Anyone who is remotely interested in space exploration games must check this game out. From a gameplay perspective, it's a classic. Technically it was groundbreaking, breathtaking. Thousands of fractal solar systems on two 360K floppies! Animated 3D graphical landing sequences on a 4.77 mhz PC! Unbelievable. We're not worthy!
Get it at http://www.theunderdogs.org. You'll also need the maps and the VGA patch and a slowdown program (loadit or moslo).
The sequels are called Starflight II (also excellent) and Protostar (dunno).
Has anyone gotten starflight to run under DOSEMU or any emu under Linux?
This game doesn't just deserve a remake, it deserves an entire genre of derivative work.
Reminds me of the book and video games, "Rebel Moon" and "Rebel Moon Rising".
Still, it seems to me that starting a colony on the moon would be so expensive that no-one could afford the investment without some concrete payback. The colonization of the "new world" was motivated by real profit incentive for the countries/companies spawning the venture. Hard to see that kind of potential on the moon, or anywhere else in near-space.
I think we'll be long dead before something like this comes to fruition. Too bad.
OTOH, we have for the first time in human history the ability to play realistic 3D interactive games and simulations of space exploration/combat. That's cool enough for me to be happy to be alive.
Oh, and for topicalness, the scientist in the article did not mention whether he worked in an area relevant to "national security". The NIH is a big institution that oversees all kinds of research projects. The justification for searching employees in this particular instance may be no more plausible than searching, say, schoolteachers or librarians.
I think it's entirely proper to question and challenge the justification for such warrantless searches, just as it is for the USA's urine testing (faugh!), no-knock searches, and other abuses of state/corporate power that have infected the nation.
The tree of liberty is indeed in need of watering...
"Your heart is like a silken sponge." - Residents
Re:Linus interview on osnews.com
on
Linux 2.4.13
·
· Score: 1
This is the dumbest post I've seen in - well - days.
"I could care less" means that you COULD care less than you do - meaning you DO care.
"I couldn't care less" means you do NOT care at all, and thus could not care less.
According to a report aired in germany (3sat) last night, UK leads the world in camera surveillance. Numbers cited are:
Number of cameras: 1.5 million
Expenditure: est. 400 million to 1 billion pounds
In same report, they showed some trams in Leipzig. Old trams regularly vandalized. New trams with built-in surveillance hadn't suffered one case of vandalism yet.
Now, it sucks to be monitored, but it also sucks to be raped, robbed or just to have to pay for the vandalism of public facilities.
Seems to me that the benefits of surveillance are provable, and significant. The harms of surveillance lie in the potential for abuse.
Thus, I think slashdotters need to be politically engaged to ensure that our democracies institute laws which prevent abuses.
Some ideas:
Surveillance cameras must be highly visible, not concealed.
Surveillance (govt or private) must operate with full disclosure and openness. I.e. each camera must carry a contact number/email.
Govt. may not network cameras or employ automatic face recognition in order to implement automated person tracking.
What I'm getting at is that a democracy should be able to make use of a technology (telephone, internet) without allowing illegal, unsupervised snooping (NSA, Echelon) on that technology. This requires education and advocacy. I think discussions like these are vital to that end.
That's exactly what they want you to think, justletmeinnow.
The western media are trying to isolate the incident from the context of USian world global domination, and judging by your response, they have convinced at least one ignorant USian.
What's pathetic is that you can participate in a forum such as/. and simply ignore all the posts showing this to be a consequence of a rapacious, brutal and deeply hypoctitical US foreign policy.
I do sympathise with you. When I was younger, I also had a knee-jerk hate reaction against people who criticised the USA. Now I see that I was deeply brainwashed in school, and just didn't want to accept the fact that my country, the "bastion of democracy and freedom" etc, had such bloody hands. I know it's a really bitter pill to swallow, and it can actually hurt your own spirit/job/life to become aware of just how sick and hypocritical the USA is.
Now, How much warning have we given the area? 3 weeks? How much warning were we given before the WTC attacks? none. Had we gotten warning, I doubt the towers would've been occupied (hell, I bet the entire area would've been evacuated!).
