A friend of mine is an avid boardgamer and introduced me to several awesome games. If you're looking at two player games in the style of Axis&Allies check the following columbia games (in order of difficulty):
Napoleon
Pacific Victory
Rommel in the Desert
East Front
If you're looking at a game for more people I'd suggest looking into Rio Grande Games. Something like Princes of Florence, Traders of Genoa, Puerto Rico, El Grande, Euphrat & Tigris or even Bonhanza. Board Game Geek shows many of the most popular games. Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne are pretty good simple games that are great to start with.
In my experience, coding (understood as feature development) is but a small fraction of the man hours spent on creating a piece of software. And it should be that way. I agree totally that if because of bad management a project spends most of its time on coding, then it will be bugridden or completely broken. And it's not the code's fault.
There are two things which spell good software: thorough and precise requirements and testing. A lot of time must be spent with the clients (and/or by the engineering team) to define exactly what the software is supposed to do. Creating prototypes and documenting use cases (or business events, etc.) is essential for the success of an application. Otherwise developers will spend half their time thinking "should the software do this or that" and in most cases they will improvise something which the client doesn't want. With good requirement specifications, the design and coding is almost a breeze. Finally testing the whole application not only for code bugs but against the requirements is essential. Without proper testing you can have no confidence that the software (a) works, (b) does what it's supposed to be doing.
This is so true. File association in Linux is definitely my #1 annoyance. In windows you install a program and it automatically registers associated file types to be opened in this program. Many of them also have options to re-register file types in case you installed another app that overwrote them.
In Linux it's a totally different story. For almost any app you install you have to register every file type by hand. Sure it works for the "official apps" but what if I use a different one? Tough they say.
And this is not without mentioning the parent's point about having to do it over and over because the settings just won't stay.
I would love for desktops to have an easy way for third party apps to register themselves with file types. I guess I'm just living in a dream.
This is near impossible to do. Benchmarks are usually done with equal hardware except for the processors and motherboard (for mobos you only need one per processor if you do many processors from the same manufacturer). For a desktop computer it's easy to switch the parts in and out and use the same hard-drive/ram/etc. but for laptops you have to use entirely different laptops for every processor tested which a) is expensive and b) skews the benchmarks results.
Come on. This type of comment is way out of context. Netscape was the leading browser back then because it was the first, it was new, a large majority of people surfing the web were geeks and IE wasn't integrated with Windows. Now that IE is integrated with windows, that more and more non-technical people surf the web and that browsers are a commodity, it's no longer true that the tides can turn like it did in the past.
The percent market share that IE doesn't currently have is mostly computer savvy people who don't mind going out of their way to try new software or people using <insert favorite non-MS operating system here>.
Until Windows doesn't include a browser with the basic distro or Linux/OSX takes over the desktop, neither of which will happen anytime soon, we won't see the end of IE.
I've experienced this exact behavior before. It's because you don't have DMA enabled for your hard drive(s). "hdparm -d/dev/hda" will confirm that (off).
To fix it you need to compile the kernel with the right PCI IDE chipset support. The only way I know of checking which one it is is to compile all the PCI IDE chipset support into the kernel and catch yours by doing "dmesg | more" after rebooting with the new kernel. Find which is yours and recompile without the other ones... that should do it.
With DMA enabled you should see a very good overall speedup and no more lock-ups. Especially for hard-drive I/O stuff like "mkisofs, cdrecord, bzip2 some huge file, cp anything large, installing (via aptitude) or even the "Reading Package Lists...." stage of apt-get update"
When I was a kid like you, cars didn't even exist! I had to walk 40 km uphill both ways in sandals at -50C with snow up to my shoulders!!
Stop whining and start walking!
Sounds good to me
on
Linus on DRM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If the GPL is all about freedom, it's also about freedom of what you can do with it (ok you can't include it in close source software without releasing that source, but that's to protect it from being non-free).
If some third party wants to take the kernel source and add DRM to it, they are free to do so. I'm also free to not use their kernel and keep compiling my own from Linus' tree.
You have good points. I am currently enrolled in a software engineering (real software engineering, not comp sci) program in Ontario and what you say is true. However:
It's not only about liability, but also about using engineering techiques of design, review and testing to ensure the reliability of a software system given certain requirements.
People have already died of software failures. Therac 25 and the London Amulance system are only two of the most known cases of software failures that caused death.
Software engineering does happen! A few examples, mostly all safety-critical applications, pace-makers, medical equipment, flight control systems, space shuttles software, etc.
Most software today is *not* engineered... in most cases it's not even designed. Most of the time you have no useful requirements, and the modules' or objects' documentation is poor and outdated if not absent. A software engineer would never let that happen---it would be putting his career on the line. But since most software packages now come with a disclaimer of removing all liabilities.
Which comes back to your point: what would you think of a civil engineer responsible for the construction of your 100 stories building who would only work if you accept that if the building bites the dust you can't hold him responsible or liable in any way?
I'm a huge linux fan and I love to brag about how much better than Windows it is, etc. However I don't think it's right to say false truth like "linux 2.6 will be 3 times faster!!!!!" KernelTrap mentions that:
Most significant gains can be expected at the high end such as large machines, large numbers of threads, large disks, large amounts of memory etc. [...] For the uniprocessors and small servers, there will be significant gains in some corner cases. And some losses. [...] Generally, 2.6 should be "nicer to use" on the desktop. But not appreciably faster.
