Grampa started talking about computers the other day, like they were something to be proud of. He mentioned how he got his very first computer before the turn of the millenium, and how it was one of the fastest computers at the time, almost 1 Ghz. He's so embarressing. Didn't anyone in his day tell him about there first model T and how it actually managed to reach 20 mph and maybe go 500 miles without breaking down, all without no air conditioning or automatic pilot?
Then he went on about some free software thing named after a penguin or something. Something about people sharing code for programs and not having programming AIs, and how sharing is more ethical. Like I actually care. He should have been a hippy instead, at least that free love thing sounded interesting. He keeps doing this in front of company too, they are beginning to avoid him when he walks down the street, especially when he breaks out his old "industrial", "metal", and "punk" albums with all the funny names and really bad lyrics that go along with really bad music. Then he dares to call my music crap. How could he have ever been with the times if he doesn't understand the quality I listen to?
He's so weird. Maybe he should be in a home or something. He says "hello" and "good day" to the biobots, and I think I saw him try to tip one in the restraunt the other day. His year-old medical scans show no senility, but I wonder if they should test him again. He lectured me on the freedoms of paper money the other day when I asked him for a few bucks so I could watch a movie, I think he actually preferred the germ-covered greasy pieces of green paper that could be easily lost and even stolen in a physical act of violence! *Sigh* Can't he tell that the world today is a much safer place? He keeps ranting about how there used to be "organic" food when he was younger, and meat came from animals. Ewww. I would never eat a potatoe that grew in the dirt, and I would never eat another steak if I had to kill a cow. Anyways, I read a few books from around Grandpa's time, they usually sprayed their crops with nasty toxins to reduce disease, and most of their animals that they raised were stuffed in tiny stalls and fed corn, a dirty process, and much more wasteful, its more efficient to grow meat directly on the plant. But if you believe what grandpa says, it must have been the dark ages, no genetic engineering, and primitive medical science. Could you beleve that people could reach a clinic and then die? Or even be diagnosed with a "terminal" disease and live months, or even a year, before dying, without the doctors being able to do anything?
Speaking of doctors, grandpa still tells me that the occasional joint I smoke will drive me insane and then kill me. He is so paranoid, but I guess that's what happens if you grow up in a time of prohibition. He told me how "smokers" in his day often died of lung cancer. He just doesn't understand. Its THC, not nicotine. I know nicotine is dangerous, that's why they outlawed it years ago and replaced it with tobacco grown with a synnicotine gene. The cigarettes we smoke now are specially grown from genetically engineered plants that is gaurenteed not to harm us, and even if we did get cancer, its easily cured.
Grampa also doesn't like my pet miniature griffon. He keeps muttering how a dog or a cat is more real. Its times like these that I think he's one of those flat-earther nuts. Next thing you'll know, he'll start ranting about how humans aren't supposed to live on Mars, and how artificial wombs are wrong.
I think grandpa is turning into one of those old folks who will always live in the past. His house is full of books, he has old 2D videos, some in black and white (which makes them a classic, in his eyes), and even an old boxy thing that he says was a computer. I'm tempted to buy him a slide ruler for Christmas as a joke, but he'd probably add it to his collection. He found an old "video game console" called a "playstation2" the other week, and called all the local stores in town until he found one antique store that carried the equipment he needed to hook it up to his 2D set. Then he tried to get me to play the lame games with all the blocky, cheesy graphics. When I mentioned that any 1st grader could tell that a computer made the pictures, he told me that it was "top of the line" in his day.
At least he's happy hanging out at the local senior center all day, talking to the other old farts. Its good that he enjoys his life, after all, he's only 100, he easily could live for another 50 years.
You give the impression that nethack is not under active developement, version 3.3.1 came out rather recently. It can be found at http://www.nethack.org. Other roguelikes worth mentioning are ADOM (don't worry, he's better at designing a game then a website), and Angband. There are several derivatives of Angband and Nethack, while ADOM is closed source. A good list of other roguelike games (with links) is available at http://www.skoardy.demon.co.uk/rlnews/links.html. All of the popular roguelikes and most of the rest have linux binaries, and the source code is often available too! Nethack is even released under the GPL license.
The other side of text-based gaming are text-based MUDs, a nice list of them can be found at The Mud Connector.
The article also fails to mention that there is a free version of civilization that will run on Linux and has multi-player capability. Check out www.freeciv.org for information and downloads.
A nice new bleeding edge computer, then another one to play with when I break, er, "improve" the first one. A fat connection to the internet backbone. The power to instantly order the execution of any server admin who has givin me problems. Making a hunting season just for script kiddies. A statue in my honor. The heads of all who oppose me on a platter. Dropping AOL into a big black hole, and then tossing the RIAA and MPAA after them. Outlawing pop music. A 40" monitor. A few words crediting me, such as "Dasunt is your god, worship him!" Public taunting of all who says Emacs is better then Vi! Making Linus Torvalds my pet coding monkey. Improving the drainage in the basement so that my pet coding monkeys don't get wet and catch a fatal disease. Designing a virus in my name that instantly kills anyone who types "First post" or any misspelling thereof. A hard disk drive measured in terabytes, whole numbers, with at least 2 digits. A small monetary contribution to my wealth that's about the size of a modest European nation's GNP. The space shuttle and a chauffer. Making Bill Gates the sole member of next season's Survivor, and forgetting to take him off the island after the show's over. Accurate ballot counting machines for Florida. Throwing all Cuban refugees back into the ocean, and adding any annoying relatives. Officially declaring Wisconsin hell. A fiber optic cable jacked directly into my brain. Last, but not least, a spell checker in slashcode.:)
No, don't mark this as flamebait, its humor! Well, 'cept for the part about Emacs. Just Kidding! Honest! Can't you take some good nature teasing?
