Formula 1, if you didn't know, is the premiere motorsport in the world. Every rule about car design in F1 falls into one of two categories. Rules that prevent the egineer from killing the driver and rules that say the car must not fall apart. The result is the most technologically advanced cars in the entire world. These are the fastest four wheeled motor vehicles on earth that can make both left and right turns. Every race car driver falls into 3 categories. Driving F1, wanting to drive F1 and too afraid to drive F1. If you think Nascar is dumb because they go around in circles, F1 is for you. I've heard it described as driving a go-kart with a jet engine. (it's really just a V10).
Oh, and some other information. Michael Schumacher is the greatest driver in F1 today, he has won the championship the last 6 times. He is the highest paid athlete in the entire world. He drives a ferrari, the best car there is. It looks like he is going to win again this year, he has lost only one race so far. And while it seems boring to watch the same guy win every time it shows you why F1 is so great. The best driver wins every time. And this guy is the undisputed greatest driver of cars to ever live.
The US grand prix in Indianapolis is this sunday at 1pm. It is the only race in the US this year. If you haven't seen an F1 race I highly reccomend you check it out. Imagine Nascar, with right turns and no rednecks. It doesn't suck.
I really could care less which one is left standing, it just doesn't matter. I'm buying a DS no matter what and I'm not buying a PSP. There are two reasons.
1) I remember back in the game gear / gameboy days. Gamegear was the system with clearly superior technology and hardware, you could turn the thing into a TV even! But who won? Nintendo with their low res spinach screen gameboy. It was just superior enough to a tiger lcd game and you could switch cartridges out of it instead of buying games seperately. DS and PSP is history repeating itself.
2) Completely ignoring what I just said, lets say the DS fails miserably. Let's say that the DS turns out to be the worst thing ever. Great! I'll be the guy who's got one. I'll be just as cool as that kid down the road who still has a working Virtual Boy. Worth every penny. Not only that, but its guaranteed to have at least a couple good games for it. From the previews we have been given at E3 as we as its gameboy backwards compatibility and wirelessness, owning a Nintendo DS is guaranteed to entertain me for at least X hours. As far as the PSP goes there is no guarantee of that I have seen. So even if the DS bombs, it is a great investment on which I am guaranteed to make a return. Worst case scenario I end up buying ever game that comes out for it because they get marked down to a buck each. Best case, it wins. Can't lose.
Note that I'm not saying the PSP is a POS. I'm just saying that with the knowledge currently available to me the DS is showing every sign of being worth the price while the PSP is not. If its announced tommorow that the PSP is actually as good as a Treo 600 a gameboy and a light saber combined, or even close to that, I'll change my mind.
Does anyone know if the lockup bug with the combination of APIC/APIC-IO and nforce 2 boards is fixed? Currently I've got 2.6.5 and I have to disable APIC to prevent the system from hanging.
// This one makes a huge difference. Last value in milliseconds (default is 250) user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
Then pipelining will be enabled and the 250 millisecond delay before rendering will be disabled. You may not realize it, but this makes firefox render a zillion times faster even on the fastest of systems. Especially if you have high bandwith and a significant portion gets downloaded in those 250 milliseconds.
Yeah, google didn't work and we didn't know what to do. We tested and determined the problem was akamai within a minute. So I used AIM to ask a friend who could still resolve google what the ip was. he passed it to me over aim using gaim encryption no less. We then created an alias for google on our dns server. google.ourdomain.com.
We also developed a new DNS protocol in the process. ESEDOIM: Extremely slow encrypted DNS over instant messenger. Who wants to write an RFC?
I'm a huge huge fan of arcade racing games. I've played them all. Everything from Pole Position to the rare Virtua Racing 2. There are exactly two racing games that I would rank as the most realistic.
1) Ferrari 355 Challenge. This is a rare game to find indeed. You can recognize it because of its 3 monitors and bright red ferrariness. This is a large expensive arcade machine and they usually charge like a buck to play. But its as close to a Ferrari as you can get without shelling out $200K.
2) Nascar Silicon Alley motor speedway. I think these are all out of business now. But there used to be one in the PPP (Palisades Mall in NY). Its really really big and costs a lot to play. You sit in a full size Nascar "pod" with a projector in front of you and everything is exactly like a real stock car. It's the most realistic driving experience I've ever had. I know it was the real thing because I tried to drive like it was Cruisin' USA and I kept spinning out and not being able to get going again.
Other than that you are going to have to search for actual driving simulators that they use to teach driving. As far as video games go, those are the most realistic.
That's the new policy at our work. If you ever have a problem with outlook and you can't fix it by rebooting or whatever, Thunderbird for you. Ever have a problem with spyware or anything in IE, Firefox for you. The library at my school finally installed Firefox at my request, but nobody uses it. I will do something about this.
