Actually, what the nanocoating does is prevent the water from flowing down into the spaces between the spikes, but (if I'm reading this correctly) the flow friction is a combination of the teflon surface and the air flowing between the nanospikes. Hence, if you grew microcrystals on your car, it air would flow around and through the spikes, and you would slow your car down significantly. In addition, the most significant negative forces on your car (and in many flow situations) are drag from turbulence and air pressure. If the military wants a racing submarine capable of beating a traditional water-born craft, it will have to find a way to create perfectly smooth flow over a non-smooth surface.
Not to say that either of those are what the poster implied. But the technology does not solve the only problems with liquid movement. And it certainly won't find its way onto the family station wagon.
We used DirectMusic in our last title... As a technology it is pretty powerful and helps keep both costs and file sizes down. On the other hand, we had a very tense two-week period where the software was crashing for reasons unknown to us, and nobody could figure out what that little DirectMusic black box was doing. The cost savings over writing something ourselves was offset by what we paid consultants to figure out what was going wrong.
DirectMusic is a good idea, but like early Direct X the developer friendly side (such as error reporting) needs a little flushing out.
Actually, windows recognizes both 3 button mice without additional drivers (scroll down doubles as button 3), and Microsoft's odd 5 button mice. Windows doesn't require 3 button mice like Gnome and KDE do, but it supports them without fuss.
There are many faults with windows worth picking on, but support for multi-button mice isn't one of them.
I've always liked the concept of turning pirated copies into a "superdemo" of sorts. My main concern, and the concern of most of the people here, appears to be that the copy protection does not degrade the performance for legal, purchased players. I don't think we should jump to any conclusions on this front. SafeDisk technology is uncopyable (cough) due to an inherent pattern in the disk, yet we have been using those for years. While all my reviews get bonus smileys if playing the game doesn't require spending 1/2 hour digging around for the CD, I can live with popping one in.
On the other hand, if by "data" they mean an unexpected pattern of 1's and 0's, any bitwise ISO will copy that straight. This seems like it will prevent people running the game from virtual CD drives, and not much else. Still, the technology is interesting, and if the copying of the superdemo is encouraged, it could be the most fruitful abuse of Kazaa yet.
I can't tell anymore... Have American companies suddenly acquired a deep and cynical sense of self-depreciating humor, or have they all just gone batty.
Company A publishes a piece of DRM software that it trumpets to industry executives as bulletproof. Graduate Student B exposes deep flaws in the product Company A is selling. Company A sues Graduate Student B for being badly misinformed, spreading false information, and telling people foolproof ways to defeat their scheme. Company A describes these flaws in detail in all of their press releases, ensuring that they will be known by the magic-marker and shift-key weilding pirates when the technology finally hits the market. Their suit against Graduate Student B ensures that they will at least be given a job immediately upon exit of college, if not being picked up by a major university's PHD program... thus encouraging Graduate Students C - Z to attempt this shortcut through the "Publish or Perish" mentality pervading college campuses.
What company A should be doing is preparing version 2.0 of their software, which they will then sell to record companies while hiring Graduate Student B to get free publicity on all of the news websites. This won't discourage academics from looking for flaws in software, but it will gain someone who has proven themselves to be good QA for the company's product. Company A comes out smelling like the good guy, with an improved (read, sustainable) product, press that cost one additional employee, and a compelling reason to push their clients to pay for an upgrade.
Why is it this is hard to see for companies? Maybe they have gone batty.
Sprint PCS Group, Cingular Wireless LLC, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. all plan to start selling the Palm OS-based smart phone, starting in the fall.
AT&T Wireless will start selling the device by the end of the year, according to officials at the Redmond, Wash., company, who declined to give pricing. T-Mobile U.S.A. Inc. finished its field trials of the Treo 600 this week and has yet to announce a launch date.
And while we're googling, the names "Orange" and "Europe" have been mentioned together wrt this device.
I'll be haggling with my designated AT&T representative over this one.:)
Where I work multiple computer setups are required... as a gaming company, one must have the code up on one machine while debugging on the other. But even when one machine is not tied up with running the software, it is still far more productive to have a development machine and a communications machine... One to do traditional productive work, and one to respond to E-mail inquiries, Chat messages, keep up with bug counts, re-read plan files and schedules, etc.