Odd, I think VIA has some nice products, especially chipsets.
Or didn't you read the article?
With this aim in mind, VIA acquired processor manufacturer Cyrix in June of 1999. Shortly after, in August of 1999, VIA snapped up Centaur, design house behind the IDT Winchip processor
Now I'm guessing that the Cyrix CPU team hasn't been integrated with the rest of VIA, but I'm sure information has flowed between the chipset team and the CPU team. Understanding the chipset could make a better processor.
The processor does have a small size, takes less energy to run, and doesn't need a fan, which would help reduce computer noise. Looking at it, I'm guessing its also fairly overclockable. In the article that you seem to have neglected to read, there are benchmarks that demonstrate that a Samuel II's speed is almost identical to a Celery's under most circumstances (excluding 3-D intensive games). It seems to be a very solid cpu for those who aren't into gaming, I would almost be tempted to buy it if I was looking at a low-end machine.
The moral of this story is to read the article next time, then post.
I took an IQ test in my early teens and did rather well (if the above thread was correct, I could have easily became a member of Mensa). However, when I took the test, I realized it was time based, and skipped answering some questions because I didn't want to take the extra 10 seconds or so. Unfortunately, the way that IQ tests are set up, I now believe that taking the extra time would have resulted in a higher score.:( Oh well.
Why buy yourself an already made machine? Isn't it more enjoyable to get an old Jamma cabinent, strip out the old boads, mount a computer chassis inside of it, and then tear apart a keyboard and start soldering connectors directly to it? Plus, there is the fun of hunting down custom drivers so you can use the original monitor, rigging up the monitor so it rotates, making your own trackball out of mouse parts, and building a splitter so you can use a regular keyboard too (then modifying the case so the keyboard can stay hidden 99% of the time). Plus if you can find an old coin door and mechanism, you could wire it up to take real coins. Then there is hunting down software and an OS (Sorry guys, DOS or Windows works best, the emulator scene seems to love DOS.) It seems like an enjoyable project to me, I don't think I'd ever be able to let someone build one for me.:)
There would be something about taking an old arcade machine with a burned out board, sticking a couple hundred dollars of computer equipment into it plus a few weeks of my time, and making a machine that can play almost any arcade game plus most of the old consoles that would give me a warm fuzzy feeling (plus be illegal in most parts of the world *grin*). I suppose that some might want to buy a pre-made cabinet, but that's like buying an already built computer or having someone else install my OS.
The only problem with doing the above is having to be involved in the emulation scene. There is a small part of the emulation scene that is dedicated to faithfully emulating old hardware (*waves to MAME*), and there is another part that just wants to emulate old games to be able to preserve a part of the past. For every 2 of these people, there are 98 people who seem to have less functioning neurons then fingers. Bulletin boards are filled with messages from clueless newbies who have neglected to RTFM, and it seems that all the emulation homepages threaten pain or death in order to prevent yet another fool for emailing a rom request. I was checking out websites the other night, hoping that someone hacked TCP/IP multi-player functionality into DOS/Win32 Mame, almost all of the message boards I found were filled with "Help, I can't get it to work" threads and people requesting for new games to be emulated so they can avoid paying quarters at the local arcade, as well as the occasionally "MAME runs too slow" post (which MAME does because its dedicated to the faithful emulation of hardware, not fast emulation). Half these people are just waiting for a nice PS/2 emulator to arrive so they can trade cd images and avoid buying games and the console, they have fallen to the dark side of the emulation scene and gives the rest of us the image of being cheap pirates. If you only want to be able to play new games for free, go away, we don't need your kind, stick to your Warez channels and websites. If you don't have enough brain power to read a faq/readme that has already answered the question, go away, you probably should rethink your decision to use a computer in the first place. I may be bitter about it, but in the last few years I've seen the emulation scene become filled with whiny teenage brats, fewer and fewer people care about the ideas of emulation, most just want to play games for free.
I think you might need X to run it (never checked), but at
http://www.mame.net/downports.html there is a linux binary, as well as a win32 binary, amiga, mac, beOS and several other platforms.
but the cost factor for even a first generation pentium makes it not worth the effort. A 486-based solution would make it economically viable.
You are mistaken, an old socket 5 and even a few socket 7 pentium motherboards with a p90 or p100 cpu can be found on ebay for less then $20. I would rather pay $20 for a p100 then pay $10 for a slower 486.
I have used a p100 (OC'ed to 125mhz by upping the bus speed to 83mhz) to play mp3s via winamp under win98, and I experienced no problems as long as I wasn't stressing the CPU in other ways. This was a bloated windows solution, I'm sure you have enough power to stream with a stripped down dedicated linux system. Just don't try to rip with an early pentium, unless you are really, really patient.
I totally agree. The author comes across as a windows user who installed redhat one day, became confused at the choices of a custom installation, and then whined into this article.
Just imagine if all the commercial windows apps where out there on one cd with windows OS (both 2k and ME). Would the author be complaining that he had to choose between all the office suites out there? Or all the media players? The author sounds new to linux, and is begging the distro to make the choice of programs for him. All he probably wants is one email client, one browser, and an office suite. (Btw, why doesn't make a Linux-for-Dummies distro? Include Star Office, Netscape, and all the games, and ignore the stuff like Emacs and Vi *sniff*, and the other "useless" stuff like gcc.)
