For whatever reason, sometimes, when I join a server, my teammates don't have the right uniform. Or the titles are red where they should be blue. (Yes, I'm aware of which team I'm on.) So I'll spawn, knock off one or two baddies who look like they're trying to cap the spawn point, see "mikemol6453 [teamkills] soandso", and realize there's something screwy going on again, and cope with it.
And after a few minutes of playing, I'll get, "You have been kicked. This is usually the result of excessive teamkills or a successful kick vote." But it's happened when my score was positive, and I didn't get any notification of a kick vote.
It's not the choppers that make it a problem. In Gulf of Oman, if the USMC team gets stuck on the carrier, while the MEC holds all the capture points, it's pretty much game over.
Wait for an aircraft to spawn? You'll be dead before the pilot lifts off, having been bombed to pieces by enemy aircraft. Go for the boats belowdecks? If there are any left, you can expect to be shot to pieces by armor on shore.
...as the most sought-after vehicle. This is true. And the article describes a couple different ways players fight over them. My buddy is quite skilled at flying the attack helicopters; he gets them to do things that cause experienced players to bail out. Flying in vertical loops, regularly coming within inches of obstacles...it's like riding a roller coaster without safeties.
But I like flying gunner on the Black Hawk (or Chinese or MEC equiv.) better; and my buddy likes to pilot. Starting from scratch, we got our first promotions within a few hours of playing.
Encode your key with some sort of error correction, like Hamming code combined with 512-line striping. Then perform a low-level format on the floppy to give it enough extra space for your error-correcting bits.
You could lose up to one sector for every seven, without any trouble. If you go up to 1024-line striping, you can even lose two adjacent sectors. 1024 lines would give you four.
Try formatting a floppy with 12 sectors per track, 80 tracks, and use 6144-line reversing striping. (12 sectors * 512 bytes/sector) In your first pass, read one sector from each side of each track, starting at track 0 and ending with track 79. Next, read the next sector from each side of each track, starting at track 79 and ending with track 0. Repeat back and forth until you've read the whole disk.
You've now got a fairly fault-tolerant, if a bit slow, floppy disk. Add whatever data you'd like. The failure of up to 80 sectors can be tolerated, without loss of data. And you can lose up to 12 adjacent sectors, an entire track. (Which is more likely than 12 randomly scattered sectors; Physical damage tends to occur in streaks.) At worst, you lose 512 bytes of data if you lose the same-numbered sector on two tracks near each other.
I am waiting for a case where a software maker gets sued for releasing buggy code, but they will probably cover their ass with the long license agreements that nobody ever reads.'
I remember when I tried to re-install Windows 95 (a legal copy, mind you) from a floppy disk set back in the late 90s. Get halfway done, then run into a bad floppy. I tried everything I could, but I didn't have the tools at the time to format a floppy in an unusual format, and the data I'd managed to recover from the floppy didn't fit in 1.38MB.
I didn't run Linux at the time, so I'd never heard of superformat.
In short, one bad floppy can ruin a whole install sequence. And floppies don't age well. CDs can scratch, but they at least have error correction built into the filesystem.
The problem is that I'm not satisfied with the filenames currently given the files. Placement of different fields, such as name, author name, video source, etct., is inconsistent. And sometimes important fields are omitted altogether.
If I were to write this application, I'd want the filenames to be generated from stored metadata.
I have Asperger's Syndrome. And I don't like how you're assuming that just because someone says they don't want hundreds of people victomized, they have a disorder that would make them comfortable in that group. It's bigotry, and you ought to grow out of it.
That said, I work as a student tutor in a computer lab. I tutor several people each week on a one-to-one basis. And I have passing interaction with hundreds more each day.
It's certainly true that most popularity-conscious projects will work towards adding those missing features. But until they have those features, pragmatic users--most Linux users are pragmatic--will go with what fits their needs.
I use Linux, and love, use and create open source and Free software, but that doesn't stop me from paying for Quake (twice; the first CD was all scratched up, then lost), Doom II, RTCW, and even a license of XP Pro.
Which is why nobody ran Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake II, Quake III, KDE, StarOffice or Netscape on Linux prior to source release? Or Doom III, VMWare or NVIDIA/ATI manufacturers' drivers today?
If an Open Source project doesn't have the features that a Linux user wants, they'll usually go with the closed-source alternative that does. Even if it costs money.
Didn't you notice that the Games section is the only section, aside from book reviews, that's coming up with Slashdot-original content? And it's the only section where the original content was written by an employee instead of a regular reader like honestpuck?
It's a good move for Slashdot, and there's really no other place to put that content.
That's why we have different Open Source licenses. There's the GPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.
Each is tailored to a different situation. And let's not get into a debate about Open Source vs. Free Software. Not again. Please. For the curious, read this and this, instead. Or just do a search for open source vs free software.
Slashdot Mirror
Hm. Must be admins that keep kicking me.
For whatever reason, sometimes, when I join a server, my teammates don't have the right uniform. Or the titles are red where they should be blue. (Yes, I'm aware of which team I'm on.) So I'll spawn, knock off one or two baddies who look like they're trying to cap the spawn point, see "mikemol6453 [teamkills] soandso", and realize there's something screwy going on again, and cope with it.
