Assuming that one would take screenshots of the best scenes in the game, then from the screenshots given on the website, I'd be inclined to think that this game is absolutely horrible.
This game runs on Linux -- and on Slashdot you aren't allowed to criticize any game that runs on Linux. No matter how lame, ill-conceived, or bug-ridden, it must be heralded as the wave of the future and a business model for game companies everywhere. Get with the program!
Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Wolfenstien 3d is a better game than that Linux game with the penguin sliding on his belly in snow...
In the end, "refurb" units are often of low quality because it's impossible to test and repair computer equipment cheaply and well and make money doing so.
That's why you don't see refurbished network cards, sound cards, and mice. When the price of the item is too low to make it worthwhile, the units are scrapped. When it comes to more expensive items, refurb often means that they were THOROUGHLY tested via an automated means and that they passed. Those that don't are often scrapped. Only if the item commands a pretty handsome price does it actually get repaired. I am sure that there are both reputable and disreputable refurb operations. I have a lot of faith in Dell's refurbished computers, but I have a lot less faith in refurbished Samsung telephones.
But unless you have some information that I do not, we are both just talking from personal experience -- which has no statistical significance at all.
Ring voltage is around 90V, so please don't think of phone lines as low voltage. Also, have you ever seen the spikes on a phone line when there is a lightning strike at a telephone pole?
I have never had any problems with Refurbished products. I see refurbished being more reliable then buying off the self.
I agree with you 100%. A refurbished product is normally gone over by someone who has some technical expertise while the "new" product is something that was put together by monkeys taught to wield a soldering iron.
I work for a fabless semiconductor company architecting extremely low-cost 8051-based smartcards. And it is 8051s that own the mass 8-bit market; Z80 & HD64180 are passe.
Bad news: 8051s are becoming passe as better architectures like the ARM and the Atmel AVR RISC microcontrollers come on the scene.
But Z80s are still used in many devices. They aren't usually the best choice for a new design, but if the company has an existing product or existing code base, then they may well be justified. Look at how many of them TI used in their calculators (though I don't know for certain that Zilog built them).
Re:So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2
However, what is the standard for building the simplest, most basic UPS device?
One relay across two pins of a 9-pin D serial port.
Re:So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2
What a boatload of penguin shit! There's not a single thing of consequence that he would need to do in a dashboard PC that can't be accomplished just as well under Windows as under Linux.
you don't really think that's true do you?
Yes. Prove me wrong.
Re:So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2
dude, that's the third time you posted that comment in the last few months! wtf? Troll.
Let's find out who's trolling: Provide links to my supposedly identical comments.
Re:So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2
what if he wanted to run a webserver and database server without having to waste money on any licenses?
Then he could run any number of them that are available for Windows. My favorite free web server for Windows is Savant. There's probably as much free Windows software as there is free Linux software.
Why would he run a web server when the thing is not connected to the web and has no IP address?
what if he wanted to run his choice of a journaling filesystem and wanted to tweak it for speed?
Then he needs a life. It's a dashboard toy. Use NTFS with Windows 2000 and be done with it.
look, with linux (and vmware) he has the best of both worlds PLUS ultimate configurability. he can make his car computer do whatever he wants.
No, he has a compatability mess and grotesque wasting of CPU horsepower.
if he were to install only windows, boy would he be limiting the power of his project.
What a boatload of penguin shit! There's not a single thing of consequence that he would need to do in a dashboard PC that can't be accomplished just as well under Windows as under Linux.
He can't even get decent GPS mapping software that runs under Linux.
Re:So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2
Well the article mentions some logic tied into the auxilliary power on the car. If he is using Linux he can design a rudimentary program which will shutdown the OS nicely when the car is shutoff (aux power off). If he is using Windows the task isn't trivial.
Ever seen what windows does when hooked to a smart UPS? Windows shuts down based on relay closures in uninterruptable power supplies, so he would have zero software to design for Windows.
So if most of your apps are Windows...
on
Dashboard Linux
·
· Score: 2, Troll
Why run Linux when your GPS software and other apps are native Windows apps? Just so you can say "Look at me! I'm one of the l33T linux dudez!"?