As for newbie friendly, I must agree that an install would probably be hell, but average use isn't a problem. As an experiment I installed Redhat 6.2 + Gnome on a friend's system and he has no more difficulties then he does on windows. In a way, its rather nice, he doesn't have enough permission under his account to trash the computer, and I believe I threatened him with dismemberment if he tried to log in as root.:) This is a guy who believes that the pinnacle of computing was the Apple IIe, and he has no problem clicking on the desktop links to open a browser or a word editor, which really isn't different at all from MS Windows. I've noticed that if a person has computer experience from pre-GUI days, adapting them to linux is rather easy, its just the users that only knew windows 9x/NT that are a problem. Ex-DOS users seem to be the easiest of all to train.
No offense, but the problem was that the numbers weren't converted over, therefore, it didn't matter what system of measurements were being used, all that mattered was that there was more then one.
If they had stuck to pure English units, they wouldn't have made the error. The error was that they assumed that the units they were working with were English units, its just as easy to make the other side of that mistake and assume all units are metric. Therefore, while there may be many good arguments for adopting the metric system, this isn't one of them.
This bill doesn't hurt big business, so the lobbying groups aren't going to oppose it, the subject isn't even on the trade unions radar, and the ACLU is considered a bunch of nuts in most peoples' eyes, since they do weird liberal things such as support the bill of rights.
This leaves the will of the American people. Unfortunately the American public doesn't give a damn. Unreasonable search and seizures are a pain, but only if the police show up during the football game, luckily, we can't even tell if they are wiretapping, therefore, its okay, since it doesn't bother us. As for encryption, 99% of the email users out there don't even know it exists, for them, email magically leaves one computer and arrives at a different computer, without occupying any of the points inbetween. Under this theory, email is one of the safest ways to communicate with another human being, since its common knowledge that you can't intercept messages as they travel through the ether.:) As for them taking away our computers, the US government has the wonderful ability to never be wrong, at least when it comes down to telling who a "hacker" is. (No, not cracker, that's a food. Haven't you watched the movies, hackers are evil.) Therefore, even without putting the PR spin that "this bill helps us eliminate the child porn trade and organized crime", this bill will pass easily.
Us humans are short-sighted bastards. If it doesn't affect us immediately in a way we can see, we usually don't care.
...that give the impression that all anime lovers are fanatic that just can't get over the fact that a movie or series has ended. I mean, paying money for a replica of a hardsuit, how pitiful. Do these people have no life?
*Sigh* I waste too much time reading the anime articles on slashdot. Now my ranma/akira fanfiction story is going to be late. I must stare at my anime cells for inspiration, and watch akira for the 257th time while doublechecking my notes to see where it departed from the manga.
I'm not sure about you, but there are some pretty ugly girls in the National Geographic. I was paging through this one issue, and they had all these pictures on this one African tribe by the name of "Gorilla", and I swear, they didn't even look human!
Now you could be a troll, or you could be dumb. Lets assume the latter, for argument's sake. The youngest person in Ranma 1/2 that is involved in the Ranma love polygon is 16 (Akane), nobody has sex, and the most objectionable thing about the series is some slight frontal nudity (the Japanese have different standards). A pedophile is normally defined as someone who lusts after young children, none of which can be found in Ranma 1/2.
Are you dumb, a troll, or both? I'm guessing the first or last choice.
Now all of the following is paraphrased in the book Perpetual Motion : The History of an Obsession by Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, which is a book I highly recommend.
Back in the 1760's the clockmaker James Cox and his assistant, Joseph Merlin, built a clock that never, ever needed to be wound, and would theoretically run until the parts wore out from mechanical wear. The clock was driven by a series of weights, and all of the moving surfaces were jeweled to reduce wear. The entire thing was enclosed in a clear case to limit dust. The clock was driven by changes in atmospheric pressure, it had a large mercury barometer filled with 150 lbs of mercury. This was more then enough power to drive the clock, a mechanism had to be added to the design to automatically disengage the winding wheel when the clock was wound up. Even without the barometer, the clock was so perfectly balanced that it could run for a year without any power after being wound up. The clock itself still exists, according to the book, it was aquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum where it is on display in one of the public galleries, but it has been drained of all mercury and thus is no longer operating. When the author visited the clock, it didn't even have a label to describe it.
Anyways, its a good book, I recommend it, especially if you find it in the 50% off bin of the local Barnes & Nobels like I did.:)
After reading that chapter, I had the following ideas:
Mercury may not be the cheapest or the most environmentally friendly material today, but there is nothing to stop us from making clocks and watches that are highly efficient and gain energy by a small change in atmospheric pressure, or even another means, such as an expansion of a metal with a change in temperature. The barometric-driven watches would have the improvement over the kinetic watches of not having to be worn to be kept wound, and we are not to the point of regulating air pressure in our houses and offices yet. The temperature-driven watches also probably could be made efficient enough to "recharge" themselves even with the minute variations of a climate controlled building, but the added efficiency might increase costs. I don't see any reason why neither watch could be made air-tight, although with the barometric watches, the barometer would have to be at least partially incorperated into the casing.
With the advantage that they don't have to be worn to be charged, I think the barometric watches could compete very favorable with kinetic watches.
