I took on the Nehe Open Source Zelda project two years ago. We made much progress (portals from overworld to underworld, most all weapons implemented, etc...) and then we got a letter from Nintendo's lawyers about the graphics. We had lifted them from an emulator (screen shots and Photoshop-action) and so we needed to scrap them.
The project could have continued but that took a significant amount of air out of my sails. I gave the code to a friend at the BaltoLUG who added SDL to it and made it work on Linux. This new project is still up but not being actively developed: Openlynks. Sadely, the level editor was made in Visual Basic 6 and so unlike the C++/OpenGL game engine, it hasn't been ported over.
Semantics can be a pain within the Christian community. With a group of volunteers, I throw "Christian Raves" which contain all elements of a rave (music, lights, PLUR...) minus drugs and people grinding up on each other. Regardless, I've been told by people they can't attend because their parents see the word "Rave" and freak out without digging deeper into what it's about.
Not all, but many Christians want to stay in a Christian bubble. Screw the bubble...Jesus did in His day.:)
As for "cashing in"...this is simply not true (yet). Anyone developing right now is doing so on the hopes that a market exists. It's only a hope because channels to get the product to the consumer aren't in place yet. There may be only one publisher of Christian Games (don't know if they are established yet or not) who will be trying to get the games into Christian Bookstores, and other places where a market (may) exist. It is easier to make money with video games by not targeting a specific market segment...at least that's what I gathered from one of the developers I talked to at the 2003 CGDC who left his job at EA and was just getting by trying to make a "Christian Game".
I'm thinking: By purposely not fixing it (a trivial task considering some of the patches that Microsoft has had to push down for security), MS can add PNG transparency as another bullet-point to reasons why a user should pay to upgrade their OS to Longhorn. (...sneaky business practice!)
Thanks Mobydisk.:) I did legally change my name. It's not l33t speak but it is based from my 1987 BBS alias. As far as I understood, it was illegal (in the United States) to have any #'s in your name.
Joke thread or not; I recommend against anyone naming their children something bizarre. Children can't (or at least it is very difficult) to change it to something they want before they are 18, and they will most likely receive much taunting in school and around the neighborhood. If they really want to change their name, they can do it later in life. 5,000,000 women change their name every year, it's not that hard.
How timely, as yesterday MSDN posted a thick article on WinFS. While the article date is December 2003, the date on the front page of msdn.microsoft.com is January 28, 2004.
It's interesting as I am one of the people who registered (IE: paid for) WinAMP way back when before it went to "free only". Anyone want to bet previously registered users need to pay again?:)
I think the point many have made here that when MS's competition doesn't exist, innovation slows to a trickle is correct.
For your example of Programming Tools though, I would say Java technologies are what has force MS to create.NET, and would disagree about no innovation in the Visual IDE.
As a Visual Studio 6 and.NET developer (for both leisure and enterprise software), I have observed that Visual Studio.NET contains many features not integrated in other developer packages (KDevelop, Boreland, etc...) I was happy to see Borland stepping up to the fight with C++BuilderX as that means alternatives are starting to emerge.
I didn't believe Trolltech was held by Canopy and so I went to Trolltech's site to prove you wrong. No mention of Canopy there. But I also went to Canopy's website and on their front page the list all groups in order with Trolltech in the lower right. *ack*
Considering Canopy owns 39 companies, I am a bit more concerned about the law suit. I'm sure these guys are quite aggressive (otherwise they wouldn't be where they are today).
I DJ on both vinyl and CD, but prefer spinning CDs. The problem is that all the "good tracks" can still only be purchased on vinyl.
After reading the Tom's Hardware guide on the TerraTec DMX 6 Fire I knew that would be the next sound card to purchase. It has a phono-in as two RCA jacks, and comes with decent* software to clean up scratchy vinyl (*- Yet doesn't clean up RIAA filter artifacts. See below.)
Ripping vinyl is not intuitive though. I made a few rips via Sound Forge and wondered why all my bass wasn't coming through. The card had on-board RIAA filtering, which caused other problems. The solution: Download the RIAA Direct-X plug-in and run the filter on the WAV after it has been captured.
