blah blah blah hand-me-downs blah blah blah old blah blah
As a gamer I have to object to this. What you're forgetting is that it's not the graphics and engine and so forth that make the game, but rather the gameplay. Remember Half-Life? IIRC, the Half-Life engine is modded Quake I/II engine. So what made this one of the best selling and highest rated FPS's around? Good solid gameplay. In an age where many games are moving more and more towards internet play, (Q3A, UT, and so forth) it was refreshing to see an innovative and well done game which really stood out in the single player arena. Even though it was done using "hand-me-down" technology, the gameplay itself is what set this gem away from the rest. Just because a company is the first to come out with a technology, doesn't mean they'll make full use of it's potential. I'm not trying to knock on Quake or Unreal, but there are many many cases of people making a great game using dated technology, with fresh ideas or approaches that really appeal to gamers. Just my two cents...
Just a small quibble... a 'real world' UI is not the answer, since this brings with it alot of the limitations of the real world, and once you go introducing features to make the interface more useable, you're tampering with the metaphor (or in this case, the non-metaphor, I suppose) of the user interface and essentially introducing 'reality kluges' that interfere with the intuitiveness of the UI. ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
Hmm... if they managed this by splitting a later-stage zygote in half, essentially creating two earlier-stage zygotes, what's to stop them from splitting those zygotes in half again? Basically you're limited by the amount of resources you need to grow the zygotes... but for all practical purposes there shouldn't be a limit on the number of possible offspring from a zygote. ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
Yes, proactive... your definition is right, your reasoning is wrong.. you can take proactive steps to fight security problems even if the problem has already been detected... how? In this case, by running frequent (for some value of frequent) scans to make sure that nobody's got a system setup that is abuseable by spammers. This is considered a proactive solution since it attempts to stop the problem before it occurs, i.e. before said misconfigured server is used to send (USENET|email) spam to others. Granted, it's a little bit ironic when you think about it, but that's about it. ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
Pfft advocating an authoritarian stance based on the actions of a few irresponsible individuals? Sounds like you're trying to stop crimes from occuring by sticking everyone in jail from the get go. ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
While USENET has no central authority, there's still a centralized location to go for getting blocked domains, ie. whichever group determines who or what goes into the udpcancel list. It'd be nice to see this extended to other services, I'm not sure how feasable it would be. I suppose a centralized procmail filter database would be feasible... hmm.... ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
I'd like to address all these 'widget' theories about dissolved NO2 in the beer.
This is simply ridiculous. The carbonization in beer is exactly that, carbon dioxide generated by the fermentation process and the yeast used to brew the beer. The bubbles are caused because when a can of beer is opened, the CO2 which is stored in the pressurized in the can vaporizes as the pressure in the can drops from whatever it is in the can to STP (will vary with altitude;) This is basic chemistry people. This theory that the nitrogen in the beer somehow adds to the taste can be discounted by the simple fact that it doesn't exist in bottles, and the intuitive leap that suggests that the shape of the bottle naturally allows for an easier pour than cans do.
So why the widget, you ask? Quite simple, really. Have you noticed that when you pour a beverage out of a container with a single opening, especially when the opening is 'submerged', i.e. the container is very full, that it will come out in uneven bursts?
As the liquid in the container drains, the pressure in the container drops until at some point the pressure differential between the inside of the container and the outside atmosphere is so great that air forces its way into the container through the only available opening. Since this opening is the only one available, the incoming air will displace the fluid that is pouring out of the container, causing the flow out to diminish temporarily.
Once the pressure differential is somewhat equalized, the fluid will resume flowing at its original rate, until such time as the pressure inside the container drops again to the critical level OR the level of the fluid decreases to the point that the entire opening is not obscured by exiting fluid, thus giving the atmosphere another method of entry into the container to equalize the pressure.
This is why you might have noticed some people put small holes at the non-open end of milk/orange juice cartons, since as you're pouring the air can flow in this second entrance and the pressure inside the container remains relatively consistent with the external atmospheric pressure, since the air has another entryway besides the one that is being blocked by the outflowing liquid.