I really think that firefox is the doorway for people into OSS. It's such an awesome product and so obviously objectively superior to every other product out there that it is very easy to get people to switch to it. At least that's my experience. Compared to getting people to go linux getting them on firefox is a walk in the park. Now with the installer, even better. All it needs it a nice fancy tutorial.
1) that's me. Only I already have any vinyl I will ever want... 2) I don't do that, but its a good idea. I care about quality though, I encode high quality vbr mpr with lame. 3) I don't have an iPod, but I'm happy with digital music. I don't have any problems with xmms or winamp, I just want the iPod so I can take it with me. 4) yup and yup.
I think your friend is very right. However, there is one flaw. He is sampling only people who go to his small record shop. He is not sampling all the millions who still buy CDs at wal-mart and people like me who will never pay for music again. Not to mention the people who use iTunes only.
The truth that be. I'm looking forward to the Treo610. Same as the 600 only it has bluetooth and a better screen. I think the ultimate on-the-go setup would be a Treo plus a very small laptop, like the Sony X505. You wouldn't even need an iPod, although they are quite nice. You could stream the audio from your laptop hard drive over bluetooth to the Treo which has headphones plugged into it.
It's the best of every world. You've got a camera, phone, mp3 player, pda and an entire computer. When you're walking about you can check the Treo and when you sit down at the cafe whip out the laptop and get Internet via bluetooth to the Treo. Just gotta increase the bandwith and decrease the latency to make it better and better. It would also be nice if the treo ran linux instead of palmos, but hey, can't complain.
Problem is this. First off at my school there are two IT departments. The academic IT department where you get an IT degree and the IT department that makes the network go. There is also the CS academic department where I am getting my degree.
The IT department that makes the network go regards the CS and IT departments just like every other acadmic department. They treat them no differently. They in fact dislike them because:
a) they aren't as smart as they are b) they give the biggest fight against stupid changes relative to other departments c) they probably get paid more for teaching than doing d) cs teachers only work 4 days a week
and more. So what does the CS department do? They make their own network and get their own sys-admin. They only interface with the schools network to take advantage of the internet connection. They could care less about anything that the school does with the network above them as long as the internet keeps working.
generally if you asked for a plan from both groups the academics would give you a design that was implemented as much to standard as possible using the best of what's out there while the IT department would be a lot more focused on the bottom line and would most likely cut a few corners.
You are implying here that making an implementation as standard as possible is the polar opposite of watching the bottom line. In fact making something standards compliant is synonymous with watching the bottom line, but only in the long term. But yes, what you say is true, the IT department only thinks of cost and the CS department would only think of quality. The reason that they don't choose an open source implementation is not because it isn't cost effective. It's because the IT department isn't smart enough to do it. They don't know about the tools, heck some of them don't know what linux even is. Most IT "professionals" are to this day just plain ignorant of what the deal is with open source. Open source is mostly a CS thing. It's a new way to make software. IT guys haven't made software a day in their lives. They are users just like home users. Their IT degrees signify only that they actually know what they are doing when it comes to using the software, unlike the home user who misconfigures everything and crashes left and right. The CS major is above the IT major in that they are expert at making and using software. However, the IT major knows things the CS major does not, such as networking and administration stuffs.
That's why we need to go out and do this. A big problem linux has is that all the geeks who support is usually expend their efforts preaching to the choir. I'm guilty of it as well as everyone here. Look at this, every day on slasdhot we sit around telling each other that linux is awesome. Anyone who reads slashdot already knows it and doesn't need to hear it again. Only I'll still read slashdot because of insightful posts like the parent.
Instead of posting on a linux forum about how great linux is go out and talk to people. Omg! going out of the house! Ok, well maybe you geeks with no social skills should stay in your mother's basements and wait for us to tall you. But the rest of you linux users should get out there and spread the word in a real way.
I work for a small company and the boss just hates paying for software. He doesn't really know so much technically about linux, but he knows that its free. Go find a small business that pays too much for MS licenses and make a "sales call" in your spare time. Heck, just converting random people to firefox is a step in the right direction.
Whatever your coding isn't that urgent that you can't wait to do it later:P
So first they install a huge open wireless network for everyone to enjoy. Now they install a surveillance network to watch out for suspicious folk who might be using it. Otakon is going to be a blast this year...
When google news first emerged I thought hey, I wish I could just get the headlines as links. Later after I discovered and starting heavily using RSS I e-mailed google and told them that. Then when googles blog came out I was suprised to see it was syndicated. But not with RSS, heck their blog was made with blogger. I expected more from great google. Maybe now they will actually give me my RSS world news headlines I've been waiting for. But hopefully they wont point to news sites that need registration:P
I also use the gentoo with the xfce4. I can't wait for the xfce 4.2, it is teh hotness. If you haven't tried xfce4 I suggest you at least take it for a spin. Imagine a lightweight GTK based window manager that has everything you need and nothing you don't. Anything it doesn't supply, you must provide by using other linux programs (xbindkeys, devilspie, etc.). It is also super fredesktop.org standards compliant. It's really great because all of your programs interoperate in the standard linux way as opposed to all of them needing to be built with kde/gnome support.
