Er, let's just hope they don't suck as much as my editing/grammar skills.
Correction: Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivers will be available in within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope they don't suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.
OpenGL performance in Quake 3 and Enemy Territory on these boards roughly matches that of a comparably priced GeForce FX 5600.
Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivres will be available in Within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope it doesn't suck suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.
Yep, a total double standard, and one that makes absolutely no sense either.
IMO, it seems that an NRA website which advocates lawful usage of a gun is a lot safer for children than an anit-NRA website which tells people that guns are for killing people.
You are correct that a light year is the distance they would travel if at 'warp 1' for 365 days.
Go here if you want the Star Trek definitions for the warp scale. Obviously, 5x, 10x, hell even 100x would be too slow to take the Enterprise across the Milky Way in a hurry.
Blame who you want for what happened to Valve, but it's just common sense to know that shit happens and data gets compromised. It's rediculous to expect *anybody* to be able to hold your personal info without unwanted visitors taking a peak. Whether or not their marketing affiliates with legal access or hackers without doesn't matter. Valve has no good reason to be storing information that can be traced to me in their system without my *EXPLICIT* permission first.
Steam will not install unless users agree to the privacy policy. Half-Life players who wish to play on Steam-validated servers, which you can expect to become the vast majority with more servers upgrading from the old version each day, must install Steam. So it's either give up your info or buy a new game to play on-line.
To install Steam and play on any Steam-validated Half-Life servers (Including Counter-strike servers), one must agree to Valve's privacy statement. Here's a little snippet:
"Storage and Security of Information Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases hosted in the United States. Valve has taken reasonable steps to protect the information users share with us, including, but not limited to, setup of processes, equipment and software to avoid unauthorized access or disclosure of this information."
Reasonable steps, eh? Like the same steps they used to protect the Half-Life 2 source code?
>>Yes it is hard to beat M$ because of their already installed user base etc. etc. but I really would like to see some heavy hitters to release ditributions targetted at the desktop.
Yep. KDE is what got me off Windows too. I tried Gnome with Redhat 5.2, but was rather dissatisfied. I couldn't even figure out how to make an icon on the desktop (Remember, I was TOTALLY NEW to desktop GNU/Linux). Then I tried KDE and everything was a lot more familiar to me.
Now that I'm fairly experienced with Linux on my desktop, I've thought about switching over to Windowmaker or a lighter desktop. However, KDE is just so damn pretty these days it's hard to give up. Yeah yeah, I know it's bloated and they have their own word processor and it's slow to load up and it looks kinda like Windows (Or MacOS if you enable the little bar on top), but it's just so nice and user friendly that I just don't really mind the extra 15 seconds it takes to start and my hardware can handle it easily.
It was choice that drove me to try Linux in the first place, and I was extremely happy with the choice to use KDE. If I could only use Gnome or Windowmaker at the time, then the learning curve would've been much higher and I probably would've ended up a frustrated newbie and dismissed GNU/Linux as a nothing more than a hacker's plaything.
So thank you, KDE dev team, for showing me the path...
It's been a while since I've played, but if I recall one of the more annoying problems in Starcraft were cookie-cutter build orders and rushes. One could hatch four or six zerglings and do a very signifficant amount of damage (Destroy a storage depot, a pylon, or several drones) in a small map like the ever-so-popular Lost Temple before defenses could be set up. This wasn't a big deal for Terrans since a bunker required only a set of barracks to be built, but it was much more difficult to get enough zealots or build a forge to get photon cannons or an evolution chamber to get a sunken colony going in time to fend off such a rush.
The worst imbalance I can think of were the Protoss templars with psi storm. For 75 mana/energy and a capacity to use that ability several times, a Protoss player could devastate any Zerg or Protoss force or any Terran air forces. I omitted Terran ground forces simply because of siege tanks and possible science vessals with EMP to drain the energy from templars. Zerg defilers weren't nearly as bad, but they could still render a force comprised of mechanical units (Especially Protoss) defenseless.
Oh, and mass dragoons were too powerful. Unless the player ran them straight into a huge line of siege tanks or psi storming templars, there was very little hope in stopping them before they could level a base. Even with lots of canons / bunkers / sunken colonies / misc units lying around.
Another thing that I really hated about that game is how air units would huddle up on top of eachother. The primary reason I hated this was because it made all units in a control group extremely vulnerable to plague, EMP, and psi storm. Some other RTS games allow formations, which would be ideal for fixing that problem.