As an employee, I would easily be willing to front the money for a second machine. Removing bottlenecks is both more productive and more pleasant.
Except that the litigation required to overturn the patent took 8 years... or 1/2 of the length of the patent. In that time, the motor car companies made large amounts of money on their ill-gotten gains, and the endless march towards suburban sprawl was pushed back another 10 years.
In short, a real patent lasts 20 years, a fake patent lasts 10. This is "not much?"
It's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely.
If you want to store messages indefinitely, or want a permanent e-mail address, don't rely on free services. When choosing a provider, ask why they will be around in 5 years. Yahoo will be around because they are drawing traffic to their larger site, and selling upgrades. Microsoft will be around because they are trying to leverage control of every aspect of computing to their advantage, and hotmail helps tie people to their passport system. But i-name? deathsdoor.com? Free mail boxes and forwarding services have folded rapidly as small hosting companies have realized that it takes a lot of bandwidth and effort to keep that extra box with 100,000K users up and running, especially with the things people use free mail accounts for (spam boxes and to side-step site registration restrictions).
If you really need a permanent e-mail box, or a permanent e-mail address, consider purchasing one. POBox.com has been around for several years, and charges roughly 15 dollars per year for mail forwarding for life that, unlike many of the other sites out there, might actually be in business that long.
If you are lothe to purchase a permanent address, get friendly with your local college administrator, ISP owner, or Colo guy at bigcompany.com. Most people who own a domain name have no problem giving out.01% of their bandwidth and system resources to a friend. And unlike many of the services that I know will be mentioned here, that address will actually survive.
Actually, KazaaLite isn't a hack, it is a selective installer. Instead of modifying the code for the program, it takes the original packages and selectively installs only the parts that the end-user would want.
If they distributed this separately, it would be a total non-issue. The fact that they are distributed together is what leads to copyright violation. But a hack? No. Blatant Piracy? Words have meaning, and in this case "Blatant Piracy" isn't what you mean.
If Gamespot took the images themselves, they are doing the equivalent of taking a photograph. As a photograph can have significant creative value, it can be copyrightable.
So yes, under US law, Gamespot can have a copyright on the images they take of other company's games. This doesn't preclude, necessarily, the original gaming company from also having some degree of copyright jurisdiction over the image as it is a derivitave work. But that basically grants them the right to veto a usage of the work, not to override the other partner's veto of a usage of the work.
Basically, if you were in America and that law applied to you, they would have a strong case. IANAL, but if I were you I would steal some ROMS and take your own screenshots. It's better to stay on the safe side of the law.
I'm sure the store that sold it to you will be happy to abide by the agreement that they didn't enter into. The EULA claims that the store is required to take back the software if you don't agree to the terms, but stores are not required to agree to accept returns on software that they sell. In fact, many don't on the simple and totally reasonable premise that such a policy would encourage massive amounts of piracy (as Electronics Boutique found out).
So such arrangements really are an agreement between 3 parties, the one who wrote the terms of the agreement, the one who received the agreement as an addendum to a routine point of sale, and the party who sold the software and who has never actually seen the terms of the agreement.
Of course there are many other issues, such as balance of power, which effect copyright law, but I just wanted to point out that the illegality of click-through agreements on commercial software becomes blatant when in practice the consumer has no right to return the software.
Seriously, it is a game with 5 resource types, only one of which is available in-game. You can purchase units, except that they don't cost anything. Units have available slots for special attacks, except that they don't have any special attacks. You can upgrade units, if you can get the severely bent interface to work.
Really, It's painfully obvious that this game isn't finished, yet they were (are) trying to sell it to the hungry masses. I wonder why they are doing so badly? Top that off with horrible graphics and controls, randomly generated level designs ripped straight out of Starcraft's playbook, Action-oriented gameplay that pauses for several seconds every time someone enters an area, and a design that shouts "Diablo in space, with 6 characters!", And it is no wonder they need to give it away. Honestly, at this stage in their development I'd be ashamed to charge anyone for it.
