If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Personally, I'd feel pretty good about taking a risk -- any risk -- if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
*Those* are odds I can live with.
It's a stupid argument anyway. Nobody knows the chances of a given catastrophic event happening. What's being examined is the rate of failures versus rates of success, and that's not a probablilty, it's just a ratio.
Excellent points. I'd also like to bring up another thought this, which is similar to the problems we're having in our own hostipal with portable devices: HIPAA Compliance.
At the moment, there is a profound lack of IT Infrastructure to accomodate these systems. Issues of security are HUGE, involving things like wireless data transmission encryptions, client/server interaction (and *licensing* --per seat? per device? per user? per connection? You figure it out). Then there are the purely technical issues, like implementing the wireless hardware with appropriate coverage (and security there too -- drive-by WAN, anyone?) , acquiring new IPs and subnetting issues, not to mention the fact that the strength and weakness of these things is that someone can just up an walk away with them... Then there are the personal issues you brought up, plus training and support considerations.
Dear Lord, save me from this kind of starry-eyed Star Trek wanna-be hallucination of the future. $1000 for a glorified clipboard? I can't think of any health care department in the state that could justify that.
And that's only for the two hours that the tablets can actually run on given the battery life. So now we need multiple battery packs and charging stations on every floor...
So she turned to a life of crime and sleazery after losing a juicy gubbment contract? Wah. She sounds like a one-shot Batman villian -- a couple of bad days and suddenly she's a masked vigilante.
I've been on the skids too. Putting that kind of time and effort into FINDING A JOB was much more satisfying than hitting up my tech-buds as accomplices to degrading the Internet yet another notch. Well done, Obi-Wan, your failed teachings have brought another soul to the Dark Side.
Thanks for putting a human face on the issue and all, but really. GMFTatsujin
Obviously this miscommunication is partly the fault of the Linux enthusiasts. Linux advocates have to learn that Joe User will never bother to understand the difference between the GUI and the underlying kernel. And I don't blame him for being a non-nerd. It is the responsibility of the Linux community to put this kind of statements into a language that can easily be understood by non-technical people.
Um... When one is paid $95 for a six-sheet summary of the business impact of one way of doing things vs the other, one had damn well know what one is talking about. It is the responsibility of the guy writing the report to do his homework.
If that involves highliting the distinctions between little quibbles like "Linux is the kernel, KDE is the GUI," then so be it. While I don't blame him for being a non-nerd, I do blame him for not taking the time to research his material and articulate it accurately.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been more daring. They're attempting break free of the Win32 legacy with.net, even going for processor independence at the same time. Sure, Java and many other virtual machines have attempted this, but not at the OS level. *Relatively* speaking, this is a bigger attempt at simplification and moving into the future than what we've seen happening with Linux
Majesty Gold has both the original missions (~15 I think) and the Northern Expansion (another 10 or so).
The official missions are short, but I've really had fun with the Freestyle game generator. You can generate just about any kind of mission imaginable, including monster types, map size, building restrictions, economic factors, starting heroes, and so on. It's amazingly easy, complete, and fast. The only thing you don't get with the freestyle game is the mission briefing voice-over.
There is an unofficial installer for it, but you would know that if you looked on BioWare's forums.
Yes, and then there's the supported method which is recommended by the company that made the product. If I wanted an unofficial install that may or may not work and would certainly not be supported, Id' run NWN in Winex3. But you would know that if you didn't assume I was an idiot.
That is, in fact, true. You install the linux client and snarf the rest of it from an existing Windows application. Which sort of sucks, actually, becuase it means you have to install it on Windows before you can play it on Linux. Bah.
On the other hand, they aren't charging extra for the Linux client -- you just have to register with Bioware (free). I think Bioware almost got it 100% right -- pay for the content, make the engine free.
I recommend you pick it up if you haven't yet. It kept me glued for weeks, and the wife and I come back to it every couple of months. Well worth it. I've been emulating it in WineX and it's been spiffy.
"WineX! Oh no! Support linux gaming, man!" Well, I'd love to. It's just too bad I already paid for the game once. $80 for a $40 game? I mean, Majesty's good, but not *that* good.
Ditto with Kohan, the Sims, Neverwinter Nights, etc... I'm all for the parallel development though - go UT2003!
"If these 180 were somehow spirited off internet - we'd be left with the Nigerians, and companies spamming by mistake. The spam problem would simply disappear," he said.
So... who's got 1,800 feet of rope and an orchard to spare?
Actually, I'm all for WINE. Not for the new games, because that takes a long time to develop and support in WINE, but for the older games. I don't want to have to have a Windows partition just to run them, and I don't want to leave them behind. I've already purchased them once, so emulation is the best way to go for me.
If you have already-released games that you want to keep, support WINE. If you want to play new games, pester the developers and vote with your dollars.