If you want to run Quake, UT, Winamp (or equivalent), and commercial GPS mapping software, you need Windows, not Linux. Of course, there's always someone with a really big hammer, a square peg, and a round hole...
Go ahead, tell me I am trolling, but how on earth did a company with an ancient, 8-bit architecture manage to get idiots to throw $280M at it?
By creating an architecture that is still used today in everything from calculators to embedded industrial control applications. Not every application needs ghz class CPUs, 512MB of RAM, and pipelined parallel processing.
It's guys like you that keep guys like me employed. Every problem presented to you is solved with a PC in some form factor or another. Computerized home thermostat? Mini PC on a board. Web server for monitoring temperature and pressure? PC in a rack mount case with an A/D board. Telephone voice mail system? PC in a funny looking case. Then when your product is hopelessly over the price target and behind schedule, guys like me get calls, choose an appropriate architecture, be it a PIC, Z80, AVR, or something else, and get the project back in line with reality.
Go ahead and mod this down as flamebait or troll if you want. I've got 50 Karma points as I post this so I'll live with 47 if need be.
Maybe this is the answer for the RIAA. Don't release crippled CDs that include copy-prevention measures. Release music that no one wants to copy. I bet that the KPMG theme song was not traded on Napster or any other P2P music trading service. MP3.com probably never posted a pirated copy of it.
Maybe the RIAA could consult with KPMG about how to produce music that no one will try to pirate.
A lot of ISPs may have rules about keepalives in their ALUs but in my experiance with PPPOE they don't realy care. I've kept my PPPOE connection online 24/7 for 2 years now and havn't heard a peep from my ISP about it.
Wait until they start running out of IP addresses. That's one of the reasons that ISPs like PPPoE -- smaller number of IP addresses since most connections, at any given time, don't have one assigned.
I just spoke to someone who go threatening telephone calls for running a keepalive program on his PPPoE DSL connection. My advice: Make sure that you have another broadband solution available.
I do pay for what I use, dick-breath. I told you that I have a few servers (mail, FTP, telnet) that are all password protected and used solely by me. I last used my FTP server about a week ago, so that's 0 bytes this week for FTP. Telnet? About 100kbytes total since it's been up. Mail? Doesn't matter. If I didn't run my own mail server, I'd send and receive mail through theirs, so there is no bandwidth cost there.
Have you always been this big a turd? Here I am offering to pay over double what I do currently for the same bandwidth and you've got your panties in a bunch about it.
128kbps is more than adequate for a mail server, telnet server, or FTP server to retrieve the occasional file. It's 2 minutes per meg.
Is it enough to make a public server for multiple users? No, but that's arguably against the policy of most cable modem ISPs in the country. My complaint is that I have a few servers for which I am the only user and they are trying to make me pay $250 per month to keep them alive.
Well, all I had to do was set my mail client to check every 10 minutes and I was on pretty much 24x7, and the ISP never seemed to mind, until they went under, that is.
Yeah, I've done the same thing -- accidentally, even. But you just aren't risking anything with a dial-up ISP. So what if they kick you off? Then you only have another 389 of them to choose from.
With a cable modem it's different. Lose that and you might be forced to go back to dial-up. That's the position I'm in: One government-approved monopoly to provide me with broadband. DSL is not available to me and satellite doesn't really compare.
Are you illiterate, stupid, or both? I did not say that it was technically impossible to keep a connection from timing out. Any idiot can figure out how to do that, as you just proved. I said that most ISPs running with PPPoE had policies prohibiting anti-timeout schemes. Violate the policy and you risk losing your service.
Next time, read the post before calling me "blatantly wrong."
"Its rediculiously easy to make a script that pings some host at a certian interval..."
And it's ridiculously easy for your ISP to catch you and disconnect your service for violating their no-defeating-the-timeout policy. You know, some of us actually abide by the agreements we sign...
Those are ridiculous prices come on. For the people who are just checking their email, $40?
I said checking their e-mail and some web surfing.
As to how ridiculous the prices are, people pay $24 for AOL and then spend $15 for a phone line. $40 seems pretty reasonable compared to that. We are talking about increasing the speed by a factor of ten or more!
