Excellent post... If you have no objection, I'll post it at Librenix.com tomorrow (Sunday) where it will likely get somewhat lower visibility than a (Score: -1, Redundant) 200th post here.:P
I think I remember seeing something about that also -- but I never saw it actually up and working. My related game, Starshiptraders has been up on the web -- as well as telnet -- for over four years. Early versions (until June of 99) were called Tsarwars, however.
Heh... I did write my latest online game in C, but my new (non-game) websites are in PHP. It's remarkably appropriate and flexible for writing web applications, especially DB-driven ones.
Hey Ron, how, if possible, do you see other players currently logged on? I've been logged on for a while now without a timeout, so my guess is that being logged on means you have a cookie and the server doesn't keep track.
Which leads to another question: is there a means for players to communicate in real time while playing?
Yeah, I played on the stardock until it went away a few years ago. This thing, with its web interface, might be worth investigation.
This server is pretty slow right now -- but it's slashdotted -- it may be much better later. It would be interesting to see how many users are logged on right now with the thing still responding. This may be a quality implementation.
Starshiptraders is written in C but requires a dedicated server and lots of memory to achieve good response. I've always been afraid to submit it to slashdot.;)
(your sig about mindwire.org gave me this idea -- I will check it out as a possible new link.)
I can no longer write off Rob's Bush-bashing as the rantings of a young man who has spent his few adult years building a website and has had little time left to think about other things. I've ignored it long enough. At a minimum, I can no longer promote this site on my own websites.
Compared to slashdot, my website is insignificant, but it's growing at 40% a month. It may mean nothing to slashdot but I intend to replace Cmdr Taco's baby with some other news site.
For me, and any other slashdotter who might want to replace a link, please reply to this message with any suggestions. I'm not looking for anything big and political -- I just want something reliably geeky.;)
Actually, it's direct lineage dates back to 1986, predating tw2002... TW2, a 99-sector game did exist then along with the original inspiration for the genre, Hewlett Packard's 'Star Trader'.
If you look closely, you'll see that playing it is very different from any modern TW variant. Most recently, it was derived directly from something called 'The Last Resort' about 1.5 years ago, with the TW-like scenario being added to TLR.
I think I figured out the problem you had. You didn't click the 'new player' radio button. In that case, the system assumes you typoed your name and doesn't automatically generate a new account.;)
There are over 38,000 accounts on the system. You have to pick a name that isn't already in use, obviously. But I haven't had any reports on problems creating accounts lately.
The one you described wasn't taken and I created it without a problem.
Did you get an error message objecting to your attempted account names?
My game doesn't actually have a client -- players use web browsers and telnet clients -- but the game has benefitted substantially from 'cheating'. In starship traders, there isn't really any way to cheat, per se, other than running more than the legal limit of ships. Bug exploitation and imbalances in the game, for example, are legal gameplay. My goal has been to fix those imbalances and bugs as they are discovered, and the game is much more robust as a result.
Now, if only I could find the time to write the ever-postponed java client...
Erm... what makes you think they are competent to recognize real geeks? I know of a technically unsophisticated organization that hires "technical experts" that just turn out to be more bureaucrats.
Once again, we run into that old problem: you can't manage what you don't understand. If the subject matter is difficult enough to understand, a naive manager won't be able to tell which "experts" are real and which are totally off base. In the experiences I'm familiar with, credentials don't seem to help much -- in either the high level strategic decisions or the lower level technical ones.
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I don't expect the problems at the PTO to be solved without a near-total replacement of their structure.
Re:Computer games -- Woohoo!
on
Hackers
·
· Score: 2
hmmmm... does it mean I am a hacker since I wrote a game for the Atari 800? Or does it just mean I'm old?;)
Maybe they are, but they deserved more than they got! The price Andover went for suggests that/. was considered to be much more valuable by VA than the successful Andover offer.
The Sun solution would be much more expensive because it wouldn't be only one Sun. It would require many, many, Sun 6500's or 10000's. Since their application distributes quite nicely, the price/performance of Intel boxes running Linux would be very hard to beat.
