Its posts like these that make slashdot worth visiting. He is right, I feel the Open Source movement, Linux, and its tech patrons in general have started to become what they hate, zealots of the media, Originally we are techs had a common bound in the tech world where being a tech and using Unix was enough. Differences we're not rivals. When Linux came out in the early 90s it turned into a Tech vs Tech (Unix vs M$) Us against Them, etc mentallity.
Now with Linux becomming more mainstream, more people with different views will enter the picture, and the once common ground we shared as techs is littered with political, social, and technical in-fighting. No longer enough to be united by a common platform(Unix), more so - it is no longer enough to be united by even a common OS(Linux), we have distribution in-fighting for the same damn kernel!
Techs want to war with themselves, fine - but like any great society, entropy enters into the picture, and its going to be a shame to watch the great roman empire of Linux topple from barbarians from Seattle while we bicker over stupid crap such as the RMS, ERS, and the GPL., we have more recursive abv.'s then we do sense.
The Linux and in general the hi-tech community has grown in the past decade, its no longer a small group of people, these are not the days of KIBO anymore. If you seek attention in this enviroment, the best way is to attack someone famous., its a old and easy way to make yourself known. we don't need this crap, tho I do sympathize as lets face it, RMS is a old ego-maniacal windbag that even I can barely stand.
Rodney Caston
Zooom!! As it passes over our heads!
on
GEEK Unions?
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· Score: 1
Posted by wonderpop:
Hmm.. once again it seems as if Slashdot user the world over have completely missed the point of the story. Like that's never happened before. Anyway, I suppose just to be fair I should address everything, even the slighly off topic stuff.
First, a political organization of geeks is ludicrous. We are all to solitary and way to self important(myself included) to want to follow the whims of any organization, even if it is dedicated to our benefit. Even if it was just a vote situation with no leaders, I'm sure that some one would squabble over any position of leadership or power, right down to who would master the website.
Second, a union of geeks(no matter how off topic) is even more ludicrous. It wouldn't happen, for the same reasons listed above, especially if we had to pay dues. We'ld end up just like the idiots in congress, or worse, like the teamsters without the flannel and the diesel stink.
So, there is my point. I'm sorry if I stereo-typed, oh well, that's how it goes. This is a forum, after all.
"They teach us to drop fire on people, but they won't let us write f*ck on our airplanes because it's obscene."
Why Do I Have a Bad Feeling About This?
on
GEEK Unions?
·
· Score: 1
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
I can see this being billed as a "techno-militia" and the people murdered by the FBI and NSA.
Just think about this for a minute. They will compare them to the guys at Columbine. They will portray them as unstable, antisocial, and dangerous.
I never realized how divided the camps on Free Software are. I mean I always realized that there existed a gap, but the flames are amazing. Then of course there are those who write comments and have no clue what there are talking about. Maybe I am one of them.
I was expecting something along the lines of "Arise, you cramp-fingered proletariat coders! You have nothing to lose but your licensing agreements! Cast off the chains of the imperialist running dogs at Microsoft and stand blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight of revolution!"
Man, you just don't get Communist movements like you did in the old days anymore...
Alot of games DO just rely on graphics and sound... but that's all games are anyway (even old ones). But I know what you mean though about gameplay. You should try Aliens vs. Predator. That game is better than all of the Alien and Predator movies combined! As for gauntlet, pong, pacman, etc... I never liked moving little blobs into other little blobs vrey much. Its entertaining, for a short while, but nothing I would want to spend more than 10 minutes on. I think new games definately have better gameplay. Don't confuse good memories of your youth with good memories of cheesy video games.
