will be along to argue just how slow Java is in 3... 2... 1...
Ever tried reverse engineering the MAPI "protocol"? It's all serialized COM objects being shunted across the network. The client and the server are tied, making any attempts at reverese engineering an exercise in feature-chasing frustration.
There are still plenty of businesses that use alternative servers like Lotus Notes. (Though only God knows why.) That should tell the market that an alternative communications stack should be viable in the corporate market. All you need is an email server and client with features that are competitive with Outlook/Exchange, and an operating system that doesn't automatically sell the customer on using a "unified software provider" for all their OS, Email, and Office needs.
Second level of... California Raisins? Seriously? I know I passed at least 6 levels, and I believe I actually beat the game. (Though I could be making that up.) Of course, it was painfully slow on the hardware I played it on, so I had a LOT of time to respond to traps.
California Raisins was all over the map on the original hardware. (I played it on a few different computers.) So its speed is going to be a bit wacky on DOSBox as well. What you want to do is use CTRL+F11 and CTRL+F12 to decrease or increase the number of virtual cycles per second until you find a game speed that's reasonable. For games tuned to the original 4.77 MHz, this seems to be about 450 cycles/sec. I use that setting on Crossfire, and it works spectacularly well.
The difference is that previous graphics upgrades had notable effects on the gameplay experience. For example:
2600: 2 sprites + monocolor background
5200: 4 sprites + character mode background
Colecovision: 32 sprites w/16 colors
NES: 64 sprites w/64 colors
SNES: 128 sprites w/256 color + scaling + rotation + blending
Post-SNES: Framebuffers + 3D Accelerators
Each of those steps was a rather major improvement over the previous generation. The games didn't just look better, they played better thanks to abilities that were previously unavailable to developers. Now we're sitting on a situation where improvements to the graphics doesn't actually change the gameplay by much, if at all. Only Nintendo seems to have realized this, and focused on innovation in other areas.
Not to mention that Wisconsin makes better cheese. We care about our curds, man!
I think you're confusing Citibank with MBNA. I agree that the MBNA/BoA merger was less than stellar. But that's par for the course with BoA as they've always been the first to drop the ball. (IMHO) Citibank will be bought out by Bank of America shortly after the reanimated corpse of Hitler resumes a successful Blitzkrieg against Europe. (i.e. Not gonna happen)
Battlecruiser 3000AD was the definitive piece of PC "vapourware" until Duke Nukem Forever came along. It was eventually kicked out the door by the publisher, against the programmer's wishes. Had the programmer had his way, it would probably have stayed in development in perpetuity.
Thus in modern terms, it is considered "correct" to use vapourware for a product that has not been delivered according to promises. Especially if new promises are continually made and broken. i.e. "Battlecruiser 3000AD was vapourware for seven years!"
You're correct. I was confusing the hydrogen tank explosion as having happened during the scheduled 1999 test flight. Replace X-33 with the DC-X, however, and you have the same result.
Production delays are still delays. Until the first fully operational craft is delivered to a customer, it is still vaporware. I have no doubt that it will happen eventually, but that doesn't stop the vapor phase from occurring.
The X-33 flew as well, but that was total vaporware. Until someone accepts delivery of an A380, it will remain as vaporware as Airbus continues to delay shipments in order to "work out the bugs".
Of course you're a "fan boy". How else are you keeping your PS3 cool other than fanning it?
Sorry, sorry. Couldn't resist.
Dude, Coleco made that port. That's why Donkey Kong is on the wrong side in that version too. The Mattel guys were actually pretty upset about the quality and wanted to do their own version to show it could be done right. That's probably why IMagic did Beauty and the Beast.
Actually, it was a travesty. But players were just happy to have Donkey Kong, so they enjoyed it anyway. Sort of like the 2600 Pacman.
Colecovision's Burgertime was a much better arcade port. As was Mr. Do.
There was nothing revisionist about it. It just wasn't obvious to consumers.
