"Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention. "
Hmm he's right. I was about to drop all the 3D animation I was about to do and work on destroying earthbound asteroids... thanks for pointing me to the light!
"Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers?"
I think it seems ridiculous to you because it's assumed that one scenario would mean it'd be cheaper to buy a new pc than to fix this one. To be honest, I'm not sure why that benchmark came into being. The truth of the matter is that you need somebody's time, and that's going to cost. On the flip side, you lose $800 if the machine doesn't work. Well gee.
" (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour). "
Well now we're wandering into a different topic now. You can always find cheaper elsewhere. You don't have a shop to maintain nor a line of customers ready to hand you money to fix their problems. So yeah, an hour of your time is going to be under $100 I imagine. On the flip side, though, it's fortunate you already had the tools you needed to get it done. Now I really don't know anything about a 'stripped wheel stud', but if it was the type of thing where you had to buy a new tool, then your rate wouldn't have been so cheap.
I understand what you mean, but I don't find it all that ridiculous. If you can't do something yourself then you're going to have to pay for one's expertise.
"Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?"
They're trying to prove to the world that Microsoft is incompetent and evil. Those of us that use Windows must all be real morons who don't know shit, so they're hoping that by pointing out that Steve Ballmer double-parked we'll finally "see the light!" It wouldn't bother me except that it is generally assumed that my choice to use Windows 2000 wasn't voluntary. Slashbots think that Microsoft's monopoly put a Windows box on my desk at both home and at work. Yeah, there might be some truth to it. But seriously, if Windows was the big lump of shit that the people stuck in the past imagine it to be, I wouldn't be able to do 3D rendering on it.
I agree with you that the petty "anything that can be spun against Microsoft" campaign is childish and obnoxious, but in this case, it was nice to find out why Hotmail was down. It's also nice to know when the next big worm breaks. Slashdot's helped me stay protected for years now. I just hope one day Slashdot will take Microsoft a little more seriously instead of the righetous BS that I need to be running Linux even though my work software isn't running on it.
*sigh* This post isn't going to be visible for very long. Pity. At least it felt good to let it out.
I still prefer tougher email security
on
DSPAM v2.10 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.
I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve. Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on. No requesting permission to be on your white list. No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from. No real way to verify the sender is legit. etc.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature.
Predictably so, yes. Sell a product that plays a version of their games that can be acquired without paying Nintendo a cent, and you can bet your ass Nintendo will crack down on you. It's not just Nintendo, either. Remember Conectix and Sony?
"Really, the technical community needs to sit down and figure out a universal cross-platform benchmarking method."
That'd be nice, but the real world doesn't work so well in this regard. The platforms are different enough that all have different strengths. Your 300fps in Quake3 doesn't tell me squat about how fast Lightwave will render. If a program's optimized for one app but not another.. well shoot, there's another problem that a benchmark really cannot provide much insight into.
I'm sick of benchmarks anymore. Computers have too many little things going on that affect the overall result. The solution? There needs to be a broadening of what your computer does. Maybe voice recognition is the next big bfd. Maybe it's a flashy new interface that requires a lot more graphical power. Maybe it's getting more people interested in 3D rendering. Heck, I dunno.
I do know that my 'underpowered' laptop I'm writing this message on is still going strong and is still quite useful to me. I can't think of anything off the top of my hand (save for a few games I suppose, but I'm more of a console gamer anyway) that this thing won't do in some form. Heck, I bought it because the LCD runs at 1600 by 1200.
Maybe the next big thing isn't how fast the processor is, but how many you have running. I wouldn't mind having a render farm here.
"Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it"
Brilliant move. I'd have more respect for these guys if they started it as an Open Source project to begin with. Now they're just being asses. What they should have done instead is marketed it as a development tool.
Let me give you all a piece of advice: Don't use Open Source to advocate (either directly or indirectly like in this case) piracy. You don't want corps like Nintendo burned by actions like this. How do you really think other software development houses are going to see it?
"Yet Microsoft's decision to ditch Xbox's Wintel legacy shouldn't have been much of a surprise. There are many reasons why consoles have diverged from the Intel and AMD way of doing things. The primary reason is the general-purpose nature of the PC."
Um. He makes it sound like the XBOX suffered by using Intel. Seeing as how the XBOX is arguably the most graphically imrpessive system out this generation, I don't think he has a very strong leg to stand on here. It's not the processor that's doing the graphic grunt work, it's the NVidia chip along with it. That actually wasn't a bad move by Microsoft. Besides, once consoles get powerful enough, general purposeness isn't such a bad thing.
Eh. I guess some peeps look for failures even when they're not there.
"It's a pity that slashcode isn't advanced enough to allow editing for typos."
Actually it's designed that way on purpose. Once you say it, it's out there, can't change the past. That's why they gave you a little button marked 'preview'.