The RIAA filter itself works most of the time, but about one in every 6 records I rip, the filter creates very loud, 1 to 2 sample, "popping" artifacts, that need to be manually removed. I don't know if it's the filter itself or the implementation...either way I just wish it wasn't it didn't have that effect.
Once that is done, normalize to a good level and you're done. The process takes about 20-45 minutes per record. It's a pain, but spinning the end result on CDJ-1000 makes it all worth it. --
I have lived in Baltimore for many years, and this was the first year I attended. A cousin of mine is "Dr. Mud" and was part of the team who makes the mud pit each year.
The race rocked, because:
It had huge sculptures
The sculptures all moved (some better than others)
The degree of silliness was quite high
On the last point, they had a "blessing of the feet" for the drivers of the sculptures...which involved a person dressed a like Obi-Wan pretending to talk through his mind while a pre-recorded CD played what he was saying, and sometimes throw in music and efx. There was much other silliness. The pictures people took do a pretty good of depicting it.
Just seeing it once is inspiration to want to build one of these things and participate next year.
Agreed, it was an awful movie...but so bad that I've had to rent it again since I first saw it. (I think that was 1989).
After watching it with some friends, someone proclaimed: "We should all say 'Crash & Burn' instead of bye." Friend 1: Did this once. Friend 2: Did this for a week. Myself: Still doing it today. *ack*
This doesn't apply to everyone, but I hope this is relevant for one or two people...
The first commercial card (I know of) which has allowed DJs to easilly take their vinyl is TerraTec's DMX 6Fire 24/96. At $200, this convenience convinced me to stop using my Creative SB Gold-64 and upgrade.
Okay, I will admit I'm part of a nitch market, but for all the other DJs out there who want to be trying their tracks out on a Pioneer CDJ-1000 (or similar device) this is quite innovative.
I would say the state of arcades (at least around Baltimore, MD) is healthy. There are two major malls (Towson Town Center & White Marsh) in the Northern region, which both have average sized arcades (12-24 machines). There is also one complex "Sports" which is filled with arcades among mini-golf, and air hockey.
I don't know what the specific status may be in any other U.S. cities but I have found in my travels that the Baltimore arcades tend to be indicative of what the scene is like else where.
I can see you are taken off guard by the response, as your intended post was not have people pick a part your personal life. It comes off (to me) as a post intended to show a "true-ism" which happens in all relationships. To a degree these true-isms hold, but from the language used in your post and rebuttle, it appears there is a problem in your relationship with your fiance'.
If you've been dating for a long time (6+ months), haven't had any break-ups (or time-outs), and no periods of an overwhelming desire to be left alone (even for a little while) then your okay. If any of these have occurred, tread lightly.
I speak from my own experience. I've been in about half a dozen serious relationships, with one that seemed to mirror your situation. I found it more important for me to be sure my girl-friend was happy than for me to admit I enjoyed "The Man Show" or do one of a dozen other things I enjoy. Just like your situation, my girl-friend had valid points but I also LIED to her in order to make her feel good about her statements and that I shared her opinion.
These may seem like innocent statments, but in the context of the thread they act as a warning:
"I don't need to lie to her to be alowed into bed, but it is nice to make her feel like her opinion on that topic is shared."
"Playing this game would not make me as happy as being with her."
P.S.: In my above situation, I was in love too...the physical relationship was the best I had ever had (or yet to have)...but it cost me my identity, which I found is much more important than playing with boobies.
That was the most civilized cease-and-desist letter I have read linked to by a Slashdot story. (It's a shame more lawyers don't use similar language in their cease-and-desist letters.)
I believe the request made by Google's lawyer is quite reasonable. Google created the word, and they don't want it diluted.
I don't know if only one game can be considered the best, with there being so many genres. IMHO, Super Mario Brothers 3 does deserve to be named the best side scroller.
Adventure-wise though, I'd go with Zelda. It was RPG, it was action-based, it was both! Add some quality 8-bit music and you have a game you can't put down (for long). Shameless plug for the Open Source Zelda project I'm a part of.
I'll utilize this topic to drum up support for an Open Source game I'm helping to push forward. It's Open Source Zelda and can be found here.
