I second the nomination for JungleDisk. It's free (you still pay for your S3 account), and you can schedule a nice automatic backup to run every so often (5 minutes - once a month). On OSX you can connect to the JungleDisk server (really just a front end for S3) on a local port so it shows up like any other mounted drive (good finder integration).
As if the game (if it can be called such having absolutely no actual gameplay) wasn't bad enough, the inventor applied for and received a patent on it. I have a diatribe on the rediculousness of this http://www.koontzfamily.org/david/blog/?p=214/here .
If you're interested in supporting your favorite artist but want to deter this sort of behavior by recording companies buy the artist's merchandise (preferrably directly off their web site). I can guarantee you that the artist is making a whole lot more money from every shirt or hat you buy than a couple of CD's.
You can always go back to a 486 100Mhz and get outstanding battery life. Graphics are no different, you pay for your performance in battery life. Do you honestly think every cell manufacturer is going to slap these chips in all their phones if the battery life is terrible? No there will be consumer (for fun) phones i.e. N-Gage and professional (not for fun) phones that have no spiffy anything but "Just Work".
So the Bush bashing post isn't a troll and gets +3 informative, but the parent which in the same tone and lays out many activities that have also contributed to the current situation is a troll? Whatever.
The actual reality of the choice isn't the important thing, it's the illusion that you have a choice that allows the mind to accept the matrix/meta-matrix 'reality'.
>And soon they won't even need to use Dell for the >dirty work because they will have their own PC >line called Xbox.
Yes, but if they try this the will be cutting off the one thing that keeps them in the public's good graces. Right now Joe Consumer believes PC's = Windows and therefore Microsoft. They belive that Word is the only word processing software that's any good and Internet Explorer is the only web browser available. Most people can't tell the difference between PC's and Windows right now, but they can tell the difference between PC's and consoles so if (when) Microsoft decides they don't need PC manufacturers anymore because they have Xbox a lot of people will become educated very quickly. Microsoft might have their Xbox platform but it will suddenly be a proprietary platform which people will most likley shy away from in favor of their traditional (and now uber cheap) pc's running whatever OS they pluck off the shelf (or preinstalled) at Wal-Mart
Yes it is true that game development has been gravitating towards licensed engines because the cost of developing from scratch a AAA engine has been steadily increasing. What is NOT true is that games based on licensed engines involves "just scripting the NPCs and loading some fansy GFX" This is complete BS. Do you think that RTCW is just "some fansy GFX" slapped on the Quake 3 engine? Beyond the back-end (rendering, sound, input) everything content wise had to be created, and anyone creating a game will confirm for you that generating the content for a game is one of the most involved aspects. Did ST:Voyager Elite Forces just drop in some new models? No! The enhanced the rendering engine, implemented pretty decently intelligent bots for the single player campaign and scripted tons of events (ala Half-Life) that made the game so much more than "just" Q3 with new models and levels. This is NOT just filling in a "template" it involves editing the engine's source code to get it to do what you want. Because you do get the full source to the engine you can extend it in any way you see fit, this hardly fits with any definition of a "template" that I know of.
Now for just a little nit-picking. It's the Unreal engine, there is no such thing as the Unread engine, you can at least get the names of your examples correct. Secondly, it's a lot not alot (2 words not one), you emphasise this but you spell it incorrectly! Third, if you're going to make sweeping generalizations about licensed engines with incorrect facts and assumptions you could at least let us know who you are. Of course I'm probably guilty now of feeding the trolls but I just wanted to sweep away a little bit of the FUD that was floating under the bridge.
>2) This is awful news for other ISPs, since this will give the script kiddies incentive to do it again.
I agree with you here, any publicity is bad for discouraging this sort of thing, even publicity that condems it.
>Not only did you get an ISP to shut down ("Wow, isn't that cool" must be running through their heads) but they also got featured on/. This will just embolden these kiddies to do it again. sigh
I disagree here, how many 1337 kiddies read slashdot? First of all they would need to be technically minded, and second of all they should be sufficiently geek/nerd'ish to be interested in the content of slashdot. Both of these are demonstrated to be untrue by their use of pre-made tools that they do not understand the inner workings of.