You're misinformed. One of the terrorists suffered pangs of conscience and phoned the CIA and Secret Service to warn of the attack. He was ignored. The buildings were occupied.
Some questions:
Who made the phone call?
What was the content of the warning?
Why was this story squelched by the media?
You'd think this would be newsworthy, right?
Does anyone have more info on the warnings? This should be an entirely new slashdot article. Post what you know here!
Video surveillance by governments, when coupled with automatic recognition, gives the state an unprecedented (meaning never-before available) power to trace and track ordinary citizens.
This is a fact. When technology changes the balance of power between statist controls and freedom of individuals, we should take notice.
Whether abuses have occurred or will occur is debatable, but given the current and proven abuses of telecommunications channels by the US/UK intelligence community, I think there is enough precedent to warrant suspicion whenever members of government call for more surveillance under the guise of crime prevention or "national security".
The "cameras are everywhere, get used to it" argument is, valid to the extent that A) many people and companies can now afford video cameras and B) such cameras provide a useful function in proving crimes. However, it does NOT immediately follow that democratic states should give their governments carte blanche to do whatever they want with the technology.
As previously mentioned, privacy is a luxury of pluralistic, humanitarian cultures. Lack of privacy was one reason that the US/UK (rightfully) condemmned the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Your politicians (and thoroughly goatse'd posters like angkor) are pushing for policies that are totalitarian, faschistic and communist and are successfully making a mockery of the oft-touted, self-righteous term "free society".
In general, western governments have not been as oppressive of political dissenters as many others. This does not mean that they are not oppressing political dissent. Wish I had time to dig for sources, but y'all can use search engines... Some keywords: CIA, FBI, SIGINT, yippies, YIP, covert, surveillance, DNC, Chicago, Black Panthers, Malcolm X, etc etc.
"I came, bearing a sword" - shit Jesus, didn't that hurt?
Is that viewsonic using the Mitsubishi 22" flat-panel Diamondtron tube? My Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 uses one. The electronics are great - will do 1600x1200 at 100hz!! Sitting 30 cm away, running antialiased fonts, I can't see dots. Just a little more blurry than holding up a printed page at that distance.
In sum, people do yourself a favor and scrimp and save for a 22" diamondtron-based monitor. Best $1000 I've ever spent. http://www.pricewatch.com should have these at well under $900 now.
According to a German newssource, one of the terrorists in Hamburg called the CIA and Secret Service to warn of the attack, but the warning was ignored.
I'm trying to find more info on this, but the story seems to have disappeared. Can anyone provide more info? You'd think that federal agencies ignoring a telephoned warning about the impending attack would be front page news.
Given the predictable American response to the tragedy, the implications are sta... uh, maybe I'd better stop now.
To quote Al Jourgensen, "Connect the god-damn dots."
Re:Afghanistan is ...being starved to death
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
According to the WFP (World Food Program), 4 million Afghanis are in danger of death by starvation this winter. Approx. 750,000 people in Kabul are dependent upon foreign food aid for survival.
The USA has now coerced Pakistan to close the borders and block food-relief.
Result: USA is now silently starving millions of innocent Afghanis to death. You won't hear Dubya boasting about it on national TV, nor will you hear about US and European culpability in this deliberate and incredibly cruel act of genocide in western media.
A number of Americans have called for all nations who train and support terrorists to be bombed into the ground. Well, the USA supported and trained Bin Laden, as well as tens of thousands of terrorists throughout Asia and S.America. The delicious irony is that if these wishes were carried-out, the USA would bomb itself out of existence.
But back to the crime at hand: It would be an act of *mercy* if the US were to carpet bomb the Afghani populace. Better than deliberately starving these wretched souls to death.
The curses crowd my mouth. I'm looking at my sandwich and I can't finish it, because i know that I'm a citizen of a democracy that commits such unspeakable acts while cynically posing as the worlds "beacon of freedom and justice and..".
My fast begins now. I call upon all people of the world to cry out against this despicable cruelty against innocent Afghani women, children - and yes, men too.