I don't think having a bazaar style development process for game development would improve anything. Buying games is not like buying office 2000. If it doesn't work, or there is a bug that hinders gameplay, you go get your money back, and make sure you never buy software from that company again. I am a major fan of computer games, and I find that if companies don't release perfect games, they have patches available to fix problems within two weeks or so. Take Aliens vs. Predator for example. That game is about as good as it gets. I hadn't experienced any bugs in the game at all. But there was a major outcry from fans because you couldn't cheat and you couldn't save games in the middle of a level. Just a week ago they released a patch which enables all of these features and more, and that was only a few weeks after the game was released. Of course there are exceptions. When Quake 2 was released, it was a useless piece of crap. It took several months of patches to fix it completely. And people will still buy software from Id anyway. But how many years has it taken John Carmack and his team to develop their graphics engine? I doubt they would feel OK about not getting any royalties when someone uses their graphics engine. Of course, PATCHES might come quicker for an open-source game, but I think the actual development would be seriously hindered.
What was that? That obviously wasn't supposed to be funny, or maybe I've just lost my sense of humor. Its seems to me that the only people who will read that are people who will get upset about it. If you don't know or care about FSF or Gnu or GPL, you will read about 3 sentences of this "interview" and say WTF is this sh*t? What is this "article" supposed to be about? This guy is asking to get flamed.
Yes, I am seething with 'jelousy' that none of my fellow Britons had that much time to waste, or even the inclination to do so. I'm ashamed that instead of playing Pac-man for six hours, I was actually earning my wage... --------------------------------------
Hard Hat Mack was great. My #1 favorite Apple II game had to be Elite, followed closely by all most of the Infocom games [god, I wish I had A Mind Forever Voyaging still] and Castle Wolfenstein.
Aside from the Infocom text adventures, Elite was far and away the most rich and engrossing game I ever saw on the Apple II(c). My friend Ed and I played that for days at a time. We were feared throughout the galaxy.
The Infocom game you're thinking of is called Witness. It was probably my first (of many) Infocom games purchased at an early age. I'll never forget it. Though I didnt' really realize it at the time, it was paying homage to the Raymond Chandler style 1930's hardboiled-L.A.-detective novels. Witness pulled off the atmosphere quite well. The butler was actually named Phong. One of my favorite things to type was:
PHONG, SPILL THE BEANS
I don't remember precicely who the murderer was in that game. I think it was probably the character Stiles, though I could be remembering wrong (it's been a while) or it may be one of those where the murderer changes with every new game.
My all-time favorite Infocom game was Zork Zero. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but I thought it was great. I felt such a sense of accomplishment when I finally collected all the Flathead artifacts. But everything Zork-related really came full circle when I saw the end-game for Zork Zero and connected that with the end of Zork III... some pretty amazing stuff.
Thanks for bringing back the memories.
You know, the Apple II emulation scene is alive and well (so I hear) and there are several emulators for Linux.
This is no different than any other achievement. Land speed record, boating record, circumnavigation, it's all about who has the ability to do it first. If this is not a hoax, I say great! If you don't like it, tough! None of you fuckers could do it and apparantly neither can anyone else in your respective countries.
Visit: http://online1.quantum.com/src/tt/storage_quickv iew.htm For details. Pretty cool stuff, can perform Reads and Writes at the same time via, dual heads. The article mentions something about AVHDD, which I assumed was Audio Visual Hard Disk Drive. Anybody ever heard of this? Is it a superset of IDE, SCSI etc? Interesting. MC BoB
Well, actually, I kind of wish my girlfriend was more into computers than she is. If nothing else so she would get as excited as I am about my programming accomplishments.
She understands the basics of computers and uses them frequently but she sees them only as a tool to get stuff done, not as an end in and of themselves or an enjoyable pursuit. I can understand that point of view but I do kinda wish she would get a little more excited about it all.;-)
Good thing we have a lot of other stuff to talk about and enjoy besides computers!
Well, it's is easy enough to circumvent the commercials. What is a shame are the "fast forwad" buttons on the TIVO. I played with an early unit and there was about a 5 sec. lag between hitting FF and it really moving forward. When I pressed an engineer he admitted it was to please the advertisers.