The article is a tad misleading about reel mowers, it mentions they are hard to push when in fact, a properly maintained reel mower with sharp blades is not significantly more difficult to mow with as long as the grass isn't absurdly long. The problem is that a lot of the old reel mowers are dull and rusty, a proper reel mower should still spin for several revolutions after you stop pushing. If I recall correctly, its not the weird shaped metal bands that are sharp, its the blade on the bottom towards the rear of the mower that is sharp, however, it will cost you more to professionally sharpen a reel mower, since few places are used to doing it, and the blade is longer (only the last 2" of a gas-powered mower's blade is sharpened).
They don't take abuse as well, since you'll have to work harder to push the mower instead of the motor, and they won't cut long grass at all, but in the latter case, a power motor will also quickly wear out if used for the same job, and can be dangerous if you hit something in the grass (I once threw the blade of a power mower 50' after hitting a small tree stump that nobody told me about, it totally destroyed the lawn mower, and the total absence of anyone in the flight path was the only factor in preventing a fatal accident). Anyways, for long grass, there is another old fashioned tool that works without gasoline, it totally quiet, and gives you a nice workout - a scythe.:)
The president of our company held on to his little DOS copy of Wordstar until just last year. He would actually type out his official correspondence in that and send them to a 9-pin dot matrix printer (which he also refused to give up).
The way I got him to give it up was by convincing him that it wasn't Y2K compatible and could conceivably wreck his machine.
Now unless he needed compatability with the rest of the office, all you did was convince someone to give up a working system that they had used and had no problems with, just to train on a new system that probably cost them more time (at least to learn) and money (for the new computer and software).
I don't think twice about giving my credit card to a waiter at a restraunt, although its rather easy for the waiter to use the information to charge false expenses to my account (and it has happened to other people before). Its nice to have security holes pointed out, but really, locks are to keep honest people honest, any transaction is potentially insecure, and it pays to double check any financial records you receive to find any false charges or transactions. I don't fear this hole, statistically speaking, I suspect real life is a lot riskier.
Its the US. In this country, animation has always been for, and probably will always be for the kiddies. There are a few notable exceptions, such as South Park or the Simpsons, but mostly they are dry drivel, and only if you're lucky will you get a few jokes aimed at the adults (Rugrats is a good example).
Now on the other hand, in Japan anime is more then just kiddie fare, there is action, adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, comedy, romance, porn, etc. A few anime beat anything in their non-animated US genre counterparts. For the best pure fantasy movie out there, I'd have to consider anime (perhaps Lodoss Wars or Mononoke), since the US seems unable to make even one decent fantasy movie. "Grave of the Fireflies" is one of the best anti-war movies out there, and "Ranma 1/2" (first and second TV seasons) is the funniest romantic comedy I have ever seen (and the most bizarre).
So, if you want to see good animation, rent some anime, just avoid the hentai and pokemon that Blockbuster and most of the other video stores seem to stock. Go to a few websites, look at the reviews, and find a good anime. Tenchi (OAV + Movies), Ranma, Escaflowne, Lodoss, Evangelion, Armitage III, KOR, Ghost in the Shell, Mononoke, Oh! My Goddess, Grave of the Fireflies, or Slayers would be a nice variety of movies, and all of the above are subtitled and dubbed, and none of them are hard to find.
scotay writes: Once you get passed breeding age, there is no longer any evolutionary rationale for extending lifespan past that date.
The theory behind why menopause developed was that there is a time when a woman helping take care of her grandchildren will give more of a benefit then going through a risky pregnancy in old age. Grandma taking care of 3 grandchildren while their mother works will do more to ensure the survival of her genes then giving birth in her 50s. Men don't have to deal with risky pregnancies, therefore, we are fertile until the day we die. Menopause isn't normal for most species, its only humans and a type of dolphin/whale that experience it (IIRC). For most animals, having another child is the best way to ensure the survival of the genes, but for us humans, with our long childhoods and community teaching, grandma can be a big help.:)
Re:Prosperity: social and economic power is critic
on
Eat Less - Live Longer
·
· Score: 2
I once read of a theory which stated that the rise of such technology was not to better our lives, but to keep the same standard of living.
Aboriginal people with low population densities only have to work a few hours a day to get all their diet needs. Its only when their population increases that they have to resort to farming and a greater expenditure of their time to support their same standard of living. Farming did not lead to more free time, it lead to less, and it also lead to a greater population increase, since the greater percentage of carbohydrates shortened the average time between pregnancies. As the population further increased, people turned more and more to farming, and hunting pretty much disappeared after all the big game had been killed off.
The theory also stated that the reason behind the gender inequity was a push for less females, and thus, limiting the population growth. By encouraging warfare, villages put a higher value on boys instead of girls, and the warfare between villages had the nice side effect of making "no-man's land" where game animals could grow and breed.
First came the (Classic) Athlon. The classic Athlon spawned two CPUs. The Duron is the classic Athlon with a cut down chip size, but with almost all of the power of its predecessor. The Thunderbird is an improved Athlon, faster then a Duron (or a "classic" athlon), and is the CPU that AMD is still selling under the name of "Athlon". The Thunderbird compares very favorible to the PIII, beating it in more then a few benchmarks. The Duron is also a fine CPU, running at a 100 mhz bus, while the celeron runs at a 66 mhz bus, which makes the Duron easily beat the Celeron, although both are known for their overclocking ability.
Slashdot Mirror
Do't worry, if you read the works of Arthur C Clarke, you'll understand that dark nights are going to be a rarity after 2010. :)
Grampa started talking about computers the other day, like they were something to be proud of. He mentioned how he got his very first computer before the turn of the millenium, and how it was one of the fastest computers at the time, almost 1 Ghz. He's so embarressing. Didn't anyone in his day tell him about there first model T and how it actually managed to reach 20 mph and maybe go 500 miles without breaking down, all without no air conditioning or automatic pilot?