About the biggest problem I have with battle.net is that the players seem to have a severe lack in creativity. I play a good deal of Warcraft (Same name on US/West gateway), and in almost all team ladder games I play (I don't even bother with solo games now) it boils down to my opponent(s) choosing whatever race is most unbalanced and exploiting whatever it is that makes them unbalanced. Back in Reign of Chaos it was mass shamens, then mass witch doctors, then mass huntresses. It's gotten a lot better recently with Frozen Throne, but people still seem to be caught in this one-track mind state where they mass only one unit no matter how circumstances vary. I've had teammates and enemies insist on rushing even if the target has a bunch of towers up and can easily fend them off, and I've had teammates and enemies that insist on massing air units when the other team has plenty of anti-air. Or perhaps someone will decide to rush tech and mass tier 3 units, but won't bother to expand. So by the time the fighting heats up, this poor bastard only has three or four units to fight with. Good units, perhaps, but typically non-upgraded and hopelessly outnumbered. Fortunately, a good variety of malee / range or air / spellcasters can win out in almost any situation, so I'm pleased overall with the game.
I suppose all in spite of out-dated graphics, an inferior interface to Warcraft 3, and the stuff I've described above, SC has managed to withstand the test of time, so Blizzard certainly did something right with that game.
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Re:For Those Who Haven't Played the first....
on
Max Payne 2 Reviewed
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· Score: 1
Good post, but I'd argue the validity of the claim that Max Payne was 'realistic.' The graphics looked fairly realistic, the weapons were also good, but slowing the passage of time, popping pills to replenish health instantly, and getting hit in the head with a baseball bat several times and walking away moments later hardly qualifies as real to me.
The game was excellent, though. It played like a well-written movie and was tons of fun. There were definitely times when I could almost forget I was playing a game. I hope the sequel lives up to the original.
I've always found the labeling scheme behind "Desktop," "Workstation," and "Server" machines to be nothing more than a way for companies like HP and Dell to charge people and corporations hundreds, if not thousands more than by implying vastly superior quality when they might only get a few incremental upgrades such as extra RAM, a bump in speed for the CPU, and possibly a faster video card./rant
Yet every time he's tried, he's failed. MP3.com and Lindows stick out in my mind the most, and maybe there are others.
MP3.com is a failure!?!?!? The guy sold it for like over a quarter billion dollars. That's probably more than I could ever make (Or spend) in a lifetime!
I'm not sure about Lindows, though. They seem to be coming out with lots of new stuff and they have that deal with Seagate now. Are Lindows PCs still sold at Wal-Mart?
I once saw an amusing bumper sticker that read: "Guns kill people the same way spoons make Rosie 'O Donell fat." Being a pro-gun person, I got a good laugh out of that. I think the same logic applies to violent video games, too.
That's not to say that all pro-video game violence people are also pro-gun, just saying it's a pretty decent analogy...
Payback? That's rediculous. What use do Linux users have for Valve source code? Even if some group of hackers got it to run in Linux, which would require switching from DirectX to OpenGL and Linux-compatible sound and input mechanisms (SDL?), and probably a lot of other things I'm not aware of, there's no way in hell Valve would let them play on-line with Steam in place.
I'll admit though, I do get a kick out of the irony of it all. They chose to make their game operable only on the Windows platform, they probably did most of their development in Windows, Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically bans Linux users who play Half-Life / Counter-Strike using WINE, and now years of hard work have been compromised by nothing more than an age-old security hole in Outlook Express. I mean, Outlook's problems with the preview window are not obscure little bugs that few people know about, much less know how to exploit.
Granted, there are probably hundreds of ways Valve's source could've been stolen had it been on a Unix network, it's just amusing how this all played out. I'm sure the folks at Valve aren't stupid, and probably took all sorts of precautions to prevent their code from being leaked. So far it seems that this wasn't an inside job, nor a leak from someone like ATi (Who leaked the Doom 3 E3 demo and sent full Unreal source to id on a laptop). It's just funny how their Achilles heel was an e-mail client.
"Xian" from id confirmed that it was ATi that mishandled the Doom3 E3 demo. John Carmack also noted that ATi sent id software a laptop with full Unreal source code.
Re:why does it matter?
on
The Borg MegaCube
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm not sure, either. I guess some people just like science-oriented nature of the program.
