I really enjoyed reading through the list, and esp. #50 was quite moving. Wasn't there a couple who celebrated a quake II / III based real life wedding in VR? I seem to recall a/. story from a couple of years back, that would have fit nicely on that list, too ("you may now frag the bride";-)
I'd flag this as off topic, but that's the worst, adblock plus-evading website I've come across in a while. If that's the destiny of the web, then thanks, but no thanks, from me.
Um, the Amiga system comes to mind here, too, with the blitter and copper being separate cpu-like entities which could be programmed out of band alongside the CPU; same goes for the C64 and its 1541 floppy "co-processor", if I recall correctly;-)
I remember one story from my early sysadmin days at the local uni. On the normal LAT terminals, hitting the break key (or it might have been F5, not sure) would get you into the terminal's command line mode, enabling you to connect to another machine and opening a new LAT session.
Well, I had just been promoted to sysadmin and was sitting at the console terminal of a VAX running Ultrix that many of our students used for their C programming coursework (remember the time they taught decent languages in IT?;-), maybe 20-30 people were working on the machine during that time of day.
I needed to switch to another machine for checking something, and being totally oblivious to the fact that I sat at the server console, hit the break key, only to find out this would drop you to the boot prompt of the VAXen's firmware. Needless to say, my boss and I instantly smelled the burning of torches and heard the trampling of angry feet from the hall next door where the classroom was, and it took less than 15 seconds before our admin room door was being pulled open.
My boss had the wits to shout "damn students, they've brought down math5 again!!!!" which probably saved us from an ugly, untimely death as the mob retreated instantly to escape any blaming from an angry sysadmin, but boy, that moment had me scared quite a bit!
This happened a while back in Germany when a bloke who shot a dozen people at some school in Erfurt was found to have played Counterstrike and other FPS'es.
I'd like to see a title make use of four Wiimote's for martial arts training (Katas in Karate come to mind, for instance). I don't own a Wii, so I don't know if four wiimotes could be connected to the Wii, but it would also make an interesting environment for beat'em ups and so on.
Conversely, if I went back home at 6 sharp (because I had the ability to carry my work home) and still had some pending work for the day, I would never be able to truly unwind at home until the pending work has been completed. A beer tastes way better when you're tired and satisfied.
Nothing beats a good physical workout after a day in the office, be it cycling home from work, Karate or even sex (I know, this is/.;-)
I wish somebody would port Amiga's CygnusEd over to Linux. While I'm an emacs user when working on Unix systems, I still recall fondly the ease of use, speed and straight-forwardness of working with CygnusEd on my trusty A500. It just took a bit of AREXX / VLT magic to turn this thing into a full blown email client, just as an example.
Ok, the softscrolling might be hard to do without the custom chips on Linux system, but I guess I could do without them for now;-)
While rfactor (a racing simulation) was released last year by ISI games, this year has seen some very good mods released for this simracing platform, like the ETCC03 mod (European touring cars) and lately the brilliant F1 1979 mod, bringing all cars of the F1 1979 season to rfactor at no additional cost. Also, a great "current" F1 season has been created by the community, so if you're into racing sims, this is the one title to check out.
"Get a grip. In the seventies and eighties there were terrorists from all over the place, Germans, Italians, Japanese, Irish, Spanish, Arabic, Amercian (from both continents), Arabic, Indian, Pakistani, Israeli as well as Palestinian. There was none of drive to instill the public with a ever pervasive sence of fear."
There wasn't a need to back then because we were all told to be mightily afraid of... the Soviets. Once they were gone, it was only a matter of time before our praised leaders would come up with something else for us to be afraid of.
"One of the nice beneits for F1 racing is that technology trickles down into mainstream cars after a decade or so."
Modern roadcars are already more advanced in the driving aids department than F1 cars, as an effort to increase the effect of the driver steering the car, all driving aids except for traction control were banned a while ago. ESP, EPM, whatever, aren't available in F1 and rightly so, I think, so I would not expect too big an influx from F1 into roadcar technology when it comes to electronics and / or software.
Don't forget that engine manufacturers can test engines over a complete race distance without ever leaving their labs, simply by mounting the engine in a controlled environment and then "replaying" a data recording of say, a race at Monza (usually a race with high engine attrition) several times. Any flaws in the ECU should become apparent rather quickly.
both movies are rather contemporary, but I just loved both Val Kilmer as "Chris Knight" in "Real Genius" and Christopher Lloyed as Emmett Brown from "Back to the future".
I wish I had some mod points right now. Your argument is exactly the reason why I still prefer nethack over today's role playing games: even the most stunning graphics will get repetitive after a while, while there's always something new to be discovered in NetHack. Nothing beats having two Baby Dragons flying from your pack and reading this message: "it says something like "daddy";)
"Agriculture hasn't grown as a linear line, instead we find "kinks" in it where technology increases the productivity faster than population growth"
Population growth (esp. our exponential style) is fuelled and limited by food availability. A population cannot increase exponentially if the food isn't there (turning biomass into human biomass, to put it simply), so in order for a population to grow exponentially, food availability has to grow in the same manner (people aren't made of moonbeams or dust, they're made of food just like the rest of creation).