And you object to $90 for a static IP and T1 download speeds? Ever price a T1? Try $800/month. Cable modems are a miracle technology and you should be thrilled to see bandwidth like this for so cheap.
If your attitude is typical, it's no wonder that @Home is going belly-up.
You can still run servers from PPPoE and even servers from PPP over POTS. You have a routable address.
It was my understanding that PPPoE, like PPP over POTS, would "time-out" and disconnect you. Most ISPs have a no-defeating-the-timeout policy, effectively meaning that you have no routable address unless you are sitting there using the computer.
The problem with the residential broadband market is that it relies on users not using much of the bandwidth available to them. But the people that most flock to broadband connections are those that want bandwidth.
I'm fighting with Cox Road Runner (Fairfax, VA) about policy changes. Although not currently prohibited, it appears that they are trying to pressure residential users that run their own (passworded) FTP servers, Telnet servers, mail, and web servers into buying Cox Business Internet services. One problem: My 1.5mbps download pipe costs $250 on business vs. $40 on residential. Odd too, how they are only discussing these server limitations now that they have a high-priced "business service" to offer.
Road Runner, @home, and other cable modem services need to start pricing more realistically. If someone wants just "basic" service for e-mail and web pages, then give them 512K PPPOE so that they can't run servers. And charge them $40 a month for it. If someone wants to run servers for personal use or needs a bit more bandwidth to dowload Linux and *BSD ISO images, give them 1.5MB, 1 static IP and charge them $90. But don't try to make residential users pay for business class services that cost as much as a car payment! People just won't make the jump from $40 to $250 -- unless they really are running businesses.
I've listened to a couple of songs on both vinyl and on CD's and often the vinyl did *sound* better. However I'm willing to bet that the CD version was a more faithful representation of the performance being recorded - the record only sounded better because it was distorted (either from its mixing and/or from the needle/vinyl interface) in a way that's pleasant to the human ear.
It's called euphonic distortion and you hit the nail on the head. Many of the vinyl-is-superior crowd believe so because the bass feedback to the turntable, coupled with the overshoot on transients, gives their speakers a fuller sound. Often, people have built systems around their turntable -- the least linear component in their system. Put it this way: If your turntable boosts the 120hz bass by 6db and your speakers cut it by 6db, the overall effect can be pretty good. Hook up a device with a flat frequency response and suddenly the sound is "thin" or otherwise lacking.
Truth be told, a good CD through a high-quality player (not some DVD/CD $99 combo unit) will outperform an equivalent LP on a high-end turntable. You can measure the improvement and hear it as well. By the way, I have a Linn turntable and Linn cartridge and a tweaked CD player with "select grade" D/A, improved power supply, and class A video buffer output -- so neither my turntable nor my CD is a slouch. The rest of my stuff is similarly high-end (no receivers here).
So besides failing to understand the difference between elected officials attempting to pass laws with which you don't agree, and authoritarian officals from The Party deciding what is good for you
It is you that can't seem to understand the difference between laws which someone doesn't like and laws which violate basic Constitutional rights to free speech.
, you also cannot grasp the concept of a defense against the "tyrannical majority" (which is what the electoral college is supposed to provide).
The Electoral College helps ensure that the winning candidate has popular support that is dispersed both geographically and ideologically and that, as a result, the electoral winner will be able actually to govern. The Electoral College also ensures that every state has a voice in the election of the President.
The slim margins by which Mr. Bush won the Electoral vote and by which Mr. Gore won the popular vote is not indicative of an Electoral college protecting the citizens from a tyrannical majority. It was a statistical fluke and a failure of the Electoral college. Nonetheless, it is the law of the land and we must live with the results.
BTW, I would be surprised if there were no other elections wherever you may live between the presidential elections and now...
There were. I voted for Democrats Mark Warner for Governor and Timothy M. Kaine for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Thankfully, they won handily due to voter anger over the fact that Republicans, despite controlling the Virginia legislature and holding the Governorship, were unable to pass a budget. In addition, four years ago, the Republican Governor Jim Gilmore (Chairman of the RNC) effectively bribed voters into electing him, saying he would eliminate the personal property tax on cars. Four years later, we still have the tax and even members of his own party have called his campaign promise fiscally irresponsible.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming that one would take screenshots of the best scenes in the game, then from the screenshots given on the website, I'd be inclined to think that this game is absolutely horrible.
