So true that it's not funny... Emacs is not just a GUI, it's a goddamn operating system. I love it.
I was completely blown away when I tried the Emacs interface to TiMidity. It was frosty. A Finn built a great program and the Japanese made it vastly greater by adding a bunch of cool and completely unusual features like this =)
1) Games. 'Nuff said. Though, most of the games I really really like to play (SMAC, NWN, Myth II, Nethack, Ultimas) already run on Linux, or are coming. 2) Video capture and editing. (the fact that nvrec almost works and almost keeps sound in sync and almost does tolerable bitrate MPEG isn't enough. VirtualDub on Win98 works 100% =) 3) Um... yeah, and my scanner (CanoScan D660U) isn't supported by SANE. That's
Yes, I know of Cinelerra. The problems? Usability was somewhat... intimidating and support for some codecs wasn't very helpful. Seemed nice enough, but still can't quite compete with Premiere or something =)
Re:Legality of Emulating ROMs you own under copyri
on
MAME To Become GPL?
·
· Score: 1
all console games come with a license that says that you cannot make any copies of the game, including for back-up purposes
Nintendo may say whatever damn they please about the evils of emulation, but the law (at least in most of the places) still allows people to make backups and emulating the systems.
One shouldn't believe everything the companies say...
But that leads to an old question: Will there ever be VirtualDub for Linux? It was planned at least but I haven't heard of any concrete actions in a long time.
VirtualDub is, as I understood the comments, pretty heavily tied to Video4Windows and MFC... The nice thing about Windows is that V4W and Directshow are pretty damn good video APIs compared to anything currently available on Linux. GStreamer isn't Here yet. =)
But yeah, a good video editor, or preferrably a good NLE, would rule. (No, BC2K and Cinelerra don't count. In this case, the definition of "good" includes "fine-tuned usability" =)
How does Film Gimp compare the other big open source video editor Virtual Dub [virtualdub.org]?
Virtual Dub is more like rough cutting of material and applying filters/cropping. *And* while it's great, it is not exactly something the big boys would want to use on anything serious... (Nobody seems to be working on a good, honest NLE. Even a limited one would rule.)
Film GIMP, on the other hand, is a pro app. It focuses on a completely different field - careful manipulation of still frames. Main selling point is the ability to work in 16 bit per channel mode (I suppose VirtualDub doesn't go that far, only 24bpp like everything else... =)
Uh, GYVE is probably dead, long live Sketch... (interestingly Sketch is the only Python program I use often and my Perl Coder Karma(tm) won't make it crash horribly...) Sad, really, because I heard some good things about it. Maybe the new programs shadow it, then? The page seems to link to Sodipodi, hope it's less buggy than when I last used it... Never tried Kontour, though, I don't like KDE.
But the good news, in any case, is that vector drawing in OSS world is hardly dead, even if GYVE is =)
As a long time user of a foreign language Windows (Dutch) I can assure you it's almost never a problem. C:\Windows is the same in all language versions, as is C:\Program Files.
In Finnish version (at least in all of 9x), the directories are C:\Windows (no surprise) and C:\Ohjelmatiedostot. But this has never been a problem, because all of the apps - even English versions - I've used have defaulted to install C:\Ohjelmatiedostot\Wherever, except for some rare applications that insist calling it C:\Program Files.
And "Bureaublad" sounds whole lot more interesting than "Työpöytä", which is always a thrilling directory to cd to, at least in shells other than Cygwin bash. =) And when mounting that to other OSes, the weird characters are always interesting. (For some obscure reason, it now seem to show up properly in Linux, but that sort of depends on shell...)
More or less same here. The problem is, they don't sell stuff that interests me, or make it way overpriced. Rather than spending money on CDs, I buy DVDs (which are almost the same price and have more bang per euro), and I'm happily addicted to sites like RKO that have everything I've ever dreamed of, free and legit... =)
Yes... and, in effect, no. I can't buy my favorite music (game soundtracks etc) from nearby stores, can't find the kind of older music I'm looking from - I can't find any good new music because it's buried under all of the crap they release these days! I quit in disgust, and can only buy good stuff if it actually walks to me =)
The problem is, of course, that the record companies are too busy fighting piracy and not doing things they're supposed to do - encourage the artists to make good music and sell it at reasonable prices. You know the old saying, once people start waving guns around, their intelligence drops through the floor... Well, the record companies have "war on piracy" and use that as an excuse to sell unsatisfying albums at ridiculous prices.
