Leave RedHat out of that list...I've seen plenty of botched RedHat upgrades, and let's not forget that little problem they seem to have of requiring 2 iterations past each major version before they get it decently solid.
Maybe this is a level of abstraction that *should* be removed?
That's hardly the point. Anything to keep the blame off those we hold in high regard.
That even number in the middle is supposed to mean *stable*. Sure, there's always going to be a collection of minor bugs that'll get through just about any reasonable level of testing...but come on...this bug was simply huge. Even if you don't feel that it is necessarily the duty of kernel programmers to do extensive testing, I hope you do think they have enough ethics to do *some* testing before kicking a version out the door.
At least with FreeBSD I never had to worry when I cvsup'd to the latest sources in the -stable branch and built a new world and kernel. If the Linux kernel people are going to bother to have separately labeled stable and development versions, they should do at least some rudimentary testing before slapping a stable version number on some code and pushing it to the mirrors. Sure, there's no rules to this game...nothing says they have to do that...but they better do it, if they want Linux to ever get anywhere.
And yes, using new stuff on production machines is a bad idea...doesn't change the fact that if Linux ever wants any sort of market respect, showstopper bugs like this can't be allowed to make it into versions that are indicated to be "stable".
Actually, I'm giving this thing a try right now, and it does have a keyboard shortcut...++number...1 makes it very transparent, 0 makes it solid again.
Still useless for getting any actual work done, but at least it's got the keyboard shortcut covered.
Those are so irrelevant. All of these "Desktop Environments" suck shit. FVWM is all the window manager I'll ever need.
As to vi vs emacs, I've only got enough brainspace to learn one extensively (as in, know practically every keyboard command), and which of those is the editor that you can be 99% sure is installed on every damned UNIX box on the planet?
I think System Shock and Marathon originally came out around the same time. Alas, I never played the original System Shock. Have the sequel (came free with a video card purchase), but I haven't gotten around to really messing with it yet. So, I'll concede the point that there may have been a PC FPS with a good story before Half Life. But if you can put up with the outdated graphics, please give Marathon a go. It's really a great game. I believe there is also a project that adds OpenGL support so things don't look quite so old.
I completely agree with your statements about the progression of things at id software...and this is precisely why we have stuff like Quake 3, which is a great 3D engine demo, and little else. Unreal Tournament may also be a soulless FPS with no true single-player experience, but at least it is genuinely fun. Quake 3 got old in less than a month.
Return to Wolfenstein does look promising, though...I've killed an awful lot of hours playing that demo.
Bah. When I first played Marathon, not only was I a die-hard PC gamer, I was a die-hard anti-Mac person. They were toys, pure and simple, in my eyes. You couldn't get anything *real* done, whether it be work or entertainment. But Marathon stood all that on its head. It kicked the crap out of the FPSs available on the PC at the time. Sure, the basic concepts were still run around, shoot, find switches, solve puzzles, etc., but goddamnit it had a STORY! A story so engrossing that, until Half Life, no PC-based FPS could even begin to challenge. That was the first FPS where I really got into the game. Playing a co-op multiplayer game in a dark room with headphones...damn game gets creepy as hell.
As far as your revolution assessment, a FPS capable of scaring the crap out of the average fairly jaded gamer *is* a revolution. If nothing else, it's one hell of an accomplishment. The ability of the game to draw you in, to make it more than a game, that is a very hard and key factor. Look at this very review...even it talks about the importance of Half Life's story elements, and how that makes it the best FPS...until Halo.
Earthlink handles this pretty nicely...I used them for dialup service (well, I used Mindspring technically) for years before DSL became available in my area...when it did, I got it through them, and they leave your dialup account active for no additional charge. They have dialups in most places...I don't travel all that much, but it's nice to have that whenever I do go on the road.
PSX is far easier to pirate for the average person than DC. Any moron can rent a handful of PSX games and burn them. Not all of them are willing to lurk around the necessary newsgroups and IRC channgels to get a significant number of DC game images.
The only thing hard about PSX piracy is the mod chip stuff...and the majority of people still own ones that have the parallel port, so the Action Replay and similar units can be used instead. Besides, anyone who can't find some dude who works at a video game store that sells and installs mod chips just isn't trying.
And I love Hong Kong...should be getting my GBA "backup and development" system any day now:)
I believe that is (badly) referring to some of the security features of XP...basically built-in utilities for "cleaner" deletions, stuff that can't be as trivially recovered after the fact. Normal deleted files can be quite easily retrieved with the right tools.
Most likely the water vapor that condenses on the connector acts as a solvent and gets rid of some of the corrosion on the contacts. You'd probably do better to carefully clean the contacts (both on the cartridge and in the unit) with rubbing alcohol.