Your media are manufacturing consent. Fight the empire of lies with words, not bombs. Bombs are exactly what the (state) terrorists want you to throw.
...nuff for now.
"You got to fight the powers that be." -Public Enemy
Re:Too late, you already have zero privacy
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
No, not zero.
Just less and less.
I don't use CCs.
I can encrypt my email, but I don't, because I want the spooks to read what I have to say. (I want everyone to read what I say!:-)
Privacy is a worthwhile fight. Your "you already have zero privacy" attitude is simply nihilism. If you extrapolate your position to other areas of life, you might just as well put a bullet in your head. Why not? You have to die anyway...
Point is, you can do what you want. The opportunity is yours. My suggestion is, "do good". That includes fighting for things like privacy, individual freedoms, peace, health, truth, beauty, the environment and prosperity.
Yeah, there's conflicts and complications - welcome to life. Nihilism is a cowardly route. Hatred is the whirlpool of the soul.
I can't be eloquent tonight - hope I'm not misunderstood.
cya
Re:Why is a civilian spouting off about war?
on
A New Kind of War
·
· Score: 1
Because war-dogs like yourself are the problem, not the solution
When the state of Afghanistan declares war against the U.S. and attacks, you have a war.
The fact that some terrorists (who may or MAY NOT) be from Afghanistan have poked the US in the eye does not give you the right to carpet-bomb a country.
But the U.S. doesn't give a flying fsck about right or wrong. Just watch the pretty fireworks and wave your bloody flag, you ape.
Which country holds the world at gunpoint, controls the media and the international financial markets?
Which country exempts itself from UN resolutions?
Which country thwarts global democracy through the UN and the World court?
Which country exempts itself from crucial environmental resolutions (kyoto)?
Which country is the only one to have used nuclear weapons against civilian populations?
Which country is the only one to effectively monitor the majority of world communications for industrial and military purposes?
Which country infects the worlds computer networks with spyware?
Which country created todays drug-wars and forced international drug hypocrisy?
"..[was] an inevitable response to the targetting of civilian populations by the USA and her lap dogs"
When has this happened?
What an amazing ignoramus...
When? ca. 1700-2001 Where?.. well, to name just a few:
North America (native americans and the south)
Germany
Japan
Cambodia
Korea
Vietnam
The Balkans
Palestine
Iraq
And I'm not even well-versed in these matters - the history of US-sponsored genocide is just too sickening. You have net access, you twit. Read... Learn.
Not necessary, they are voluntarily doing it themselves. https://www.yahoo.com now redirects to a non-ssl page, and my account on freemail.web.de is completely blocked (unlike friends of mine).
I can't begin to say how much the situation sickens me - not the attacks - the response.
The faschist control freaks everywhere are having a field day. Killing them won't help. Gotta get out there and enlighten your neighbor as to the causes of the attack, and the consequences of the consequences.
The German government does this as well. You may not name your child "Dweezul Zappa" here.:-/
The sad thing is the degree to which Germans (and other europeans) trust their govt. to be the saintly bringer of all good things. What a bunch of dumbfskcs. Didn't ya fscking socialists learn something from "National Socialism" -- HUUH?
I've not installed the new KOffice because of the dense web of dependencies on upgraded KDE libraries. I don't want to break my KDE just to install a "Wordpad" class text editor! Ted is small, slick, and very self-contained. Way to go, Mark de Does!
Absolutely right. U9 was a great start, but they needed another year to add decent quests, add alternate solutions and debug/speed the engine. And of course more NPC activity in towns. And and and.
But the roaming freedom! I'd sometimes have a good smoke and just wander with the distance cutoff set to some obscenely large value.
Refresh rates went below 1/second, but the scenes were so gorgeous!
Another fun thingy was enabling the flying cheat, then raising up 1000 ft above an area to see how it all looked from above. At some point you caused the VM manager to barf cause it was loading so many textures -- heh.
I WISH they'd just buy the rights to the U9 world and make a good game based on all the work they had done up to that point.
Completely agree with other posters that game development suffers from the heavy investements needed in the graphic dept.