Anyhoo, back to Guiness;) This effect makes pouring a 'proper' guiness out of a can very difficult, since the fits and bursts cause a great deal of turbulence in the pouring process and can cause excessive foaming, resulting in a beer that is 90% head. What the Draughtflow (tm) system does is release a gas (perhaps nitrogen) inside the can that bubbles up, in effect creating or simulating a hole at the bottom of the can, equalizing the pressure inside of the can with that of the external atmosphere. This will keep the beer pouring smoothly no matter how the can is held. I will concur, however, that this is indeed an ingenious solution to a serious problem;)
P.S. The bubbles in guiness are smaller not because of dissolved nitrogen in the beer, but because the beer isn't artifically carbonated like some inferior beers are.;) ---- Dave Purity Of Essence
Good god man... if I had a nickel everytime I hear someone bitch about how crippled the current x86 architecture is by the industry dependence on backwards compatibility with an ancient and outdated architecture, and why we can't throw it out and design a much better chip from the ground up? And now you're bitching at the FCC for doing exactly that, throwing out an ancient and outdated standard and replacing it with a much better one? Yeesh.. make up your minds, people!:-P ---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
First of all, I'd like to think that Starship Troopers was almost made for it's camp value rather than a true story in and of itself.... lots of cheese with some eye candy thrown in. But as a movie it was very entertaining in and of itself. While I haven't had the pleasure of reading Heinlen's original and seeing how badly it was distorted from it's original writing (and given Heinlen's record, it was probably a pretty bad representation of his work).
Ender's Game is a little different, in this respect. Character portrayal is probably one of the most important aspects of this film... Ender, obviously, but Peter and Valentine as well... after all, they are an integral part of Ender's psyche, as was pointed out in Xenocide. While the Demosthenes/Locke personae could be left out since this was basically a sideline to the story, I think the Ender/Stilson conflict really shouldn't be... IMHO the whole point of the scene exists to show that Ender is basically a "doomsday machine" ( a la Dr. Strangelove ), that is to say that he'll take a situation to it's logical conclusion and act accordingly... hence with Stilson he aims to discourage future retribution or harassment with one decisive action, which neatly parallels the government with its use of the MD device. Anyways, I'm rambling on... I guess I just hate to see any part of a work that I really enjoyed cut out or changed, regardless of practicality or marketing concerns.
---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
What I didn't get was the fact that even through wind tunnel testing, which, inevitably proved what would happen, the engineers insisted on doing it the wrong way.
If I remember correctly, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was actually designed and built before wind tunnel testing was a concept... after all, who'd think that a 30 - 45 mph wind could blow down a bridge? The wind tunnel tests were conducted after the fact, as a matter of fact, this might have been the event (or catastrophe, as the case may be) that led to the use of wind tunnel and other structural stress tests. ---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Actually, there's an interesting reason behind this behavior, and for what it's worth, anyone looking to travel to or visit France might want to read this, as this can make all the difference to your stay:) You see, most French people speak some level of english... the reason that you got that reaction from people when you spoke to them in English is that they couldn't be bothered to help anyone who doesn't even make a token effort to try and speak their language... remember, you're in their contry, after all... However, if you make a serious attempt to speak to them in french, NO MATTER HOW BAD (trust me on this:P) they will react much more positively.
---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
If you take a poll of whether or not the actual investors had wanted amazon to patent or not to patent I am willing to bet the investors would say file the patent.
Obviously, you don't understand what's going on here. Yes, right now the current attitude is "If it makes money, patent it!". But, and I'll spell this out slowly for you, read along, if we start boycotting companies that apply for stupid and or destructive patents, then we (as consumers) will pull the rug out from under their reason for getting the patent in the first place (that is, to make money). Vote with your dollars. Once investors realize that applying for patents like this are just going to get them boycotted and/or bad PR, I think you'll find that the stockholders and investors won't be so hasty when they're next polled ^_^ ---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Just as it it possible to install Linux and *NOT* install the source code, and have a perfectly functional Linux system, it is definitely possible to install an application "for linux" without source and have it run just fine...