Then he went on about some free software thing named after a penguin or something. Something about people sharing code for programs and not having programming AIs, and how sharing is more ethical. Like I actually care. He should have been a hippy instead, at least that free love thing sounded interesting. He keeps doing this in front of company too, they are beginning to avoid him when he walks down the street, especially when he breaks out his old "industrial", "metal", and "punk" albums with all the funny names and really bad lyrics that go along with really bad music. Then he dares to call my music crap. How could he have ever been with the times if he doesn't understand the quality I listen to?
He's so weird. Maybe he should be in a home or something. He says "hello" and "good day" to the biobots, and I think I saw him try to tip one in the restraunt the other day. His year-old medical scans show no senility, but I wonder if they should test him again. He lectured me on the freedoms of paper money the other day when I asked him for a few bucks so I could watch a movie, I think he actually preferred the germ-covered greasy pieces of green paper that could be easily lost and even stolen in a physical act of violence! *Sigh* Can't he tell that the world today is a much safer place? He keeps ranting about how there used to be "organic" food when he was younger, and meat came from animals. Ewww. I would never eat a potatoe that grew in the dirt, and I would never eat another steak if I had to kill a cow. Anyways, I read a few books from around Grandpa's time, they usually sprayed their crops with nasty toxins to reduce disease, and most of their animals that they raised were stuffed in tiny stalls and fed corn, a dirty process, and much more wasteful, its more efficient to grow meat directly on the plant. But if you believe what grandpa says, it must have been the dark ages, no genetic engineering, and primitive medical science. Could you beleve that people could reach a clinic and then die? Or even be diagnosed with a "terminal" disease and live months, or even a year, before dying, without the doctors being able to do anything?
Speaking of doctors, grandpa still tells me that the occasional joint I smoke will drive me insane and then kill me. He is so paranoid, but I guess that's what happens if you grow up in a time of prohibition. He told me how "smokers" in his day often died of lung cancer. He just doesn't understand. Its THC, not nicotine. I know nicotine is dangerous, that's why they outlawed it years ago and replaced it with tobacco grown with a synnicotine gene. The cigarettes we smoke now are specially grown from genetically engineered plants that is gaurenteed not to harm us, and even if we did get cancer, its easily cured.
Grampa also doesn't like my pet miniature griffon. He keeps muttering how a dog or a cat is more real. Its times like these that I think he's one of those flat-earther nuts. Next thing you'll know, he'll start ranting about how humans aren't supposed to live on Mars, and how artificial wombs are wrong.
I think grandpa is turning into one of those old folks who will always live in the past. His house is full of books, he has old 2D videos, some in black and white (which makes them a classic, in his eyes), and even an old boxy thing that he says was a computer. I'm tempted to buy him a slide ruler for Christmas as a joke, but he'd probably add it to his collection. He found an old "video game console" called a "playstation2" the other week, and called all the local stores in town until he found one antique store that carried the equipment he needed to hook it up to his 2D set. Then he tried to get me to play the lame games with all the blocky, cheesy graphics. When I mentioned that any 1st grader could tell that a computer made the pictures, he told me that it was "top of the line" in his day.
At least he's happy hanging out at the local senior center all day, talking to the other old farts. Its good that he enjoys his life, after all, he's only 100, he easily could live for another 50 years.
Us slashdotters have better watch out, I'm told its pretty easy to get the source to linux. :)
You give the impression that nethack is not under active developement, version 3.3.1 came out rather recently. It can be found at http://www.nethack.org. Other roguelikes worth mentioning are ADOM (don't worry, he's better at designing a game then a website), and Angband. There are several derivatives of Angband and Nethack, while ADOM is closed source. A good list of other roguelike games (with links) is available at http://www.skoardy.demon.co.uk/rlnews/links.html. All of the popular roguelikes and most of the rest have linux binaries, and the source code is often available too! Nethack is even released under the GPL license.
The other side of text-based gaming are text-based MUDs, a nice list of them can be found at The Mud Connector.
The article also fails to mention that there is a free version of civilization that will run on Linux and has multi-player capability. Check out www.freeciv.org for information and downloads.
A nice new bleeding edge computer, then another one to play with when I break, er, "improve" the first one. A fat connection to the internet backbone. The power to instantly order the execution of any server admin who has givin me problems. Making a hunting season just for script kiddies. A statue in my honor. The heads of all who oppose me on a platter. Dropping AOL into a big black hole, and then tossing the RIAA and MPAA after them. Outlawing pop music. A 40" monitor. A few words crediting me, such as "Dasunt is your god, worship him!" Public taunting of all who says Emacs is better then Vi! Making Linus Torvalds my pet coding monkey. Improving the drainage in the basement so that my pet coding monkeys don't get wet and catch a fatal disease. Designing a virus in my name that instantly kills anyone who types "First post" or any misspelling thereof. A hard disk drive measured in terabytes, whole numbers, with at least 2 digits. A small monetary contribution to my wealth that's about the size of a modest European nation's GNP. The space shuttle and a chauffer. Making Bill Gates the sole member of next season's Survivor, and forgetting to take him off the island after the show's over. Accurate ballot counting machines for Florida. Throwing all Cuban refugees back into the ocean, and adding any annoying relatives. Officially declaring Wisconsin hell. A fiber optic cable jacked directly into my brain. Last, but not least, a spell checker in slashcode. :)
No, don't mark this as flamebait, its humor! Well, 'cept for the part about Emacs. Just Kidding! Honest! Can't you take some good nature teasing?