The main problem is making sure that use of such a system maintains the original intent and spirit. In any organization as large and complex as the federal government, there exists the possibility (near certainty, to be honest) that there are people who take a very "ends justify means" approach to life. There is also a chance that a subset of those people may feel that their "ends" (political advancement, financial reward, etc) are more important than the proper goals of government. And of course, there is the chance of outright corruption.
We can be pretty sure that no one would abuse the system when it's first installed...but what about 20 years down the line? We already have piles of stories about secret FBI files made on political dissidents during the cold war...do you honestly think that none of the justifications or emotions that caused those actions will never return to the minds of people in government? I simply don't trust humanity that much.
Yep, computer-oriented classes and experience is the only possible way to ever gain problem solving and data analysis skills. No way could anyone ever figure out how to teach those concepts without involving a computer. Before the PC revolution, companies had to send their data to IBM so their scientists could use one of the world's 5 computers to crunch through it. Also prior to this grand era, people just ignored problems instead of solving them.
I think computers are pretty damn spiffy too, but I still prefer methods that focus on reasoning and problem solving in a more pure sense, not being tied to a given task.
Just get MAME for Dreamcast...and if you don't have a Dreamcast, what's wrong with you? It's a neat system, cheap as dirt, you can put NetBSD on it, etc.
I submit myself as a candidate for the common enemy. Give me a moon base, a robot army, and a neat evil-futuristic-warlord uniform (damn well better have a cape), and I will gladly terrorize the world so it can unite against me.
Anyone up for the job of my chief lieutenant? I promise not to kill you when you inform me that my demise is imminent unless I rethink my plans.
Just because you're not taking the "kill em all" to the most extreme possible level does not make it any less wrong when used on a smaller scale. There is no way you can ever justify to me that it is right to punish completely innocent people for another's actions. Act against spammers...don't act against people who did nothing to you.
As to the choice issue...the reason I tend to speak out on the anti-spam blackhole stuff is not because of the effects on the technologically capable. What about those people who don't know enough to even ask their ISP if they use this sort of thing? The only way they'll ever hear about this sort of thing is when it negatively affects them. Great things that does for the image of the blackholes.
At any point that I am walking down a public street, a salesman could approach me and launch right into a sales pitch. I can dodge around him, turn, say no, something like that...but it's still going to change my initial plan of walking uninhibited down the street.
Yes, spam sucks...but look at the examples you gave of how to ensure a spam-filled mailbox...all of those are like walking down the biggest public street in the world.
But more important than a reason people shouldn't get so incredibly pissed off over spam...the whole concept of black hole lists is just wrong. It's a "kill em all and let god sort em out!" solution. Why should the other users of an ISP with a handful (or even just one) bad user all be punished? They did nothing wrong. In most cases, there's no way they would know such a situation was possible. Use methods that don't punish the innocent, and you'll get a lot more support with stuff like this.
I think most people would nix the idea due to more things being on the "stuff that can go wrong" list. Simple buttons and switches like those found in joystick controllers are much simpler than accelerometers and other things necessary for a glove controller to really work well. I've seen at least one match where the controller died...I think we'd see a lot more if people tried to make the controller's systems more complex than is really needed.
Gestures have problems usage-wise as far as I'm concerned...most people don't move their hands exactly the same way every time. So you have to make the range of motion for each gesture fairly wide so it includes enough of the common mistakes to work reliably. But those wide ranges start to add up fast, so you have to make the gestures themselves bigger so you can reliably differentiate between gestures. A finger hitting a button or a hand throwing a stick to the right has very little room for error. No "is that really right, or is it up and right?" problems. Not to mention the innate tactile feedback of a button is a great thing.
If you weigh that much, don't put it in your back pocket. Hell, don't put it in your back pocket at all. They aren't designed to be sat on. You know that little note in the airline safety stuff about "the seat cushion can be used as a flotation device?" Well, no PDA that I've seen so far has a note that says "this PDA can be used as a seat cushion".
Or do you mean accidentally leaving it in your chair? Well, the manufacturer shouldn't be held responsible for people being absent-minded and clumsy.
Re:Idea after being mugged last year...
on
GPS Meets PCS
·
· Score: 2
And how is your phone going to determine the cell numbers of people near you? Some sort of cell phone "broadcast ping"? Don't think that's gonna happen...
Slashdot Mirror
Leave RedHat out of that list...I've seen plenty of botched RedHat upgrades, and let's not forget that little problem they seem to have of requiring 2 iterations past each major version before they get it decently solid.
Maybe this is a level of abstraction that *should* be removed?