Umm ok. So you're telling me that applications that are assembled with the Intel x86 instruction set are going to run just fine on a VAX machine? Or an Alpha?
Linux is linux is linux, but an application that has been compiled for x86 architecture will NOT run on PPC without some type of interpreter or VM, or a separately compiled binary for each architecture. And do you think retailers are really going to put Quake3 for Linux/x86, Quake3 for Linux/alpha, Quake3 for Linux/PPC, etc... on the shelves? I doubt it.
---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I'm not a Katz-basher, but I have to disagree with the premise of this article. Calling this the "Post-Microsoft era" is probably a bit on the premature side. Gates is a very smart man (in a very evil-overlordish way) and I seriously doubt that this is going to mark an end of some sort for M$. Somehow Gates doesn't strike me as the type of person (unfortunate as it may be) that will just curl up and die when he loses his big marketing club that he can beat everyone over the head with.
OTOH, hopefully this will set him back somewhat, and wake people up to the (better) alternatives that are out there. At the very worst, it won't have an effect one way or another, and any benefit to the OpenSource/Linux/BSD movement is better than none.
---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Now our cars can transmit license & registration information so that when a cop points a radar gun at you, he doesn't have to pull you over. Just mails you a fine!
Actually, a system similar to this is already in effect in many european countries. Speed meters and cameras are mounted on tall poles. If someone's spotted going a certain amount over the speed limit, the camera snaps a picture of the car with the recorded speed and date/timestamp. The image gets sent to the autorities who do a run on the plate and send the ticket to the registration address, with a copy of the photo.
The problem with this system of course is that people learn where the cameras are and slow down for that stretch. There are several systems being tested or in place where the cameras can be moved from location to location to keep drivers on their toes, though.
As for the rest of this article... I have mixed feelings on this. I can see alot of uses for this, but I can also see alot of abuses for this system as well. How forgeable would these vehicle id's be? Or failing that, how easy would it be to interfere with the signal? Hack into your car, and never hit another red light? mmmm;-)
---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I've only had the chance to play the windows version of of UT, but I must say that it is a very beautiful and fun game to play... on my pIII-500 with a Diamond Viper TNT card, it runs very smooth in single player mode, perhaps even faster than quake3test. The load times aren't bad, but there's always room for improvement. The bot AI at the default setting is pretty mediocre after playing fragbait on many a quake3 server, however the auto-adjust feature seems to work fairly well and where the default level left me quickly bored, the adjusted bots gave me a run for my money. The physics are up to par with the latest gen of FPS games, and the visuals are absolutely gore-geous... and the in-game insults as you reduce an opponent to hamburger are a riot.;)
Having said that, there are drawbacks to the game. The big weakness at the moment is network play... I went to play a few games of CTF, domination, and FFA, and found most of the servers (even those with good pings) to be almost unplayable. The only thing I can liken this to is playing quake][ over 28.8, which is pretty rough. 384k DSL should easily be able to handle most network games, but the speed that was so overpowering in quake3 was not to be found in UT. I realize that this is a very early build, but I think that the network code needs alot of optimizing, since this is supposed to be the primary focus of this game.
Overall, I'd give the game a 7/10, a potentially great game with alot of nice features, but with room for improvement. ---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I've seen several people mentioning paying metered rates for DSL and other fixed connections... I just thought I'd point out is that for *DSL/ISDN/Frame/T[1-3] you're already paying for the line yourself, leasing it from the teleco in most cases.
If you read the article carefully, you'll see that the telecos are complaining about dialup customers tying up the local exchanges with long duration calls to the ISP's...