In the rare cases the blind chickens find a seed (and this is very rare), I'm more than happy to buy the CD. But in that case the CD really has to be worth the outrageous price - otherwise, I'll just buy some DVD instead (almost the same price!), and get much better value for my money. =)
(Due to fact I'm more likely to buy a DVD than a CD, I just noticed I had been buying quite a few of soundtrack CDs, though, but I carefully avoided any that had words "from and inspired by" on the cover... =)
Re:Other OS P2P technologies
on
Gnutella2?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've had nothing but problems with giFT. Finally started booting back into Windows and using Kazaa.
Curious. I've had very few problems with the CVS version of giFT. In fact, i've found it to be the best-working p2p app on Linux since Napster. Doesn't eat all of the bandwidth for nothing, and downloads are *really* fast compared to *any* Gnutella client. I've actually downloaded things with this thing! =)
The problems have mostly been like "okay, today it didn't work, tomorrow it'll work again"; I think the biggest outage in my case was recently when the new interface protocol was introduced and all clients seemed to work only day or two later.
You're running xmms using artsd? If not you should;)
OR get a sound card that supports hardware mixing (well, most modern soundcards do that) and get Linux sound driver for that card that supports hardware mixing (ALSA is a good bet, especially with the OSS emulation module).
I use SBLive! and ALSA, never had any problems with Flash...
Re:PDF is to XML, as Acrobat is to XDocs
on
Microsoft takes on PDF
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If anything, XML will be the PDF-killer. Adobe trapped themselves into a corner when they devoted themselves to a proprietary file format instead of using XML.
XML COMES! XML CONQUERS! XML is the best thing since the sliced bread! XML RULES!
PostScript was designed from ground up to be a page description language. PDF was based on ideas from PostScript.
XML, on the other hand, was designed to mark up content in semantic way. The whole idea was NOT to make something that describes the layout, but rather the structure of the content. The layout was left for other technologies.
XML will definitely not displace PostScript or PDF as a page description language. As a content format it's a great thing, perhaps, but not as a print format.
Why bother? The point of vi is that it loads in a microsecond and it works over any kind of terminal session. Why have a larger GUI editor that emulates the awkward interface of vi? That's just backwards.
Both XEmacs and GNU Emacs work just fine in tty, thanks for asking, but admittedly vi loads faster. Then again, you're only supposed to start emacs once per session. =) (There are supposedly things like gnuserv/gnuclient that speed up launching...)
As for the interface issue, I think you have a good point. If I use Emacs, I use Emacs, and if I use vi, I use vi - and if one is to truly learn *NIX stuff, they'd better learn both editors, and not cheat, because that's only deception...
Don't evaluate code that's not marked as code! Since Slashdot doesn't allow the use of <code>, I thought >tt> would be adequate. I know, I know, it's hard to read documentation, but it shouldn't be that hard to tell the difference between code and its explanation...
By the way, I later realized what was missing from your function: argument list and docstring. No wonder it didn't work.
(interactive) is for wimps. Real Programmers always use `M-:' anyway.
Design issue, friend, design issue! These people specifically wanted it to be invoked as "M-x viper-mode".
Besides, real programmers don't use (while (read-char) (ding)). They just undefine all key bindings.
I was looking for the Cool Desktop for Linux, and halfway there, I realized I don't need it.
It was sort of a moment of deep realization. What am I looking for? Something that looks good, or something that does the job?
WindowMaker does the job.
WindowMaker works. I don't care what it looks like. It can be made look nice, too, but I don't need good looks, just something that doesn't make my eyes bleed. It works. It looks decent enough. It works.
"I have this cool new dock", said the MacOS X user. "Oh, that, I had a NEXTSTEP dock years ago, because the Window Maker folks made a desktop that works", I replied.
"Oh goody! The application finally drew its window on screen!" quoth the WinXP user. "But I already finished my work by this time, because this thing works", I replied.
Window Maker works. It may look cool, but it actually works.
I like movies too much to give them up despite what the MPAA is trying to do.
My thoughts exactly. I dislike the people who fund the the movies, but I watch the movies because I appreciate the efforts made on the artistic side. I watch MPAA's movies when they, for some reason, take a pause to the flood of crap and lobbying stupid laws and actually come up with a great movie! =)
That said, I'm not sure I'll be the first one to see Finding Nemo. Pixar's stuff is often good, but Disney in general is suffering from "I liked their early stuff better" syndrome. =)
You just have to read a little. By now I'm sure you found out that in Debian you don't edit modules.conf directly, but put files in/etc/modutils, which update-modules assemble into a modules.conf file.
