BBS-style games still live and grow on the net...
on
Nethack 3.4.0
·
· Score: 2
Starship Traders is normally thought of as a web mode game, but it has its history in Czarwars, a BBS door game. It still supports telnet on port 23 for the 'Continuum of Chaos' persistent-universe game at StarshipTraders.com.
Yep... an earlier study found that people who slept more than 16 hours per day were over 80 times as likely as the control group to die of Sleeping Sickness!:)
...Since MS is now prohibited from disallowing system vendors from including other OS's for dual-boot on their Windows boxen.
If the vendors don't include free Linux images for dual boot on their computers, that the user can allow to remain or delete when they first start the box, I'll be suspicious. I'll still suspect that MS is intimidating vendors if some don't opt to bundle in Linux.
My kids love the Sims... and they are something of warmongers. Yeah, they would play Sim War.
But if I were making a strategy game, it'd be exactly like this. I wrote it precisely because I thought the Trade Wars scenario would make an excellent strategy game -- and no game of that genre worked for me. It is very much a strategy game, although everything is set in a rather abstract scenario.
Traditionally, SST has been played through a telnet client or a web browser, but a graphical client is in the works and is available for Linux and Windows... I don't know whether it will ever replace the web interface or the telnet interface (which I still prefer).
Don't confuse a large number of 'logical' machines with physical ones. If a Pentium III had the ability in hardware to subdivide itself into thousands of functionally identical logical processors you would be able to run thousands of Linux instances on that one CPU. You probably see the problem that you would immediately encounter: each Linux instance would have only a tiny fraction of a percent of the PIII's processing power. Yes, you'll have thousands of distinct running instances of Linux, but they will be very slow when several of them tries to do something cpu-intensive at the same time.
A mainframe CPU is not dramatically faster than (any other) microprocessor anymore. In recent years I've only been able to indirectly compare the benchmarks; it seems that IBM isn't interested in submitting it's mainframes for industry standard benchmarking these days. Bottom line: a 12-CPU mainframe is still a 12-CPU box, even if running 1,000 or 10,000 instances of Linux.
The mainframe's value is no longer in being a honker of a computer. Reliability, the ability to run existing OLTP workloads, and manageability are the big reasons people still buy mainframes.
Yes, indeed it is having problems.... My journal entry was made about 24 hours ago. It was gone this morning so we've had maybe over a day of problems now.
Give us an update, CT!
Oh, and ignore the 'game client' link below -- if it is still there. Yesterday it pointed to my journal entry.
After all, how do you tell a 'good' virus from a bad one? It might be harder than you realize, if you're a virus scanner, for example. There is an article here that deals with some of the other issues that 'good' viruses raise.
...In the single Continuum of Chaos game. Seriously, the game is played in a universe consisting of one million sectors, each of which corresponds to a web page -- with multiple sub-pages. Google and the other engines can't really index it because it requires a log in. Further, even if they did log in they would run out of Antimatter long before they got through even a tiny fraction of the pages.
heheh! Not only is it a fine remote administration feature, but it's also pretty slick the way machines upgraded in this way advertise their new status to everyone with a webserver on port 80.
I copied my favicon.ico (a penguin icon for MS IE and Konqueror to save along with a bookmark) as default.ida. Now, whenever I get probed, I send out a little portrait of Tux.;)
Ok, I know that doesn't accomplish anything useful, but it does cut down on the 404's in the logfile at Librenix!
Meybe all that research doesn't apply to slow moving strategy games that resemble MUD's more than doom. Still, I've learned how to run a scam, and sometimes I manage to avoid one.;)
The criticisms of this review are valid but could benefit from a different perspective. I started writing a networked, 3D game client in the spring, my first such attempt. If I had discovered this book a month earlier, it would probably have saved me a week or more. It did save me some time. I could find no other single source that covered what I wanted to do.
A short overview and a brief technical introduction to virtually every technology I have used so far is in this book. When you are struggling with your first 3d game client, this book offers valuable perspective that can save you from wasting a lot of time just trying to figure out what to use. If you are attempting, as I was, to write your first 3d, networked game client, consider this: is a week (or two or three) of your time worth 50 bux? (I think that's what I paid) If so, take a look at the book.
If you are an experienced programmer in most of the technologies covered in this book and already have a good perspective on each of them and what they are useful for, don't buy it.
If you fall in between the extremes above and think that the book isn't for you, wait for something else or dig up the info for yourself -- as I mostly did.;) But, in the absence of much competition, this book may have some value if you want to write code -- and save a little time -- right now.
(The client I'm working on is not yet released in source form but will be when I get it cleaned up a bit. It is here and is used to play the web game Starshiptraders which has historically been playable only with a browser or telnet.)
With Solaris licenses. I'm not sure you get a media kit though -- it'll probably cost you another $us60 or so, if you need the actual CD's. Sun traditionally includes an unlimited-user license for Solaris with every box they sell. The price is $us995.