Odd, I think VIA has some nice products, especially chipsets.
Or didn't you read the article?
With this aim in mind, VIA acquired processor manufacturer Cyrix in June of 1999. Shortly after, in August of 1999, VIA snapped up Centaur, design house behind the IDT Winchip processor
Now I'm guessing that the Cyrix CPU team hasn't been integrated with the rest of VIA, but I'm sure information has flowed between the chipset team and the CPU team. Understanding the chipset could make a better processor.
The processor does have a small size, takes less energy to run, and doesn't need a fan, which would help reduce computer noise. Looking at it, I'm guessing its also fairly overclockable. In the article that you seem to have neglected to read, there are benchmarks that demonstrate that a Samuel II's speed is almost identical to a Celery's under most circumstances (excluding 3-D intensive games). It seems to be a very solid cpu for those who aren't into gaming, I would almost be tempted to buy it if I was looking at a low-end machine.
The moral of this story is to read the article next time, then post.
Just my $.02
I took an IQ test in my early teens and did rather well (if the above thread was correct, I could have easily became a member of Mensa). However, when I took the test, I realized it was time based, and skipped answering some questions because I didn't want to take the extra 10 seconds or so. Unfortunately, the way that IQ tests are set up, I now believe that taking the extra time would have resulted in a higher score. :( Oh well.
Just my $.02
I must take this moment to insert my $.02
Roms and fan translation patches help remedy Nintendo's dumb marketing.
*Goes back to playing Tenchi Muyo! on a SNES emulator (full English translation)*
Why buy yourself an already made machine? Isn't it more enjoyable to get an old Jamma cabinent, strip out the old boads, mount a computer chassis inside of it, and then tear apart a keyboard and start soldering connectors directly to it? Plus, there is the fun of hunting down custom drivers so you can use the original monitor, rigging up the monitor so it rotates, making your own trackball out of mouse parts, and building a splitter so you can use a regular keyboard too (then modifying the case so the keyboard can stay hidden 99% of the time). Plus if you can find an old coin door and mechanism, you could wire it up to take real coins. Then there is hunting down software and an OS (Sorry guys, DOS or Windows works best, the emulator scene seems to love DOS.) It seems like an enjoyable project to me, I don't think I'd ever be able to let someone build one for me. :)
There would be something about taking an old arcade machine with a burned out board, sticking a couple hundred dollars of computer equipment into it plus a few weeks of my time, and making a machine that can play almost any arcade game plus most of the old consoles that would give me a warm fuzzy feeling (plus be illegal in most parts of the world *grin*). I suppose that some might want to buy a pre-made cabinet, but that's like buying an already built computer or having someone else install my OS.
The only problem with doing the above is having to be involved in the emulation scene. There is a small part of the emulation scene that is dedicated to faithfully emulating old hardware (*waves to MAME*), and there is another part that just wants to emulate old games to be able to preserve a part of the past. For every 2 of these people, there are 98 people who seem to have less functioning neurons then fingers. Bulletin boards are filled with messages from clueless newbies who have neglected to RTFM, and it seems that all the emulation homepages threaten pain or death in order to prevent yet another fool for emailing a rom request. I was checking out websites the other night, hoping that someone hacked TCP/IP multi-player functionality into DOS/Win32 Mame, almost all of the message boards I found were filled with "Help, I can't get it to work" threads and people requesting for new games to be emulated so they can avoid paying quarters at the local arcade, as well as the occasionally "MAME runs too slow" post (which MAME does because its dedicated to the faithful emulation of hardware, not fast emulation). Half these people are just waiting for a nice PS/2 emulator to arrive so they can trade cd images and avoid buying games and the console, they have fallen to the dark side of the emulation scene and gives the rest of us the image of being cheap pirates. If you only want to be able to play new games for free, go away, we don't need your kind, stick to your Warez channels and websites. If you don't have enough brain power to read a faq/readme that has already answered the question, go away, you probably should rethink your decision to use a computer in the first place. I may be bitter about it, but in the last few years I've seen the emulation scene become filled with whiny teenage brats, fewer and fewer people care about the ideas of emulation, most just want to play games for free.
Just my $.02
I think you might need X to run it (never checked), but at http://www.mame.net/downports.html there is a linux binary, as well as a win32 binary, amiga, mac, beOS and several other platforms.
Now why are you running plex86 again?
MaxQuordlepleen writes:
but the cost factor for even a first generation pentium makes it not worth the effort. A 486-based solution would make it economically viable.
You are mistaken, an old socket 5 and even a few socket 7 pentium motherboards with a p90 or p100 cpu can be found on ebay for less then $20. I would rather pay $20 for a p100 then pay $10 for a slower 486.
I have used a p100 (OC'ed to 125mhz by upping the bus speed to 83mhz) to play mp3s via winamp under win98, and I experienced no problems as long as I wasn't stressing the CPU in other ways. This was a bloated windows solution, I'm sure you have enough power to stream with a stripped down dedicated linux system. Just don't try to rip with an early pentium, unless you are really, really patient.
Just my $.02
I totally agree. The author comes across as a windows user who installed redhat one day, became confused at the choices of a custom installation, and then whined into this article.
:) This is a guy who believes that the pinnacle of computing was the Apple IIe, and he has no problem clicking on the desktop links to open a browser or a word editor, which really isn't different at all from MS Windows. I've noticed that if a person has computer experience from pre-GUI days, adapting them to linux is rather easy, its just the users that only knew windows 9x/NT that are a problem. Ex-DOS users seem to be the easiest of all to train.