Yeah, but what if you need to buy a Pony Tail Buttplug? Nobody's gonna buy that at a store...
That's hardly the point. Anything to keep the blame off those we hold in high regard.
That even number in the middle is supposed to mean *stable*. Sure, there's always going to be a collection of minor bugs that'll get through just about any reasonable level of testing...but come on...this bug was simply huge. Even if you don't feel that it is necessarily the duty of kernel programmers to do extensive testing, I hope you do think they have enough ethics to do *some* testing before kicking a version out the door.
At least with FreeBSD I never had to worry when I cvsup'd to the latest sources in the -stable branch and built a new world and kernel. If the Linux kernel people are going to bother to have separately labeled stable and development versions, they should do at least some rudimentary testing before slapping a stable version number on some code and pushing it to the mirrors. Sure, there's no rules to this game...nothing says they have to do that...but they better do it, if they want Linux to ever get anywhere.
And yes, using new stuff on production machines is a bad idea...doesn't change the fact that if Linux ever wants any sort of market respect, showstopper bugs like this can't be allowed to make it into versions that are indicated to be "stable".
Actually, I'm giving this thing a try right now, and it does have a keyboard shortcut...++number...1 makes it very transparent, 0 makes it solid again.
Still useless for getting any actual work done, but at least it's got the keyboard shortcut covered.
Those are so irrelevant. All of these "Desktop Environments" suck shit. FVWM is all the window manager I'll ever need.
As to vi vs emacs, I've only got enough brainspace to learn one extensively (as in, know practically every keyboard command), and which of those is the editor that you can be 99% sure is installed on every damned UNIX box on the planet?
I think System Shock and Marathon originally came out around the same time. Alas, I never played the original System Shock. Have the sequel (came free with a video card purchase), but I haven't gotten around to really messing with it yet. So, I'll concede the point that there may have been a PC FPS with a good story before Half Life. But if you can put up with the outdated graphics, please give Marathon a go. It's really a great game. I believe there is also a project that adds OpenGL support so things don't look quite so old.
I completely agree with your statements about the progression of things at id software...and this is precisely why we have stuff like Quake 3, which is a great 3D engine demo, and little else. Unreal Tournament may also be a soulless FPS with no true single-player experience, but at least it is genuinely fun. Quake 3 got old in less than a month.
Return to Wolfenstein does look promising, though...I've killed an awful lot of hours playing that demo.
Bah. When I first played Marathon, not only was I a die-hard PC gamer, I was a die-hard anti-Mac person. They were toys, pure and simple, in my eyes. You couldn't get anything *real* done, whether it be work or entertainment. But Marathon stood all that on its head. It kicked the crap out of the FPSs available on the PC at the time. Sure, the basic concepts were still run around, shoot, find switches, solve puzzles, etc., but goddamnit it had a STORY! A story so engrossing that, until Half Life, no PC-based FPS could even begin to challenge. That was the first FPS where I really got into the game. Playing a co-op multiplayer game in a dark room with headphones...damn game gets creepy as hell.
As far as your revolution assessment, a FPS capable of scaring the crap out of the average fairly jaded gamer *is* a revolution. If nothing else, it's one hell of an accomplishment. The ability of the game to draw you in, to make it more than a game, that is a very hard and key factor. Look at this very review...even it talks about the importance of Half Life's story elements, and how that makes it the best FPS...until Halo.
And yes, I bought Marathon II for the PC.
Earthlink handles this pretty nicely...I used them for dialup service (well, I used Mindspring technically) for years before DSL became available in my area...when it did, I got it through them, and they leave your dialup account active for no additional charge. They have dialups in most places...I don't travel all that much, but it's nice to have that whenever I do go on the road.
PSX is far easier to pirate for the average person than DC. Any moron can rent a handful of PSX games and burn them. Not all of them are willing to lurk around the necessary newsgroups and IRC channgels to get a significant number of DC game images.
:)
The only thing hard about PSX piracy is the mod chip stuff...and the majority of people still own ones that have the parallel port, so the Action Replay and similar units can be used instead. Besides, anyone who can't find some dude who works at a video game store that sells and installs mod chips just isn't trying.
And I love Hong Kong...should be getting my GBA "backup and development" system any day now
I believe that is (badly) referring to some of the security features of XP...basically built-in utilities for "cleaner" deletions, stuff that can't be as trivially recovered after the fact. Normal deleted files can be quite easily retrieved with the right tools.
Most likely the water vapor that condenses on the connector acts as a solvent and gets rid of some of the corrosion on the contacts. You'd probably do better to carefully clean the contacts (both on the cartridge and in the unit) with rubbing alcohol.