This project was started by Nehe (of famed OpenGL tutorials) and he maintains posting the stable milestone check-ins. Even if you aren't interested in OSZ, check out his site...his tutorials are the best on the web, IMHO.
The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture so that other developers may reuse the engine for similar games. The code is also highly OO, and well documented in the hopes that those interested in knowing how to create a game (or apply OO design) can glen some knowledge from other developers' work.
It's Win32 now, but we have had interest from a developer in the BaltoLUG who may begin a Linux port. Anyone is welcome to attempt this, branch it, or do whatever they want with the code (under the GPL). =)
I would be surprised if the DJ industry continues to use vinyl 10 years from now. Over a year ago, Pioneer released the first CD turntable that behaves like a record player:
Right now the only limiting factor is the cost ($1300), but that will come down in time.
I own both a Technics 1200, and a CDJ-1000. While the CDJ has a different feel than the Technics, it allows me to do more when performing. I'm willing to bet more will jump on this once a CDJ-1000, or equivalent, reaches the cost of professional turntables (around $400).
There is the cost of having to deal with the infrequent pop-up dialogs to pay for the Pro version. After so many days of usage (60?) I received such an advertisement. I'm using 0.74b and haven't upgraded as I heard new versions do this more frequently.
A co-worker purchased the Pro version, and it really does have some nice features, but not $25 worth of nice features IMHO. I'd feel more generous towards their efforts if their free version is pop-up free, but I suppose they've added this feature because most users don't mind this. (If they've removed this in recent versions, please respond.)
The title and description is misleading. From the comments further down in the article, Linus points out that only 50 threads at a time were running in parallel:
>I agree, it's pretty silly. But still, I was curious how they
>managed to achieve it;)
You didn't read the post carefully.
They started and waited for 100,000 threads.
They did not have them all running at the same time. I think the
original post said something like "up to 50 at a time".
Basically, the benchmark was how _fast_ thread creation is, not now many
you can run at the same time. 100k threads at once is crazy, but you can
do it now on 64-bit architectures if you really want to.
Slashdot Mirror
I took on the Nehe Open Source Zelda project two years ago. We made much progress (portals from overworld to underworld, most all weapons implemented, etc...) and then we got a letter from Nintendo's lawyers about the graphics. We had lifted them from an emulator (screen shots and Photoshop-action) and so we needed to scrap them.
The project could have continued but that took a significant amount of air out of my sails. I gave the code to a friend at the BaltoLUG who added SDL to it and made it work on Linux. This new project is still up but not being actively developed: Openlynks. Sadely, the level editor was made in Visual Basic 6 and so unlike the C++/OpenGL game engine, it hasn't been ported over.
The remains of the project pages are here.
Semantics can be a pain within the Christian community. With a group of volunteers, I throw "Christian Raves" which contain all elements of a rave (music, lights, PLUR...) minus drugs and people grinding up on each other. Regardless, I've been told by people they can't attend because their parents see the word "Rave" and freak out without digging deeper into what it's about.
:)
Not all, but many Christians want to stay in a Christian bubble. Screw the bubble...Jesus did in His day.
As for "cashing in"...this is simply not true (yet). Anyone developing right now is doing so on the hopes that a market exists. It's only a hope because channels to get the product to the consumer aren't in place yet. There may be only one publisher of Christian Games (don't know if they are established yet or not) who will be trying to get the games into Christian Bookstores, and other places where a market (may) exist. It is easier to make money with video games by not targeting a specific market segment...at least that's what I gathered from one of the developers I talked to at the 2003 CGDC who left his job at EA and was just getting by trying to make a "Christian Game".
I'm sure whoever made the site is using IE and didn't test it browsers with less marked share. (Don't flame me for this, I'm a Firefox user myself.)
You can view it in full screen by loading the SWF directly. link to SWF here
I'm thinking: By purposely not fixing it (a trivial task considering some of the patches that Microsoft has had to push down for security), MS can add PNG transparency as another bullet-point to reasons why a user should pay to upgrade their OS to Longhorn. (...sneaky business practice!)
Thanks Mobydisk. :) I did legally change my name. It's not l33t speak but it is based from my 1987 BBS alias. As far as I understood, it was illegal (in the United States) to have any #'s in your name.