>What they plan to do is release the new and improved XBox V2
Yes it's rumored to be called the Homestation
>(twice as many "Green" screens of death, twice the price)
That's pretty hard on the pocketbook for a product targeting joe blow's living room. I don't think even MS would price something that high (at least until they know they can.) They will price it at or under their competition until they can gain dominance and THEN jack up the price.
These of course are just a few of the more frequent ones, QNX seemed to come up often a little while ago, oh and don't forget Emacs, some consider it an OS all in itself. Then there's that goatse.cx OS I've been hearing about.
Tivo could set up something like an opt-in Nielson rating system where users can volunteer for Tivo to report what they watch, when they watch it, how many times, etc. This could be a moneymaker for Tivo as well as giving Tivo customers some input into their favorite shows.
I had the same experience trying to find the free player, it was wedged in a tiny corner with text that almost blended into it's background. The only thing Real has going for them is a bunch of deals to push their format on sites people actually WANT to visit (I wanted to listen to CD tracks on Amazon.)
The "They're not MS" argument would have worked back when they had a good product, but now, I actually think they're worse.
Yes those currently run MS software but look at the primary manufacturers, Compaq and HP. Both these companies are investing in Linux (Compaq is admittedly doing the most on the PDA side.) What good does it do Compaq to rub shoulders with MS over a Linux distro for IPAQ if they don't see themselves getting a full blown PDA OS out of it?
MS is going to jump on the bandwagon a few years late (ala GUIs, the Internet, Consoles, etc.) throw a truckload of money at it and hope to win, HP and Compaq have seen this before and they have to know it's coming, especially with MS's increased forays into the hardware biz. I'm sure both companies are looking for something that will let them stand on their own without MS holding them down/back/under.
The media hype surrounding Linux may have died with the various high-profile linux company's stock prices but that doesn't mean Linux has stopped making inroads.
An example of this would be Java. When Sun released it everyone was shouting Java this and Java that and how it would change the world yada yada yada. Sound familiar? Well Java news has been pretty slim in the non-geek world (or at least from what I've seen.) However, Java has been making big inroads into the back-end systems that don't get much media converage. One might assume Java had gone the way of many a dead language without realizing it's at work behind the scenes and growing.
>But what do you expect from someone who practices identity theft [wired.com]?
How exactly do you steal the identity of someone who never existed? The man we know as Robert X. Cringly was the Infoworld Cringly for 8 years! I'd say he pretty much defined who that Cringly was (or is today, I don't read Infoworld.) Saying he practices identity theft would be a valid argument if the Infoworld Cringly was someone else and he had just appropriated the name for use on PBS, but he didn't. He built up the Infoworld Cringly and so I believe he has a right to go on with the persona he's used for all this time.
Tsck Tcsk, I would expect better from someone named 4of12 and a self proported Star Trek viewer. Say it with me now, Holodeck. Holo, like Hologram or Holography. And BTW it's Moriarty.
On the flipside, I do think your analogy of Moriarty's holodeck is a pretty good one.
>3) Demand that every OS Developer, from Microsoft to RedHat make their OS absolutely air-tight and unable to be used for such purposes,
Ok, then we need to add #6
6) Demand that every human being is required to perform their job flawlessly, any deviation from this standard will result in life imprisonment, forfiture of all assest and or death by exposure to rabid lawyers.
Do you honestly think any OS developer really wants to let bugs slip into their products? (Ok, well maybe MS.) C'mon, if it were so easy to just *snap* oh look, no more bugs in our 400,000+ lines of code it would have already been done. (Even by MS)
I agree that there should be consequences for DoS attacks and the "free speech" excuse gets thrown out in defense of too many things but what you're suggesting here is not only unresonable, it is not humanly possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Gwen Stacey?
I second the nomination for JungleDisk. It's free (you still pay for your S3 account), and you can schedule a nice automatic backup to run every so often (5 minutes - once a month). On OSX you can connect to the JungleDisk server (really just a front end for S3) on a local port so it shows up like any other mounted drive (good finder integration).