The main problem is making sure that use of such a system maintains the original intent and spirit. In any organization as large and complex as the federal government, there exists the possibility (near certainty, to be honest) that there are people who take a very "ends justify means" approach to life. There is also a chance that a subset of those people may feel that their "ends" (political advancement, financial reward, etc) are more important than the proper goals of government. And of course, there is the chance of outright corruption.
We can be pretty sure that no one would abuse the system when it's first installed...but what about 20 years down the line? We already have piles of stories about secret FBI files made on political dissidents during the cold war...do you honestly think that none of the justifications or emotions that caused those actions will never return to the minds of people in government? I simply don't trust humanity that much.
Yep, computer-oriented classes and experience is the only possible way to ever gain problem solving and data analysis skills. No way could anyone ever figure out how to teach those concepts without involving a computer. Before the PC revolution, companies had to send their data to IBM so their scientists could use one of the world's 5 computers to crunch through it. Also prior to this grand era, people just ignored problems instead of solving them.
I think computers are pretty damn spiffy too, but I still prefer methods that focus on reasoning and problem solving in a more pure sense, not being tied to a given task.
Just get MAME for Dreamcast...and if you don't have a Dreamcast, what's wrong with you? It's a neat system, cheap as dirt, you can put NetBSD on it, etc.
No way....you can't have Europa...all these worlds are yours, except Europa.
Well...nothing, actually. But you do get free room and board. And you'll get a snazzy uniform. And some slave girls.
Ooooh yeah...slave girls.
I submit myself as a candidate for the common enemy. Give me a moon base, a robot army, and a neat evil-futuristic-warlord uniform (damn well better have a cape), and I will gladly terrorize the world so it can unite against me.
Anyone up for the job of my chief lieutenant? I promise not to kill you when you inform me that my demise is imminent unless I rethink my plans.
At $1500, it damn well better be cool enough to keep me interested for more than a few weeks.
Just because you're not taking the "kill em all" to the most extreme possible level does not make it any less wrong when used on a smaller scale. There is no way you can ever justify to me that it is right to punish completely innocent people for another's actions. Act against spammers...don't act against people who did nothing to you.
As to the choice issue...the reason I tend to speak out on the anti-spam blackhole stuff is not because of the effects on the technologically capable. What about those people who don't know enough to even ask their ISP if they use this sort of thing? The only way they'll ever hear about this sort of thing is when it negatively affects them. Great things that does for the image of the blackholes.
Oh, you vigilantes are so cute when you're mad.
At any point that I am walking down a public street, a salesman could approach me and launch right into a sales pitch. I can dodge around him, turn, say no, something like that...but it's still going to change my initial plan of walking uninhibited down the street.
Yes, spam sucks...but look at the examples you gave of how to ensure a spam-filled mailbox...all of those are like walking down the biggest public street in the world.
But more important than a reason people shouldn't get so incredibly pissed off over spam...the whole concept of black hole lists is just wrong. It's a "kill em all and let god sort em out!" solution. Why should the other users of an ISP with a handful (or even just one) bad user all be punished? They did nothing wrong. In most cases, there's no way they would know such a situation was possible. Use methods that don't punish the innocent, and you'll get a lot more support with stuff like this.
I think most people would nix the idea due to more things being on the "stuff that can go wrong" list. Simple buttons and switches like those found in joystick controllers are much simpler than accelerometers and other things necessary for a glove controller to really work well. I've seen at least one match where the controller died...I think we'd see a lot more if people tried to make the controller's systems more complex than is really needed.
Gestures have problems usage-wise as far as I'm concerned...most people don't move their hands exactly the same way every time. So you have to make the range of motion for each gesture fairly wide so it includes enough of the common mistakes to work reliably. But those wide ranges start to add up fast, so you have to make the gestures themselves bigger so you can reliably differentiate between gestures. A finger hitting a button or a hand throwing a stick to the right has very little room for error. No "is that really right, or is it up and right?" problems. Not to mention the innate tactile feedback of a button is a great thing.
If you weigh that much, don't put it in your back pocket. Hell, don't put it in your back pocket at all. They aren't designed to be sat on. You know that little note in the airline safety stuff about "the seat cushion can be used as a flotation device?" Well, no PDA that I've seen so far has a note that says "this PDA can be used as a seat cushion".
Or do you mean accidentally leaving it in your chair? Well, the manufacturer shouldn't be held responsible for people being absent-minded and clumsy.
And how is your phone going to determine the cell numbers of people near you? Some sort of cell phone "broadcast ping"? Don't think that's gonna happen...
The next time someone asks if you have Norton, say yes. Geez...it's not like this is hard. If he's clueless, how is he going to verify it?