While the concept of a MMPORTS is appealing, this version falls far short of the mark. And sadly, it isn't the only MMP game that does. Second Life? Sims Online? If you want to know why so many are doing so badly, first look to how badly so many are made.
Crystal Dynamics has a lot of history with both Franchises (Gex, Kain, Pandemonium, etc) and with darkness (Akuji: The Heartless, Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain, Disney's Magical Racing Tour...).
Unlike Eidos proper, they tend to make deep games that rely upon a combination of exploiting good engines and telling a story that at some fundamental level shocks the player. If Laura Craft is going to move away from "Walk to the edge. Hop back. Take two running steps and jump." style gameplay, it needs to be moved away from the group that has been working on it for years.
They need to give Laura a harder edge and a totally revamped control scheme. So long as she remains in a world overpopulated by keys and locked doors, the series will stagnate. If on the other hand she has to assassinate a mob boss who has seen her face and survive the escape attempt, the series could take on a whole new level.
Of course this being Crystal Dynamics, who have never put out a truly episodic game in their lives, the gameplay will probably be heavily based in exploration rather than in missions. But still, such open worlds could cut to the heart of what Laura Croft is about.
Now we need to find a good producer to pull the movies out of the doldrums. Cameron, anyone?
Peltier effect is both hot and cool
on
Clammy Modding
·
· Score: 1
The problem with Peltier is that it doesn't cool so much as separate hot and cold. To be successful a Peltier device requires (as your mod did) a heatsink and fan, or else it will overheat tremendously.
And by adding a heatsink and fan, you have basically undone the reason for having a Peltier device in the first place.
Re:Depends, heated or cooled.
on
Clammy Modding
·
· Score: 1
By definition the transitional energy of heat of the mouse in any given direction must be canceled out by an equal amount of transitional energy in the opposite direction. Therefore, rate of translocation (to "go") will remain unaffected by by the above mentioned phenomenon.
Now if modifying the underlying structure of said device lowers the overall stability or utility quotient, the mouse will "go" into the trash more quickly. But I don't think that is what he was talking about.
For more information...
on
Clammy Modding
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not necessarily
on
Clammy Modding
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Mechanical mice work by monitoring a small beam of UV light as it passes through a pair of grooved disks (like those on an image master). In a very basic form that I'm sure will be picked apart, it counts the number of blinks of light that it sees. Therefore, if you move it a small enough amount you won't break the threshold for blinking the light on / off, and the movement won't register at all.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the vibrations were small enough that they wouldn't register on a consumer level mechanical mouse.
Give everyone Jabber / PSI, and your local server. Communications over Jabber can be encrypted, logged, and secured enough to meet federal mandates. There are gateways that can be installed to allow people to chat with the outside world (logged, of course). And, most importantly, few enough people use Jabber that most chatting will be going on within the company, not with outside parties.
IM is a powerful alternative to phone calls and e-mails for getting work done. It shouldn't be taken entirely out of a workplace, just put in its proper (and legal) place.
For years I struggled to stay focused in college, but I could hardly ever stay on task with what I was supposed to do. I figured I was just lazy, despite the fact that I hardly ever went to bed until 3AM, and in that time I had coded two websites and started on a 4D Tic Tac Toe implementation on a calculator. I only ever got papers right, and I didn't realize why.
Recently, I realized that the reason I could write papers so effectively was because I would have to go to a lab to write them (I lacked a printer). In the cold, sterile, uninteresting environment of a laboratory, a lot of work could get done. You could still surf the web, which was a problem, but you couldn't start coding anything, you couldn't read anything you didn't bring, you couldn't nap, you couldn't get around to building that Gundum model, etc.
You really need a proper mindset to study, and you need a location to get that mindset. I find it further helps to plan on sleeping in the lab, to prevent any sense of external distractions, such as a warm bed, from creeping into your thoughts. And after sleeping for three hours on a hard wooden window sill, you are usually ready to get serious about what you have to do to get somewhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, what the nanocoating does is prevent the water from flowing down into the spaces between the spikes, but (if I'm reading this correctly) the flow friction is a combination of the teflon surface and the air flowing between the nanospikes. Hence, if you grew microcrystals on your car, it air would flow around and through the spikes, and you would slow your car down significantly. In addition, the most significant negative forces on your car (and in many flow situations) are drag from turbulence and air pressure. If the military wants a racing submarine capable of beating a traditional water-born craft, it will have to find a way to create perfectly smooth flow over a non-smooth surface.