Or just list every module you want to be loaded in/etc/modules, one per line with parameters, and they will be loaded at the boot. Which is good, because I never understood what the hell the stuff in modules.conf means. Pure and simple and working stuff, even when not using kerneld sounds proto-neolithic. =)
I have a question. With the newest version of linux, came an ugly-ass GUI version of Nethack. I want the old ascii thing. Where can I find this without just installing an older linux ver?
Edit your ~/.nethackrc so that it says
OPTIONS=windowtype:tty
Assuming, of course, that your binary was compiled with tty support - but it's probably in by default. =)
Bored and lazy now that the d00dz have mostly left the group alone... I have actually had more time to focus on the game itself! =)
Ack, just realized I have been off the Usenet for over a month. Have to make yet another comeback tomorrow, and tell of this amazing game I'm having right now. =)
The makers of the game concentrated on the content, not the graphics or presentation. =)
The game is challenging. There's about ~40 dungeon levels or something. I've played the game for about a decade. I've been to level 12 or 13. (Okay, I'm a very lazy player, but still.)
There are few games that give this kind of feeling of accomplishment. Even if you don't win, if you have One Hell of a Game, it really means you have One Hell of a Game. I, for one, use the expression in a way entirely different from the way non-Nethackers use it.
For me, personally, it's also a grim reminder of the harsh reality: I can't really call myself a gamer until I've finished Nethack. I mean, everyone can finish these new games, but Nethack is an old, time-proven test that separates really dedicated gamers from the rest of the people. If someone says they have finished the game without cheating, I look at them with Great, Boundless Respect(tm). Anyone who can finish a game this hard has to be worth their merit. And I'd give the Nobel or something to the guy who finishes the game without tips, spoilers or sourcediving and with all optional challenges done...
If someone made that game, I think God himself would have vengeance by having a giant rain of Ts fall from the Heavens to impale everyone involved.
Rain of Trolls... and they say Slashdot has a troll problem...
Just for the irony. If God was really nasty, he may even use *s or even the dreaded #!
I understand the stones, but a kitchen sink from the heavens? If I remember the Bible stuff correctly, it was that ruler guy who washed his hands, not God!
How is the 4th Annual NetHack Tournament committe planning on handling the scourage of the gaming field that is cheaters, flooders, packeteers, and other undesirables?
This ain't your son's newest 3D shooter... =) Simple: To play the game you telnet or ssh to the server. You play the game there. There is no "client" to hack and (in theory anyway) the server provides no way for the user to retrieve the binary or other data... and the only stuff that goes between the user and the server is terminal control commands. And given that the game itself has been on development for decades, I guess it's pretty solid what comes to security and abuses, once you disable the '!' command and stuff like that... =)
Slashdot Mirror
So true that it's not funny... Emacs is not just a GUI, it's a goddamn operating system. I love it.
I was completely blown away when I tried the Emacs interface to TiMidity. It was frosty. A Finn built a great program and the Japanese made it vastly greater by adding a bunch of cool and completely unusual features like this =)
I was under impression Aqua used Display PDF. However, then some Mac guru said it doesn't actually use it for everything the hype says it's used.
- W4, who doesn't use MacOSX because Window Maker was out ages ago and GNUstep is stabilizing =)
1) Games. 'Nuff said. Though, most of the games I really really like to play (SMAC, NWN, Myth II, Nethack, Ultimas) already run on Linux, or are coming. 2) Video capture and editing. (the fact that nvrec almost works and almost keeps sound in sync and almost does tolerable bitrate MPEG isn't enough. VirtualDub on Win98 works 100% =) 3) Um... yeah, and my scanner (CanoScan D660U) isn't supported by SANE. That's
Yes, I know of Cinelerra. The problems? Usability was somewhat... intimidating and support for some codecs wasn't very helpful. Seemed nice enough, but still can't quite compete with Premiere or something =)
Nintendo may say whatever damn they please about the evils of emulation, but the law (at least in most of the places) still allows people to make backups and emulating the systems.
One shouldn't believe everything the companies say...