At least a copy of sites are using this GPL'd copying policy in an attempt to make the web a bit less hospitable to Smart Tags. The idea is to disallow reproduction privileges for purposes of modifying document content by adding links. Some background is here.
"For example, radio and television were unknown at the time the First Amendment was drafted. But that amendment clearly means that Congress shall not muck about with free speech on radio or television, just as they shall not in newspapers..."
I agree with you here. However, I'm not sure it illustrates your point. The fact that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on free speech and that that logically applies to all media doesn't mean that another prohibition should be dropped when new methods arise. (I realize you didn't say that; I'm just making the point that both are restrictions on government authority and that there should be no extension of that autority by default.)
I think your argument supports the principle of 'general reasonableness', by which I mean reasonable to a substantial majority of the people. I would argue that modern, high-tech surveillance methods are not both understood and expected by most people, thereby making them unreasonable by the intent of the Fourth Amendment.
The real intent of my post was to make the point that if such searches can be quietly implemented before their widespread public consideration, then they will seem much more 'reasonable' after they become common. Perhaps if we quickly implemented new punishment methods, they would no longer be 'unusual punishments' by the time the public considered them an issue. Neat trick, if you can get away with it. Unfortunately, I was sloppy in making that point in my original post.
If we incrementally allow more and more intrusive searches, eventually they will come to seem more 'reasonable'.
None of these high-tech methods of spying on citizens were available at the time the Bill of Rights were written. That, alone, should be enough to disqualify them as unreasonable since they were certainly not considered 'reasonable' -- or even considered at all -- in the language of the document.
Yep... and if they don't care to shut us up, what's the problem? I can find whatever I want on the web no matter how big the conglomerates get. Further, I can publish anything I want and people who know how to look can find it.
But if you're gonna play the business game, you gotta make money. I guess that bothers an 'online journalist' like Katz more than it bothers me.;)
Though it might more accurately be described as a GCC/Linux PPC vs. x86 benchmark, it's still interesting to those of us who are committed to GCC and Linux. Those two items, and their spawn, suck up almost all the (used) cycles on all of my machines.
Slashdot Mirror
Starship Traders is normally thought of as a web mode game, but it has its history in Czarwars, a BBS door game. It still supports telnet on port 23 for the 'Continuum of Chaos' persistent-universe game at StarshipTraders.com.
Yep... an earlier study found that people who slept more than 16 hours per day were over 80 times as likely as the control group to die of Sleeping Sickness! :)
...Since MS is now prohibited from disallowing system vendors from including other OS's for dual-boot on their Windows boxen.
If the vendors don't include free Linux images for dual boot on their computers, that the user can allow to remain or delete when they first start the box, I'll be suspicious. I'll still suspect that MS is intimidating vendors if some don't opt to bundle in Linux.
My kids love the Sims... and they are something of warmongers. Yeah, they would play Sim War.
But if I were making a strategy game, it'd be exactly like this. I wrote it precisely because I thought the Trade Wars scenario would make an excellent strategy game -- and no game of that genre worked for me. It is very much a strategy game, although everything is set in a rather abstract scenario.
Traditionally, SST has been played through a telnet client or a web browser, but a graphical client is in the works and is available for Linux and Windows... I don't know whether it will ever replace the web interface or the telnet interface (which I still prefer).
Don't confuse a large number of 'logical' machines with physical ones. If a Pentium III had the ability in hardware to subdivide itself into thousands of functionally identical logical processors you would be able to run thousands of Linux instances on that one CPU. You probably see the problem that you would immediately encounter: each Linux instance would have only a tiny fraction of a percent of the PIII's processing power. Yes, you'll have thousands of distinct running instances of Linux, but they will be very slow when several of them tries to do something cpu-intensive at the same time.
A mainframe CPU is not dramatically faster than (any other) microprocessor anymore. In recent years I've only been able to indirectly compare the benchmarks; it seems that IBM isn't interested in submitting it's mainframes for industry standard benchmarking these days. Bottom line: a 12-CPU mainframe is still a 12-CPU box, even if running 1,000 or 10,000 instances of Linux.
The mainframe's value is no longer in being a honker of a computer. Reliability, the ability to run existing OLTP workloads, and manageability are the big reasons people still buy mainframes.
Move along now; there's no magic going on here.
Yes, indeed it is having problems.... My journal entry was made about 24 hours ago. It was gone this morning so we've had maybe over a day of problems now.
Give us an update, CT!
Oh, and ignore the 'game client' link below -- if it is still there. Yesterday it pointed to my journal entry.
...because: "'The importance of this discovery cannot be underestimated,' Kawashima told The Observer."
;)
After all, Prof. Kawashima is quoted as such right in the article.
"And lastly, my beliefs is that 4-5 cells do not constitue life"
Hmmm... Perhaps you meant 'a human life' rather than just 'life'? After all, a live cell is a live cell.
But, just out of curiousity, exactly when does a unique and complete human life begin?