Folks,
Just because you've had luck with DX8 doesn't mean it doesn't break some DX7 apps on some systems. Do a web search
Frankly, I don't need Windows or DirectX 8 to live a rich and fulfilling life. In fact, I find I'm much happier without them.
Slashdot Mirror
Starflight!!
Anyone who is remotely interested in space exploration games must check this game out. From a gameplay perspective, it's a classic. Technically it was groundbreaking, breathtaking. Thousands of fractal solar systems on two 360K floppies! Animated 3D graphical landing sequences on a 4.77 mhz PC! Unbelievable. We're not worthy!
Get it at http://www.theunderdogs.org. You'll also need the maps and the VGA patch and a slowdown program (loadit or moslo).
The sequels are called Starflight II (also excellent) and Protostar (dunno).
Has anyone gotten starflight to run under DOSEMU or any emu under Linux?
This game doesn't just deserve a remake, it deserves an entire genre of derivative work.
Try it!
Reminds me of the book and video games, "Rebel Moon" and "Rebel Moon Rising".
Still, it seems to me that starting a colony on the moon would be so expensive that no-one could afford the investment without some concrete payback. The colonization of the "new world" was motivated by real profit incentive for the countries/companies spawning the venture. Hard to see that kind of potential on the moon, or anywhere else in near-space.
I think we'll be long dead before something like this comes to fruition. Too bad.
OTOH, we have for the first time in human history the ability to play realistic 3D interactive games and simulations of space exploration/combat. That's cool enough for me to be happy to be alive.
Oh, and for topicalness, the scientist in the article did not mention whether he worked in an area relevant to "national security". The NIH is a big institution that oversees all kinds of research projects. The justification for searching employees in this particular instance may be no more plausible than searching, say, schoolteachers or librarians.
I think it's entirely proper to question and challenge the justification for such warrantless searches, just as it is for the USA's urine testing (faugh!), no-knock searches, and other abuses of state/corporate power that have infected the nation.
The tree of liberty is indeed in need of watering...
"Your heart is like a silken sponge." - Residents
This is the dumbest post I've seen in - well - days.
"I could care less" means that you COULD care less than you do - meaning you DO care.
"I couldn't care less" means you do NOT care at all, and thus could not care less.
Sheesh. Idjits.
Now, it sucks to be monitored, but it also sucks to be raped, robbed or just to have to pay for the vandalism of public facilities.
Seems to me that the benefits of surveillance are provable, and significant. The harms of surveillance lie in the potential for abuse. Thus, I think slashdotters need to be politically engaged to ensure that our democracies institute laws which prevent abuses.
Some ideas:
What I'm getting at is that a democracy should be able to make use of a technology (telephone, internet) without allowing illegal, unsupervised snooping (NSA, Echelon) on that technology. This requires education and advocacy. I think discussions like these are vital to that end.
That's exactly what they want you to think, justletmeinnow.
The western media are trying to isolate the incident from the context of USian world global domination, and judging by your response, they have convinced at least one ignorant USian.
What's pathetic is that you can participate in a forum such as /. and simply ignore all the posts showing this to be a consequence of a rapacious, brutal and deeply hypoctitical US foreign policy.
I do sympathise with you. When I was younger, I also had a knee-jerk hate reaction against people who criticised the USA. Now I see that I was deeply brainwashed in school, and just didn't want to accept the fact that my country, the "bastion of democracy and freedom" etc, had such bloody hands. I know it's a really bitter pill to swallow, and it can actually hurt your own spirit/job/life to become aware of just how sick and hypocritical the USA is.
peace,
You're misinformed. One of the terrorists suffered pangs of conscience and phoned the CIA and Secret Service to warn of the attack. He was ignored. The buildings were occupied.
Some questions:
You'd think this would be newsworthy, right?
Does anyone have more info on the warnings? This should be an entirely new slashdot article. Post what you know here!
It's only expensive unless you can pressure your 'allies' to foot the bill.
The USA made a PROFIT off the Gulf War.