Remember, local telecos aren't desgined to handle a 'full' load, they work on the principle that not everyone will be using their phones at the same time. Basically dialup users are putting extra load on the voice lines, whereas the people who are paying for leased lines are already paying for their connectivity, and aren't potentially clogging up regular voice lines. That's about the long and short of it. ---- Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Their big "success" benchmark seemed to be server sales, i.e. more workstations sold with WinNT compared to the "3.5% Linux server sales". If I'm reading this correctly then they're not taking into account all the people that delete WinXX off their computers and install Linux themselves, rather than buying it pre-packaged, or people that build their own systems. If I'm correct, then these statistics are disregarding a majority of the Linux systems out there. I'm not going to scream FUD since this could have been a simple oversight, but one that shows that these people obviously have no clue about Linux.
p.s.Remedial calculus is not trivial... It's useless...
Obviously not, since the derivative of the derivative is simply a second order derivative, or f"(x) where f(x) = ((3x^3)+sin(x))cot(4x-5)), rather than that clumsy nested notation;) ---- Dave All hail Discordia!
How do you secure on a file-by-file basis in Linux? For example, do it in such a way that you can grant read-only access to a single person within a group for a single file within a directory where the group otherwise has full access to the directory and change access to the subdirectories under it? I don't believe Linux (and UNIX in general) could handle this.
Uhh please, if you're going to try and critique another operating system it usually helps to have at least a MARGINAL CLUE OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Wait wait, what am I saying? An NT advocate with a clue? I guess that'd be an oxymoron.... ---- Dave All hail Discordia!
I cringe when I heard people hitting Reply To All: GET ME OFF THIS LIST.
Hehe... that reminds me of the good old days of 'lame-list'. It was basically an open-subscribe majordomo list where you could subscribe other people that you felt were worthy of this dubious honor.;) The list even sent out the standard instruction sheet to the... victim... yet still the list was full of 'HOW DO I GET OFF THIS LIST?' and 'UNSUBSCRIBE ME' mails. It generated quite an amount of spam, and was fitting punishment for people that don't RTFM;) ---- Dave All hail Discordia!
Slashdot Mirror
blah blah blah hand-me-downs blah blah blah old blah blah
As a gamer I have to object to this. What you're forgetting is that it's not the graphics and engine and so forth that make the game, but rather the gameplay. Remember Half-Life? IIRC, the Half-Life engine is modded Quake I/II engine. So what made this one of the best selling and highest rated FPS's around? Good solid gameplay. In an age where many games are moving more and more towards internet play, (Q3A, UT, and so forth) it was refreshing to see an innovative and well done game which really stood out in the single player arena. Even though it was done using "hand-me-down" technology, the gameplay itself is what set this gem away from the rest. Just because a company is the first to come out with a technology, doesn't mean they'll make full use of it's potential. I'm not trying to knock on Quake or Unreal, but there are many many cases of people making a great game using dated technology, with fresh ideas or approaches that really appeal to gamers. Just my two cents...
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Gahhh... stop taunting me... my copy of Lain is still on hold at dvdexpress until my BGC boxset comes in :((( *grumble*
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Just a small quibble... a 'real world' UI is not the answer, since this brings with it alot of the limitations of the real world, and once you go introducing features to make the interface more useable, you're tampering with the metaphor (or in this case, the non-metaphor, I suppose) of the user interface and essentially introducing 'reality kluges' that interfere with the intuitiveness of the UI.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Hmm... if they managed this by splitting a later-stage zygote in half, essentially creating two earlier-stage zygotes, what's to stop them from splitting those zygotes in half again? Basically you're limited by the amount of resources you need to grow the zygotes... but for all practical purposes there shouldn't be a limit on the number of possible offspring from a zygote.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Yes, proactive... your definition is right, your reasoning is wrong.. you can take proactive steps to fight security problems even if the problem has already been detected... how? In this case, by running frequent (for some value of frequent) scans to make sure that nobody's got a system setup that is abuseable by spammers. This is considered a proactive solution since it attempts to stop the problem before it occurs, i.e. before said misconfigured server is used to send (USENET|email) spam to others. Granted, it's a little bit ironic when you think about it, but that's about it.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Pfft advocating an authoritarian stance based on the actions of a few irresponsible individuals? Sounds like you're trying to stop crimes from occuring by sticking everyone in jail from the get go.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
While USENET has no central authority, there's still a centralized location to go for getting blocked domains, ie. whichever group determines who or what goes into the udpcancel list. It'd be nice to see this extended to other services, I'm not sure how feasable it would be. I suppose a centralized procmail filter database would be feasible... hmm....