From a 50,000 foot level, what happened is that game consoles had been flooding the market with new hardware and titles at an unsustainable rate. At the same time, console makers had been trying to turn their consoles into full computers in an attempt to make their systems more appealing. Commodore attempted to improve the computer market by advertising that computers could be both for serious work AND games. To top it all off, retailers had long believed that Video Games were just a fad.
All this added up to a powder keg that was ready to go off. About the same time, Commodore started a price war with Texas Instruments, Atari manufactured more E.T. cartridges than their were systems, E.T. was poorly received, and retailers ended up with too much console product on their shelves. So they did what any console maker would do: They reduced the prices on the console stuff to clear it out faster so they could focus on the computer stuff. This was picked up on by the public (who already were being told that computers were superior) and the market for console stuff disappeared overnight.
*CRASH*
The bright side of this is that there are still tons of sealed games for the old systems just waiting to be found. They've been sitting in warehouses, attics, backrooms, and all kinds of other interesting places for the last 20+ years. Even today, I can still get sealed games for the 2600 and Intellivision for barely a couple of dollars. You just have to know where to look.
The Intellivision wasn't lacking third party titles. Everyone from Activision, to IMagic, to Atari (!) released games for the system. You can see a full list of games over on IntellivisionLives.
While Intellivision focused more on thinking games rather than arcade action*, it was pretty much successful right up until the Video Game Crash of '83/84. At that point, Mattel Electronics died, but the Intellivision lived on as part of the newly formed INTV Corp. Some of the best games were produced under INTV (Diner, Thin Ice, Thunder Castle, Hover Force, etc.), and they didn't close their doors until 1991. (IIRC)
Except for the fact that Donkey Kong was on the wrong side of the screen.
Suprisingly, not that many players noticed this little gaff.
Not entirely true. It was released in Europe as the Phillips Videopac+. It took collectors a while to realize that the Videopac+ (O^3) was different than the Videopac (O^2), and that the new console had actually been released. Albeit in small quantities. Of course, the extra hardware enhancements the article talks about (like the modem) were not in the European release.
* Don't get me wrong. The Intellivision had some great action games. Dreadnaught Factor is one of my favorites, as is Space Spartans.
Absolutely not. Governors are responsible for the ongoing management of their state. If you cut their ability to serve, you'll cut off the ability for a state to function. Congressmen are nothing more than representatives of the governor (Senators are not required to be elected by the people) and the people of a state to ensure that their wishes are being met at a federal level. It was never the intent to take power away from the states by regularly passing consolidated laws for the entire nation.
In fact, the whole setup was supposed to put everyone's interests at odds with each other. The state governor's representation was supposed to be at odds with the represenation of the people, which was at odds with other states, which was to ensure that congress would only do something if they could all agree on it. Otherwise, congress wasn't supposed to do anything.
By making Senators just like representatives, we subjected ourselves to the Tyranny of the Masses.
You're only half right. The PS3 supply problem has been mostly sorted out, but both consoles are being regularly resupplied. The difference is that the Wiis are disappearing the moment the store opens, while the PS3s just... aren't. (Remember, the Wii has several times as many consoles out as the PS3.)
Scary as it may sound, most people know the exact dates that the Wii will arrive, and thus show up to acquire them. I few dates I was aware of:
November 24th (Black Friday supply)
December 2nd (First occurance of consoles being held until Sunday in order to list it in the flyers)
December 6th (Walmart held theirs until this date because their flyers are on a different schedule)
December 9th (Most stores cancelled this release to stockpile for the 17th)
December 17th (huge dump of stockpiled consoles)
December 22nd (last shipment before Christmas)
Each of these dates represented a significant number of units for nearly every major retailer. The fewest I've heard of was 9 for a given store. EB Games appear to get their shipments in a more ad-hoc fashion, so reports on specific dates have been sketchy for those.