Germany will fork over about 15 billion Deutsche Marks (about 6.5 billion dollars) for this idiocy.
Video surveillance by governments, when coupled with automatic recognition, gives the state an unprecedented (meaning never-before available) power to trace and track ordinary citizens.
This is a fact. When technology changes the balance of power between statist controls and freedom of individuals, we should take notice.
Whether abuses have occurred or will occur is debatable, but given the current and proven abuses of telecommunications channels by the US/UK intelligence community, I think there is enough precedent to warrant suspicion whenever members of government call for more surveillance under the guise of crime prevention or "national security".
The "cameras are everywhere, get used to it" argument is, valid to the extent that A) many people and companies can now afford video cameras and B) such cameras provide a useful function in proving crimes. However, it does NOT immediately follow that democratic states should give their governments carte blanche to do whatever they want with the technology.
As previously mentioned, privacy is a luxury of pluralistic, humanitarian cultures. Lack of privacy was one reason that the US/UK (rightfully) condemmned the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Your politicians (and thoroughly goatse'd posters like angkor) are pushing for policies that are totalitarian, faschistic and communist and are successfully making a mockery of the oft-touted, self-righteous term "free society".
In general, western governments have not been as oppressive of political dissenters as many others. This does not mean that they are not oppressing political dissent. Wish I had time to dig for sources, but y'all can use search engines... Some keywords: CIA, FBI, SIGINT, yippies, YIP, covert, surveillance, DNC, Chicago, Black Panthers, Malcolm X, etc etc.
"I came, bearing a sword" - shit Jesus, didn't that hurt?
Can't agree more.
Is that viewsonic using the Mitsubishi 22" flat-panel Diamondtron tube? My Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 uses one. The electronics are great - will do 1600x1200 at 100hz!! Sitting 30 cm away, running antialiased fonts, I can't see dots. Just a little more blurry than holding up a printed page at that distance.
In sum, people do yourself a favor and scrimp and save for a 22" diamondtron-based monitor. Best $1000 I've ever spent. http://www.pricewatch.com should have these at well under $900 now.
Just do it.
According to a German newssource, one of the terrorists in Hamburg called the CIA and Secret Service to warn of the attack, but the warning was ignored.
I'm trying to find more info on this, but the story seems to have disappeared. Can anyone provide more info? You'd think that federal agencies ignoring a telephoned warning about the impending attack would be front page news.
Given the predictable American response to the tragedy, the implications are sta... uh, maybe I'd better stop now.
To quote Al Jourgensen, "Connect the god-damn dots."
According to the WFP (World Food Program), 4 million Afghanis are in danger of death by starvation this winter. Approx. 750,000 people in Kabul are dependent upon foreign food aid for survival.
The USA has now coerced Pakistan to close the borders and block food-relief.
Result: USA is now silently starving millions of innocent Afghanis to death. You won't hear Dubya boasting about it on national TV, nor will you hear about US and European culpability in this deliberate and incredibly cruel act of genocide in western media.
A number of Americans have called for all nations who train and support terrorists to be bombed into the ground. Well, the USA supported and trained Bin Laden, as well as tens of thousands of terrorists throughout Asia and S.America. The delicious irony is that if these wishes were carried-out, the USA would bomb itself out of existence.
But back to the crime at hand: It would be an act of *mercy* if the US were to carpet bomb the Afghani populace. Better than deliberately starving these wretched souls to death.
The curses crowd my mouth. I'm looking at my sandwich and I can't finish it, because i know that I'm a citizen of a democracy that commits such unspeakable acts while cynically posing as the worlds "beacon of freedom and justice and..".
My fast begins now. I call upon all people of the world to cry out against this despicable cruelty against innocent Afghani women, children - and yes, men too.
Your media are manufacturing consent. Fight the empire of lies with words, not bombs. Bombs are exactly what the (state) terrorists want you to throw.
...nuff for now.
"You got to fight the powers that be." -Public Enemy
No, not zero.
:-)
Just less and less.
I don't use CCs.
I can encrypt my email, but I don't, because I want the spooks to read what I have to say. (I want everyone to read what I say!