Interesting how I haven't seen this kind of hatred toward the movie until Moore's little ditty at the Oscars. Up until that night, Bowling for Columbine was praised to the high heavens.
But then, I certainly wouldn't expect anybody on/. to be easily swayed on a hot-button topic in a reactionary fashion or anything.
Check out Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. It's still got all the trappings of sci-fi combat (lasers you can see, FTL drive to get from place to place, etc) but the combat itself is based around a newtonian model. Fire up your engines and you accelerate, turn them off and you drift. It makes for some fun maneuvers, broadsiding capital ships and so on. It's also incredibly tough to get used to the first couple of times out, since you have to learn how so apply a deft touch instead of the usual all-out burn.
There's a also mod for the IWar series called Buda5 which re-creates the Babylon 5 universe, since newtonian physics was a highlight of the show's effects. GMFTatsujin
If you cant' get to the article,
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Try reading this copy while you wait.
Many people don't know it, but today's automobiles--including the car you're using right now--contain elements that have hardly changed at all in the last 20 years. Yes, engines are faster, tires are bigger, and camshafts throw more torque. But in many fundamental ways, your car isn't very different from the cars of two decades ago.
Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at this almost-20-year-old image (left) scanned from the October 1984 issue of Car and Driver magazine, which covered the rollout of the original Datsun Stationwagon. If you've ever popped open your hood, the overall layout will instantly seem familiar, and you'll recognize many of the components. Note the washer fluid tank in the rear right corner, the transmission on the right, the piston chamber in the closed bay near the center, the fan belt and horn, and the distributor to the left. Experienced eyes will even pick out the battery, the fuel tank, the familiar-looking cables and electrical connectors, and more.
Although some of the system elements have been modified over time, almost everything in your car is a direct lineal descendent of the Ford Model T --a seminal design that still shapes automobile architecture decades later.
GMFTatsujin
AMD's EasyNow! PC was legacy-free too
on
Legacy-Free PCs
·
· Score: 1
Check out the FAQ here. Basically it's a little PC with nothing but USB ports, built-on VGA and LAN, and a power button, released in the K6-400 heyday. This was a response to the first iMacs. I bought one for $50 a couple of months ago, thinking I might make a nice little linux router and file server out of it.
That's when I found out that "legacy free" meant "software emulation requiring WinDrivers." I still haven't managed to get the goddamned thing to recognize the built-in LAN unless I put Windows on it and hunt down the drivers for a product that AMD would rather not admit it ever put out.
Screw legacy-free. I only realized after purchasing it that even if I'd managed to get this little bitch to work, I'd still have to sacrifice running my printer server off of it because it has no parallel port. If legacy-free means "replace all your hardware and peripherals" then I don't want any part of it, thanks. GMFTatsujin
Well, I will admit to being a linux newbie, which is precisely WHY I chose Gentoo over a pre-compiled distro. Having to set options and compile is, I've found, the only way I learn what's really going on with my computer. I'm up for tweaking and fiddling and cursing until I get it right.
I'll say this, I've learned a lot in the past 2 weeks.:)
I guess that makes me, what, a power newbie? Or masochistic. What's the diff? GMFTatsujin
I recently installed Gentoo Linux with modest optimizations for my processor (athlon-tbird 1GHz at -O2), expecting some pretty snappy response. Every app and driver was compiled from source with compatabilities built in for ALSA and OSS. I though it would be better than pre-compiled binaries.
I've been quite disappointed. Maybe I layered in too much.
Noatun plays MP3s with only modest smoothness. mpg123 suffers similar problems. Skips are common when switching or redrawing windows. Real users stick to command lines, I guess.:)
I haven't tried recording from a live source, but I'd be wary -- is that weird pause in the music because of the recording skipping, or the playback skipping? Which system do I trust?
Anyway. Perhaps I tried stuffing in too much compatability, and instead should have picked one system over the other. But then who knows which apps would work and which wouldn't?
Please please please -- can we have a standard layer that's easy to install? GMFTatsujin
I'm convinced that you can't get a peice of identity-based legistlation passed these days unless it make a cute acronym in English. What do the Italians, Spanish, or Germans think URU means?
I didn't find his performace as Gollum all that compelling either way. Certainly not enough to merit a nomination.
When an Oscar-deserving performance comes along, computer-augmented or not, it should be recognized. I just didn't think this was one of them.
That being said, the performance wasn't just the actor's alone. There were other artists in front of the keyboard who tweaked and augmented the facial expressions among other things -- the performance was really a collaborative effort to get the final peice on all levels. So would the animators get to share in the Oscar too?
Slashdot Mirror
If I had a 1 in 56.5 chance of winning the lottery jackpot, I'd slap 60 bucks down with no hesitation. Small outlay of money for almost a guarantee of winning.