Try substituting Sun 6500's with 20 CPU's for each set of 20 Intel boxes and see what that does to the pricing.;) (In practice, the ratio would probably be closer to 12-15 Intel boxes per Sun 6500, I would guess, as a PIII doing it kind of integer work would likely outperform a SPARC II)
The HTML Manual of Style, Larry Aronson, Copyright 1994, Ziff-Davis Press, documents Post in just the way I use it in both of my database-driven websites. One of them has been on the web since 1996, incidently, accepting posts and applying them to its database.;)
Pressure from Microsoft to abuse their position of power is no excuse. eBay is, until a Microsoft smoking gun is identified, the offender here. After a 'smoking gun' is found, there would be two offenders. Microsoft pressure, even illegal pressure, shouldn't let eBay off the hook.
eBay was entrusted to provide a service (that they advertise) and they appear to have refused, with no reasonable explanation given.
If they actually changed the rating of comments, that, to me, is also inexcusable. If they can't, or won't, provide an explanation for all of this, I will never use eBay.
Exactly. I think he's just pandering with the claim that friend-to-friend copying is ok. He just knows that it's less efficient than the Internet copying model and is, therefore, a thing of the past.
You'd better read the fine print at buy.com! Looks like they will happily take yer money for vaporware.;)
Good point, Legoboy; Bad point, Jon Katz
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 2
I'm very aware of copyright and patent issues since I've written a bunch of software and designed a few algorithms. However, in spite of the fact that I would seem to be someone who IP laws would benefit, I think they have been stretched beyond the point of value even to me, especially with the recent trend toward obvious and trivial software patents.
Bad point, Jon. Why lay such blame on 'corporatism'? If I ask the government to give me the deed to your house -- and they do it -- does that mean that there is a problem with people like me? Or, is the problem a bankrupt policy that can be so easily manipulated?
Of course people are greedy. That's hardly the core problem however. Their ability to use the mechanisms of the state for their own gain is the heart of the real issue.
Judge Hampel is, of course, correct. Justice in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. must rely on the ignorance of the jury to function properly.
Why is it unacceptable to let the jury in a murder trial know that the defendant has been convicted of murder before, for example? Shouldn't a jury know all the facts? If we trust a jury to make the decision of guilt or innocence, shouldn't we also be able to trust them with the truth?
For the short term, I'm not very hopeful. In the longer term, it is inevitable now. Our current policy made no sense even before this. Now, it will be much more difficult for the politicians and bureaucrats to pretend it still makes sense. But, rest assured, they will stupidly resist for as long as they can.
Slashdot Mirror
MajikSlinger,
:P
Excellent post... If you have no objection, I'll post it at Librenix.com tomorrow (Sunday) where it will likely get somewhat lower visibility than a (Score: -1, Redundant) 200th post here.
I think I remember seeing something about that also -- but I never saw it actually up and working. My related game, Starshiptraders has been up on the web -- as well as telnet -- for over four years. Early versions (until June of 99) were called Tsarwars, however.
Heh... I did write my latest online game in C, but my new (non-game) websites are in PHP. It's remarkably appropriate and flexible for writing web applications, especially DB-driven ones.
Hey Ron, how, if possible, do you see other players currently logged on? I've been logged on for a while now without a timeout, so my guess is that being logged on means you have a cookie and the server doesn't keep track.
Which leads to another question: is there a means for players to communicate in real time while playing?
Yeah, I played on the stardock until it went away a few years ago. This thing, with its web interface, might be worth investigation.
;)
This server is pretty slow right now -- but it's slashdotted -- it may be much better later. It would be interesting to see how many users are logged on right now with the thing still responding. This may be a quality implementation.
Starshiptraders is written in C but requires a dedicated server and lots of memory to achieve good response. I've always been afraid to submit it to slashdot.
(your sig about mindwire.org gave me this idea -- I will check it out as a possible new link.)
;)
I can no longer write off Rob's Bush-bashing as the rantings of a young man who has spent his few adult years building a website and has had little time left to think about other things. I've ignored it long enough. At a minimum, I can no longer promote this site on my own websites.
Compared to slashdot, my website is insignificant, but it's growing at 40% a month. It may mean nothing to slashdot but I intend to replace Cmdr Taco's baby with some other news site.
For me, and any other slashdotter who might want to replace a link, please reply to this message with any suggestions. I'm not looking for anything big and political -- I just want something reliably geeky.
Actually, it's direct lineage dates back to 1986, predating tw2002... TW2, a 99-sector game did exist then along with the original inspiration for the genre, Hewlett Packard's 'Star Trader'.
If you look closely, you'll see that playing it is very different from any modern TW variant. Most recently, it was derived directly from something called 'The Last Resort' about 1.5 years ago, with the TW-like scenario being added to TLR.