Privacy is a worthwhile fight. Your "you already have zero privacy" attitude is simply nihilism. If you extrapolate your position to other areas of life, you might just as well put a bullet in your head. Why not? You have to die anyway...
Point is, you can do what you want. The opportunity is yours. My suggestion is, "do good". That includes fighting for things like privacy, individual freedoms, peace, health, truth, beauty, the environment and prosperity.
Yeah, there's conflicts and complications - welcome to life. Nihilism is a cowardly route. Hatred is the whirlpool of the soul.
I can't be eloquent tonight - hope I'm not misunderstood.
cya
Because war-dogs like yourself are the problem, not the solution
When the state of Afghanistan declares war against the U.S. and attacks, you have a war.
The fact that some terrorists (who may or MAY NOT) be from Afghanistan have poked the US in the eye does not give you the right to carpet-bomb a country.
But the U.S. doesn't give a flying fsck about right or wrong. Just watch the pretty fireworks and wave your bloody flag, you ape.
Which country holds the world at gunpoint, controls the media and the international financial markets?
Which country exempts itself from UN resolutions?
Which country thwarts global democracy through the UN and the World court?
Which country exempts itself from crucial environmental resolutions (kyoto)?
Which country is the only one to have used nuclear weapons against civilian populations?
Which country is the only one to effectively monitor the majority of world communications for industrial and military purposes?
Which country infects the worlds computer networks with spyware?
Which country created todays drug-wars and forced international drug hypocrisy?
You are a tiny cog in a huge, evil machine.
What an amazing ignoramus...
When? ca. 1700-2001
Where?
And I'm not even well-versed in these matters - the history of US-sponsored genocide is just too sickening. You have net access, you twit. Read... Learn.
"The truth?? You can't HANDLE the truth!"
"Blow up ISPs that allow SSL"?
Not necessary, they are voluntarily doing it themselves. https://www.yahoo.com now redirects to a non-ssl page, and my account on freemail.web.de is completely blocked (unlike friends of mine).
I can't begin to say how much the situation sickens me - not the attacks - the response.
The faschist control freaks everywhere are having a field day. Killing them won't help. Gotta get out there and enlighten your neighbor as to the causes of the attack, and the consequences of the consequences.
Peace. Love. Linux. arnim
The German government does this as well. You may not name your child "Dweezul Zappa" here.
The sad thing is the degree to which Germans (and other europeans) trust their govt. to be the saintly bringer of all good things. What a bunch of dumbfskcs. Didn't ya fscking socialists learn something from "National Socialism" -- HUUH?
arnim
If you're looking for a baisc MS-Office compatible word Processor, Ted beats everything else I've tried.
a rt icle123.shtml
http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/
A review can be found at:
http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/November2000/
I've not installed the new KOffice because of the dense web of dependencies on upgraded KDE libraries. I don't want to break my KDE just to install a "Wordpad" class text editor! Ted is small, slick, and very self-contained. Way to go, Mark de Does!
Absolutely right. U9 was a great start, but they needed another year to add decent quests, add alternate solutions and debug/speed the engine. And of course more NPC activity in towns. And and and.
But the roaming freedom! I'd sometimes have a good smoke and just wander with the distance cutoff set to some obscenely large value. Refresh rates went below 1/second, but the scenes were so gorgeous!
Another fun thingy was enabling the flying cheat, then raising up 1000 ft above an area to see how it all looked from above. At some point you caused the VM manager to barf cause it was loading so many textures -- heh.
I WISH they'd just buy the rights to the U9 world and make a good game based on all the work they had done up to that point.
Completely agree with other posters that game development suffers from the heavy investements needed in the graphic dept.
Folks, Just because you've had luck with DX8 doesn't mean it doesn't break some DX7 apps on some systems. Do a web search
Frankly, I don't need Windows or DirectX 8 to live a rich and fulfilling life. In fact, I find I'm much happier without them.
The AVC Soul Player portable MP3 CD player features upgradable firmware, which might in future include Ogg Vorbis support.
http://www.easybuy2000.com