Joke thread or not; I recommend against anyone naming their children something bizarre. Children can't (or at least it is very difficult) to change it to something they want before they are 18, and they will most likely receive much taunting in school and around the neighborhood. If they really want to change their name, they can do it later in life. 5,000,000 women change their name every year, it's not that hard.
How timely, as yesterday MSDN posted a thick article on WinFS.
While the article date is December 2003, the date on the front page of msdn.microsoft.com is January 28, 2004.
Saw that as well.
:)
It's interesting as I am one of the people who registered (IE: paid for) WinAMP way back when before it went to "free only". Anyone want to bet previously registered users need to pay again?
I think the point many have made here that when MS's competition doesn't exist, innovation slows to a trickle is correct.
.NET, and would disagree about no innovation in the Visual IDE.
.NET developer (for both leisure and enterprise software), I have observed that Visual Studio .NET contains many features not integrated in other developer packages (KDevelop, Boreland, etc...) I was happy to see Borland stepping up to the fight with C++BuilderX as that means alternatives are starting to emerge.
For your example of Programming Tools though, I would say Java technologies are what has force MS to create
As a Visual Studio 6 and
I didn't believe Trolltech was held by Canopy and so I went to Trolltech's site to prove you wrong. No mention of Canopy there. But I also went to Canopy's website and on their front page the list all groups in order with Trolltech in the lower right. *ack*
Considering Canopy owns 39 companies, I am a bit more concerned about the law suit. I'm sure these guys are quite aggressive (otherwise they wouldn't be where they are today).
I DJ on both vinyl and CD, but prefer spinning CDs. The problem is that all the "good tracks" can still only be purchased on vinyl.
After reading the Tom's Hardware guide on the TerraTec DMX 6 Fire I knew that would be the next sound card to purchase. It has a phono-in as two RCA jacks, and comes with decent* software to clean up scratchy vinyl (*- Yet doesn't clean up RIAA filter artifacts. See below.)
Ripping vinyl is not intuitive though. I made a few rips via Sound Forge and wondered why all my bass wasn't coming through. The card had on-board RIAA filtering, which caused other problems. The solution: Download the RIAA Direct-X plug-in and run the filter on the WAV after it has been captured.
The RIAA filter itself works most of the time, but about one in every 6 records I rip, the filter creates very loud, 1 to 2 sample, "popping" artifacts, that need to be manually removed. I don't know if it's the filter itself or the implementation...either way I just wish it wasn't it didn't have that effect.
Once that is done, normalize to a good level and you're done. The process takes about 20-45 minutes per record. It's a pain, but spinning the end result on CDJ-1000 makes it all worth it.
--
The race rocked, because:
On the last point, they had a "blessing of the feet" for the drivers of the sculptures...which involved a person dressed a like Obi-Wan pretending to talk through his mind while a pre-recorded CD played what he was saying, and sometimes throw in music and efx. There was much other silliness. The pictures people took do a pretty good of depicting it.
Just seeing it once is inspiration to want to build one of these things and participate next year.
Agreed, it was an awful movie...but so bad that I've had to rent it again since I first saw it. (I think that was 1989).
After watching it with some friends, someone proclaimed: "We should all say 'Crash & Burn' instead of bye."
Friend 1: Did this once.
Friend 2: Did this for a week.
Myself: Still doing it today. *ack*
I find it ironic that Microsoft would say this, considering a recent (March 1, 2003) MSDN article about: Build Your Own Research Library with Office 2003 and the Google Web Service API.
This doesn't apply to everyone, but I hope this is relevant for one or two people...
The first commercial card (I know of) which has allowed DJs to easilly take their vinyl is TerraTec's DMX 6Fire 24/96. At $200, this convenience convinced me to stop using my Creative SB Gold-64 and upgrade.
Okay, I will admit I'm part of a nitch market, but for all the other DJs out there who want to be trying their tracks out on a
Pioneer CDJ-1000 (or similar device) this is quite innovative.
I would say the state of arcades (at least around Baltimore, MD) is healthy. There are two major malls (Towson Town Center & White Marsh) in the Northern region, which both have average sized arcades (12-24 machines). There is also one complex "Sports" which is filled with arcades among mini-golf, and air hockey.