How commercial skip works: The networks send an "insert" signal right before they send the commercial in order to allow the local stations to preempt with a local spot. The commercial skip on most RCA vcr's works by reading the "insert" marker on the transmission (It's inband signaling contained in the vertical pulse, if I recall correctly) and marking that point on the tape. When the commercial is over, the networks broadcast a "return to downlink" signal to force the local station back to the network. The VCR then marks the "return" signal on the tape as well. Upon playback of the tape in an enabled VCR the system fast forwards through the marked sections. IT's a VERY important process becuase that's why the RCA was able to bring the technology to market. They are not eliminating the commerical, simply marking the in and out points. Not eliminating the commercial. I had a long talk with on the engineers on the project back in the early 90's. He said they spent, on average, 5$ per VCR for the technology and 15 million on the legal battles with the major programmers (I'm talking ABC,CBS etc, not C++)
This feature would be realitivly easy to implement in the ReplayTV or TIVO, if you had the source code.
BTW, I spoke with Replay a while back, (Right before Marc A. joined them) and they said they will have a PCI card based system at some point, they just didn't want to 'Confuse' the market too early.
Each time I see it it becomes more unbelievable that anyone could take it seriously. Everything about the film, from the perfect Aryan hero to the commercial style presentation and utterly dimwitted tactics, is a complete piss-take. While I was shocked by the ridiculous amount of gore the first time round, I find it hilarious now.
Oh, and the line "Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today..." is a classic.
Re: Aliens - symbolism or not, it's a fantastic action film, with the powerloader/alien queen face-off standing out as an all time great film moment. --------------------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
Posted by Largo_3:
Its posts like these that make slashdot worth visiting. He is right, I feel the Open Source movement, Linux, and its tech patrons in general have started to become what they hate, zealots of the media, Originally we are techs had a common bound in the tech world where being a tech and using Unix was enough. Differences we're not rivals. When Linux came out in the early 90s it turned into a Tech vs Tech (Unix vs M$) Us against Them, etc mentallity.
Now with Linux becomming more mainstream, more people with different views will enter the picture, and the once common ground we shared as techs is littered with political, social, and technical in-fighting. No longer enough to be united by a common platform(Unix), more so - it is no longer enough to be united by even a common OS(Linux), we have distribution in-fighting for the same damn kernel!
Techs want to war with themselves, fine - but like any great society, entropy enters into the picture, and its going to be a shame to watch the great roman empire of Linux topple from barbarians from Seattle while we bicker over stupid crap such as the RMS, ERS, and the GPL., we have more recursive abv.'s then we do sense.
The Linux and in general the hi-tech community has grown in the past decade, its no longer a small group of people, these are not the days of KIBO anymore. If you seek attention in this enviroment, the best way is to attack someone famous., its a old and easy way to make yourself known. we don't need this crap, tho I do sympathize as lets face it, RMS is a old ego-maniacal windbag that even I can barely stand.
Rodney Caston
Posted by wonderpop:
Hmm.. once again it seems as if Slashdot user the world over have completely missed the point of the story. Like that's never happened before. Anyway, I suppose just to be fair I should address everything, even the slighly off topic stuff.
First, a political organization of geeks is ludicrous. We are all to solitary and way to self important(myself included) to want to follow the whims of any organization, even if it is dedicated to our benefit. Even if it was just a vote situation with no leaders, I'm sure that some one would squabble over any position of leadership or power, right down to who would master the website.
Second, a union of geeks(no matter how off topic) is even more ludicrous. It wouldn't happen, for the same reasons listed above, especially if we had to pay dues. We'ld end up just like the idiots in congress, or worse, like the teamsters without the flannel and the diesel stink.
So, there is my point. I'm sorry if I stereo-typed, oh well, that's how it goes. This is a forum, after all.
"They teach us to drop fire on people, but they won't let us write f*ck on our airplanes because it's obscene."
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
I can see this being billed as a "techno-militia" and the people murdered by the FBI and NSA.
Just think about this for a minute. They will compare them to the guys at Columbine. They will portray them as unstable, antisocial, and dangerous.
This WILL happen if geeks unite.
LK
Posted by Neothi:
I never realized how divided the camps on Free Software are. I mean I always realized that there existed a gap, but the flames are amazing. Then of course there are those who write comments and have no clue what there are talking about. Maybe I am one of them.
And no I don't have anything constructive to say.