So.. play Roulette much?
Didn't think so. When did 1:56 become "almost a guarantee?"
Personally, I'd feel pretty good about taking a risk -- any risk -- if I knew there was a ~2% chance of failure. Turn it around, because it also means there's a ~98% chance of success.
*Those* are odds I can live with.
It's a stupid argument anyway. Nobody knows the chances of a given catastrophic event happening. What's being examined is the rate of failures versus rates of success, and that's not a probablilty, it's just a ratio.
Excellent points. I'd also like to bring up another thought this, which is similar to the problems we're having in our own hostipal with portable devices: HIPAA Compliance.
At the moment, there is a profound lack of IT Infrastructure to accomodate these systems. Issues of security are HUGE, involving things like wireless data transmission encryptions, client/server interaction (and *licensing* --per seat? per device? per user? per connection? You figure it out). Then there are the purely technical issues, like implementing the wireless hardware with appropriate coverage (and security there too -- drive-by WAN, anyone?) , acquiring new IPs and subnetting issues, not to mention the fact that the strength and weakness of these things is that someone can just up an walk away with them... Then there are the personal issues you brought up, plus training and support considerations.
Dear Lord, save me from this kind of starry-eyed Star Trek wanna-be hallucination of the future. $1000 for a glorified clipboard? I can't think of any health care department in the state that could justify that.
And that's only for the two hours that the tablets can actually run on given the battery life. So now we need multiple battery packs and charging stations on every floor...
Kill me.
GMFTatsujin
So she turned to a life of crime and sleazery after losing a juicy gubbment contract? Wah. She sounds like a one-shot Batman villian -- a couple of bad days and suddenly she's a masked vigilante.
I've been on the skids too. Putting that kind of time and effort into FINDING A JOB was much more satisfying than hitting up my tech-buds as accomplices to degrading the Internet yet another notch. Well done, Obi-Wan, your failed teachings have brought another soul to the Dark Side.
Thanks for putting a human face on the issue and all, but really.
GMFTatsujin
Obviously this miscommunication is partly the fault of the Linux enthusiasts. Linux advocates have to learn that Joe User will never bother to understand the difference between the GUI and the underlying kernel. And I don't blame him for being a non-nerd. It is the responsibility of the Linux community to put this kind of statements into a language that can easily be understood by non-technical people.
Um... When one is paid $95 for a six-sheet summary of the business impact of one way of doing things vs the other, one had damn well know what one is talking about. It is the responsibility of the guy writing the report to do his homework.
If that involves highliting the distinctions between little quibbles like "Linux is the kernel, KDE is the GUI," then so be it. While I don't blame him for being a non-nerd, I do blame him for not taking the time to research his material and articulate it accurately.
GMFTatsujin
Microsoft, on the other hand, has been more daring. They're attempting break free of the Win32 legacy with .net, even going for processor independence at the same time. Sure, Java and many other virtual machines have attempted this, but not at the OS level. *Relatively* speaking, this is a bigger attempt at simplification and moving into the future than what we've seen happening with Linux
Netscape, anyone? By extension, Mozilla?
Majesty Gold has both the original missions (~15 I think) and the Northern Expansion (another 10 or so).
The official missions are short, but I've really had fun with the Freestyle game generator. You can generate just about any kind of mission imaginable, including monster types, map size, building restrictions, economic factors, starting heroes, and so on. It's amazingly easy, complete, and fast. The only thing you don't get with the freestyle game is the mission briefing voice-over.
There is an unofficial installer for it, but you would know that if you looked on BioWare's forums.
Yes, and then there's the supported method which is recommended by the company that made the product. If I wanted an unofficial install that may or may not work and would certainly not be supported, Id' run NWN in Winex3. But you would know that if you didn't assume I was an idiot.
Thanks for playing.
That is, in fact, true. You install the linux client and snarf the rest of it from an existing Windows application. Which sort of sucks, actually, becuase it means you have to install it on Windows before you can play it on Linux. Bah.
On the other hand, they aren't charging extra for the Linux client -- you just have to register with Bioware (free). I think Bioware almost got it 100% right -- pay for the content, make the engine free.
I recommend you pick it up if you haven't yet. It kept me glued for weeks, and the wife and I come back to it every couple of months. Well worth it. I've been emulating it in WineX and it's been spiffy.
"WineX! Oh no! Support linux gaming, man!" Well, I'd love to. It's just too bad I already paid for the game once. $80 for a $40 game? I mean, Majesty's good, but not *that* good.
Ditto with Kohan, the Sims, Neverwinter Nights, etc... I'm all for the parallel development though - go UT2003!
"If these 180 were somehow spirited off internet - we'd be left with the Nigerians, and companies spamming by mistake. The spam problem would simply disappear," he said.