Some of the biggest improvements for desktop responsiveness can be found (for Kernel 2.4.x) at Con Kolivas' web site of performance linux patches.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be nice if more of the Linux big names would jump on the bangwagon and lobby with companies to get open source drivers for hardware.
Just like Perl/Tk
If you're looking at a game for more people I'd suggest looking into Rio Grande Games. Something like Princes of Florence, Traders of Genoa, Puerto Rico, El Grande, Euphrat & Tigris or even Bonhanza. Board Game Geek shows many of the most popular games. Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne are pretty good simple games that are great to start with.
I think Tom's Hardware servers need an upgrade...
No, but they might ask Google to prevent search on torrent files.
AWESOME!
[sarcasm]
Lycos has released an anti-spam program that really works! Check your inbox for more details...
[/sarcasm]
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
In my experience, coding (understood as feature development) is but a small fraction of the man hours spent on creating a piece of software. And it should be that way. I agree totally that if because of bad management a project spends most of its time on coding, then it will be bugridden or completely broken. And it's not the code's fault.
There are two things which spell good software: thorough and precise requirements and testing. A lot of time must be spent with the clients (and/or by the engineering team) to define exactly what the software is supposed to do. Creating prototypes and documenting use cases (or business events, etc.) is essential for the success of an application. Otherwise developers will spend half their time thinking "should the software do this or that" and in most cases they will improvise something which the client doesn't want. With good requirement specifications, the design and coding is almost a breeze. Finally testing the whole application not only for code bugs but against the requirements is essential. Without proper testing you can have no confidence that the software (a) works, (b) does what it's supposed to be doing.
"Windows Upgrade, FAA Error Cause LAX Shutdown"
Sounds to me like Windows causes constipation. Use moderatly.
Forget it man. You won't find X.org in debian for another 10 years!
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Are you nuts? Did you see A.I.? Did you see how Speilberg massacred the ending with and extra 30min of flimsy pseudo aliens?
How about getting enthusiastic talented people who won't write/direct/produce to get more 5 year olds to see a movie they won't remember anyway?
This is so true. File association in Linux is definitely my #1 annoyance. In windows you install a program and it automatically registers associated file types to be opened in this program. Many of them also have options to re-register file types in case you installed another app that overwrote them.
In Linux it's a totally different story. For almost any app you install you have to register every file type by hand. Sure it works for the "official apps" but what if I use a different one? Tough they say.
And this is not without mentioning the parent's point about having to do it over and over because the settings just won't stay.
I would love for desktops to have an easy way for third party apps to register themselves with file types. I guess I'm just living in a dream.
Did you delete your old profile before upgrading from 0.8 to 0.9 (0.9.1) ?
Well, don't delete it but rename it and move the bootkmarks, cookies, etc. Into a new profile which is created when firefox starts.
Cheers
Let's push the number of comments to 666!
This is near impossible to do. Benchmarks are usually done with equal hardware except for the processors and motherboard (for mobos you only need one per processor if you do many processors from the same manufacturer). For a desktop computer it's easy to switch the parts in and out and use the same hard-drive/ram/etc. but for laptops you have to use entirely different laptops for every processor tested which a) is expensive and b) skews the benchmarks results.
Did they make the source available?
It's called AnkhSVN.
Enjoy!
Come on. This type of comment is way out of context. Netscape was the leading browser back then because it was the first, it was new, a large majority of people surfing the web were geeks and IE wasn't integrated with Windows. Now that IE is integrated with windows, that more and more non-technical people surf the web and that browsers are a commodity, it's no longer true that the tides can turn like it did in the past.
The percent market share that IE doesn't currently have is mostly computer savvy people who don't mind going out of their way to try new software or people using <insert favorite non-MS operating system here>.
Until Windows doesn't include a browser with the basic distro or Linux/OSX takes over the desktop, neither of which will happen anytime soon, we won't see the end of IE.
I've experienced this exact behavior before. It's because you don't have DMA enabled for your hard drive(s). "hdparm -d /dev/hda" will confirm that (off).
To fix it you need to compile the kernel with the right PCI IDE chipset support. The only way I know of checking which one it is is to compile all the PCI IDE chipset support into the kernel and catch yours by doing "dmesg | more" after rebooting with the new kernel. Find which is yours and recompile without the other ones... that should do it.
With DMA enabled you should see a very good overall speedup and no more lock-ups. Especially for hard-drive I/O stuff like "mkisofs, cdrecord, bzip2 some huge file, cp anything large, installing (via aptitude) or even the "Reading Package Lists...." stage of apt-get update"
When I was a kid like you, cars didn't even exist! I had to walk 40 km uphill both ways in sandals at -50C with snow up to my shoulders!!
Stop whining and start walking!
If the GPL is all about freedom, it's also about freedom of what you can do with it (ok you can't include it in close source software without releasing that source, but that's to protect it from being non-free).
If some third party wants to take the kernel source and add DRM to it, they are free to do so. I'm also free to not use their kernel and keep compiling my own from Linus' tree.
Linus does have a point.
Some of the biggest improvements for desktop responsiveness can be found (for Kernel 2.4.x) at Con Kolivas' web site of performance linux patches.
--
They don't have much choice, it's running Windows! Even with this it's probably going to be slow as hell.