Rather than risk repeating what everyone else said I must say this. The distros that most people use like RedHat, Mandrake and Suse are like big american SUV cars. They have everything, which is also more than anyone needs. Gentoo however is for ricers which is what I am. I get a small, efficient foreign car and I customize to fit me like a glove. No extras, nothing missing. If you don't believe it then this monthly thread will convince you.
OHIO has always been super anal about speeding. I mean they have cops camping the interstates at the border 24/7. If you are going even 1 over and you have out of state plates they pull you over. Then they let you pay with a credit card right then and there. The plan has always been to increase revenue for the state by stealing it from non-Ohionians. While they say that they are looking for lost and stolen vehicles they are no doubt going to use it to ticket every traffic violation they can detect automatically.
True, AQ2 was pretty teh awesome. However, CS had just a few things that AQ doesn't.
Half-Life, it was such an awesome game that everybody owned it so everyone modded it. Quake 2 didn't sell as much as Half-Life did, not even close.
Objective, IIRC in AQ2 you had a team, but all you wanted to do was kill the other team. CS added the bomb and the hostages. True enough many people ignore the objective to the dismay of their teammates. But its very important.
Guns, AQ had the smg, the shotgun whatever. Counterstrike had the money system and a full loadout of real world weaponry. It makes a difference.
The simple thinking is this. If everyone used linux then we wouldn't have this problem.
The next level of thinking is that hey, if everyone used linux they would make viruses for it instead of windows and we'd have the same problem.
The next level of thinking is that linux isn't homogenous like windows so making a virus to infect all linux boxes is more difficult. But that is false because if linux were to be used by everyone there would have to be a homogenous version everyone used.
The real high level of thinking is this. If a spammer knows linux and gets a hold of a few linux boxen that's a lot worse than if he got a hold of the same number of windows boxen. Because linux is more powerful and stable they can send a lot more spam a lot easier than on a windows machine. They will only be limited by the hardware of the machine and not the resource hungry windows.
The only real solution is network level security. Firewalls and such. And of course smart users who can prevent themselves from getting hacked or can unhack themselves.
The makers of those console games should distribute PC software for linux and windows so that college kids with high bandwidth connections can run servers on the spare pcs they have lying around. That's where all the counterstrike servers come from. If they don't then they are going to have to run their own servers, which might be higher quality but it will cost them more money.
Ok, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The cause of the PC Games downfall is well known.
Because of the differences in controls and displays some game genres are better on the PC and some game genres are better on consoles. Anything with lots of information on the screen like a Civilization or a Master of Orion, RTS games like Warcraft 3 and first person shooters are all PC genres. Games like platformers, fighting games and such are all console genres. A big screen and a gamepad are perfect for these. Some games work well on either, like puzzle games.
The reason that PC gaming is going down the tubes is that there is no innovation in the genres which are good to play on the PC. FPS and RTS are pretty much stuck in a rut. Each new game is the same as all the others. Sure there are better graphics and sound, but eye candy does not a hit game make. Think about it, there are only 2, TWO pc games coming out that people are anticipating. Doom3 and HL2. The reason they are anticipated is because they promise innovation is a dormant genre. But look over in the console arena, what do you see? What's that? Nintendo with its GBA hookups and FF:CC? XboX Live? I see new things there! It's not the same old game its always been.
Sure, there are more reasons than one why the PC is going downhill as a gaming platform. All the cheapass commodity games stocking up at Wal-Mart are no help. But then again, you see the same sorts of things coming out for the PS2 and GBA. The primary reason for PC gaming being in a rut is the lack of innovation in PC genres and the extensive innovation in console genres.
Some people I tell this to try to argue that there is PC innovation and I'm wrong. If this is you then consider this. Why is Counter-Strike the most popular online game ever after all these years? When it came out it was revolutionary. Real weapons, team based objective gameplay that wasn't CTF. And staying dead until the next round. This did not exist then. And since CS came out, no game has made such great leaps into making new gameplay as to unseat CS. Nothing. If one of them did, then CS wouldn't still be the most popular game. Tribes 2 and NS both came close, but they both suffered the same 2 problems. 1) Gameplay too complex to jump right in. 2) The devs killed the game off unintentionally.
So until HL2 and Doom3 come out my video game money is still going to Nintendo.
Yeah, that's what I meant to say, kind of. I usually elaborate and repeat my point many times on/. posts to make sure I get my idea across correctly. This time I tried not to be so redundant, and look what happens.