So... who's got 1,800 feet of rope and an orchard to spare?
The release notes page won't come up... Hey, they're not emulating IIS on their server, are they?
Or not not emulating IIS, since Wine Is Not an Emulator?
Actually, I'm all for WINE. Not for the new games, because that takes a long time to develop and support in WINE, but for the older games. I don't want to have to have a Windows partition just to run them, and I don't want to leave them behind. I've already purchased them once, so emulation is the best way to go for me.
If you have already-released games that you want to keep, support WINE. If you want to play new games, pester the developers and vote with your dollars.
Interesting how I haven't seen this kind of hatred toward the movie until Moore's little ditty at the Oscars. Up until that night, Bowling for Columbine was praised to the high heavens.
/. to be easily swayed on a hot-button topic in a reactionary fashion or anything.
But then, I certainly wouldn't expect anybody on
Which do you measure, the inside or the outside?
GMFTatsujin
Check out Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. It's still got all the trappings of sci-fi combat (lasers you can see, FTL drive to get from place to place, etc) but the combat itself is based around a newtonian model. Fire up your engines and you accelerate, turn them off and you drift. It makes for some fun maneuvers, broadsiding capital ships and so on. It's also incredibly tough to get used to the first couple of times out, since you have to learn how so apply a deft touch instead of the usual all-out burn.
There's a also mod for the IWar series called Buda5 which re-creates the Babylon 5 universe, since newtonian physics was a highlight of the show's effects.
GMFTatsujin
GMFTatsujin
Check out the FAQ here. Basically it's a little PC with nothing but USB ports, built-on VGA and LAN, and a power button, released in the K6-400 heyday. This was a response to the first iMacs. I bought one for $50 a couple of months ago, thinking I might make a nice little linux router and file server out of it.
That's when I found out that "legacy free" meant "software emulation requiring WinDrivers." I still haven't managed to get the goddamned thing to recognize the built-in LAN unless I put Windows on it and hunt down the drivers for a product that AMD would rather not admit it ever put out.
Screw legacy-free. I only realized after purchasing it that even if I'd managed to get this little bitch to work, I'd still have to sacrifice running my printer server off of it because it has no parallel port. If legacy-free means "replace all your hardware and peripherals" then I don't want any part of it, thanks.
GMFTatsujin
What do you do in your spare time, juggle babies over an open fire? Oops! There goes another calculated risk!
I wish I could take credit for that. Thanks, Mr. Straczynski.
GMFTatsujin
Well, I will admit to being a linux newbie, which is precisely WHY I chose Gentoo over a pre-compiled distro. Having to set options and compile is, I've found, the only way I learn what's really going on with my computer. I'm up for tweaking and fiddling and cursing until I get it right.
:)
I'll say this, I've learned a lot in the past 2 weeks.
I guess that makes me, what, a power newbie? Or masochistic. What's the diff?
GMFTatsujin
I recently installed Gentoo Linux with modest optimizations for my processor (athlon-tbird 1GHz at -O2), expecting some pretty snappy response. Every app and driver was compiled from source with compatabilities built in for ALSA and OSS. I though it would be better than pre-compiled binaries.
:)
I've been quite disappointed. Maybe I layered in too much.
Noatun plays MP3s with only modest smoothness. mpg123 suffers similar problems. Skips are common when switching or redrawing windows. Real users stick to command lines, I guess.
I haven't tried recording from a live source, but I'd be wary -- is that weird pause in the music because of the recording skipping, or the playback skipping? Which system do I trust?
Anyway. Perhaps I tried stuffing in too much compatability, and instead should have picked one system over the other. But then who knows which apps would work and which wouldn't?
Please please please -- can we have a standard layer that's easy to install?
GMFTatsujin
XP is a half-assed upgrade, W2K is at least a half-decent OS
So this is a question of "is the glass half-assed or half-decent" then?
I'm convinced that you can't get a peice of identity-based legistlation passed these days unless it make a cute acronym in English. What do the Italians, Spanish, or Germans think URU means?
Now lets discuss the combined slashdot editors' frightful confusion regarding homonyms, shall we?
I think you mean "hahmonims."
I can't believe you left out Marriah Carrey's stunning portrayal of a burned-out superstar-turned-deadweight in Glitter. Talk about memorable!
Oh... wait...
I didn't find his performace as Gollum all that compelling either way. Certainly not enough to merit a nomination.
When an Oscar-deserving performance comes along, computer-augmented or not, it should be recognized. I just didn't think this was one of them.
That being said, the performance wasn't just the actor's alone. There were other artists in front of the keyboard who tweaked and augmented the facial expressions among other things -- the performance was really a collaborative effort to get the final peice on all levels. So would the animators get to share in the Oscar too?