I think I figured out the problem you had. You didn't click the 'new player' radio button. In that case, the system assumes you typoed your name and doesn't automatically generate a new account. ;)
There are over 38,000 accounts on the system. You have to pick a name that isn't already in use, obviously. But I haven't had any reports on problems creating accounts lately.
The one you described wasn't taken and I created it without a problem.
Did you get an error message objecting to your attempted account names?
My game doesn't actually have a client -- players use web browsers and telnet clients -- but the game has benefitted substantially from 'cheating'. In starship traders, there isn't really any way to cheat, per se, other than running more than the legal limit of ships. Bug exploitation and imbalances in the game, for example, are legal gameplay. My goal has been to fix those imbalances and bugs as they are discovered, and the game is much more robust as a result.
Now, if only I could find the time to write the ever-postponed java client...
Erm... what makes you think they are competent to recognize real geeks? I know of a technically unsophisticated organization that hires "technical experts" that just turn out to be more bureaucrats.
Once again, we run into that old problem: you can't manage what you don't understand. If the subject matter is difficult enough to understand, a naive manager won't be able to tell which "experts" are real and which are totally off base. In the experiences I'm familiar with, credentials don't seem to help much -- in either the high level strategic decisions or the lower level technical ones.
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I don't expect the problems at the PTO to be solved without a near-total replacement of their structure.
hmmmm... does it mean I am a hacker since I wrote a game for the Atari 800? Or does it just mean I'm old? ;)
Perhaps it is the ultimate fate of perl to encompass all standards, making it the single most standard development language! ;)
Here is an "in denial" take on the Microsoft response.
Another article pointing this out is here.
Maybe they are, but they deserved more than they got! The price Andover went for suggests that /. was considered to be much more valuable by VA than the successful Andover offer.
The Sun solution would be much more expensive because it wouldn't be only one Sun. It would require many, many, Sun 6500's or 10000's. Since their application distributes quite nicely, the price/performance of Intel boxes running Linux would be very hard to beat.
;) (In practice, the ratio would probably be closer to 12-15 Intel boxes per Sun 6500, I would guess, as a PIII doing it kind of integer work would likely outperform a SPARC II)
Try substituting Sun 6500's with 20 CPU's for each set of 20 Intel boxes and see what that does to the pricing.
The HTML Manual of Style, Larry Aronson, Copyright 1994, Ziff-Davis Press, documents Post in just the way I use it in both of my database-driven websites. One of them has been on the web since 1996, incidently, accepting posts and applying them to its database. ;)
Pressure from Microsoft to abuse their position of power is no excuse. eBay is, until a Microsoft smoking gun is identified, the offender here. After a 'smoking gun' is found, there would be two offenders. Microsoft pressure, even illegal pressure, shouldn't let eBay off the hook.
eBay was entrusted to provide a service (that they advertise) and they appear to have refused, with no reasonable explanation given.
If they actually changed the rating of comments, that, to me, is also inexcusable. If they can't, or won't, provide an explanation for all of this, I will never use eBay.
Microsoft won't get any of my business anyway.
Exactly. I think he's just pandering with the claim that friend-to-friend copying is ok. He just knows that it's less efficient than the Internet copying model and is, therefore, a thing of the past.
Just how secure the "World's second most Secure Firewall" is. heh.
You'd better read the fine print at buy.com! Looks like they will happily take yer money for vaporware. ;)
I'm very aware of copyright and patent issues since I've written a bunch of software and designed a few algorithms. However, in spite of the fact that I would seem to be someone who IP laws would benefit, I think they have been stretched beyond the point of value even to me, especially with the recent trend toward obvious and trivial software patents.
Bad point, Jon.
Why lay such blame on 'corporatism'? If I ask the government to give me the deed to your house -- and they do it -- does that mean that there is a problem with people like me? Or, is the problem a bankrupt policy that can be so easily manipulated?
Of course people are greedy. That's hardly the core problem however. Their ability to use the mechanisms of the state for their own gain is the heart of the real issue.
Judge Hampel is, of course, correct. Justice in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. must rely on the ignorance of the jury to function properly.
Why is it unacceptable to let the jury in a murder trial know that the defendant has been convicted of murder before, for example? Shouldn't a jury know all the facts? If we trust a jury to make the decision of guilt or innocence, shouldn't we also be able to trust them with the truth?
For the short term, I'm not very hopeful. In the longer term, it is inevitable now. Our current policy made no sense even before this. Now, it will be much more difficult for the politicians and bureaucrats to pretend it still makes sense. But, rest assured, they will stupidly resist for as long as they can.
...if it means that I can select my own "on hold" music! ;)