Posted by generic kewl tech reference:
I was expecting something along the lines of "Arise, you cramp-fingered proletariat coders! You have nothing to lose but your licensing agreements! Cast off the chains of the imperialist running dogs at Microsoft and stand blinking in the unfamiliar sunlight of revolution!"
Man, you just don't get Communist movements like you did in the old days anymore...
Posted by _DogShu_:
Alot of games DO just rely on graphics and sound... but that's all games are anyway (even old ones).
But I know what you mean though about gameplay. You should try Aliens vs. Predator. That game is better than all of the Alien and Predator movies combined!
As for gauntlet, pong, pacman, etc... I never liked moving little blobs into other little blobs vrey much. Its entertaining, for a short while, but nothing I would want to spend more than 10 minutes on. I think new games definately have better gameplay. Don't confuse good memories of your youth with good memories of cheesy video games.
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
>The UK hold the land speed record at the moment, BTW.
Fine, that's something for them to be proud of.
My point still stands.
LK
Posted by Moritz Moeller - Herrmann:
And if you dan't have sax or SuSE:
It is GPLed. Thanks SuSE!
Posted by _DogShu_:
FreeBSD won static, and Linux won CGI.
Posted by _DogShu_:
I don't think having a bazaar style development process for game development would improve anything.
Buying games is not like buying office 2000. If it doesn't work, or there is a bug that hinders gameplay, you go get your money back, and make sure you never buy software from that company again.
I am a major fan of computer games, and I find that if companies don't release perfect games, they have patches available to fix problems within two weeks or so.
Take Aliens vs. Predator for example. That game is about as good as it gets. I hadn't experienced any bugs in the game at all. But there was a major outcry from fans because you couldn't cheat and you couldn't save games in the middle of a level. Just a week ago they released a patch which enables all of these features and more, and that was only a few weeks after the game was released.
Of course there are exceptions. When Quake 2 was released, it was a useless piece of crap. It took several months of patches to fix it completely. And people will still buy software from Id anyway.
But how many years has it taken John Carmack and his team to develop their graphics engine? I doubt they would feel OK about not getting any royalties when someone uses their graphics engine.
Of course, PATCHES might come quicker for an open-source game, but I think the actual development would be seriously hindered.
Posted by _DogShu_:
What was that? That obviously wasn't supposed to be funny, or maybe I've just lost my sense of humor.
Its seems to me that the only people who will read that are people who will get upset about it.
If you don't know or care about FSF or Gnu or GPL, you will read about 3 sentences of this "interview" and say WTF is this sh*t? What is this "article" supposed to be about? This guy is asking to get flamed.
Posted by _DogShu_:
They were developed on my old 486sx-33!
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
Now what OS was used to serve this?
Mirrors?
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
Posted by Faithless the Wonder Boy:
Smartarse reply:
In the case of those tools, the moving part is your arm.
--------------------------------------
Posted by Faithless the Wonder Boy:
Yes, I am seething with 'jelousy' that none of my fellow Britons had that much time to waste, or even the inclination to do so. I'm ashamed that instead of playing Pac-man for six hours, I was actually earning my wage...
--------------------------------------
Posted by Moritz Moeller - Herrmann:
I agree. It installs easily and works perfectly with mutt. I can really recommend it!
Anyone remember Hard Hat Mack?
Hard Hat Mack was great. My #1 favorite Apple II game had to be Elite, followed closely by all most of the Infocom games [god, I wish I had A Mind Forever Voyaging still] and Castle Wolfenstein.
Aside from the Infocom text adventures, Elite was far and away the most rich and engrossing game I ever saw on the Apple II(c). My friend Ed and I played that for days at a time. We were feared throughout the galaxy.
The Infocom game you're thinking of is called Witness. It was probably my first (of many) Infocom games purchased at an early age. I'll never forget it. Though I didnt' really realize it at the time, it was paying homage to the Raymond Chandler style 1930's hardboiled-L.A.-detective novels. Witness pulled off the atmosphere quite well. The butler was actually named Phong. One of my favorite things to type was:
PHONG, SPILL THE BEANS
I don't remember precicely who the murderer was in that game. I think it was probably the character Stiles, though I could be remembering wrong (it's been a while) or it may be one of those where the murderer changes with every new game.