In comparison, the PS3s are usually Fex-Exed to the stores in bundles of 3 to 5 units. Delivery is ad-hoc and unpredictable. Surprisingly, the consoles don't appear to immediately sell out. I know several people (one personally) who were there at the time of a PS3 restock. There simply wasn't much interest from the shoppers.
Which is not such a bad thing. The market already has plenty of solutions, checks, and balances for just about every ill facing our country. When congress gets involved, all they do is pass laws that f**k up the solutions already in place.
Ever play SimCity? Did you ever notice that things seem to go best when you're not trying to make major changes to your city every year? Same thing with politics. The nation runs mostly on automatic. We need congressmen who will stop trying to micromanage the government. The only issues that should be acted upon are the ones with clear solutions staring us in the face.
Agreed. The parties have become the power behind the power, acting as gatekeepers for all who wish to enter politics.
That's definitely fair, as long as you allow for various congressional expenses to be charged back to the congressional budget. Expenses such as travel and running their office are too expensive to come out of pocket, and we wouldn't want them running to outside money at the first opportunity. Of course, such an expense account opens up other possibilities for fraud (need I remind anyone of the congressional postal abuse scandal?) so it's not a perfect solution.
In the end, we need a set of changes that would convince the cheaters that politics isn't worth it, and that the only reason to get into office is if you want to see something changed. One has to wonder, how much better would politics be if we dissolved the parties backing these politicians?
They were just messing with him. They were playing on the whole "hacker movie" stereotypes of being able to do anything with even the slightest bit of information*. The request to get a sign or buildings in the background was to solidify the idea that they wanted this information for verification purposes. They probably wanted him to believe they could zoom in from a live satellite and see the location he photographed.
They continued to jerk his chain with email exchanges like this one:
It sounds good (lots'o techno-jargon), but it's obviously nonsense to anyone who knows better.
* I don't watch 24, but I've heard some rather amusing takes on their entire "hacker" philosophy. In particular, they seem to be able to do the impossible without blinking an eye, just by wrapping it up in some techno-babble that's intended to sound good to the average joe.
I'm sorry, I keeled over laughing from that part. They really had him strung along with the whole thing. Although, I think he started to catch on after the "bust":
Honestly, the more I see of this stuff, the more I wonder if it isn't time for a congress reform rather than any of the billion other little "reforms" that congress proposes. The original intent of the founding fathers was that regular people would run for office and represent the best interests of their constituents; in the tradition of Cincinnatus They certainly never intended for the "career" politicians we see today. Too much money, organized crime, and generally dispicable people getting into office.
The only question is, what is the best approach to encourage more honorable folks to run for office? Perhaps the terms of office should be limited? That would certainly help discourage careering. Limits on advertising budgets would be good, but difficult to police. Any other ideas?
More precisely, you'd just need the development kit. (Which, granted, is a pretty exclusive club.) Sony already support the micro version of OpenGL, so it shouldn't prove too difficult to port JOGL or LWJGL. Of course, my understanding is that a lot of the graphics programmers develop their own drivers for the consoles. So that part would probably remain unchanged, but with Java thunks. (Unless someone ports Java to the GPU, that is...)
In theory, it should already run on PS3 Linux; albeit a bit slow. I'm thinking more along the lines of running the game directly from a game disc.
BTW, Markus has already submitted his 4K entry for this year. Looks like he decided to do a Zuma clone this time around.
No one is talking about Metacity. They're talking about the GNOME Desktop Environment, a complete desktop shell and software bundle.
To be serious for a moment, I honestly hope that this encourages ports to the Wii, XBox 360, and PS3. Java is an extremely capable game programming language at this point, and could potentially save programmers a great deal of development and debugging time. In fact, the only thing that's been holding developers back from using Java is that it doesn't port to the major consoles. If that were to change...
Damn kids.
:P
Looks like the programmer was having a little fun. (Apparently at your expense.) Jabberwacky is quoting a silly reincarnation of the oldie song, "Goin' to the chapel, and we're... gonna get maaaaarried. [...] Goin', to the Chapel, of Love."