Not to say that either of those are what the poster implied. But the technology does not solve the only problems with liquid movement. And it certainly won't find its way onto the family station wagon.
We used DirectMusic in our last title... As a technology it is pretty powerful and helps keep both costs and file sizes down. On the other hand, we had a very tense two-week period where the software was crashing for reasons unknown to us, and nobody could figure out what that little DirectMusic black box was doing. The cost savings over writing something ourselves was offset by what we paid consultants to figure out what was going wrong.
DirectMusic is a good idea, but like early Direct X the developer friendly side (such as error reporting) needs a little flushing out.
Actually, windows recognizes both 3 button mice without additional drivers (scroll down doubles as button 3), and Microsoft's odd 5 button mice. Windows doesn't require 3 button mice like Gnome and KDE do, but it supports them without fuss.
There are many faults with windows worth picking on, but support for multi-button mice isn't one of them.
This thread is goZing down the tubues. Orange you happy?
I've always liked the concept of turning pirated copies into a "superdemo" of sorts. My main concern, and the concern of most of the people here, appears to be that the copy protection does not degrade the performance for legal, purchased players. I don't think we should jump to any conclusions on this front. SafeDisk technology is uncopyable (cough) due to an inherent pattern in the disk, yet we have been using those for years. While all my reviews get bonus smileys if playing the game doesn't require spending 1/2 hour digging around for the CD, I can live with popping one in.
On the other hand, if by "data" they mean an unexpected pattern of 1's and 0's, any bitwise ISO will copy that straight. This seems like it will prevent people running the game from virtual CD drives, and not much else. Still, the technology is interesting, and if the copying of the superdemo is encouraged, it could be the most fruitful abuse of Kazaa yet.
Sadly, research departments don't seem to be bringing in as much money as legal departments these days.
I can't tell anymore... Have American companies suddenly acquired a deep and cynical sense of self-depreciating humor, or have they all just gone batty.
Company A publishes a piece of DRM software that it trumpets to industry executives as bulletproof. Graduate Student B exposes deep flaws in the product Company A is selling. Company A sues Graduate Student B for being badly misinformed, spreading false information, and telling people foolproof ways to defeat their scheme. Company A describes these flaws in detail in all of their press releases, ensuring that they will be known by the magic-marker and shift-key weilding pirates when the technology finally hits the market. Their suit against Graduate Student B ensures that they will at least be given a job immediately upon exit of college, if not being picked up by a major university's PHD program... thus encouraging Graduate Students C - Z to attempt this shortcut through the "Publish or Perish" mentality pervading college campuses.
What company A should be doing is preparing version 2.0 of their software, which they will then sell to record companies while hiring Graduate Student B to get free publicity on all of the news websites. This won't discourage academics from looking for flaws in software, but it will gain someone who has proven themselves to be good QA for the company's product. Company A comes out smelling like the good guy, with an improved (read, sustainable) product, press that cost one additional employee, and a compelling reason to push their clients to pay for an upgrade.
Why is it this is hard to see for companies? Maybe they have gone batty.
According to E Week:
:)
Sprint PCS Group, Cingular Wireless LLC, AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. all plan to start selling the Palm OS-based smart phone, starting in the fall.
AT&T Wireless will start selling the device by the end of the year, according to officials at the Redmond, Wash., company, who declined to give pricing. T-Mobile U.S.A. Inc. finished its field trials of the Treo 600 this week and has yet to announce a launch date.
And while we're googling, the names "Orange" and "Europe" have been mentioned together wrt this device.
I'll be haggling with my designated AT&T representative over this one.
Where I work multiple computer setups are required... as a gaming company, one must have the code up on one machine while debugging on the other. But even when one machine is not tied up with running the software, it is still far more productive to have a development machine and a communications machine... One to do traditional productive work, and one to respond to E-mail inquiries, Chat messages, keep up with bug counts, re-read plan files and schedules, etc.