I don't know what the specific status may be in any other U.S. cities but I have found in my travels that the Baltimore arcades tend to be indicative of what the scene is like else where.
I can see you are taken off guard by the response, as your intended post was not have people pick a part your personal life. It comes off (to me) as a post intended to show a "true-ism" which happens in all relationships. To a degree these true-isms hold, but from the language used in your post and rebuttle, it appears there is a problem in your relationship with your fiance'.
If you've been dating for a long time (6+ months), haven't had any break-ups (or time-outs), and no periods of an overwhelming desire to be left alone (even for a little while) then your okay. If any of these have occurred, tread lightly.
I speak from my own experience. I've been in about half a dozen serious relationships, with one that seemed to mirror your situation. I found it more important for me to be sure my girl-friend was happy than for me to admit I enjoyed "The Man Show" or do one of a dozen other things I enjoy. Just like your situation, my girl-friend had valid points but I also LIED to her in order to make her feel good about her statements and that I shared her opinion.
These may seem like innocent statments, but in the context of the thread they act as a warning:
P.S.: In my above situation, I was in love too...the physical relationship was the best I had ever had (or yet to have)...but it cost me my identity, which I found is much more important than playing with boobies.
That was the most civilized cease-and-desist letter I have read linked to by a Slashdot story. (It's a shame more lawyers don't use similar language in their cease-and-desist letters.)
I believe the request made by Google's lawyer is quite reasonable. Google created the word, and they don't want it diluted.
Why shouldn't Paul McFedries comply?
I don't know if only one game can be considered the best, with there being so many genres. IMHO, Super Mario Brothers 3 does deserve to be named the best side scroller.
Adventure-wise though, I'd go with Zelda. It was RPG, it was action-based, it was both! Add some quality 8-bit music and you have a game you can't put down (for long). Shameless plug for the Open Source Zelda project I'm a part of.
I'll utilize this topic to drum up support for an Open Source game I'm helping to push forward. It's Open Source Zelda and can be found here.
This project was started by Nehe (of famed OpenGL tutorials) and he maintains posting the stable milestone check-ins. Even if you aren't interested in OSZ, check out his site...his tutorials are the best on the web, IMHO.
The idea is to re-create the original 8-bit Zelda which Nintendo released in the mid-80's, but for it to have an open architecture so that other developers may reuse the engine for similar games. The code is also highly OO, and well documented in the hopes that those interested in knowing how to create a game (or apply OO design) can glen some knowledge from other developers' work.
It's Win32 now, but we have had interest from a developer in the BaltoLUG who may begin a Linux port. Anyone is welcome to attempt this, branch it, or do whatever they want with the code (under the GPL). =)
I would be surprised if the DJ industry continues to use vinyl 10 years from now. Over a year ago, Pioneer released the first CD turntable that behaves like a record player:
Pioneer CDJ-1000
Right now the only limiting factor is the cost ($1300), but that will come down in time.
I own both a Technics 1200, and a CDJ-1000. While the CDJ has a different feel than the Technics, it allows me to do more when performing. I'm willing to bet more will jump on this once a CDJ-1000, or equivalent, reaches the cost of professional turntables (around $400).
Correct. John Carmack made a post on slashdot which nulled many of the statements he had about earlier versions of DirectX.
The comment can be found here
There is the cost of having to deal with the infrequent pop-up dialogs to pay for the Pro version. After so many days of usage (60?) I received such an advertisement. I'm using 0.74b and haven't upgraded as I heard new versions do this more frequently.
A co-worker purchased the Pro version, and it really does have some nice features, but not $25 worth of nice features IMHO. I'd feel more generous towards their efforts if their free version is pop-up free, but I suppose they've added this feature because most users don't mind this. (If they've removed this in recent versions, please respond.)
I can testify to that.
I have bought a CD-ROM and later a CD-burner from Sony many years ago. They were both flakey and the support was no help.
They make a great video-game console, but I've been overall disappointed with their service.
You can spend some time searching through Pricewatch.
I've been doing this for a custom system for a few months now (over half a year) and
this link has what I'm planning on putting together.
It should be good for sound, games, gfx and coding (all which I do.)