This game runs on Linux -- and on Slashdot you aren't allowed to criticize any game that runs on Linux. No matter how lame, ill-conceived, or bug-ridden, it must be heralded as the wave of the future and a business model for game companies everywhere. Get with the program!
Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Wolfenstien 3d is a better game than that Linux game with the penguin sliding on his belly in snow...
What would you do with a starbucks account any way?
And do you have to have Java to use it?
In the end, "refurb" units are often of low quality because it's impossible to test and repair computer equipment cheaply and well and make money doing so.
That's why you don't see refurbished network cards, sound cards, and mice. When the price of the item is too low to make it worthwhile, the units are scrapped. When it comes to more expensive items, refurb often means that they were THOROUGHLY tested via an automated means and that they passed. Those that don't are often scrapped. Only if the item commands a pretty handsome price does it actually get repaired. I am sure that there are both reputable and disreputable refurb operations. I have a lot of faith in Dell's refurbished computers, but I have a lot less faith in refurbished Samsung telephones.
But unless you have some information that I do not, we are both just talking from personal experience -- which has no statistical significance at all.
Ring voltage is around 90V, so please don't think of phone lines as low voltage. Also, have you ever seen the spikes on a phone line when there is a lightning strike at a telephone pole?
Low voltage? Guess again...
I have never had any problems with Refurbished products. I see refurbished being more reliable then buying off the self.
I agree with you 100%. A refurbished product is normally gone over by someone who has some technical expertise while the "new" product is something that was put together by monkeys taught to wield a soldering iron.
I work for a fabless semiconductor company architecting extremely low-cost 8051-based smartcards. And it is 8051s that own the mass 8-bit market; Z80 & HD64180 are passe.
Bad news: 8051s are becoming passe as better architectures like the ARM and the Atmel AVR RISC microcontrollers come on the scene.
But Z80s are still used in many devices. They aren't usually the best choice for a new design, but if the company has an existing product or existing code base, then they may well be justified. Look at how many of them TI used in their calculators (though I don't know for certain that Zilog built them).
However, what is the standard for building the simplest, most basic UPS device?
One relay across two pins of a 9-pin D serial port.
What a boatload of penguin shit! There's not a single thing of consequence that he would need to do in a dashboard PC that can't be accomplished just as well under Windows as under Linux.
you don't really think that's true do you?
Yes. Prove me wrong.
dude, that's the third time you posted that comment in the last few months! wtf? Troll.
Let's find out who's trolling: Provide links to my supposedly identical comments.
what if he wanted to run a webserver and database server without having to waste money on any licenses?
Then he could run any number of them that are available for Windows. My favorite free web server for Windows is Savant. There's probably as much free Windows software as there is free Linux software.
Why would he run a web server when the thing is not connected to the web and has no IP address?
what if he wanted to run his choice of a journaling filesystem and wanted to tweak it for speed?
Then he needs a life. It's a dashboard toy. Use NTFS with Windows 2000 and be done with it.
look, with linux (and vmware) he has the best of both worlds PLUS ultimate configurability. he can make his car computer do whatever he wants.
No, he has a compatability mess and grotesque wasting of CPU horsepower.
if he were to install only windows, boy would he be limiting the power of his project.
What a boatload of penguin shit! There's not a single thing of consequence that he would need to do in a dashboard PC that can't be accomplished just as well under Windows as under Linux.
He can't even get decent GPS mapping software that runs under Linux.
Well the article mentions some logic tied into the auxilliary power on the car. If he is using Linux he can design a rudimentary program which will shutdown the OS nicely when the car is shutoff (aux power off). If he is using Windows the task isn't trivial.
Ever seen what windows does when hooked to a smart UPS? Windows shuts down based on relay closures in uninterruptable power supplies, so he would have zero software to design for Windows.
Why run Linux when your GPS software and other apps are native Windows apps? Just so you can say "Look at me! I'm one of the l33T linux dudez!"?