You have inspired me:
http://www.koontzfamily.org/david/blog/?p=338
As if the game (if it can be called such having absolutely no actual gameplay) wasn't bad enough, the inventor applied for and received a patent on it. I have a diatribe on the rediculousness of this http://www.koontzfamily.org/david/blog/?p=214/here .
If you're interested in supporting your favorite artist but want to deter this sort of behavior by recording companies buy the artist's merchandise (preferrably directly off their web site). I can guarantee you that the artist is making a whole lot more money from every shirt or hat you buy than a couple of CD's.
You can always go back to a 486 100Mhz and get outstanding battery life. Graphics are no different, you pay for your performance in battery life. Do you honestly think every cell manufacturer is going to slap these chips in all their phones if the battery life is terrible? No there will be consumer (for fun) phones i.e. N-Gage and professional (not for fun) phones that have no spiffy anything but "Just Work".
So the Bush bashing post isn't a troll and gets +3 informative, but the parent which in the same tone and lays out many activities that have also contributed to the current situation is a troll? Whatever.
Yes, Kenny Baker.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0048652/
The actual reality of the choice isn't the important thing, it's the illusion that you have a choice that allows the mind to accept the matrix/meta-matrix 'reality'.
DoD is Day of Defeat a Half Life mod.
www.dayofdefeatmod.com
>And soon they won't even need to use Dell for the
>dirty work because they will have their own PC
>line called Xbox.
Yes, but if they try this the will be cutting off the one thing that keeps them in the public's good graces. Right now Joe Consumer believes PC's = Windows and therefore Microsoft. They belive that Word is the only word processing software that's any good and Internet Explorer is the only web browser available. Most people can't tell the difference between PC's and Windows right now, but they can tell the difference between PC's and consoles so if (when) Microsoft decides they don't need PC manufacturers anymore because they have Xbox a lot of people will become educated very quickly. Microsoft might have their Xbox platform but it will suddenly be a proprietary platform which people will most likley shy away from in favor of their traditional (and now uber cheap) pc's running whatever OS they pluck off the shelf (or preinstalled) at Wal-Mart
Yes it is true that game development has been gravitating towards licensed engines because the cost of developing from scratch a AAA engine has been steadily increasing. What is NOT true is that games based on licensed engines involves "just scripting the NPCs and loading some fansy GFX" This is complete BS. Do you think that RTCW is just "some fansy GFX" slapped on the Quake 3 engine? Beyond the back-end (rendering, sound, input) everything content wise had to be created, and anyone creating a game will confirm for you that generating the content for a game is one of the most involved aspects. Did ST:Voyager Elite Forces just drop in some new models? No! The enhanced the rendering engine, implemented pretty decently intelligent bots for the single player campaign and scripted tons of events (ala Half-Life) that made the game so much more than "just" Q3 with new models and levels. This is NOT just filling in a "template" it involves editing the engine's source code to get it to do what you want. Because you do get the full source to the engine you can extend it in any way you see fit, this hardly fits with any definition of a "template" that I know of.
Now for just a little nit-picking. It's the Unreal engine, there is no such thing as the Unread engine, you can at least get the names of your examples correct. Secondly, it's a lot not alot (2 words not one), you emphasise this but you spell it incorrectly! Third, if you're going to make sweeping generalizations about licensed engines with incorrect facts and assumptions you could at least let us know who you are. Of course I'm probably guilty now of feeding the trolls but I just wanted to sweep away a little bit of the FUD that was floating under the bridge.
>2) This is awful news for other ISPs, since this will give the script kiddies incentive to do it again.
/. This will just embolden these kiddies to do it again. sigh
I agree with you here, any publicity is bad for discouraging this sort of thing, even publicity that condems it.
>Not only did you get an ISP to shut down ("Wow, isn't that cool" must be running through their heads) but they also got featured on
I disagree here, how many 1337 kiddies read slashdot? First of all they would need to be technically minded, and second of all they should be sufficiently geek/nerd'ish to be interested in the content of slashdot. Both of these are demonstrated to be untrue by their use of pre-made tools that they do not understand the inner workings of.