I personally like Star Trek because it is very much different from other sci-fi shows which concentrate mostly on solving conflict with aliens by killing them. In Star Trek, the crew's mission is not to use violence unless absolutely necessary. In I-Borg, for example, the crew nurses to health an injured Borg, a mortal enemy of the Federation, while the Borg begins to understand what individuality is.
Many episodes deal more with the social evolution of humanity rather than shooting 'phasers' at everything that doesn't look human. The very first one, Encounter at Farpoint, is probably the best example of this. After referring to humanity as a "dangerous, savage child-race," Q taunts the Enterprise crew hoping to make them fire upon an unidentified vessal attacking a planet. Rather than attacking it, they investigate the situation further to discover that another alien being is being held captive and forced into labor by the inhabitants of the planet. Of course, they make the right decision in the end and prevent the destruction of mankind at the hands of the Q.
It seems the idea was that a much more evoloved society would investigate threats and come up with peaceful solutions whenever possible rather than taking a course of violent action like Q had expected of them in that first episode.
I know a lot of people are going to immediately jump on Java saying how terribly it performs on their systems, and I can't really argue with that:) However, I don't think a Java desktop is such a bad idea. My guess it that Sun is targeting their existing users and trying to get them to pay for a Sun desktop for Macs and x86 machines on the network.
Java's known to be compatible across a variety of platforms, so it makes sense to bring a common desktop to all platforms. If the Java desktop is nearly as good as the Newforge guy claims (And I know Newsforge is pretty biased in favor of anything non-Microsoft), I can see this becoming sort of a standard for businesses already running Sun systems. If they can get the Java desktop to run on top of Windows and make it easy to install, it could even become a de-facto standard for networks running multiple architectures.
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I use free software becuase I got sick of being forced to agree to onerous licensing terms.
Better? I wouldn't push it that far for every computer user, but OSS does offer me the control I desire.
And if you've ever inserted a DVD like Ronin from MGM Studios and accidently agreed to install "PC Friendly" you know it's true.
Er, let's just hope they don't suck as much as my editing/grammar skills.
Correction: Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivers will be available in within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope they don't suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.
OpenGL performance in Quake 3 and Enemy Territory on these boards roughly matches that of a comparably priced GeForce FX 5600.
Drivers haven't been tested, but LinuxHardware reports that Linux drivres will be available in Within the first quarter of next year. Let's just hope it doesn't suck suck and that there are some real perks of running an XGi over a GFFX5600.
Matrox? I haven't seen a Matrox card in action for years. Nvidia's TwinView seems to be dominating that segment now.
At least for people who care about performance, anyway.
Yep, a total double standard, and one that makes absolutely no sense either.
IMO, it seems that an NRA website which advocates lawful usage of a gun is a lot safer for children than an anit-NRA website which tells people that guns are for killing people.
As someone else already mentioned, get lm_sensors. Also, you'll need to add i2c support to your kernel.
You are correct that a light year is the distance they would travel if at 'warp 1' for 365 days.
Go here if you want the Star Trek definitions for the warp scale. Obviously, 5x, 10x, hell even 100x would be too slow to take the Enterprise across the Milky Way in a hurry.
Blame who you want for what happened to Valve, but it's just common sense to know that shit happens and data gets compromised. It's rediculous to expect *anybody* to be able to hold your personal info without unwanted visitors taking a peak. Whether or not their marketing affiliates with legal access or hackers without doesn't matter. Valve has no good reason to be storing information that can be traced to me in their system without my *EXPLICIT* permission first.
Steam will not install unless users agree to the privacy policy. Half-Life players who wish to play on Steam-validated servers, which you can expect to become the vast majority with more servers upgrading from the old version each day, must install Steam. So it's either give up your info or buy a new game to play on-line.
It's a tactic worthy of Microsoft.
To install Steam and play on any Steam-validated Half-Life servers (Including Counter-strike servers), one must agree to Valve's privacy statement. Here's a little snippet:
"Storage and Security of Information
Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Valve in databases hosted in the United States. Valve has taken reasonable steps to protect the information users share with us, including, but not limited to, setup of processes, equipment and software to avoid unauthorized access or disclosure of this information."
Reasonable steps, eh? Like the same steps they used to protect the Half-Life 2 source code?
>>Yes it is hard to beat M$ because of their already installed user base etc. etc. but I really would like to see some heavy hitters to release ditributions targetted at the desktop.
Mandrake and Lindows immediately come to mind...