How long do you plan on owning this house? Optical networking is just starting to trickle in, I wouldn't expect it to be common place for a few more years. Even when that happens, Cat5 will die a slow slow slow death. By then, you'll probably be using wireless anyway.
... if it'd be easier/quicker/possibly-cheaper-but not-necessarly to hire a web consultant to make you a site, and very carefully watch everything he does. I personally have learned a lot that way, my former company brought in a couple of web people and they were more than happy to 'brag about' every little choice they made. Heh.
"Usability engineering is something separate from both graphic presentation and back-end nuts and bolts design."
Actually it's not all that seperate. Part of art (specifically, animation) is about learning to communicate with your audience. Those skills carry over into designing a good site. The real problem isn't so much that they're incapable of designing a good UI, they're just not so aware that they don't need to use every single tool in their toolbox. Early on, it's hard to stay simple when you have so much you want to show.
"Efforts to exceed this interface's limits has led to a series of bizarre experiments on personally owned machines ranging from a Belt Sander or even the drive wheel of a motor scooter employed to max out the track ball."
I wouldn't dream of cheating at the game using a belt sander or a motor scooter... but man I'd sure love to try that on the real thing!
"What guys are you doing with so huge hard drivers? My first HD had 40MB, I know it was small number... it was less than 40 diskiettes. Today I have 120GB, and I am never out of space. 120GB is more than 120CDs. On one CD I can put whole movie or half of movie, few mp3 albums, or lots, lots of text/sources. I just have no idea what I could put on bigger drive, except movies I don't watch, music I don't listen and software I don't use. "
Well I imagine I'm in the minority here, but I'm a 3D artist rendering animations on my machine. My 120 gig drive's starting to get full of lightly compressed (.png) images and mesh files etc. I can work within the 120 gig by doing backups etc, but a 400gb drive is definitely tempting.
So what about average Joes? DV video anybody? $500 buys you a DV camcorder. Just plug it into your firewire port and you've got 13 gigs an hour chugging along into it. Somebody who takes lots of vids of their kids would want lots and lots of gigs so they don't have to recompress. Etc.
I should point out, though, that there is a huge difference between needing the storage and being able to use it.
" 400GB is going to fit easily over 50 uncompressed DVD's, and I doubt I'll ever have 50 movies that I watch often enough that I benifit from copying them to hdd. "
Heh wait until you start buying whole seasons of TV shows.
"Oh boo hoo. I got hit by a bad IBM drive (75GXP) 'deathstar' but I don't think I'd mind getting a new Hitatchi, even if it is still an IBM design. Got a 'travelstar' in my laptop that's been going fine for ages. So there was a bad lot a while back, get over it. "
Just got a phone call from phrasebook. His travelstar blew up. Murphy's Law and all.
"and released it in stores with a selection of ROM images. Sega have a pretty positive attitude to emulation (possibly as a result of the collapse of their hardware business). "
I wouldn't derive that conclusion from the evidence you've provided. They provided only a handful of ROMs, right? They're not saying you can go download more ROMs, right? It's not all that different from Nintendo porting Donkey Kong Country to the GBA. Sega took a cheaper shortcut.
In defense of your point, I don't think Sega's filed any anti-emulator lawsuits, though.
I spent a couple of weeks using a modern (like less than 6 months old) PocketPC via 802.11b. My results were mixed. I used it for browsing Slashdot and reading the occasional email. Can't say I'd want to do a lot of heavy duty stuff with it, though. It didn't really understand the concept of doing more than one thing at a time. I don't mean multitasking, it did that quite well. I could only open one email at a time, or browse one page at a time, etc. That may not matter to you but it bugged the hell out of me. (not to mention that most sites didn't render on IE readably..)
If all she really does is type the occasional email, then a PocketPC + Bluetooth (using her phone to send the mail out...) + a keyboard for it may not be all that bad. But if she does anything more, she'll ache for her PC again.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not sure about everyone else, but humans as a whole we have many more earth bound issues that require our attention. Famine, disease, and war are way more important, and require more of our attention. "
Hmm he's right. I was about to drop all the 3D animation I was about to do and work on destroying earthbound asteroids... thanks for pointing me to the light!
"Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers?"
I think it seems ridiculous to you because it's assumed that one scenario would mean it'd be cheaper to buy a new pc than to fix this one. To be honest, I'm not sure why that benchmark came into being. The truth of the matter is that you need somebody's time, and that's going to cost. On the flip side, you lose $800 if the machine doesn't work. Well gee.
" (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour). "
Well now we're wandering into a different topic now. You can always find cheaper elsewhere. You don't have a shop to maintain nor a line of customers ready to hand you money to fix their problems. So yeah, an hour of your time is going to be under $100 I imagine. On the flip side, though, it's fortunate you already had the tools you needed to get it done. Now I really don't know anything about a 'stripped wheel stud', but if it was the type of thing where you had to buy a new tool, then your rate wouldn't have been so cheap.