If you want to run Quake, UT, Winamp (or equivalent), and commercial GPS mapping software, you need Windows, not Linux. Of course, there's always someone with a really big hammer, a square peg, and a round hole...
Go ahead, tell me I am trolling, but how on earth did a company with an ancient, 8-bit architecture manage to get idiots to throw $280M at it?
By creating an architecture that is still used today in everything from calculators to embedded industrial control applications. Not every application needs ghz class CPUs, 512MB of RAM, and pipelined parallel processing.
It's guys like you that keep guys like me employed. Every problem presented to you is solved with a PC in some form factor or another. Computerized home thermostat? Mini PC on a board. Web server for monitoring temperature and pressure? PC in a rack mount case with an A/D board. Telephone voice mail system? PC in a funny looking case. Then when your product is hopelessly over the price target and behind schedule, guys like me get calls, choose an appropriate architecture, be it a PIC, Z80, AVR, or something else, and get the project back in line with reality.
Go ahead and mod this down as flamebait or troll if you want. I've got 50 Karma points as I post this so I'll live with 47 if need be.
Maybe this is the answer for the RIAA. Don't release crippled CDs that include copy-prevention measures. Release music that no one wants to copy. I bet that the KPMG theme song was not traded on Napster or any other P2P music trading service. MP3.com probably never posted a pirated copy of it.
Maybe the RIAA could consult with KPMG about how to produce music that no one will try to pirate.
A lot of ISPs may have rules about keepalives in their ALUs but in my experiance with PPPOE they don't realy care. I've kept my PPPOE connection online 24/7 for 2 years now and havn't heard a peep from my ISP about it.
Wait until they start running out of IP addresses. That's one of the reasons that ISPs like PPPoE -- smaller number of IP addresses since most connections, at any given time, don't have one assigned.
I just spoke to someone who go threatening telephone calls for running a keepalive program on his PPPoE DSL connection. My advice: Make sure that you have another broadband solution available.
I do pay for what I use, dick-breath. I told you that I have a few servers (mail, FTP, telnet) that are all password protected and used solely by me. I last used my FTP server about a week ago, so that's 0 bytes this week for FTP. Telnet? About 100kbytes total since it's been up. Mail? Doesn't matter. If I didn't run my own mail server, I'd send and receive mail through theirs, so there is no bandwidth cost there.
Have you always been this big a turd? Here I am offering to pay over double what I do currently for the same bandwidth and you've got your panties in a bunch about it.
128kbps is more than adequate for a mail server, telnet server, or FTP server to retrieve the occasional file. It's 2 minutes per meg.
Is it enough to make a public server for multiple users? No, but that's arguably against the policy of most cable modem ISPs in the country. My complaint is that I have a few servers for which I am the only user and they are trying to make me pay $250 per month to keep them alive.
Well, all I had to do was set my mail client to check every 10 minutes and I was on pretty much 24x7, and the ISP never seemed to mind, until they went under, that is.
Yeah, I've done the same thing -- accidentally, even. But you just aren't risking anything with a dial-up ISP. So what if they kick you off? Then you only have another 389 of them to choose from.
With a cable modem it's different. Lose that and you might be forced to go back to dial-up. That's the position I'm in: One government-approved monopoly to provide me with broadband. DSL is not available to me and satellite doesn't really compare.
well your blatently wrong.
Are you illiterate, stupid, or both? I did not say that it was technically impossible to keep a connection from timing out. Any idiot can figure out how to do that, as you just proved. I said that most ISPs running with PPPoE had policies prohibiting anti-timeout schemes. Violate the policy and you risk losing your service.
Next time, read the post before calling me "blatantly wrong."
"Its rediculiously easy to make a script that pings some host at a certian interval..."
And it's ridiculously easy for your ISP to catch you and disconnect your service for violating their no-defeating-the-timeout policy. You know, some of us actually abide by the agreements we sign...
Those are ridiculous prices come on. For the people who are just checking their email, $40?
I said checking their e-mail and some web surfing.
As to how ridiculous the prices are, people pay $24 for AOL and then spend $15 for a phone line. $40 seems pretty reasonable compared to that. We are talking about increasing the speed by a factor of ten or more!