After all, how do you tell a 'good' virus from a bad one? It might be harder than you realize, if you're a virus scanner, for example. There is an article here that deals with some of the other issues that 'good' viruses raise.
...and I will attempt to prove it here.
[Hold on, the phone rang... I'll get right back to you...]
...In the single Continuum of Chaos game. Seriously, the game is played in a universe consisting of one million sectors, each of which corresponds to a web page -- with multiple sub-pages. Google and the other engines can't really index it because it requires a log in. Further, even if they did log in they would run out of Antimatter long before they got through even a tiny fraction of the pages.
heheh! Not only is it a fine remote administration feature, but it's also pretty slick the way machines upgraded in this way advertise their new status to everyone with a webserver on port 80.
I copied my favicon.ico (a penguin icon for MS IE and Konqueror to save along with a bookmark) as default.ida. Now, whenever I get probed, I send out a little portrait of Tux. ;)
Ok, I know that doesn't accomplish anything useful, but it does cut down on the 404's in the logfile at Librenix!
Meybe all that research doesn't apply to slow moving strategy games that resemble MUD's more than doom. Still, I've learned how to run a scam, and sometimes I manage to avoid one. ;)
Hmmm... Ok, so maybe this is a small step in the right direction, but a step nonetheless.
The criticisms of this review are valid but could benefit from a different perspective. I started writing a networked, 3D game client in the spring, my first such attempt. If I had discovered this book a month earlier, it would probably have saved me a week or more. It did save me some time. I could find no other single source that covered what I wanted to do.
;) But, in the absence of much competition, this book may have some value if you want to write code -- and save a little time -- right now.
A short overview and a brief technical introduction to virtually every technology I have used so far is in this book. When you are struggling with your first 3d game client, this book offers valuable perspective that can save you from wasting a lot of time just trying to figure out what to use. If you are attempting, as I was, to write your first 3d, networked game client, consider this: is a week (or two or three) of your time worth 50 bux? (I think that's what I paid) If so, take a look at the book.
If you are an experienced programmer in most of the technologies covered in this book and already have a good perspective on each of them and what they are useful for, don't buy it.
If you fall in between the extremes above and think that the book isn't for you, wait for something else or dig up the info for yourself -- as I mostly did.
(The client I'm working on is not yet released in source form but will be when I get it cleaned up a bit. It is here and is used to play the web game Starshiptraders which has historically been playable only with a browser or telnet.)
With Solaris licenses. I'm not sure you get a media kit though -- it'll probably cost you another $us60 or so, if you need the actual CD's. Sun traditionally includes an unlimited-user license for Solaris with every box they sell. The price is $us995.
My preview vision isn't working... "at least a couple of sites are using this..." it should say.
At least a copy of sites are using this GPL'd copying policy in an attempt to make the web a bit less hospitable to Smart Tags. The idea is to disallow reproduction privileges for purposes of modifying document content by adding links. Some background is here.
...immediately after I finally figured out how to make MySQL return a data set in random order!
"For example, radio and television were unknown at the time the First Amendment was drafted. But that amendment clearly means that Congress shall not muck about with free speech on radio or television, just as they shall not in newspapers..."
I agree with you here. However, I'm not sure it illustrates your point. The fact that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on free speech and that that logically applies to all media doesn't mean that another prohibition should be dropped when new methods arise. (I realize you didn't say that; I'm just making the point that both are restrictions on government authority and that there should be no extension of that autority by default.)
I think your argument supports the principle of 'general reasonableness', by which I mean reasonable to a substantial majority of the people. I would argue that modern, high-tech surveillance methods are not both understood and expected by most people, thereby making them unreasonable by the intent of the Fourth Amendment.
The real intent of my post was to make the point that if such searches can be quietly implemented before their widespread public consideration, then they will seem much more 'reasonable' after they become common. Perhaps if we quickly implemented new punishment methods, they would no longer be 'unusual punishments' by the time the public considered them an issue. Neat trick, if you can get away with it. Unfortunately, I was sloppy in making that point in my original post.
If we incrementally allow more and more intrusive searches, eventually they will come to seem more 'reasonable'.
None of these high-tech methods of spying on citizens were available at the time the Bill of Rights were written. That, alone, should be enough to disqualify them as unreasonable since they were certainly not considered 'reasonable' -- or even considered at all -- in the language of the document.
Yep... and if they don't care to shut us up, what's the problem? I can find whatever I want on the web no matter how big the conglomerates get. Further, I can publish anything I want and people who know how to look can find it.
;)
But if you're gonna play the business game, you gotta make money. I guess that bothers an 'online journalist' like Katz more than it bothers me.
Though it might more accurately be described as a GCC/Linux PPC vs. x86 benchmark, it's still interesting to those of us who are committed to GCC and Linux. Those two items, and their spawn, suck up almost all the (used) cycles on all of my machines.
Here I sit staring at my unnetworked Atari 800. Finally, I understand why I should have bought a Commodore!