Just imagine if all the commercial windows apps where out there on one cd with windows OS (both 2k and ME). Would the author be complaining that he had to choose between all the office suites out there? Or all the media players? The author sounds new to linux, and is begging the distro to make the choice of programs for him. All he probably wants is one email client, one browser, and an office suite. (Btw, why doesn't make a Linux-for-Dummies distro? Include Star Office, Netscape, and all the games, and ignore the stuff like Emacs and Vi *sniff*, and the other "useless" stuff like gcc.)
As for newbie friendly, I must agree that an install would probably be hell, but average use isn't a problem. As an experiment I installed Redhat 6.2 + Gnome on a friend's system and he has no more difficulties then he does on windows. In a way, its rather nice, he doesn't have enough permission under his account to trash the computer, and I believe I threatened him with dismemberment if he tried to log in as root.
Oh well, just my $.02
No offense, but the problem was that the numbers weren't converted over, therefore, it didn't matter what system of measurements were being used, all that mattered was that there was more then one.
If they had stuck to pure English units, they wouldn't have made the error. The error was that they assumed that the units they were working with were English units, its just as easy to make the other side of that mistake and assume all units are metric. Therefore, while there may be many good arguments for adopting the metric system, this isn't one of them.
Just my $.02
This bill doesn't hurt big business, so the lobbying groups aren't going to oppose it, the subject isn't even on the trade unions radar, and the ACLU is considered a bunch of nuts in most peoples' eyes, since they do weird liberal things such as support the bill of rights.
:) As for them taking away our computers, the US government has the wonderful ability to never be wrong, at least when it comes down to telling who a "hacker" is. (No, not cracker, that's a food. Haven't you watched the movies, hackers are evil.) Therefore, even without putting the PR spin that "this bill helps us eliminate the child porn trade and organized crime", this bill will pass easily.
This leaves the will of the American people. Unfortunately the American public doesn't give a damn. Unreasonable search and seizures are a pain, but only if the police show up during the football game, luckily, we can't even tell if they are wiretapping, therefore, its okay, since it doesn't bother us. As for encryption, 99% of the email users out there don't even know it exists, for them, email magically leaves one computer and arrives at a different computer, without occupying any of the points inbetween. Under this theory, email is one of the safest ways to communicate with another human being, since its common knowledge that you can't intercept messages as they travel through the ether.
Us humans are short-sighted bastards. If it doesn't affect us immediately in a way we can see, we usually don't care.
...that give the impression that all anime lovers are fanatic that just can't get over the fact that a movie or series has ended. I mean, paying money for a replica of a hardsuit, how pitiful. Do these people have no life?
*Sigh* I waste too much time reading the anime articles on slashdot. Now my ranma/akira fanfiction story is going to be late. I must stare at my anime cells for inspiration, and watch akira for the 257th time while doublechecking my notes to see where it departed from the manga.
I'm not sure about you, but there are some pretty ugly girls in the National Geographic. I was paging through this one issue, and they had all these pictures on this one African tribe by the name of "Gorilla", and I swear, they didn't even look human!
I was considering becoming a monk...
An AC writes:
Ranma 1/2 is for pedophiles.
Now you could be a troll, or you could be dumb. Lets assume the latter, for argument's sake. The youngest person in Ranma 1/2 that is involved in the Ranma love polygon is 16 (Akane), nobody has sex, and the most objectionable thing about the series is some slight frontal nudity (the Japanese have different standards). A pedophile is normally defined as someone who lusts after young children, none of which can be found in Ranma 1/2.
Are you dumb, a troll, or both? I'm guessing the first or last choice.
Now all of the following is paraphrased in the book Perpetual Motion : The History of an Obsession by Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume, which is a book I highly recommend.
:)
Back in the 1760's the clockmaker James Cox and his assistant, Joseph Merlin, built a clock that never, ever needed to be wound, and would theoretically run until the parts wore out from mechanical wear. The clock was driven by a series of weights, and all of the moving surfaces were jeweled to reduce wear. The entire thing was enclosed in a clear case to limit dust. The clock was driven by changes in atmospheric pressure, it had a large mercury barometer filled with 150 lbs of mercury. This was more then enough power to drive the clock, a mechanism had to be added to the design to automatically disengage the winding wheel when the clock was wound up. Even without the barometer, the clock was so perfectly balanced that it could run for a year without any power after being wound up. The clock itself still exists, according to the book, it was aquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum where it is on display in one of the public galleries, but it has been drained of all mercury and thus is no longer operating. When the author visited the clock, it didn't even have a label to describe it.
Anyways, its a good book, I recommend it, especially if you find it in the 50% off bin of the local Barnes & Nobels like I did.
After reading that chapter, I had the following ideas:
Mercury may not be the cheapest or the most environmentally friendly material today, but there is nothing to stop us from making clocks and watches that are highly efficient and gain energy by a small change in atmospheric pressure, or even another means, such as an expansion of a metal with a change in temperature. The barometric-driven watches would have the improvement over the kinetic watches of not having to be worn to be kept wound, and we are not to the point of regulating air pressure in our houses and offices yet. The temperature-driven watches also probably could be made efficient enough to "recharge" themselves even with the minute variations of a climate controlled building, but the added efficiency might increase costs. I don't see any reason why neither watch could be made air-tight, although with the barometric watches, the barometer would have to be at least partially incorperated into the casing.