What I mean to say is that nowadays games have arbitrary problems, and back in the day you had to use problem solving skills to get by. Nowadays you just need a strategy guide and nothing else will help you. For example Ogre Battle 64. Great game, don't get me wrong. But to get special items and units in your army what you have to do is enter certain missions on certain days and times and enter cities in those missions sometimes within a window of hours (in-game hours). There is no way to figure this out. You just either know it or you don't. It doesn't take skill to do it and it doesn't take problem solving.
Back in the day you would have games like... oh lets use Zelda for the SNES as an example. Take any of the block puzzle dungeons. Hey, there is a treasure over there, but I can't get to it. Hey, but there's a switch I can't hit! Maybe if I go upstairs and drop something on it through the hole in the floor... Oh yeah! Even games like Donkey Kong had this on a much lower level. Hmmm, his barrels go this way and that way. And the fryguy usually goes on the left ladder, so if I follow this path I can save the princess.
I agree that the bomb every wall is stupid. The point I was trying to make is that games like Metroid where secrets where abound you had to use basic problem solving skills in order to recognize when there was a secret in a place. And when you recognized a secret you had to figure out what combination of tools in your arsenal to use in what combination to get the secret. And after that you had to be able to push the buttons skillfully enough to make it happen.
Nowadays its simply a matter of If you know the secret you get the secret, otherwise its completely hidden and you'll never find it. Buy strategy guides so we make more money!
Also I've found that the vast majority of human beings lack basic problem solving skills. You can usually recognize these people as the materialistic sheep you find walking around shopping malls, watching television and participating in the latest trends like fad diets. Hopefully Darwin will come for them...
You overlook one thing my friend. It's PORTABLE now. I have zelda 1 for the cube also. And for the NES. And in a ROM. But I can't take it in the car. That's worth 20 bucks alone.
It's because many of the gamers of today were trained very poorly. The games they played through their childhood were like Resident Evil or Goldeneye. I played those too, but I was older then. I had been trained on things like Metroid, Mario 3 and Zelda. You know, before you knew where every secret was you bombed every wall, shot every guy, flicked every combination of switches.
Back in the day games required you to have advanced problem solving skills to win. In this day and age of arbitrary gaming and strategy guides it is very difficult to make a game that actually requires thinking. I'm glad the people are trying though, because that's my kind of game.
Easy way to get rid of type 2 diabetes. Don't do anything. All the fat fucks who live like slobs, eat at McDonald's and sit on the couch all day will be removed from society by Darwin. All the rest of us will be just fine. Increase the selection pressure!
Seriously though. It costs so much money to do medical research. They should concentrate on the diseases that can't be prevented. For example.. the flu. Sure we have flu shots and whatnot, but people still die from it. And getting the flu has little to nothing to do with your lifestyle. If it comes to get you, you got it. Especially if your immune system isn't flawless.
Diabetes however, is almost always the direct result of an unhealthy lifestyle. Spending money to cure it is not going to help society. In fact, its going to make people fatter and lazier. Because now when you tell them, live healthy or you'll get diabetes! They will say "don't worry, they can cure that!" This is not good.
And yes, I understand that the reason things aren't the way I want is because there is more money to be made by letting people be fat and lazy. Its another one of those vicious cycles. Food companies make a lot of money from making people fat. More fat people means more diabetes. More diabetes means that making a cure for it is more profitable. So the drug companies wont try to prevent people from getting it, they'll cooperate with food companies and lobby congress to make more fat people and more diabetes.
I say, if your fat, fuck you.
You'll have to excuse me a little bit, I just watched "Supersize Me".
But I still feel that way you dumbass fat fuckers.
Why is everyone ripping on Nintendo for these NES re-releases? Complaints I've heard:
It's an exact port of a game I paid for a long time ago, I don't want to pay for it again!
You can get Mario Bros. for free because it comes with Mario Advance ( this is justified ).
They didn't soup up the graphics and sound.
Listen. I think that Nintendo re-releasing its old NES games for the GBA is the best thing ever. And the fact that they are kind enough to sell them for cheap instead of full GBA price is even better. Not 5 years ago I was complaining that they were trying to shut down all the emu and rom sites because there was no other way to play those games if you couldn't find a working NES. Nintendo has made good and re-released their old games and in a portable fashion. Remember, the GBA goes places. Before now there was no way to play Zelda 1 in your car. Sure it might be the exact same game as back in the 80's. And sure I might be paying for the same game 3 times in my life. But there is nothing I wanted more than the ability to play Mario 3 and Zelda 1 in my car, and I have that ability now.
There is a demand by people like me for the nostalgia to be revived and the old games to be released again in true form. Nintendo is the only company willing to supply and I salute them. You might think its stupid or a waste of money, but that's because the nostalgia is lost on you. It amazes me every day that people not 3 years younger than I grew up with only Playstation. They don't know what gaming really is and their Zelda 1 was Final Fantasy 7. When square re-releases that feature film + leveling treadmill for the PSP you wont see anyone bitching.
adblock is cool. But for firefox there is a way to better block ads that I have found. If you modify your user-content.css you can make a stylesheet that prevents 99.9% of ads from rendering.
http://www.texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html There it is. Of course, this is a bad solution if you want to prevent ads from downloading. Since by using the user-content the ads still download, they just don't display. It's OK for me since my net connection is college quality.
