Texture compression. Apparently, the technique is patented, which is why ATI's drivers don't include this. The GeForce drivers do, which is why they're supported, ATI cards are not.
I need to upgrade my whole machine just to play this one game.:)
After the initial attack, I was quite afraid that the US would start carpet bombing everybody they didn't like. Their attack on Afganistan shows just how determined you guys are, to extract a measure of vengance, which honestly, I don't blame at all.
One year on, I'm a bit less afraid, but not by a lot. I fear the US will drag the world into a big fucking war in the middle east we'll live to regret. The alternative I suppose is to not attack, and probably let some of these countries that sponser terrorism develop big arse weapons, which we'll regret too.
I dunno - a tough call, but I can't believe going to war is the only answer. The trouble is I don't know what the right answer is.
I was at the top of a 9 story building in Birmingham, UK. I was installing some software for a company, and slowely I became aware of everybody starting to talk. Wandering past a desk, I saw people looking at their web browsers and talking about the WTC. Heck, I didn't even know what the WTC was, except it was in America. I had no idea it was those two damn big buildings.
On the train back home, listening to the radio, I heard what had actually happened. The first reaction was shock, followed by "Oh My God".
Then came fear. Not of what could happen to me, but of what the Americans would do when they found out who did it. Back then, I was living in a hostel with around 120 other people, and it was a fear shared by the dozen or so people I talked to about what had happened.
I'm still a bit afraid of what the Americans might do, but not as much.
My thoughts go out to you all in the States. Hang in there, and remember that a lot of us in other countries are thinking of you.
Secondly, I would like to say to those that feel that sending flames to the publishers and developers of games will help to get us a port, it wont! Stop doing it, it just harms the reputation of Linux users. If you want to help, buy the games that are out there, show the companies that DO make Linux games that it is worth it, which will make sure that the next game they make is ALSO available for Linux. If you MUST contact the companies that do not make Linux ports, please do so professionally. Send a polite email asking them to port the game, let them know that LGP will port it for them if they have not got the skills to do it. Let them know that you would pay good money for it if it is available for your platform. But do it POLITELY AND RATIONALLY. And only do it once. Continued bombardment of a polite email is as bad as a flame. Remember when you contact a company, you are presenting them with the face of Linux gaming, so show them our best face.
We as a community of users are still not being good advocates. It's more than advocacy - it's basic manners and the ability to communicate.
If you flame or abuse somebody, you give them the excuse they might be looking for to ignore you.
I just got an email from the EFA, Australia's version of the EFF. They're saying that the Australian government is about to pass a bill that would allow much greater electronic surveillance. Their brief says:
Proposed changes to the Telecommunications Interception Act (C'th) would give government agencies (not only police forces) powers to intercept and read email, voice mail and SMS messages, without an interception warrant (as is presently required). Furthermore, agencies that are not allowed to obtain and use interception warrants (like the Taxation Office, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Immigration Department, etc) would gain the power to intercept and read private communications. Communications made using new technologies would have less privacy protection than a telephone call.
It's called AdAware, and it seems capable of nuking most nasty little apps installed by websites and applications like Kazza. Grab it here from Lavesoft USA and be very afraid at how many spyware components it finds!
You should also download their reference file update utility too. This lets you keep up to date with the latest spyware programs out there.
Is called VisIT. It produces a graphical representation of how sites link together, based around any given query. It was used quite sucessfully to demonstrate how Scientology had spammed Google, by creating multiple domains all linking back to their main web page.
Like most people, I assume, I work in a Windows dominated workplace, and while software products like this are great news, I am at a bit of a loss on how to promote them in my company.
Is there a site or a HOWTO that gives hints on how to start getting the upper management in a company thinking about alternatives like this?
Andreas, xenu.net's owner announced all this on the usenet group alt.religion.scientology. You can read his posting here on google (hah!), where he talks about it, and what URLs were de-listed.
It's not really all that surprising. They have a long history of threatening anybody who critises them. They drove one critic out of America, sued the creator of this site, to name two of the more well known actions.
They have no choice. Their creater, L Ron Hubbard, said that they were to never defend, always attack. They can't help themselves. I run a small web site, with some critical information on it, and I've had legal threats.
Pardon my lack of scientific knowledge and enthusiam, but what exactly will finding one of these suckers do or, besides cost a ton of cash?
How will knowing they're out there and finding one will benefit people, besides in the science for science's sake sort of reasoning (not that I'm automatically opposed to that).
Apple started getting all upset at people copying their user interfaces, and all I can say is that I really hope these Evolution people don't get hit by the same problem - MS telling them to stop copying their user interfaces.
Having said that though, this looks a fantastic piece of software. The peer to peer calender stuff is a much used thing in the Windows world, so it's great to see it running under X too.