With the advantage that they don't have to be worn to be charged, I think the barometric watches could compete very favorable with kinetic watches.
The article is a tad misleading about reel mowers, it mentions they are hard to push when in fact, a properly maintained reel mower with sharp blades is not significantly more difficult to mow with as long as the grass isn't absurdly long. The problem is that a lot of the old reel mowers are dull and rusty, a proper reel mower should still spin for several revolutions after you stop pushing. If I recall correctly, its not the weird shaped metal bands that are sharp, its the blade on the bottom towards the rear of the mower that is sharp, however, it will cost you more to professionally sharpen a reel mower, since few places are used to doing it, and the blade is longer (only the last 2" of a gas-powered mower's blade is sharpened).
:)
They don't take abuse as well, since you'll have to work harder to push the mower instead of the motor, and they won't cut long grass at all, but in the latter case, a power motor will also quickly wear out if used for the same job, and can be dangerous if you hit something in the grass (I once threw the blade of a power mower 50' after hitting a small tree stump that nobody told me about, it totally destroyed the lawn mower, and the total absence of anyone in the flight path was the only factor in preventing a fatal accident). Anyways, for long grass, there is another old fashioned tool that works without gasoline, it totally quiet, and gives you a nice workout - a scythe.
Nidhogg writes:
The president of our company held on to his little DOS copy of Wordstar until just last year. He would actually type out his official correspondence in that and send them to a 9-pin dot matrix printer (which he also refused to give up).
The way I got him to give it up was by convincing him that it wasn't Y2K compatible and could conceivably wreck his machine.
Now unless he needed compatability with the rest of the office, all you did was convince someone to give up a working system that they had used and had no problems with, just to train on a new system that probably cost them more time (at least to learn) and money (for the new computer and software).
I would not be proud if I were you.
I don't think twice about giving my credit card to a waiter at a restraunt, although its rather easy for the waiter to use the information to charge false expenses to my account (and it has happened to other people before). Its nice to have security holes pointed out, but really, locks are to keep honest people honest, any transaction is potentially insecure, and it pays to double check any financial records you receive to find any false charges or transactions. I don't fear this hole, statistically speaking, I suspect real life is a lot riskier.
Its the US. In this country, animation has always been for, and probably will always be for the kiddies. There are a few notable exceptions, such as South Park or the Simpsons, but mostly they are dry drivel, and only if you're lucky will you get a few jokes aimed at the adults (Rugrats is a good example).
Now on the other hand, in Japan anime is more then just kiddie fare, there is action, adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, comedy, romance, porn, etc. A few anime beat anything in their non-animated US genre counterparts. For the best pure fantasy movie out there, I'd have to consider anime (perhaps Lodoss Wars or Mononoke), since the US seems unable to make even one decent fantasy movie. "Grave of the Fireflies" is one of the best anti-war movies out there, and "Ranma 1/2" (first and second TV seasons) is the funniest romantic comedy I have ever seen (and the most bizarre).
So, if you want to see good animation, rent some anime, just avoid the hentai and pokemon that Blockbuster and most of the other video stores seem to stock. Go to a few websites, look at the reviews, and find a good anime. Tenchi (OAV + Movies), Ranma, Escaflowne, Lodoss, Evangelion, Armitage III, KOR, Ghost in the Shell, Mononoke, Oh! My Goddess, Grave of the Fireflies, or Slayers would be a nice variety of movies, and all of the above are subtitled and dubbed, and none of them are hard to find.
scotay writes: Once you get passed breeding age, there is no longer any evolutionary rationale for extending lifespan past that date.
:)
The theory behind why menopause developed was that there is a time when a woman helping take care of her grandchildren will give more of a benefit then going through a risky pregnancy in old age. Grandma taking care of 3 grandchildren while their mother works will do more to ensure the survival of her genes then giving birth in her 50s. Men don't have to deal with risky pregnancies, therefore, we are fertile until the day we die. Menopause isn't normal for most species, its only humans and a type of dolphin/whale that experience it (IIRC). For most animals, having another child is the best way to ensure the survival of the genes, but for us humans, with our long childhoods and community teaching, grandma can be a big help.
I once read of a theory which stated that the rise of such technology was not to better our lives, but to keep the same standard of living.
Aboriginal people with low population densities only have to work a few hours a day to get all their diet needs. Its only when their population increases that they have to resort to farming and a greater expenditure of their time to support their same standard of living. Farming did not lead to more free time, it lead to less, and it also lead to a greater population increase, since the greater percentage of carbohydrates shortened the average time between pregnancies. As the population further increased, people turned more and more to farming, and hunting pretty much disappeared after all the big game had been killed off.
The theory also stated that the reason behind the gender inequity was a push for less females, and thus, limiting the population growth. By encouraging warfare, villages put a higher value on boys instead of girls, and the warfare between villages had the nice side effect of making "no-man's land" where game animals could grow and breed.
Someone explained it to me like this:
First came the (Classic) Athlon. The classic Athlon spawned two CPUs. The Duron is the classic Athlon with a cut down chip size, but with almost all of the power of its predecessor. The Thunderbird is an improved Athlon, faster then a Duron (or a "classic" athlon), and is the CPU that AMD is still selling under the name of "Athlon". The Thunderbird compares very favorible to the PIII, beating it in more then a few benchmarks. The Duron is also a fine CPU, running at a 100 mhz bus, while the celeron runs at a 66 mhz bus, which makes the Duron easily beat the Celeron, although both are known for their overclocking ability.