As an employee, I would easily be willing to front the money for a second machine. Removing bottlenecks is both more productive and more pleasant.
Except that the litigation required to overturn the patent took 8 years... or 1/2 of the length of the patent. In that time, the motor car companies made large amounts of money on their ill-gotten gains, and the endless march towards suburban sprawl was pushed back another 10 years.
In short, a real patent lasts 20 years, a fake patent lasts 10. This is "not much?"
If I had mod points today you would get at least two.
It's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely.
.01% of their bandwidth and system resources to a friend. And unlike many of the services that I know will be mentioned here, that address will actually survive.
If you want to store messages indefinitely, or want a permanent e-mail address, don't rely on free services. When choosing a provider, ask why they will be around in 5 years. Yahoo will be around because they are drawing traffic to their larger site, and selling upgrades. Microsoft will be around because they are trying to leverage control of every aspect of computing to their advantage, and hotmail helps tie people to their passport system. But i-name? deathsdoor.com? Free mail boxes and forwarding services have folded rapidly as small hosting companies have realized that it takes a lot of bandwidth and effort to keep that extra box with 100,000K users up and running, especially with the things people use free mail accounts for (spam boxes and to side-step site registration restrictions).
If you really need a permanent e-mail box, or a permanent e-mail address, consider purchasing one. POBox.com has been around for several years, and charges roughly 15 dollars per year for mail forwarding for life that, unlike many of the other sites out there, might actually be in business that long.
If you are lothe to purchase a permanent address, get friendly with your local college administrator, ISP owner, or Colo guy at bigcompany.com. Most people who own a domain name have no problem giving out
Actually, KazaaLite isn't a hack, it is a selective installer. Instead of modifying the code for the program, it takes the original packages and selectively installs only the parts that the end-user would want.
If they distributed this separately, it would be a total non-issue. The fact that they are distributed together is what leads to copyright violation. But a hack? No. Blatant Piracy? Words have meaning, and in this case "Blatant Piracy" isn't what you mean.
If Gamespot took the images themselves, they are doing the equivalent of taking a photograph. As a photograph can have significant creative value, it can be copyrightable.
So yes, under US law, Gamespot can have a copyright on the images they take of other company's games. This doesn't preclude, necessarily, the original gaming company from also having some degree of copyright jurisdiction over the image as it is a derivitave work. But that basically grants them the right to veto a usage of the work, not to override the other partner's veto of a usage of the work.
Basically, if you were in America and that law applied to you, they would have a strong case. IANAL, but if I were you I would steal some ROMS and take your own screenshots. It's better to stay on the safe side of the law.
I thought they recently merged Kazaa Lite and K++. You'll find that is what kazaalite.tk lists as the current project.
I'm sure the store that sold it to you will be happy to abide by the agreement that they didn't enter into. The EULA claims that the store is required to take back the software if you don't agree to the terms, but stores are not required to agree to accept returns on software that they sell. In fact, many don't on the simple and totally reasonable premise that such a policy would encourage massive amounts of piracy (as Electronics Boutique found out).
So such arrangements really are an agreement between 3 parties, the one who wrote the terms of the agreement, the one who received the agreement as an addendum to a routine point of sale, and the party who sold the software and who has never actually seen the terms of the agreement.
Of course there are many other issues, such as balance of power, which effect copyright law, but I just wanted to point out that the illegality of click-through agreements on commercial software becomes blatant when in practice the consumer has no right to return the software.
...because it isn't finished.
Seriously, it is a game with 5 resource types, only one of which is available in-game. You can purchase units, except that they don't cost anything. Units have available slots for special attacks, except that they don't have any special attacks. You can upgrade units, if you can get the severely bent interface to work.
Really, It's painfully obvious that this game isn't finished, yet they were (are) trying to sell it to the hungry masses. I wonder why they are doing so badly? Top that off with horrible graphics and controls, randomly generated level designs ripped straight out of Starcraft's playbook, Action-oriented gameplay that pauses for several seconds every time someone enters an area, and a design that shouts "Diablo in space, with 6 characters!", And it is no wonder they need to give it away. Honestly, at this stage in their development I'd be ashamed to charge anyone for it.