I understand what you mean, but I don't find it all that ridiculous. If you can't do something yourself then you're going to have to pay for one's expertise.
"Why does there have to be one?"
Because my Oprah jokes are at a standstill until this issue is resolved!
" why does this non-event warrant a front page article? "
So we can throw an anti-MS pitchfork party! Read the newsletter man, we have one of these every other day.
"Why is slashdot determined to report every single trivial detail when it comes to Microsoft?"
They're trying to prove to the world that Microsoft is incompetent and evil. Those of us that use Windows must all be real morons who don't know shit, so they're hoping that by pointing out that Steve Ballmer double-parked we'll finally "see the light!" It wouldn't bother me except that it is generally assumed that my choice to use Windows 2000 wasn't voluntary. Slashbots think that Microsoft's monopoly put a Windows box on my desk at both home and at work. Yeah, there might be some truth to it. But seriously, if Windows was the big lump of shit that the people stuck in the past imagine it to be, I wouldn't be able to do 3D rendering on it.
I agree with you that the petty "anything that can be spun against Microsoft" campaign is childish and obnoxious, but in this case, it was nice to find out why Hotmail was down. It's also nice to know when the next big worm breaks. Slashdot's helped me stay protected for years now.
I just hope one day Slashdot will take Microsoft a little more seriously instead of the righetous BS that I need to be running Linux even though my work software isn't running on it.
*sigh* This post isn't going to be visible for very long. Pity. At least it felt good to let it out.
This may work for a little while, but the creative peeps will find a way around it.
I say forget the filtering shit and force email to evolve. Part of the reason that spam happens is that there is no real authentication going on. No requesting permission to be on your white list. No real strong way to block anybody you don't want to hear from. No real way to verify the sender is legit. etc.
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do know that I've been using ICQ for years and haven't seen a Spam from there since I turned on the 'require authorization' feature.
"No, Nintendo were being asses."
Predictably so, yes. Sell a product that plays a version of their games that can be acquired without paying Nintendo a cent, and you can bet your ass Nintendo will crack down on you. It's not just Nintendo, either. Remember Conectix and Sony?
"Really, the technical community needs to sit down and figure out a universal cross-platform benchmarking method."
That'd be nice, but the real world doesn't work so well in this regard. The platforms are different enough that all have different strengths. Your 300fps in Quake3 doesn't tell me squat about how fast Lightwave will render. If a program's optimized for one app but not another.. well shoot, there's another problem that a benchmark really cannot provide much insight into.
I'm sick of benchmarks anymore. Computers have too many little things going on that affect the overall result. The solution? There needs to be a broadening of what your computer does. Maybe voice recognition is the next big bfd. Maybe it's a flashy new interface that requires a lot more graphical power. Maybe it's getting more people interested in 3D rendering. Heck, I dunno.
I do know that my 'underpowered' laptop I'm writing this message on is still going strong and is still quite useful to me. I can't think of anything off the top of my hand (save for a few games I suppose, but I'm more of a console gamer anyway) that this thing won't do in some form. Heck, I bought it because the LCD runs at 1600 by 1200.
Maybe the next big thing isn't how fast the processor is, but how many you have running. I wouldn't mind having a render farm here.
"Because of this, we have decided that we will release the emulator early next week as a free open source project, covered by the GPL license. We will of course provide a compiled version for you to use, but the full source code will also be available. This will provide us further legal protection, as we will not be profiting from it"
Brilliant move. I'd have more respect for these guys if they started it as an Open Source project to begin with. Now they're just being asses. What they should have done instead is marketed it as a development tool.
Let me give you all a piece of advice: Don't use Open Source to advocate (either directly or indirectly like in this case) piracy. You don't want corps like Nintendo burned by actions like this. How do you really think other software development houses are going to see it?
"Yet Microsoft's decision to ditch Xbox's Wintel legacy shouldn't have been much of a surprise. There are many reasons why consoles have diverged from the Intel and AMD way of doing things. The primary reason is the general-purpose nature of the PC."
Um. He makes it sound like the XBOX suffered by using Intel. Seeing as how the XBOX is arguably the most graphically imrpessive system out this generation, I don't think he has a very strong leg to stand on here. It's not the processor that's doing the graphic grunt work, it's the NVidia chip along with it. That actually wasn't a bad move by Microsoft. Besides, once consoles get powerful enough, general purposeness isn't such a bad thing.
Eh. I guess some peeps look for failures even when they're not there.
"It's a pity that slashcode isn't advanced enough to allow editing for typos."
Actually it's designed that way on purpose. Once you say it, it's out there, can't change the past. That's why they gave you a little button marked 'preview'.