No one goes into farming to produce less food, so as long as we (as a culture) increase our food production year after year, we'll see a corresponding response in population growth, year after year. Now what would happen if we kept the food production *constant* for a couple of years? Interesting thought...
A good friend of mine shelled out around 1,000 DM for a state of the art zx81 with a real keyboard and 16kb RAM which we used to hack to death, but the first computer I owned personally was a Dragon 64. It's strange nobody else seems to have mentioned it yet, as it used to be rather popular and even ran a subset of OS9 in a mere 64 kbytes (yep, multi-user / multitasking, but also plain text passwords in/etc/passwd;)) from two floppies.
I learned a lot on that machine as not too much software was available at the time, and the little thingy still sits on the shelf in my room. Memories!
Play a game of console-version nethack... everyone will think you're busy hacking away on the mainframe! During my days at university, I actually overheard a conversation between a student and a not-very-computer-literate prof where the student claimed to be working on some group theory related program - whilst playing nethack!
This phenomenon isn't only limited to online / offline role playing games, but has found its manifestation in the simracing world as well: rFactor is an open racing simulation where the developers (ISI of F1 Challenge fame) actively encourage and support community mod development and involvement, be it in the creation of new cars or racing tracks.
While rFactor hasn't yet taken the simracing world by storm, it's a very interesting contender, given the "moddability" and mod track record of previous ISI titles.
Usual "Ishmael" plug: Don't mistake what *one culture* is currently doing to the planet with what an entire species is doing, especially if we've only been doing it for 10,000 years or so until it has reached a global scale. That's only a tiny fraction of the species' entire existance, and it will naturally come to a full stop once we run out of resources. So go pick up a copy of "Ishmael" by Dan Quinn and find out what others think about this "the entire human species is evil / a virus / simply fulfilling its destiny" fad that mother Culture would love to have you believe.
Check out this site for more information if you're interested, and this essay for a good overview on Dan's ideas.
Honestly, knowing how greedy we as a species can be, I don't see any of that happening.
Oops, that triggered my soapbox mode;-)
Greedy as a culture, yes. Greedy as a species, definitely no. Humans have lived sustainably in many places on earth for millions of years before the rise of our culture 10,000 years ago, fueled by the "blessing" of inventing totalitarian agriculture and waging war on the rest of creation.
This way of living as a concept is unique in our culture and its most dangerous dogma, that man can do whatever he damn well likes without having to fear any repercussions or ill effects, because we are separate from the rest of the living community and not bound by the same laws (the laws of ecology, that is).
This site has some very interesting information on the subject (short form: read the excellent novel "Ishmael" by Dan Quinn). If we'd have to change an entire species in order to secure our long term survival, I'd share your pessimism, but thankfully it's only a culture and its vision that needs changing.
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I really enjoyed reading through the list, and esp. #50 was quite moving. Wasn't there a couple who celebrated a quake II / III based real life wedding in VR? I seem to recall a /. story from a couple of years back, that would have fit nicely on that list, too ("you may now frag the bride" ;-)
I'd flag this as off topic, but that's the worst, adblock plus-evading website I've come across in a while. If that's the destiny of the web, then thanks, but no thanks, from me.
Um, the Amiga system comes to mind here, too, with the blitter and copper being separate cpu-like entities which could be programmed out of band alongside the CPU; same goes for the C64 and its 1541 floppy "co-processor", if I recall correctly ;-)
Well, I had just been promoted to sysadmin and was sitting at the console terminal of a VAX running Ultrix that many of our students used for their C programming coursework (remember the time they taught decent languages in IT? ;-), maybe 20-30 people were working on the machine during that time of day.
I needed to switch to another machine for checking something, and being totally oblivious to the fact that I sat at the server console, hit the break key, only to find out this would drop you to the boot prompt of the VAXen's firmware. Needless to say, my boss and I instantly smelled the burning of torches and heard the trampling of angry feet from the hall next door where the classroom was, and it took less than 15 seconds before our admin room door was being pulled open.
My boss had the wits to shout "damn students, they've brought down math5 again!!!!" which probably saved us from an ugly, untimely death as the mob retreated instantly to escape any blaming from an angry sysadmin, but boy, that moment had me scared quite a bit!
This happened a while back in Germany when a bloke who shot a dozen people at some school in Erfurt was found to have played Counterstrike and other FPS'es.
I'd like to see a title make use of four Wiimote's for martial arts training (Katas in Karate come to mind, for instance). I don't own a Wii, so I don't know if four wiimotes could be connected to the Wii, but it would also make an interesting environment for beat'em ups and so on.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail ;-)
what a fitting nick you have to make a statement like that ;-)
Anyway, cheers, you owe me a new keyboard!
Nothing beats a good physical workout after a day in the office, be it cycling home from work, Karate or even sex (I know, this is /. ;-)
I wish somebody would port Amiga's CygnusEd over to Linux. While I'm an emacs user when working on Unix systems, I still recall fondly the ease of use, speed and straight-forwardness of working with CygnusEd on my trusty A500. It just took a bit of AREXX / VLT magic to turn this thing into a full blown email client, just as an example.