My all-time favorite Infocom game was Zork Zero. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but I thought it was great. I felt such a sense of accomplishment when I finally collected all the Flathead artifacts. But everything Zork-related really came full circle when I saw the end-game for Zork Zero and connected that with the end of Zork III... some pretty amazing stuff.
Thanks for bringing back the memories.
You know, the Apple II emulation scene is alive and well (so I hear) and there are several emulators for Linux.
Posted by gamesgod:
Don't get me wrong, I pretty much suck at Pacman. But what to so damn long for someone to get this record!
Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:
This is no different than any other achievement. Land speed record, boating record, circumnavigation, it's all about who has the ability to do it first. If this is not a hoax, I say great! If you don't like it, tough! None of you fuckers could do it and apparantly neither can anyone else in your respective countries.
LK
Posted by MC BoB:
v iew.htm
Visit:
http://online1.quantum.com/src/tt/storage_quick
For details.
Pretty cool stuff, can perform Reads and Writes at the same time via, dual heads. The article mentions something about AVHDD, which I assumed was Audio Visual Hard Disk Drive. Anybody ever heard of this? Is it a superset of IDE, SCSI etc?
Interesting.
MC BoB
Well, actually, I kind of wish my girlfriend was more into computers than she is. If nothing else so she would get as excited as I am about my programming accomplishments.
She understands the basics of computers and uses them frequently but she sees them only as a tool to get stuff done, not as an end in and of themselves or an enjoyable pursuit. I can understand that point of view but I do kinda wish she would get a little more excited about it all. ;-)
Good thing we have a lot of other stuff to talk about and enjoy besides computers!
Posted by Vik Olliver (at home):
:v)
Once you have computer control of your VCR, it's simple to cut out the adds: Hash the images and just don't play anything that has been shown before.
I guess it would work with a soundtrack too.
Vik
Posted by MC BoB:
It's already there, and most RCA VCR's will Fast Forward based on it's presence.
MC BoB
Posted by MC BoB:
Well, it's is easy enough to circumvent the commercials. What is a shame are the "fast forwad" buttons on the TIVO. I played with an early unit and there was about a 5 sec. lag between hitting FF and it really moving forward. When I pressed an engineer he admitted it was to please the advertisers.
How commercial skip works:
The networks send an "insert" signal right before they send the commercial in order to allow the local stations to preempt with a local spot. The commercial skip on most RCA vcr's works by reading the "insert" marker on the transmission (It's inband signaling contained in the vertical pulse, if I recall correctly) and marking that point on the tape. When the commercial is over, the networks broadcast a "return to downlink" signal to force the local station back to the network. The VCR then marks the "return" signal on the tape as well. Upon playback of the tape in an enabled VCR the system fast forwards through the marked sections. IT's a VERY important process becuase that's why the RCA was able to bring the technology to market. They are not eliminating the commerical, simply marking the in and out points. Not eliminating the commercial.
I had a long talk with on the engineers on the project back in the early 90's. He said they spent, on average, 5$ per VCR for the technology and 15 million on the legal battles with the major programmers (I'm talking ABC,CBS etc, not C++)
This feature would be realitivly easy to implement in the ReplayTV or TIVO, if you had the source code.
BTW, I spoke with Replay a while back, (Right before Marc A. joined them) and they said they will have a PCI card based system at some point, they just didn't want to 'Confuse' the market too early.
Posted by Faithless the Wonder Boy:
...one of the greatest satires ever.
Each time I see it it becomes more unbelievable that anyone could take it seriously. Everything about the film, from the perfect Aryan hero to the commercial style presentation and utterly dimwitted tactics, is a complete piss-take. While I was shocked by the ridiculous amount of gore the first time round, I find it hilarious now.
Oh, and the line "Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today..." is a classic.
Re: Aliens - symbolism or not, it's a fantastic action film, with the powerloader/alien queen face-off standing out as an all time great film moment.
--------------------------------------