VirtualDub is, as I understood the comments, pretty heavily tied to Video4Windows and MFC... The nice thing about Windows is that V4W and Directshow are pretty damn good video APIs compared to anything currently available on Linux. GStreamer isn't Here yet. =)
But yeah, a good video editor, or preferrably a good NLE, would rule. (No, BC2K and Cinelerra don't count. In this case, the definition of "good" includes "fine-tuned usability" =)
Virtual Dub is more like rough cutting of material and applying filters/cropping. *And* while it's great, it is not exactly something the big boys would want to use on anything serious... (Nobody seems to be working on a good, honest NLE. Even a limited one would rule.)
Film GIMP, on the other hand, is a pro app. It focuses on a completely different field - careful manipulation of still frames. Main selling point is the ability to work in 16 bit per channel mode (I suppose VirtualDub doesn't go that far, only 24bpp like everything else... =)
Uh, GYVE is probably dead, long live Sketch... (interestingly Sketch is the only Python program I use often and my Perl Coder Karma(tm) won't make it crash horribly...) Sad, really, because I heard some good things about it. Maybe the new programs shadow it, then? The page seems to link to Sodipodi, hope it's less buggy than when I last used it... Never tried Kontour, though, I don't like KDE.
But the good news, in any case, is that vector drawing in OSS world is hardly dead, even if GYVE is =)
In Finnish version (at least in all of 9x), the directories are C:\Windows (no surprise) and C:\Ohjelmatiedostot. But this has never been a problem, because all of the apps - even English versions - I've used have defaulted to install C:\Ohjelmatiedostot\Wherever, except for some rare applications that insist calling it C:\Program Files.
And "Bureaublad" sounds whole lot more interesting than "Työpöytä", which is always a thrilling directory to cd to, at least in shells other than Cygwin bash. =) And when mounting that to other OSes, the weird characters are always interesting. (For some obscure reason, it now seem to show up properly in Linux, but that sort of depends on shell...)
More or less same here. The problem is, they don't sell stuff that interests me, or make it way overpriced. Rather than spending money on CDs, I buy DVDs (which are almost the same price and have more bang per euro), and I'm happily addicted to sites like RKO that have everything I've ever dreamed of, free and legit... =)
Yes... and, in effect, no. I can't buy my favorite music (game soundtracks etc) from nearby stores, can't find the kind of older music I'm looking from - I can't find any good new music because it's buried under all of the crap they release these days! I quit in disgust, and can only buy good stuff if it actually walks to me =)
The problem is, of course, that the record companies are too busy fighting piracy and not doing things they're supposed to do - encourage the artists to make good music and sell it at reasonable prices. You know the old saying, once people start waving guns around, their intelligence drops through the floor... Well, the record companies have "war on piracy" and use that as an excuse to sell unsatisfying albums at ridiculous prices.
In the rare cases the blind chickens find a seed (and this is very rare), I'm more than happy to buy the CD. But in that case the CD really has to be worth the outrageous price - otherwise, I'll just buy some DVD instead (almost the same price!), and get much better value for my money. =)
(Due to fact I'm more likely to buy a DVD than a CD, I just noticed I had been buying quite a few of soundtrack CDs, though, but I carefully avoided any that had words "from and inspired by" on the cover... =)
Curious. I've had very few problems with the CVS version of giFT. In fact, i've found it to be the best-working p2p app on Linux since Napster. Doesn't eat all of the bandwidth for nothing, and downloads are *really* fast compared to *any* Gnutella client. I've actually downloaded things with this thing! =)
The problems have mostly been like "okay, today it didn't work, tomorrow it'll work again"; I think the biggest outage in my case was recently when the new interface protocol was introduced and all clients seemed to work only day or two later.
OR get a sound card that supports hardware mixing (well, most modern soundcards do that) and get Linux sound driver for that card that supports hardware mixing (ALSA is a good bet, especially with the OSS emulation module).
I use SBLive! and ALSA, never had any problems with Flash...
XML COMES! XML CONQUERS! XML is the best thing since the sliced bread! XML RULES!
Ahem.
PDF isn't exactly a closed format. PostScript wasn't exactly a closed format either.
PostScript was designed from ground up to be a page description language. PDF was based on ideas from PostScript.
XML, on the other hand, was designed to mark up content in semantic way. The whole idea was NOT to make something that describes the layout, but rather the structure of the content. The layout was left for other technologies.
XML will definitely not displace PostScript or PDF as a page description language. As a content format it's a great thing, perhaps, but not as a print format.