;-)
Ok, the softscrolling might be hard to do without the custom chips on Linux system, but I guess I could do without them for now
While rfactor (a racing simulation) was released last year by ISI games, this year has seen some very good mods released for this simracing platform, like the ETCC03 mod (European touring cars) and lately the brilliant F1 1979 mod, bringing all cars of the F1 1979 season to rfactor at no additional cost. Also, a great "current" F1 season has been created by the community, so if you're into racing sims, this is the one title to check out.
More about rfactor can be seen here: http://www.rfactor.net/
All the best, uwe
There wasn't a need to back then because we were all told to be mightily afraid of... the Soviets. Once they were gone, it was only a matter of time before our praised leaders would come up with something else for us to be afraid of.
"One of the nice beneits for F1 racing is that technology trickles down into mainstream cars after a decade or so."
Modern roadcars are already more advanced in the driving aids department than F1 cars, as an effort to increase the effect of the driver steering the car, all driving aids except for traction control were banned a while ago. ESP, EPM, whatever, aren't available in F1 and rightly so, I think, so I would not expect too big an influx from F1 into roadcar technology when it comes to electronics and / or software.
Don't forget that engine manufacturers can test engines over a complete race distance without ever leaving their labs, simply by mounting the engine in a controlled environment and then "replaying" a data recording of say, a race at Monza (usually a race with high engine attrition) several times. Any flaws in the ECU should become apparent rather quickly.
thanks for the correction, of course you're correct.
both movies are rather contemporary, but I just loved both Val Kilmer as "Chris Knight" in "Real Genius" and Christopher Lloyed as Emmett Brown from "Back to the future".
dammit, no mod points and you're at +5 already. Thanks for the laff!
I wish I had some mod points right now. Your argument is exactly the reason why I still prefer nethack over today's role playing games: even the most stunning graphics will get repetitive after a while, while there's always something new to be discovered in NetHack. Nothing beats having two Baby Dragons flying from your pack and reading this message: "it says something like "daddy" ;)
cheers, uwe
"Agriculture hasn't grown as a linear line, instead we find "kinks" in it where technology increases the productivity faster than population growth"
Population growth (esp. our exponential style) is fuelled and limited by food availability. A population cannot increase exponentially if the food isn't there (turning biomass into human biomass, to put it simply), so in order for a population to grow exponentially, food availability has to grow in the same manner (people aren't made of moonbeams or dust, they're made of food just like the rest of creation).
No one goes into farming to produce less food, so as long as we (as a culture) increase our food production year after year, we'll see a corresponding response in population growth, year after year. Now what would happen if we kept the food production *constant* for a couple of years? Interesting thought...
A good friend of mine shelled out around 1,000 DM for a state of the art zx81 with a real keyboard and 16kb RAM which we used to hack to death, but the first computer I owned personally was a Dragon 64. It's strange nobody else seems to have mentioned it yet, as it used to be rather popular and even ran a subset of OS9 in a mere 64 kbytes (yep, multi-user / multitasking, but also plain text passwords in /etc/passwd ;)) from two floppies.
I learned a lot on that machine as not too much software was available at the time, and the little thingy still sits on the shelf in my room. Memories!
Play a game of console-version nethack... everyone will think you're busy hacking away on the mainframe! During my days at university, I actually overheard a conversation between a student and a not-very-computer-literate prof where the student claimed to be working on some group theory related program - whilst playing nethack!
While rFactor hasn't yet taken the simracing world by storm, it's a very interesting contender, given the "moddability" and mod track record of previous ISI titles.
In one sentence, we are cannibals.
Usual "Ishmael" plug: Don't mistake what *one culture* is currently doing to the planet with what an entire species is doing, especially if we've only been doing it for 10,000 years or so until it has reached a global scale. That's only a tiny fraction of the species' entire existance, and it will naturally come to a full stop once we run out of resources. So go pick up a copy of "Ishmael" by Dan Quinn and find out what others think about this "the entire human species is evil / a virus / simply fulfilling its destiny" fad that mother Culture would love to have you believe.
Check out this site for more information if you're interested, and this essay for a good overview on Dan's ideas.
Wow, great argument! I am deeply impressed. Come back when you've actually read some of the stuff, then there might be a basis for a sound discussion.
Oops, that triggered my soapbox mode ;-)
Greedy as a culture, yes. Greedy as a species, definitely no. Humans have lived sustainably in many places on earth for millions of years before the rise of our culture 10,000 years ago, fueled by the "blessing" of inventing totalitarian agriculture and waging war on the rest of creation.
This way of living as a concept is unique in our culture and its most dangerous dogma, that man can do whatever he damn well likes without having to fear any repercussions or ill effects, because we are separate from the rest of the living community and not bound by the same laws (the laws of ecology, that is).
This site has some very interesting information on the subject (short form: read the excellent novel "Ishmael" by Dan Quinn). If we'd have to change an entire species in order to secure our long term survival, I'd share your pessimism, but thankfully it's only a culture and its vision that needs changing.