While the concept of a MMPORTS is appealing, this version falls far short of the mark. And sadly, it isn't the only MMP game that does. Second Life? Sims Online? If you want to know why so many are doing so badly, first look to how badly so many are made.
Hi. I'm the phrase "Underground hit." I represent a loop. If you have never heard about what I refer to, you are out of it.
Crystal Dynamics has a lot of history with both Franchises (Gex, Kain, Pandemonium, etc) and with darkness (Akuji: The Heartless, Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain, Disney's Magical Racing Tour...).
Unlike Eidos proper, they tend to make deep games that rely upon a combination of exploiting good engines and telling a story that at some fundamental level shocks the player. If Laura Craft is going to move away from "Walk to the edge. Hop back. Take two running steps and jump." style gameplay, it needs to be moved away from the group that has been working on it for years.
They need to give Laura a harder edge and a totally revamped control scheme. So long as she remains in a world overpopulated by keys and locked doors, the series will stagnate. If on the other hand she has to assassinate a mob boss who has seen her face and survive the escape attempt, the series could take on a whole new level.
Of course this being Crystal Dynamics, who have never put out a truly episodic game in their lives, the gameplay will probably be heavily based in exploration rather than in missions. But still, such open worlds could cut to the heart of what Laura Croft is about.
Now we need to find a good producer to pull the movies out of the doldrums. Cameron, anyone?
The problem with Peltier is that it doesn't cool so much as separate hot and cold. To be successful a Peltier device requires (as your mod did) a heatsink and fan, or else it will overheat tremendously.
And by adding a heatsink and fan, you have basically undone the reason for having a Peltier device in the first place.
By definition the transitional energy of heat of the mouse in any given direction must be canceled out by an equal amount of transitional energy in the opposite direction. Therefore, rate of translocation (to "go") will remain unaffected by by the above mentioned phenomenon.
Now if modifying the underlying structure of said device lowers the overall stability or utility quotient, the mouse will "go" into the trash more quickly. But I don't think that is what he was talking about.
Google Cache of the original page, text only.
A similar page at Homelinux, describing the modification made at metku.net.
Yoshi DeHerrera's version from screensavers. Once again, the same idea, but from March 2002.
A real modder's version complete with unnecessary blue LEDs.
Mechanical mice work by monitoring a small beam of UV light as it passes through a pair of grooved disks (like those on an image master). In a very basic form that I'm sure will be picked apart, it counts the number of blinks of light that it sees. Therefore, if you move it a small enough amount you won't break the threshold for blinking the light on / off, and the movement won't register at all.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the vibrations were small enough that they wouldn't register on a consumer level mechanical mouse.
Now optical, there's another story...
Give everyone Jabber / PSI, and your local server. Communications over Jabber can be encrypted, logged, and secured enough to meet federal mandates. There are gateways that can be installed to allow people to chat with the outside world (logged, of course). And, most importantly, few enough people use Jabber that most chatting will be going on within the company, not with outside parties.
IM is a powerful alternative to phone calls and e-mails for getting work done. It shouldn't be taken entirely out of a workplace, just put in its proper (and legal) place.
- C
For years I struggled to stay focused in college, but I could hardly ever stay on task with what I was supposed to do. I figured I was just lazy, despite the fact that I hardly ever went to bed until 3AM, and in that time I had coded two websites and started on a 4D Tic Tac Toe implementation on a calculator. I only ever got papers right, and I didn't realize why.
Recently, I realized that the reason I could write papers so effectively was because I would have to go to a lab to write them (I lacked a printer). In the cold, sterile, uninteresting environment of a laboratory, a lot of work could get done. You could still surf the web, which was a problem, but you couldn't start coding anything, you couldn't read anything you didn't bring, you couldn't nap, you couldn't get around to building that Gundum model, etc.
You really need a proper mindset to study, and you need a location to get that mindset. I find it further helps to plan on sleeping in the lab, to prevent any sense of external distractions, such as a warm bed, from creeping into your thoughts. And after sleeping for three hours on a hard wooden window sill, you are usually ready to get serious about what you have to do to get somewhere else.
Hope this helps!
-c