>What they plan to do is release the new and improved XBox V2
Yes it's rumored to be called the Homestation
>(twice as many "Green" screens of death, twice the price)
That's pretty hard on the pocketbook for a product targeting joe blow's living room. I don't think even MS would price something that high (at least until they know they can.) They will price it at or under their competition until they can gain dominance and THEN jack up the price.
>This way, you get 2 boxes for the price of one!
Didn't you just say it would be twice the price?
>Since when does Slashdot talk about OSes other than Linux?
Hmm, maybe
AtheOS
FreeBSD
OSX
BeOS
These of course are just a few of the more frequent ones, QNX seemed to come up often a little while ago, oh and don't forget Emacs, some consider it an OS all in itself. Then there's that goatse.cx OS I've been hearing about.
Tivo could set up something like an opt-in Nielson rating system where users can volunteer for Tivo to report what they watch, when they watch it, how many times, etc. This could be a moneymaker for Tivo as well as giving Tivo customers some input into their favorite shows.
I had the same experience trying to find the free player, it was wedged in a tiny corner with text that almost blended into it's background. The only thing Real has going for them is a bunch of deals to push their format on sites people actually WANT to visit (I wanted to listen to CD tracks on Amazon.)
The "They're not MS" argument would have worked back when they had a good product, but now, I actually think they're worse.
Yes those currently run MS software but look at the primary manufacturers, Compaq and HP. Both these companies are investing in Linux (Compaq is admittedly doing the most on the PDA side.) What good does it do Compaq to rub shoulders with MS over a Linux distro for IPAQ if they don't see themselves getting a full blown PDA OS out of it?
MS is going to jump on the bandwagon a few years late (ala GUIs, the Internet, Consoles, etc.) throw a truckload of money at it and hope to win, HP and Compaq have seen this before and they have to know it's coming, especially with MS's increased forays into the hardware biz. I'm sure both companies are looking for something that will let them stand on their own without MS holding them down/back/under.
Just my $.02
The media hype surrounding Linux may have died with the various high-profile linux company's stock prices but that doesn't mean Linux has stopped making inroads.
An example of this would be Java. When Sun released it everyone was shouting Java this and Java that and how it would change the world yada yada yada. Sound familiar? Well Java news has been pretty slim in the non-geek world (or at least from what I've seen.) However, Java has been making big inroads into the back-end systems that don't get much media converage. One might assume Java had gone the way of many a dead language without realizing it's at work behind the scenes and growing.
>But what do you expect from someone who practices identity theft [wired.com]?
How exactly do you steal the identity of someone who never existed? The man we know as Robert X. Cringly was the Infoworld Cringly for 8 years! I'd say he pretty much defined who that Cringly was (or is today, I don't read Infoworld.) Saying he practices identity theft would be a valid argument if the Infoworld Cringly was someone else and he had just appropriated the name for use on PBS, but he didn't. He built up the Infoworld Cringly and so I believe he has a right to go on with the persona he's used for all this time.
Tsck Tcsk, I would expect better from someone named 4of12 and a self proported Star Trek viewer. Say it with me now, Holodeck. Holo, like Hologram or Holography. And BTW it's Moriarty.
On the flipside, I do think your analogy of Moriarty's holodeck is a pretty good one.
40GB hard drive for $35 huh? Please give me a link to your supplier as I'd like to order a few thousand at that price.
As for only having 32MB of RAM, it's not what you have, its what you can do with what you have. Case in point: Metal Gear Solid 2.
Yes, but do they also delete the passport account? That is the point he was making.
Mod parent up, that was hilarious!
>3) Demand that every OS Developer, from Microsoft to RedHat make their OS absolutely air-tight and unable to be used for such purposes,
Ok, then we need to add #6
6) Demand that every human being is required to perform their job flawlessly, any deviation from this standard will result in life imprisonment, forfiture of all assest and or death by exposure to rabid lawyers.
Do you honestly think any OS developer really wants to let bugs slip into their products? (Ok, well maybe MS.) C'mon, if it were so easy to just *snap* oh look, no more bugs in our 400,000+ lines of code it would have already been done. (Even by MS)
I agree that there should be consequences for DoS attacks and the "free speech" excuse gets thrown out in defense of too many things but what you're suggesting here is not only unresonable, it is not humanly possible.