Slashdot Mirror
F1 Steering Wheel
Formula 1, if you didn't know, is the premiere motorsport in the world. Every rule about car design in F1 falls into one of two categories. Rules that prevent the egineer from killing the driver and rules that say the car must not fall apart. The result is the most technologically advanced cars in the entire world. These are the fastest four wheeled motor vehicles on earth that can make both left and right turns. Every race car driver falls into 3 categories. Driving F1, wanting to drive F1 and too afraid to drive F1. If you think Nascar is dumb because they go around in circles, F1 is for you. I've heard it described as driving a go-kart with a jet engine. (it's really just a V10).
Oh, and some other information. Michael Schumacher is the greatest driver in F1 today, he has won the championship the last 6 times. He is the highest paid athlete in the entire world. He drives a ferrari, the best car there is. It looks like he is going to win again this year, he has lost only one race so far. And while it seems boring to watch the same guy win every time it shows you why F1 is so great. The best driver wins every time. And this guy is the undisputed greatest driver of cars to ever live.
The US grand prix in Indianapolis is this sunday at 1pm. It is the only race in the US this year. If you haven't seen an F1 race I highly reccomend you check it out. Imagine Nascar, with right turns and no rednecks. It doesn't suck.
I really could care less which one is left standing, it just doesn't matter. I'm buying a DS no matter what and I'm not buying a PSP. There are two reasons.
1) I remember back in the game gear / gameboy days. Gamegear was the system with clearly superior technology and hardware, you could turn the thing into a TV even! But who won? Nintendo with their low res spinach screen gameboy. It was just superior enough to a tiger lcd game and you could switch cartridges out of it instead of buying games seperately. DS and PSP is history repeating itself.
2) Completely ignoring what I just said, lets say the DS fails miserably. Let's say that the DS turns out to be the worst thing ever. Great! I'll be the guy who's got one. I'll be just as cool as that kid down the road who still has a working Virtual Boy. Worth every penny. Not only that, but its guaranteed to have at least a couple good games for it. From the previews we have been given at E3 as we as its gameboy backwards compatibility and wirelessness, owning a Nintendo DS is guaranteed to entertain me for at least X hours. As far as the PSP goes there is no guarantee of that I have seen. So even if the DS bombs, it is a great investment on which I am guaranteed to make a return. Worst case scenario I end up buying ever game that comes out for it because they get marked down to a buck each. Best case, it wins. Can't lose.
Note that I'm not saying the PSP is a POS. I'm just saying that with the knowledge currently available to me the DS is showing every sign of being worth the price while the PSP is not. If its announced tommorow that the PSP is actually as good as a Treo 600 a gameboy and a light saber combined, or even close to that, I'll change my mind.
Or buy both...
Does anyone know if the lockup bug with the combination of APIC/APIC-IO and nforce 2 boards is fixed? Currently I've got 2.6.5 and I have to disable APIC to prevent the system from hanging.
Yeah, google didn't work and we didn't know what to do. We tested and determined the problem was akamai within a minute. So I used AIM to ask a friend who could still resolve google what the ip was. he passed it to me over aim using gaim encryption no less. We then created an alias for google on our dns server. google.ourdomain.com.
We also developed a new DNS protocol in the process. ESEDOIM: Extremely slow encrypted DNS over instant messenger. Who wants to write an RFC?
I'm a huge huge fan of arcade racing games. I've played them all. Everything from Pole Position to the rare Virtua Racing 2. There are exactly two racing games that I would rank as the most realistic.
1) Ferrari 355 Challenge. This is a rare game to find indeed. You can recognize it because of its 3 monitors and bright red ferrariness. This is a large expensive arcade machine and they usually charge like a buck to play. But its as close to a Ferrari as you can get without shelling out $200K.
Here it is
2) Nascar Silicon Alley motor speedway. I think these are all out of business now. But there used to be one in the PPP (Palisades Mall in NY). Its really really big and costs a lot to play. You sit in a full size Nascar "pod" with a projector in front of you and everything is exactly like a real stock car. It's the most realistic driving experience I've ever had. I know it was the real thing because I tried to drive like it was Cruisin' USA and I kept spinning out and not being able to get going again.
Other than that you are going to have to search for actual driving simulators that they use to teach driving. As far as video games go, those are the most realistic.
That's the new policy at our work. If you ever have a problem with outlook and you can't fix it by rebooting or whatever, Thunderbird for you. Ever have a problem with spyware or anything in IE, Firefox for you. The library at my school finally installed Firefox at my request, but nobody uses it. I will do something about this.