"This is off-topic but I just can't help it anymore. There was never any such thing as an "Apple ][" nor was there any such thing as an "Apple //"
Oh man, I'm so glad you came by and cleared this up. I've been saying Apple Slash Slash for years!!!
How long do you plan on owning this house? Optical networking is just starting to trickle in, I wouldn't expect it to be common place for a few more years. Even when that happens, Cat5 will die a slow slow slow death. By then, you'll probably be using wireless anyway.
"If this was the situation, would you recognize then how far Nintendo was overstepping their bounds?"
Sure I would. Afterall, ink isn't copyrightable like a game is.
... if it'd be easier/quicker/possibly-cheaper-but not-necessarly to hire a web consultant to make you a site, and very carefully watch everything he does. I personally have learned a lot that way, my former company brought in a couple of web people and they were more than happy to 'brag about' every little choice they made. Heh.
"Usability engineering is something separate from both graphic presentation and back-end nuts and bolts design."
Actually it's not all that seperate. Part of art (specifically, animation) is about learning to communicate with your audience. Those skills carry over into designing a good site. The real problem isn't so much that they're incapable of designing a good UI, they're just not so aware that they don't need to use every single tool in their toolbox. Early on, it's hard to stay simple when you have so much you want to show.
"Efforts to exceed this interface's limits has led to a series of bizarre experiments on personally owned machines ranging from a Belt Sander or even the drive wheel of a motor scooter employed to max out the track ball."
I wouldn't dream of cheating at the game using a belt sander or a motor scooter... but man I'd sure love to try that on the real thing!
"What guys are you doing with so huge hard drivers? My first HD had 40MB, I know it was small number... it was less than 40 diskiettes. Today I have 120GB, and I am never out of space. 120GB is more than 120CDs. On one CD I can put whole movie or half of movie, few mp3 albums, or lots, lots of text/sources. I just have no idea what I could put on bigger drive, except movies I don't watch, music I don't listen and software I don't use. "
Well I imagine I'm in the minority here, but I'm a 3D artist rendering animations on my machine. My 120 gig drive's starting to get full of lightly compressed (.png) images and mesh files etc. I can work within the 120 gig by doing backups etc, but a 400gb drive is definitely tempting.
So what about average Joes? DV video anybody? $500 buys you a DV camcorder. Just plug it into your firewire port and you've got 13 gigs an hour chugging along into it. Somebody who takes lots of vids of their kids would want lots and lots of gigs so they don't have to recompress. Etc.
I should point out, though, that there is a huge difference between needing the storage and being able to use it.
"Yes, yes, it's 400GB... but how big is it in units that *I* can understand, pachyderms and volkswagons? "
It can hold about 4 days worth of porn.
" 400GB is going to fit easily over 50 uncompressed DVD's, and I doubt I'll ever have 50 movies that I watch often enough that I benifit from copying them to hdd. "
Heh wait until you start buying whole seasons of TV shows.
"Oh boo hoo. I got hit by a bad IBM drive (75GXP) 'deathstar' but I don't think I'd mind getting a new Hitatchi, even if it is still an IBM design. Got a 'travelstar' in my laptop that's been going fine for ages. So there was a bad lot a while back, get over it. "
Just got a phone call from phrasebook. His travelstar blew up. Murphy's Law and all.
"and released it in stores with a selection of ROM images. Sega have a pretty positive attitude to emulation (possibly as a result of the collapse of their hardware business). "
I wouldn't derive that conclusion from the evidence you've provided. They provided only a handful of ROMs, right? They're not saying you can go download more ROMs, right? It's not all that different from Nintendo porting Donkey Kong Country to the GBA. Sega took a cheaper shortcut.
In defense of your point, I don't think Sega's filed any anti-emulator lawsuits, though.
I spent a couple of weeks using a modern (like less than 6 months old) PocketPC via 802.11b. My results were mixed. I used it for browsing Slashdot and reading the occasional email. Can't say I'd want to do a lot of heavy duty stuff with it, though. It didn't really understand the concept of doing more than one thing at a time. I don't mean multitasking, it did that quite well. I could only open one email at a time, or browse one page at a time, etc. That may not matter to you but it bugged the hell out of me. (not to mention that most sites didn't render on IE readably..)
If all she really does is type the occasional email, then a PocketPC + Bluetooth (using her phone to send the mail out...) + a keyboard for it may not be all that bad. But if she does anything more, she'll ache for her PC again.
" as many of these systems are no longer produced, and as such the emulator itself becomes - conceptually atleast - an archival copy. "
Generally true, however, Nintendo's made a killing on porting their 'classic games' to the Game Boy Advance.
"The PS2 contains a PS1 emulator...does that mean the PS2 is in violation of Nintendo's patent? "
Emulation? I thought it used the PS1's main processor in the system?
Clarification?