It's not the algorithm you put a back door in at all, it's the system that implements the crytpo system you hack.
For example, I implement twofish or RC4 or AES perfectly, but make known to various 3 letter government agencies what the 1st 80 bits of the key will be (hello Lotus Notes).
Or I encrypt with two fullblown keys, and keep a copy of the second one, so I can always decrypt it when I need to.
Or I send the Bad Guy's computer a specially encoded message that tells my crypto system to start forwarding to the previously mentioned three letter agencies copies of all plain text.
Or I change the random number generator to generate a known series of random numbers.
There are many ways to backdoor a system. Security is more than the encryption algohrithm used, it's the system that implements it. Encryption plays only a part of the overall system.
Of course, all this would be close to impossible to do in an open source system, which is why we all use them, right?
In my opinion, this is a good sign for companies in the future. I mean, we have a company demonstratably commited to open source able to or trying to make some money from their open source. I hope they succeed.
To me it shows that they've understood how to make a living out of the free software fad, and are showing others how to make dollars out of the service industry. Good for them, and I truely thank them for what they've given me in the past, in the form of sourceforge.net and sites like/.
Well how about that. I've been playing with computers since I was 13 (a looong time ago), and have installed basically every operating system I've ever used in the last 10+ years.
Until I read what you wrote, it never occured to me that most people don't do that. They buy pre-installed, or an IT cave dweller installs and configures the OS for them. I insist my computers are bought without an OS installed, so I can do it.
Duh.
It is probably way obvious to you, but I've been arguing like the original poster has for quite a while now. "Linux is too hard for the average user to set up", but the average user never sets up Windows either.
Enlightenment comes to us all, even those a tad slow such as myself.:)
The one thing I've always wondered about biometrics, is what happens when somebody steals a copy of your finger prints or a digital picture of your retna?
It's easy enough to generate a new passphrase or digital key, but swapping fingerprintes must be a bugger of an operation.
I'm of the opinion that along with several other open source applications, MySQL is what's helping Linux make large inroads to the enterprise market.
A while back I priced a WinNT solution for a basic e-commerce site, with MS-SQL 7, ASP, and all the rest of the NT fluff needed. It came to over $5,000 Australian dollars (about $7.33 USD:) The equivilent freeware solution came to exactly zero dollars (duh). (hardware costs not included, btw).
MySQL was a large part of the equation. I was and still am very impressed with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Texture compression. Apparently, the technique is patented, which is why ATI's drivers don't include this. The GeForce drivers do, which is why they're supported, ATI cards are not.
:)
I need to upgrade my whole machine just to play this one game.
After the initial attack, I was quite afraid that the US would start carpet bombing everybody they didn't like. Their attack on Afganistan shows just how determined you guys are, to extract a measure of vengance, which honestly, I don't blame at all.
One year on, I'm a bit less afraid, but not by a lot. I fear the US will drag the world into a big fucking war in the middle east we'll live to regret. The alternative I suppose is to not attack, and probably let some of these countries that sponser terrorism develop big arse weapons, which we'll regret too.
I dunno - a tough call, but I can't believe going to war is the only answer. The trouble is I don't know what the right answer is.
I was at the top of a 9 story building in Birmingham, UK. I was installing some software for a company, and slowely I became aware of everybody starting to talk. Wandering past a desk, I saw people looking at their web browsers and talking about the WTC. Heck, I didn't even know what the WTC was, except it was in America. I had no idea it was those two damn big buildings.
On the train back home, listening to the radio, I heard what had actually happened. The first reaction was shock, followed by "Oh My God".
Then came fear. Not of what could happen to me, but of what the Americans would do when they found out who did it. Back then, I was living in a hostel with around 120 other people, and it was a fear shared by the dozen or so people I talked to about what had happened.
I'm still a bit afraid of what the Americans might do, but not as much.
My thoughts go out to you all in the States. Hang in there, and remember that a lot of us in other countries are thinking of you.
We as a community of users are still not being good advocates. It's more than advocacy - it's basic manners and the ability to communicate.
If you flame or abuse somebody, you give them the excuse they might be looking for to ignore you.
but is anybody else wondering what a Mammoth would taste like?
Mmmm - mammoth burgers.
The full EFA briefing is found here, and I sure as heck don't like the idea of it.
It's called AdAware, and it seems capable of nuking most nasty little apps installed by websites and applications like Kazza. Grab it here from Lavesoft USA and be very afraid at how many spyware components it finds!
You should also download their reference file update utility too. This lets you keep up to date with the latest spyware programs out there.
Is called VisIT. It produces a graphical representation of how sites link together, based around any given query. It was used quite sucessfully to demonstrate how Scientology had spammed Google, by creating multiple domains all linking back to their main web page.