I really think that firefox is the doorway for people into OSS. It's such an awesome product and so obviously objectively superior to every other product out there that it is very easy to get people to switch to it. At least that's my experience. Compared to getting people to go linux getting them on firefox is a walk in the park. Now with the installer, even better. All it needs it a nice fancy tutorial.
1) that's me. Only I already have any vinyl I will ever want...
2) I don't do that, but its a good idea. I care about quality though, I encode high quality vbr mpr with lame.
3) I don't have an iPod, but I'm happy with digital music. I don't have any problems with xmms or winamp, I just want the iPod so I can take it with me.
4) yup and yup.
I think your friend is very right. However, there is one flaw. He is sampling only people who go to his small record shop. He is not sampling all the millions who still buy CDs at wal-mart and people like me who will never pay for music again. Not to mention the people who use iTunes only.
The truth that be. I'm looking forward to the Treo610. Same as the 600 only it has bluetooth and a better screen. I think the ultimate on-the-go setup would be a Treo plus a very small laptop, like the Sony X505. You wouldn't even need an iPod, although they are quite nice. You could stream the audio from your laptop hard drive over bluetooth to the Treo which has headphones plugged into it.
It's the best of every world. You've got a camera, phone, mp3 player, pda and an entire computer. When you're walking about you can check the Treo and when you sit down at the cafe whip out the laptop and get Internet via bluetooth to the Treo. Just gotta increase the bandwith and decrease the latency to make it better and better. It would also be nice if the treo ran linux instead of palmos, but hey, can't complain.
The IT department that makes the network go regards the CS and IT departments just like every other acadmic department. They treat them no differently. They in fact dislike them because:
a) they aren't as smart as they are
b) they give the biggest fight against stupid changes relative to other departments
c) they probably get paid more for teaching than doing
d) cs teachers only work 4 days a week
and more. So what does the CS department do? They make their own network and get their own sys-admin. They only interface with the schools network to take advantage of the internet connection. They could care less about anything that the school does with the network above them as long as the internet keeps working.You are implying here that making an implementation as standard as possible is the polar opposite of watching the bottom line. In fact making something standards compliant is synonymous with watching the bottom line, but only in the long term. But yes, what you say is true, the IT department only thinks of cost and the CS department would only think of quality. The reason that they don't choose an open source implementation is not because it isn't cost effective. It's because the IT department isn't smart enough to do it. They don't know about the tools, heck some of them don't know what linux even is. Most IT "professionals" are to this day just plain ignorant of what the deal is with open source. Open source is mostly a CS thing. It's a new way to make software. IT guys haven't made software a day in their lives. They are users just like home users. Their IT degrees signify only that they actually know what they are doing when it comes to using the software, unlike the home user who misconfigures everything and crashes left and right. The CS major is above the IT major in that they are expert at making and using software. However, the IT major knows things the CS major does not, such as networking and administration stuffs.
That's why we need to go out and do this. A big problem linux has is that all the geeks who support is usually expend their efforts preaching to the choir. I'm guilty of it as well as everyone here. Look at this, every day on slasdhot we sit around telling each other that linux is awesome. Anyone who reads slashdot already knows it and doesn't need to hear it again. Only I'll still read slashdot because of insightful posts like the parent.
:P
Instead of posting on a linux forum about how great linux is go out and talk to people. Omg! going out of the house! Ok, well maybe you geeks with no social skills should stay in your mother's basements and wait for us to tall you. But the rest of you linux users should get out there and spread the word in a real way.
I work for a small company and the boss just hates paying for software. He doesn't really know so much technically about linux, but he knows that its free. Go find a small business that pays too much for MS licenses and make a "sales call" in your spare time. Heck, just converting random people to firefox is a step in the right direction.
Whatever your coding isn't that urgent that you can't wait to do it later
So first they install a huge open wireless network for everyone to enjoy. Now they install a surveillance network to watch out for suspicious folk who might be using it. Otakon is going to be a blast this year...
When google news first emerged I thought hey, I wish I could just get the headlines as links. Later after I discovered and starting heavily using RSS I e-mailed google and told them that. Then when googles blog came out I was suprised to see it was syndicated. But not with RSS, heck their blog was made with blogger. I expected more from great google. Maybe now they will actually give me my RSS world news headlines I've been waiting for. But hopefully they wont point to news sites that need registration :P
I also use the gentoo with the xfce4. I can't wait for the xfce 4.2, it is teh hotness. If you haven't tried xfce4 I suggest you at least take it for a spin. Imagine a lightweight GTK based window manager that has everything you need and nothing you don't. Anything it doesn't supply, you must provide by using other linux programs (xbindkeys, devilspie, etc.). It is also super fredesktop.org standards compliant. It's really great because all of your programs interoperate in the standard linux way as opposed to all of them needing to be built with kde/gnome support.