To avoid misspelling the name, I just call it the Tomato Gun.
I think it was the "Krusty Komedy Klassic" at the Apollo.
You might be thinking of the episode where Gabbo stole his ratings. Then again, I could be full of shit.
Back on topic, I do get somewhat annoyed at the inordinate usage of the letter "K," like in "Konsole" or "Kuickshow."
Yep. KDE is what got me off Windows too. I tried Gnome with Redhat 5.2, but was rather dissatisfied. I couldn't even figure out how to make an icon on the desktop (Remember, I was TOTALLY NEW to desktop GNU/Linux). Then I tried KDE and everything was a lot more familiar to me.
Now that I'm fairly experienced with Linux on my desktop, I've thought about switching over to Windowmaker or a lighter desktop. However, KDE is just so damn pretty these days it's hard to give up. Yeah yeah, I know it's bloated and they have their own word processor and it's slow to load up and it looks kinda like Windows (Or MacOS if you enable the little bar on top), but it's just so nice and user friendly that I just don't really mind the extra 15 seconds it takes to start and my hardware can handle it easily.
It was choice that drove me to try Linux in the first place, and I was extremely happy with the choice to use KDE. If I could only use Gnome or Windowmaker at the time, then the learning curve would've been much higher and I probably would've ended up a frustrated newbie and dismissed GNU/Linux as a nothing more than a hacker's plaything.
So thank you, KDE dev team, for showing me the path...
It's been a while since I've played, but if I recall one of the more annoying problems in Starcraft were cookie-cutter build orders and rushes. One could hatch four or six zerglings and do a very signifficant amount of damage (Destroy a storage depot, a pylon, or several drones) in a small map like the ever-so-popular Lost Temple before defenses could be set up. This wasn't a big deal for Terrans since a bunker required only a set of barracks to be built, but it was much more difficult to get enough zealots or build a forge to get photon cannons or an evolution chamber to get a sunken colony going in time to fend off such a rush.
The worst imbalance I can think of were the Protoss templars with psi storm. For 75 mana/energy and a capacity to use that ability several times, a Protoss player could devastate any Zerg or Protoss force or any Terran air forces. I omitted Terran ground forces simply because of siege tanks and possible science vessals with EMP to drain the energy from templars. Zerg defilers weren't nearly as bad, but they could still render a force comprised of mechanical units (Especially Protoss) defenseless.
Oh, and mass dragoons were too powerful. Unless the player ran them straight into a huge line of siege tanks or psi storming templars, there was very little hope in stopping them before they could level a base. Even with lots of canons / bunkers / sunken colonies / misc units lying around.
Another thing that I really hated about that game is how air units would huddle up on top of eachother. The primary reason I hated this was because it made all units in a control group extremely vulnerable to plague, EMP, and psi storm. Some other RTS games allow formations, which would be ideal for fixing that problem.
About the biggest problem I have with battle.net is that the players seem to have a severe lack in creativity. I play a good deal of Warcraft (Same name on US/West gateway), and in almost all team ladder games I play (I don't even bother with solo games now) it boils down to my opponent(s) choosing whatever race is most unbalanced and exploiting whatever it is that makes them unbalanced. Back in Reign of Chaos it was mass shamens, then mass witch doctors, then mass huntresses. It's gotten a lot better recently with Frozen Throne, but people still seem to be caught in this one-track mind state where they mass only one unit no matter how circumstances vary. I've had teammates and enemies insist on rushing even if the target has a bunch of towers up and can easily fend them off, and I've had teammates and enemies that insist on massing air units when the other team has plenty of anti-air. Or perhaps someone will decide to rush tech and mass tier 3 units, but won't bother to expand. So by the time the fighting heats up, this poor bastard only has three or four units to fight with. Good units, perhaps, but typically non-upgraded and hopelessly outnumbered. Fortunately, a good variety of malee / range or air / spellcasters can win out in almost any situation, so I'm pleased overall with the game.
I suppose all in spite of out-dated graphics, an inferior interface to Warcraft 3, and the stuff I've described above, SC has managed to withstand the test of time, so Blizzard certainly did something right with that game.
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Good post, but I'd argue the validity of the claim that Max Payne was 'realistic.' The graphics looked fairly realistic, the weapons were also good, but slowing the passage of time, popping pills to replenish health instantly, and getting hit in the head with a baseball bat several times and walking away moments later hardly qualifies as real to me.