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
I'd like to address all these 'widget' theories about dissolved NO2 in the beer.
;) This is basic chemistry people. This theory that the nitrogen in the beer somehow adds to the taste can be discounted by the simple fact that it doesn't exist in bottles, and the intuitive leap that suggests that the shape of the bottle naturally allows for an easier pour than cans do.
;) This effect makes pouring a 'proper' guiness out of a can very difficult, since the fits and bursts cause a great deal of turbulence in the pouring process and can cause excessive foaming, resulting in a beer that is 90% head. What the Draughtflow (tm) system does is release a gas (perhaps nitrogen) inside the can that bubbles up, in effect creating or simulating a hole at the bottom of the can, equalizing the pressure inside of the can with that of the external atmosphere. This will keep the beer pouring smoothly no matter how the can is held. I will concur, however, that this is indeed an ingenious solution to a serious problem ;)
;)
This is simply ridiculous. The carbonization in beer is exactly that, carbon dioxide generated by the fermentation process and the yeast used to brew the beer. The bubbles are caused because when a can of beer is opened, the CO2 which is stored in the pressurized in the can vaporizes as the pressure in the can drops from whatever it is in the can to STP (will vary with altitude
So why the widget, you ask? Quite simple, really. Have you noticed that when you pour a beverage out of a container with a single opening, especially when the opening is 'submerged', i.e. the container is very full, that it will come out in uneven bursts?
As the liquid in the container drains, the pressure in the container drops until at some point the pressure differential between the inside of the container and the outside atmosphere is so great that air forces its way into the container through the only available opening. Since this opening is the only one available, the incoming air will displace the fluid that is pouring out of the container, causing the flow out to diminish temporarily.
Once the pressure differential is somewhat equalized, the fluid will resume flowing at its original rate, until such time as the pressure inside the container drops again to the critical level OR the level of the fluid decreases to the point that the entire opening is not obscured by exiting fluid, thus giving the atmosphere another method of entry into the container to equalize the pressure.
This is why you might have noticed some people put small holes at the non-open end of milk/orange juice cartons, since as you're pouring the air can flow in this second entrance and the pressure inside the container remains relatively consistent with the external atmospheric pressure, since the air has another entryway besides the one that is being blocked by the outflowing liquid.
Anyhoo, back to Guiness
P.S. The bubbles in guiness are smaller not because of dissolved nitrogen in the beer, but because the beer isn't artifically carbonated like some inferior beers are.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
Good god man... if I had a nickel everytime I hear someone bitch about how crippled the current x86 architecture is by the industry dependence on backwards compatibility with an ancient and outdated architecture, and why we can't throw it out and design a much better chip from the ground up? And now you're bitching at the FCC for doing exactly that, throwing out an ancient and outdated standard and replacing it with a much better one? Yeesh.. make up your minds, people! :-P
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
First of all, I'd like to think that Starship Troopers was almost made for it's camp value rather than a true story in and of itself.... lots of cheese with some eye candy thrown in. But as a movie it was very entertaining in and of itself. While I haven't had the pleasure of reading Heinlen's original and seeing how badly it was distorted from it's original writing (and given Heinlen's record, it was probably a pretty bad representation of his work).
Ender's Game is a little different, in this respect. Character portrayal is probably one of the most important aspects of this film... Ender, obviously, but Peter and Valentine as well... after all, they are an integral part of Ender's psyche, as was pointed out in Xenocide. While the Demosthenes/Locke personae could be left out since this was basically a sideline to the story, I think the Ender/Stilson conflict really shouldn't be... IMHO the whole point of the scene exists to show that Ender is basically a "doomsday machine" ( a la Dr. Strangelove ), that is to say that he'll take a situation to it's logical conclusion and act accordingly... hence with Stilson he aims to discourage future retribution or harassment with one decisive action, which neatly parallels the government with its use of the MD device. Anyways, I'm rambling on... I guess I just hate to see any part of a work that I really enjoyed cut out or changed, regardless of practicality or marketing concerns.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
My list includes a bastard sword, chain mail, soft leather boots, a number of belt pouches, my trusty travelling spellbook, and fifty feet of rope.