Rather than risk repeating what everyone else said I must say this. The distros that most people use like RedHat, Mandrake and Suse are like big american SUV cars. They have everything, which is also more than anyone needs. Gentoo however is for ricers which is what I am. I get a small, efficient foreign car and I customize to fit me like a glove. No extras, nothing missing. If you don't believe it then this monthly thread will convince you.
OHIO has always been super anal about speeding. I mean they have cops camping the interstates at the border 24/7. If you are going even 1 over and you have out of state plates they pull you over. Then they let you pay with a credit card right then and there. The plan has always been to increase revenue for the state by stealing it from non-Ohionians. While they say that they are looking for lost and stolen vehicles they are no doubt going to use it to ticket every traffic violation they can detect automatically.
True, AQ2 was pretty teh awesome. However, CS had just a few things that AQ doesn't.
Half-Life, it was such an awesome game that everybody owned it so everyone modded it. Quake 2 didn't sell as much as Half-Life did, not even close.
Objective, IIRC in AQ2 you had a team, but all you wanted to do was kill the other team. CS added the bomb and the hostages. True enough many people ignore the objective to the dismay of their teammates. But its very important.
Guns, AQ had the smg, the shotgun whatever. Counterstrike had the money system and a full loadout of real world weaponry. It makes a difference.
The simple thinking is this. If everyone used linux then we wouldn't have this problem.
The next level of thinking is that hey, if everyone used linux they would make viruses for it instead of windows and we'd have the same problem.
The next level of thinking is that linux isn't homogenous like windows so making a virus to infect all linux boxes is more difficult. But that is false because if linux were to be used by everyone there would have to be a homogenous version everyone used.
The real high level of thinking is this. If a spammer knows linux and gets a hold of a few linux boxen that's a lot worse than if he got a hold of the same number of windows boxen. Because linux is more powerful and stable they can send a lot more spam a lot easier than on a windows machine. They will only be limited by the hardware of the machine and not the resource hungry windows.
The only real solution is network level security. Firewalls and such. And of course smart users who can prevent themselves from getting hacked or can unhack themselves.
The makers of those console games should distribute PC software for linux and windows so that college kids with high bandwidth connections can run servers on the spare pcs they have lying around. That's where all the counterstrike servers come from. If they don't then they are going to have to run their own servers, which might be higher quality but it will cost them more money.
Ok, I've said it before and I'll say it again. The cause of the PC Games downfall is well known.
Because of the differences in controls and displays some game genres are better on the PC and some game genres are better on consoles. Anything with lots of information on the screen like a Civilization or a Master of Orion, RTS games like Warcraft 3 and first person shooters are all PC genres. Games like platformers, fighting games and such are all console genres. A big screen and a gamepad are perfect for these. Some games work well on either, like puzzle games.
The reason that PC gaming is going down the tubes is that there is no innovation in the genres which are good to play on the PC. FPS and RTS are pretty much stuck in a rut. Each new game is the same as all the others. Sure there are better graphics and sound, but eye candy does not a hit game make. Think about it, there are only 2, TWO pc games coming out that people are anticipating. Doom3 and HL2. The reason they are anticipated is because they promise innovation is a dormant genre. But look over in the console arena, what do you see? What's that? Nintendo with its GBA hookups and FF:CC? XboX Live? I see new things there! It's not the same old game its always been.
Sure, there are more reasons than one why the PC is going downhill as a gaming platform. All the cheapass commodity games stocking up at Wal-Mart are no help. But then again, you see the same sorts of things coming out for the PS2 and GBA. The primary reason for PC gaming being in a rut is the lack of innovation in PC genres and the extensive innovation in console genres.
Some people I tell this to try to argue that there is PC innovation and I'm wrong. If this is you then consider this. Why is Counter-Strike the most popular online game ever after all these years? When it came out it was revolutionary. Real weapons, team based objective gameplay that wasn't CTF. And staying dead until the next round. This did not exist then. And since CS came out, no game has made such great leaps into making new gameplay as to unseat CS. Nothing. If one of them did, then CS wouldn't still be the most popular game. Tribes 2 and NS both came close, but they both suffered the same 2 problems. 1) Gameplay too complex to jump right in. 2) The devs killed the game off unintentionally.
So until HL2 and Doom3 come out my video game money is still going to Nintendo.
Yeah, that's what I meant to say, kind of. I usually elaborate and repeat my point many times on /. posts to make sure I get my idea across correctly. This time I tried not to be so redundant, and look what happens.
What I mean to say is that nowadays games have arbitrary problems, and back in the day you had to use problem solving skills to get by. Nowadays you just need a strategy guide and nothing else will help you. For example Ogre Battle 64. Great game, don't get me wrong. But to get special items and units in your army what you have to do is enter certain missions on certain days and times and enter cities in those missions sometimes within a window of hours (in-game hours). There is no way to figure this out. You just either know it or you don't. It doesn't take skill to do it and it doesn't take problem solving.