The game was excellent, though. It played like a well-written movie and was tons of fun. There were definitely times when I could almost forget I was playing a game. I hope the sequel lives up to the original.
rant
/rant
I've always found the labeling scheme behind "Desktop," "Workstation," and "Server" machines to be nothing more than a way for companies like HP and Dell to charge people and corporations hundreds, if not thousands more than by implying vastly superior quality when they might only get a few incremental upgrades such as extra RAM, a bump in speed for the CPU, and possibly a faster video card.
Yet every time he's tried, he's failed. MP3.com and Lindows stick out in my mind the most, and maybe there are others.
MP3.com is a failure!?!?!? The guy sold it for like over a quarter billion dollars. That's probably more than I could ever make (Or spend) in a lifetime!
I'm not sure about Lindows, though. They seem to be coming out with lots of new stuff and they have that deal with Seagate now. Are Lindows PCs still sold at Wal-Mart?
I once saw an amusing bumper sticker that read: "Guns kill people the same way spoons make Rosie 'O Donell fat." Being a pro-gun person, I got a good laugh out of that. I think the same logic applies to violent video games, too.
That's not to say that all pro-video game violence people are also pro-gun, just saying it's a pretty decent analogy...
I found it to be rather amusing for a while just for the cartoonishly gratuitous violence. Kind of like watching Happy Tree Friends.
Payback? That's rediculous. What use do Linux users have for Valve source code? Even if some group of hackers got it to run in Linux, which would require switching from DirectX to OpenGL and Linux-compatible sound and input mechanisms (SDL?), and probably a lot of other things I'm not aware of, there's no way in hell Valve would let them play on-line with Steam in place.
I'll admit though, I do get a kick out of the irony of it all. They chose to make their game operable only on the Windows platform, they probably did most of their development in Windows, Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically bans Linux users who play Half-Life / Counter-Strike using WINE, and now years of hard work have been compromised by nothing more than an age-old security hole in Outlook Express. I mean, Outlook's problems with the preview window are not obscure little bugs that few people know about, much less know how to exploit.
Granted, there are probably hundreds of ways Valve's source could've been stolen had it been on a Unix network, it's just amusing how this all played out. I'm sure the folks at Valve aren't stupid, and probably took all sorts of precautions to prevent their code from being leaked. So far it seems that this wasn't an inside job, nor a leak from someone like ATi (Who leaked the Doom 3 E3 demo and sent full Unreal source to id on a laptop). It's just funny how their Achilles heel was an e-mail client.
"Xian" from id confirmed that it was ATi that mishandled the Doom3 E3 demo. John Carmack also noted that ATi sent id software a laptop with full Unreal source code.
I'm not sure, either. I guess some people just like science-oriented nature of the program.
I personally like Star Trek because it is very much different from other sci-fi shows which concentrate mostly on solving conflict with aliens by killing them. In Star Trek, the crew's mission is not to use violence unless absolutely necessary. In I-Borg, for example, the crew nurses to health an injured Borg, a mortal enemy of the Federation, while the Borg begins to understand what individuality is.
Many episodes deal more with the social evolution of humanity rather than shooting 'phasers' at everything that doesn't look human. The very first one, Encounter at Farpoint, is probably the best example of this. After referring to humanity as a "dangerous, savage child-race," Q taunts the Enterprise crew hoping to make them fire upon an unidentified vessal attacking a planet. Rather than attacking it, they investigate the situation further to discover that another alien being is being held captive and forced into labor by the inhabitants of the planet. Of course, they make the right decision in the end and prevent the destruction of mankind at the hands of the Q.
It seems the idea was that a much more evoloved society would investigate threats and come up with peaceful solutions whenever possible rather than taking a course of violent action like Q had expected of them in that first episode.
I know a lot of people are going to immediately jump on Java saying how terribly it performs on their systems, and I can't really argue with that :) However, I don't think a Java desktop is such a bad idea. My guess it that Sun is targeting their existing users and trying to get them to pay for a Sun desktop for Macs and x86 machines on the network.
Java's known to be compatible across a variety of platforms, so it makes sense to bring a common desktop to all platforms. If the Java desktop is nearly as good as the Newforge guy claims (And I know Newsforge is pretty biased in favor of anything non-Microsoft), I can see this becoming sort of a standard for businesses already running Sun systems. If they can get the Java desktop to run on top of Windows and make it easy to install, it could even become a de-facto standard for networks running multiple architectures.