It's a freebie download and you can get it here.
Clone: Hello! I'm #15
Cute Chick: Well hello hansome! What star sign are you?
Clone: Pyrex
Cute Chick: Ohhh baby!
And things go downhill from there.
I don't know the story.
What exactly did you do to him?
Like most people, I assume, I work in a Windows dominated workplace, and while software products like this are great news, I am at a bit of a loss on how to promote them in my company.
Is there a site or a HOWTO that gives hints on how to start getting the upper management in a company thinking about alternatives like this?
Andreas, xenu.net's owner announced all this on the usenet group alt.religion.scientology. You can read his posting here on google (hah!), where he talks about it, and what URLs were de-listed.
It's not really all that surprising. They have a long history of threatening anybody who critises them. They drove one critic out of America, sued the creator of this site, to name two of the more well known actions.
They have no choice. Their creater, L Ron Hubbard, said that they were to never defend, always attack. They can't help themselves. I run a small web site, with some critical information on it, and I've had legal threats.
Pardon my lack of scientific knowledge and enthusiam, but what exactly will finding one of these suckers do or, besides cost a ton of cash?
How will knowing they're out there and finding one will benefit people, besides in the science for science's sake sort of reasoning (not that I'm automatically opposed to that).
Apple started getting all upset at people copying their user interfaces, and all I can say is that I really hope these Evolution people don't get hit by the same problem - MS telling them to stop copying their user interfaces.
Having said that though, this looks a fantastic piece of software. The peer to peer calender stuff is a much used thing in the Windows world, so it's great to see it running under X too.
It's not the algorithm you put a back door in at all, it's the system that implements the crytpo system you hack.
For example, I implement twofish or RC4 or AES perfectly, but make known to various 3 letter government agencies what the 1st 80 bits of the key will be (hello Lotus Notes).
Or I encrypt with two fullblown keys, and keep a copy of the second one, so I can always decrypt it when I need to.
Or I send the Bad Guy's computer a specially encoded message that tells my crypto system to start forwarding to the previously mentioned three letter agencies copies of all plain text.
Or I change the random number generator to generate a known series of random numbers.
There are many ways to backdoor a system. Security is more than the encryption algohrithm used, it's the system that implements it. Encryption plays only a part of the overall system.
Of course, all this would be close to impossible to do in an open source system, which is why we all use them, right?
In my opinion, this is a good sign for companies in the future. I mean, we have a company demonstratably commited to open source able to or trying to make some money from their open source. I hope they succeed.
/.
To me it shows that they've understood how to make a living out of the free software fad, and are showing others how to make dollars out of the service industry. Good for them, and I truely thank them for what they've given me in the past, in the form of sourceforge.net and sites like
Well how about that. I've been playing with computers since I was 13 (a looong time ago), and have installed basically every operating system I've ever used in the last 10+ years.
:)
Until I read what you wrote, it never occured to me that most people don't do that. They buy pre-installed, or an IT cave dweller installs and configures the OS for them. I insist my computers are bought without an OS installed, so I can do it.
Duh.
It is probably way obvious to you, but I've been arguing like the original poster has for quite a while now. "Linux is too hard for the average user to set up", but the average user never sets up Windows either.
Enlightenment comes to us all, even those a tad slow such as myself.
The one thing I've always wondered about biometrics, is what happens when somebody steals a copy of your finger prints or a digital picture of your retna?
It's easy enough to generate a new passphrase or digital key, but swapping fingerprintes must be a bugger of an operation.
I used to use the Windows version years ago, and would be interested to know what people think of the Linux version in comparasion.
Is it as easy to use, as fast, how well the database support is, built in widgets - how well they work in KDE and Gnome, etc.
Thanks.
That grand defender of civil liberties? Where was it, when your precious 1st amendment rights are being abused by Scientology?
Or do you just fight the fights you know will get you the best publicity or a sure win?
Well done guys and girls.
:) The equivilent freeware solution came to exactly zero dollars (duh). (hardware costs not included, btw).
I'm of the opinion that along with several other open source applications, MySQL is what's helping Linux make large inroads to the enterprise market.
A while back I priced a WinNT solution for a basic e-commerce site, with MS-SQL 7, ASP, and all the rest of the NT fluff needed. It came to over $5,000 Australian dollars (about $7.33 USD
MySQL was a large part of the equation. I was and still am very impressed with it.
Again, well done to the team.
I guess it probably beats lying on your own arm till it goes numb.
Apparently that means he wins. I tried to read up on how your US system works, but just got a headache.
:)
I hate politics.
Anona-dude, my TI-35 could crush Amiga at the moment. :)