Back in the day you would have games like... oh lets use Zelda for the SNES as an example. Take any of the block puzzle dungeons. Hey, there is a treasure over there, but I can't get to it. Hey, but there's a switch I can't hit! Maybe if I go upstairs and drop something on it through the hole in the floor... Oh yeah! Even games like Donkey Kong had this on a much lower level. Hmmm, his barrels go this way and that way. And the fryguy usually goes on the left ladder, so if I follow this path I can save the princess.
I agree that the bomb every wall is stupid. The point I was trying to make is that games like Metroid where secrets where abound you had to use basic problem solving skills in order to recognize when there was a secret in a place. And when you recognized a secret you had to figure out what combination of tools in your arsenal to use in what combination to get the secret. And after that you had to be able to push the buttons skillfully enough to make it happen.
Nowadays its simply a matter of If you know the secret you get the secret, otherwise its completely hidden and you'll never find it. Buy strategy guides so we make more money!
Also I've found that the vast majority of human beings lack basic problem solving skills. You can usually recognize these people as the materialistic sheep you find walking around shopping malls, watching television and participating in the latest trends like fad diets. Hopefully Darwin will come for them...
You overlook one thing my friend. It's PORTABLE now. I have zelda 1 for the cube also. And for the NES. And in a ROM. But I can't take it in the car. That's worth 20 bucks alone.
It's because many of the gamers of today were trained very poorly. The games they played through their childhood were like Resident Evil or Goldeneye. I played those too, but I was older then. I had been trained on things like Metroid, Mario 3 and Zelda. You know, before you knew where every secret was you bombed every wall, shot every guy, flicked every combination of switches.
Back in the day games required you to have advanced problem solving skills to win. In this day and age of arbitrary gaming and strategy guides it is very difficult to make a game that actually requires thinking. I'm glad the people are trying though, because that's my kind of game.
Easy way to get rid of type 2 diabetes. Don't do anything. All the fat fucks who live like slobs, eat at McDonald's and sit on the couch all day will be removed from society by Darwin. All the rest of us will be just fine. Increase the selection pressure!
Seriously though. It costs so much money to do medical research. They should concentrate on the diseases that can't be prevented. For example.. the flu. Sure we have flu shots and whatnot, but people still die from it. And getting the flu has little to nothing to do with your lifestyle. If it comes to get you, you got it. Especially if your immune system isn't flawless.
Diabetes however, is almost always the direct result of an unhealthy lifestyle. Spending money to cure it is not going to help society. In fact, its going to make people fatter and lazier. Because now when you tell them, live healthy or you'll get diabetes! They will say "don't worry, they can cure that!" This is not good.
And yes, I understand that the reason things aren't the way I want is because there is more money to be made by letting people be fat and lazy. Its another one of those vicious cycles. Food companies make a lot of money from making people fat. More fat people means more diabetes. More diabetes means that making a cure for it is more profitable. So the drug companies wont try to prevent people from getting it, they'll cooperate with food companies and lobby congress to make more fat people and more diabetes.
I say, if your fat, fuck you.
You'll have to excuse me a little bit, I just watched "Supersize Me".
But I still feel that way you dumbass fat fuckers.
Why is everyone ripping on Nintendo for these NES re-releases? Complaints I've heard:
It's an exact port of a game I paid for a long time ago, I don't want to pay for it again!
You can get Mario Bros. for free because it comes with Mario Advance ( this is justified ).
They didn't soup up the graphics and sound.
Listen. I think that Nintendo re-releasing its old NES games for the GBA is the best thing ever. And the fact that they are kind enough to sell them for cheap instead of full GBA price is even better. Not 5 years ago I was complaining that they were trying to shut down all the emu and rom sites because there was no other way to play those games if you couldn't find a working NES. Nintendo has made good and re-released their old games and in a portable fashion. Remember, the GBA goes places. Before now there was no way to play Zelda 1 in your car. Sure it might be the exact same game as back in the 80's. And sure I might be paying for the same game 3 times in my life. But there is nothing I wanted more than the ability to play Mario 3 and Zelda 1 in my car, and I have that ability now.
There is a demand by people like me for the nostalgia to be revived and the old games to be released again in true form. Nintendo is the only company willing to supply and I salute them. You might think its stupid or a waste of money, but that's because the nostalgia is lost on you. It amazes me every day that people not 3 years younger than I grew up with only Playstation. They don't know what gaming really is and their Zelda 1 was Final Fantasy 7. When square re-releases that feature film + leveling treadmill for the PSP you wont see anyone bitching.
adblock is cool. But for firefox there is a way to better block ads that I have found. If you modify your user-content.css you can make a stylesheet that prevents 99.9% of ads from rendering.
http://www.texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html
There it is. Of course, this is a bad solution if you want to prevent ads from downloading. Since by using the user-content the ads still download, they just don't display. It's OK for me since my net connection is college quality.