What, no lantern? Looks like the only thing you're destined to becomine is grue-food >;)
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
What I didn't get was the fact that even through wind tunnel testing, which, inevitably proved what would happen, the engineers insisted on doing it the wrong way.
If I remember correctly, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was actually designed and built before wind tunnel testing was a concept... after all, who'd think that a 30 - 45 mph wind could blow down a bridge? The wind tunnel tests were conducted after the fact, as a matter of fact, this might have been the event (or catastrophe, as the case may be) that led to the use of wind tunnel and other structural stress tests.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Actually, there's an interesting reason behind this behavior, and for what it's worth, anyone looking to travel to or visit France might want to read this, as this can make all the difference to your stay :) You see, most French people speak some level of english... the reason that you got that reaction from people when you spoke to them in English is that they couldn't be bothered to help anyone who doesn't even make a token effort to try and speak their language... remember, you're in their contry, after all... However, if you make a serious attempt to speak to them in french, NO MATTER HOW BAD (trust me on this :P) they will react much more positively.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
If you take a poll of whether or not the actual investors had wanted amazon to patent or not to patent I am willing to bet the investors would say file the patent.
Obviously, you don't understand what's going on here. Yes, right now the current attitude is "If it makes money, patent it!".
But, and I'll spell this out slowly for you, read along, if we start boycotting companies that apply for stupid and or destructive patents, then we (as consumers) will pull the rug out from under their reason for getting the patent in the first place (that is, to make money).
Vote with your dollars. Once investors realize that applying for patents like this are just going to get them boycotted and/or bad PR, I think you'll find that the stockholders and investors won't be so hasty when they're next polled ^_^
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Just as it it possible to install Linux and *NOT* install the source code, and have a perfectly functional Linux system, it is definitely possible to install an application "for linux" without source and have it run just fine...
Umm ok. So you're telling me that applications that are assembled with the Intel x86 instruction set are going to run just fine on a VAX machine? Or an Alpha?
Linux is linux is linux, but an application that has been compiled for x86 architecture will NOT run on PPC without some type of interpreter or VM, or a separately compiled binary for each architecture. And do you think retailers are really going to put Quake3 for Linux/x86, Quake3 for Linux/alpha, Quake3 for Linux/PPC, etc... on the shelves? I doubt it.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I'm not a Katz-basher, but I have to disagree with the premise of this article. Calling this the "Post-Microsoft era" is probably a bit on the premature side. Gates is a very smart man (in a very evil-overlordish way) and I seriously doubt that this is going to mark an end of some sort for M$. Somehow Gates doesn't strike me as the type of person (unfortunate as it may be) that will just curl up and die when he loses his big marketing club that he can beat everyone over the head with.
OTOH, hopefully this will set him back somewhat, and wake people up to the (better) alternatives that are out there. At the very worst, it won't have an effect one way or another, and any benefit to the OpenSource/Linux/BSD movement is better than none.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Now our cars can transmit license & registration information so that when a cop points a radar gun at you, he doesn't have to pull you over. Just mails you a fine!
;-)
Actually, a system similar to this is already in effect in many european countries. Speed meters and cameras are mounted on tall poles. If someone's spotted going a certain amount over the speed limit, the camera snaps a picture of the car with the recorded speed and date/timestamp. The image gets sent to the autorities who do a run on the plate and send the ticket to the registration address, with a copy of the photo.
The problem with this system of course is that people learn where the cameras are and slow down for that stretch. There are several systems being tested or in place where the cameras can be moved from location to location to keep drivers on their toes, though.