Both XEmacs and GNU Emacs work just fine in tty, thanks for asking, but admittedly vi loads faster. Then again, you're only supposed to start emacs once per session. =) (There are supposedly things like gnuserv/gnuclient that speed up launching...)
As for the interface issue, I think you have a good point. If I use Emacs, I use Emacs, and if I use vi, I use vi - and if one is to truly learn *NIX stuff, they'd better learn both editors, and not cheat, because that's only deception...
Don't evaluate code that's not marked as code! Since Slashdot doesn't allow the use of <code>, I thought >tt> would be adequate. I know, I know, it's hard to read documentation, but it shouldn't be that hard to tell the difference between code and its explanation...
By the way, I later realized what was missing from your function: argument list and docstring. No wonder it didn't work.
Design issue, friend, design issue! These people specifically wanted it to be invoked as "M-x viper-mode".
Besides, real programmers don't use (while (read-char) (ding)). They just undefine all key bindings.
Probably missing (interactive) (if it were to be executed with "M-x viper-mode") and some other stuff. But yes, I still got the idea =)
I was looking for the Cool Desktop for Linux, and halfway there, I realized I don't need it.
It was sort of a moment of deep realization. What am I looking for? Something that looks good, or something that does the job?
WindowMaker does the job.
WindowMaker works. I don't care what it looks like. It can be made look nice, too, but I don't need good looks, just something that doesn't make my eyes bleed. It works. It looks decent enough. It works.
"I have this cool new dock", said the MacOS X user. "Oh, that, I had a NEXTSTEP dock years ago, because the Window Maker folks made a desktop that works", I replied.
"Oh goody! The application finally drew its window on screen!" quoth the WinXP user. "But I already finished my work by this time, because this thing works", I replied.
Window Maker works. It may look cool, but it actually works.
My thoughts exactly. I dislike the people who fund the the movies, but I watch the movies because I appreciate the efforts made on the artistic side. I watch MPAA's movies when they, for some reason, take a pause to the flood of crap and lobbying stupid laws and actually come up with a great movie! =)
That said, I'm not sure I'll be the first one to see Finding Nemo. Pixar's stuff is often good, but Disney in general is suffering from "I liked their early stuff better" syndrome. =)
Or just list every module you want to be loaded in /etc/modules, one per line with parameters, and they will be loaded at the boot. Which is good, because I never understood what the hell the stuff in modules.conf means. Pure and simple and working stuff, even when not using kerneld sounds proto-neolithic. =)
Edit your ~/.nethackrc so that it says
OPTIONS=windowtype:tty
Assuming, of course, that your binary was compiled with tty support - but it's probably in by default. =)
Bored and lazy now that the d00dz have mostly left the group alone... I have actually had more time to focus on the game itself! =)
Ack, just realized I have been off the Usenet for over a month. Have to make yet another comeback tomorrow, and tell of this amazing game I'm having right now. =)
The makers of the game concentrated on the content, not the graphics or presentation. =)
The game is challenging. There's about ~40 dungeon levels or something. I've played the game for about a decade. I've been to level 12 or 13. (Okay, I'm a very lazy player, but still.)
There are few games that give this kind of feeling of accomplishment. Even if you don't win, if you have One Hell of a Game, it really means you have One Hell of a Game. I, for one, use the expression in a way entirely different from the way non-Nethackers use it.
For me, personally, it's also a grim reminder of the harsh reality: I can't really call myself a gamer until I've finished Nethack. I mean, everyone can finish these new games, but Nethack is an old, time-proven test that separates really dedicated gamers from the rest of the people. If someone says they have finished the game without cheating, I look at them with Great, Boundless Respect(tm). Anyone who can finish a game this hard has to be worth their merit. And I'd give the Nobel or something to the guy who finishes the game without tips, spoilers or sourcediving and with all optional challenges done...
Rain of Trolls... and they say Slashdot has a troll problem...
I understand the stones, but a kitchen sink from the heavens? If I remember the Bible stuff correctly, it was that ruler guy who washed his hands, not God!
This ain't your son's newest 3D shooter... =) Simple: To play the game you telnet or ssh to the server. You play the game there. There is no "client" to hack and (in theory anyway) the server provides no way for the user to retrieve the binary or other data... and the only stuff that goes between the user and the server is terminal control commands. And given that the game itself has been on development for decades, I guess it's pretty solid what comes to security and abuses, once you disable the '!' command and stuff like that... =)