And you object to $90 for a static IP and T1 download speeds? Ever price a T1? Try $800/month. Cable modems are a miracle technology and you should be thrilled to see bandwidth like this for so cheap.
If your attitude is typical, it's no wonder that @Home is going belly-up.
You can still run servers from PPPoE and even servers from PPP over POTS. You have a routable address.
It was my understanding that PPPoE, like PPP over POTS, would "time-out" and disconnect you. Most ISPs have a no-defeating-the-timeout policy, effectively meaning that you have no routable address unless you are sitting there using the computer.
The problem with the residential broadband market is that it relies on users not using much of the bandwidth available to them. But the people that most flock to broadband connections are those that want bandwidth.
I'm fighting with Cox Road Runner (Fairfax, VA) about policy changes. Although not currently prohibited, it appears that they are trying to pressure residential users that run their own (passworded) FTP servers, Telnet servers, mail, and web servers into buying Cox Business Internet services. One problem: My 1.5mbps download pipe costs $250 on business vs. $40 on residential. Odd too, how they are only discussing these server limitations now that they have a high-priced "business service" to offer.
Road Runner, @home, and other cable modem services need to start pricing more realistically. If someone wants just "basic" service for e-mail and web pages, then give them 512K PPPOE so that they can't run servers. And charge them $40 a month for it. If someone wants to run servers for personal use or needs a bit more bandwidth to dowload Linux and *BSD ISO images, give them 1.5MB, 1 static IP and charge them $90. But don't try to make residential users pay for business class services that cost as much as a car payment! People just won't make the jump from $40 to $250 -- unless they really are running businesses.
I've listened to a couple of songs on both vinyl and on CD's and often the vinyl did *sound* better. However I'm willing to bet that the CD version was a more faithful representation of the performance being recorded - the record only sounded better because it was distorted (either from its mixing and/or from the needle/vinyl interface) in a way that's pleasant to the human ear.
It's called euphonic distortion and you hit the nail on the head. Many of the vinyl-is-superior crowd believe so because the bass feedback to the turntable, coupled with the overshoot on transients, gives their speakers a fuller sound. Often, people have built systems around their turntable -- the least linear component in their system. Put it this way: If your turntable boosts the 120hz bass by 6db and your speakers cut it by 6db, the overall effect can be pretty good. Hook up a device with a flat frequency response and suddenly the sound is "thin" or otherwise lacking.
Truth be told, a good CD through a high-quality player (not some DVD/CD $99 combo unit) will outperform an equivalent LP on a high-end turntable. You can measure the improvement and hear it as well. By the way, I have a Linn turntable and Linn cartridge and a tweaked CD player with "select grade" D/A, improved power supply, and class A video buffer output -- so neither my turntable nor my CD is a slouch. The rest of my stuff is similarly high-end (no receivers here).
So besides failing to understand the difference between elected officials attempting to pass laws with which you don't agree, and authoritarian officals from The Party deciding what is good for you
It is you that can't seem to understand the difference between laws which someone doesn't like and laws which violate basic Constitutional rights to free speech.
, you also cannot grasp the concept of a defense against the "tyrannical majority" (which is what the electoral college is supposed to provide).
The Electoral College helps ensure that the winning candidate has popular support that is dispersed both geographically and ideologically and that, as a result, the electoral winner will be able actually to govern. The Electoral College also ensures that every state has a voice in the election of the President.
The slim margins by which Mr. Bush won the Electoral vote and by which Mr. Gore won the popular vote is not indicative of an Electoral college protecting the citizens from a tyrannical majority. It was a statistical fluke and a failure of the Electoral college. Nonetheless, it is the law of the land and we must live with the results.
BTW, I would be surprised if there were no other elections wherever you may live between the presidential elections and now...
There were. I voted for Democrats Mark Warner for Governor and Timothy M. Kaine for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Thankfully, they won handily due to voter anger over the fact that Republicans, despite controlling the Virginia legislature and holding the Governorship, were unable to pass a budget. In addition, four years ago, the Republican Governor Jim Gilmore (Chairman of the RNC) effectively bribed voters into electing him, saying he would eliminate the personal property tax on cars. Four years later, we still have the tax and even members of his own party have called his campaign promise fiscally irresponsible.