As for the rest of this article... I have mixed feelings on this. I can see alot of uses for this, but I can also see alot of abuses for this system as well. How forgeable would these vehicle id's be? Or failing that, how easy would it be to interfere with the signal? Hack into your car, and never hit another red light? mmmm
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I've only had the chance to play the windows version of of UT, but I must say that it is a very beautiful and fun game to play... on my pIII-500 with a Diamond Viper TNT card, it runs very smooth in single player mode, perhaps even faster than quake3test. The load times aren't bad, but there's always room for improvement. The bot AI at the default setting is pretty mediocre after playing fragbait on many a quake3 server, however the auto-adjust feature seems to work fairly well and where the default level left me quickly bored, the adjusted bots gave me a run for my money. The physics are up to par with the latest gen of FPS games, and the visuals are absolutely gore-geous... and the in-game insults as you reduce an opponent to hamburger are a riot. ;)
Having said that, there are drawbacks to the game. The big weakness at the moment is network play... I went to play a few games of CTF, domination, and FFA, and found most of the servers (even those with good pings) to be almost unplayable. The only thing I can liken this to is playing quake][ over 28.8, which is pretty rough. 384k DSL should easily be able to handle most network games, but the speed that was so overpowering in quake3 was not to be found in UT. I realize that this is a very early build, but I think that the network code needs alot of optimizing, since this is supposed to be the primary focus of this game.
Overall, I'd give the game a 7/10, a potentially great game with alot of nice features, but with room for improvement.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
I've seen several people mentioning paying metered rates for DSL and other fixed connections... I just thought I'd point out is that for *DSL/ISDN/Frame/T[1-3] you're already paying for the line yourself, leasing it from the teleco in most cases.
If you read the article carefully, you'll see that the telecos are complaining about dialup customers tying up the local exchanges with long duration calls to the ISP's...
Remember, local telecos aren't desgined to handle a 'full' load, they work on the principle that not everyone will be using their phones at the same time. Basically dialup users are putting extra load on the voice lines, whereas the people who are paying for leased lines are already paying for their connectivity, and aren't potentially clogging up regular voice lines. That's about the long and short of it.
----
Dave
"I love chess! It is like ballet only with more explosions!"
Their big "success" benchmark seemed to be server sales, i.e. more workstations sold with WinNT compared to the "3.5% Linux server sales". If I'm reading this correctly then they're not taking into account all the people that delete WinXX off their computers and install Linux themselves, rather than buying it pre-packaged, or people that build their own systems. If I'm correct, then these statistics are disregarding a majority of the Linux systems out there. I'm not going to scream FUD since this could have been a simple oversight, but one that shows that these people obviously have no clue about Linux.
----
Dave
All hail Discordia!
p.s.Remedial calculus is not trivial... It's useless...
;)
Obviously not, since the derivative of the derivative is simply a second order derivative, or
f"(x) where f(x) = ((3x^3)+sin(x))cot(4x-5)), rather than that clumsy nested notation
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Dave
All hail Discordia!
How do you secure on a file-by-file basis in Linux? For example, do it in such a way that you can grant read-only access to a single person within a group for a single file within a directory where the group otherwise has full access to the directory and change access to the subdirectories under it? I don't believe Linux (and UNIX in general) could handle this.
Uhh please, if you're going to try and critique another operating system it usually helps to have at least a MARGINAL CLUE OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Wait wait, what am I saying? An NT advocate with a clue? I guess that'd be an oxymoron....
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Dave
All hail Discordia!
I cringe when I heard people hitting Reply To All: GET ME OFF THIS LIST.
;) The list even sent out the standard instruction sheet to the... victim... yet still the list was full of 'HOW DO I GET OFF THIS LIST?' and 'UNSUBSCRIBE ME' mails. It generated quite an amount of spam, and was fitting punishment for people that don't RTFM ;)
Hehe... that reminds me of the good old days of 'lame-list'. It was basically an open-subscribe majordomo list where you could subscribe other people that you felt were worthy of this dubious honor.
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Dave
All hail Discordia!
No, but for any equation with an answer greater than three, the calculator would just display the answer as "A suffusion of yellow" :-)
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Dave
All hail Discordia!