And after a few minutes of playing, I'll get, "You have been kicked. This is usually the result of excessive teamkills or a successful kick vote." But it's happened when my score was positive, and I didn't get any notification of a kick vote.
It's frustrating.
It's not the choppers that make it a problem. In Gulf of Oman, if the USMC team gets stuck on the carrier, while the MEC holds all the capture points, it's pretty much game over.
Wait for an aircraft to spawn? You'll be dead before the pilot lifts off, having been bombed to pieces by enemy aircraft. Go for the boats belowdecks? If there are any left, you can expect to be shot to pieces by armor on shore.
Wake Island 2007 is even worse.
My buddy creates a squad. I join. We take a helicopter, and our orders. We get complimented by the commander.
:)
Works for me.
...as the most sought-after vehicle. This is true. And the article describes a couple different ways players fight over them. My buddy is quite skilled at flying the attack helicopters; he gets them to do things that cause experienced players to bail out. Flying in vertical loops, regularly coming within inches of obstacles...it's like riding a roller coaster without safeties.
But I like flying gunner on the Black Hawk (or Chinese or MEC equiv.) better; and my buddy likes to pilot. Starting from scratch, we got our first promotions within a few hours of playing.
Encode your key with some sort of error correction, like Hamming code combined with 512-line striping. Then perform a low-level format on the floppy to give it enough extra space for your error-correcting bits.
You could lose up to one sector for every seven, without any trouble. If you go up to 1024-line striping, you can even lose two adjacent sectors. 1024 lines would give you four.
Try formatting a floppy with 12 sectors per track, 80 tracks, and use 6144-line reversing striping. (12 sectors * 512 bytes/sector) In your first pass, read one sector from each side of each track, starting at track 0 and ending with track 79. Next, read the next sector from each side of each track, starting at track 79 and ending with track 0. Repeat back and forth until you've read the whole disk.
You've now got a fairly fault-tolerant, if a bit slow, floppy disk. Add whatever data you'd like. The failure of up to 80 sectors can be tolerated, without loss of data. And you can lose up to 12 adjacent sectors, an entire track. (Which is more likely than 12 randomly scattered sectors; Physical damage tends to occur in streaks.) At worst, you lose 512 bytes of data if you lose the same-numbered sector on two tracks near each other.
I wonder how far base conversions can take you in observing patterns.
Nice catch, but don't forget to take into account the time it takes to determine if a number is prime.
It uses a technique called Bayesian inference for ranking players.
:)
The submitter didn't really have to give Bayesian a magical aura...We geeks who remember the first Bayesian spam filters already know it's magical.
Yes, but will it work with Punkbuster?
Second, how do you remove it? Quoth the page:
I am waiting for a case where a software maker gets sued for releasing buggy code, but they will probably cover their ass with the long license agreements that nobody ever reads.'
The Therac-25 had flaws that killed people. Also read the IEEE article.
Floppies? Ick.
I remember when I tried to re-install Windows 95 (a legal copy, mind you) from a floppy disk set back in the late 90s. Get halfway done, then run into a bad floppy. I tried everything I could, but I didn't have the tools at the time to format a floppy in an unusual format, and the data I'd managed to recover from the floppy didn't fit in 1.38MB.
I didn't run Linux at the time, so I'd never heard of superformat.
In short, one bad floppy can ruin a whole install sequence. And floppies don't age well. CDs can scratch, but they at least have error correction built into the filesystem.
The problem is that I'm not satisfied with the filenames currently given the files. Placement of different fields, such as name, author name, video source, etct., is inconsistent. And sometimes important fields are omitted altogether.
If I were to write this application, I'd want the filenames to be generated from stored metadata.
Did you notice that the editor's blurb has a link to the previous article, citing it as a rumor?
If you get confirmation, it's no longer a rumor. If it's no longer a rumor, it's news.
I have Asperger's Syndrome. And I don't like how you're assuming that just because someone says they don't want hundreds of people victomized, they have a disorder that would make them comfortable in that group. It's bigotry, and you ought to grow out of it.
That said, I work as a student tutor in a computer lab. I tutor several people each week on a one-to-one basis. And I have passing interaction with hundreds more each day.
He still lives in Holland? If so, he's about forty miles from me. I assumed he'd moved over to California.
I wonder if tax evasion would be a serious enough charge for a state to get an internet wiretap warrant.
Don't tell me half the people here haven't used these tools...Work on a website in California? A chicago colo? Did you earn money for it?
...Do you owe taxes on it?
Apparently he doesn't realize that music videos are also covered by the RIAA...
It's certainly true that most popularity-conscious projects will work towards adding those missing features. But until they have those features, pragmatic users--most Linux users are pragmatic--will go with what fits their needs.
I use Linux, and love, use and create open source and Free software, but that doesn't stop me from paying for Quake (twice; the first CD was all scratched up, then lost), Doom II, RTCW, and even a license of XP Pro.
Which is why nobody ran Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake II, Quake III, KDE, StarOffice or Netscape on Linux prior to source release? Or Doom III, VMWare or NVIDIA/ATI manufacturers' drivers today?
If an Open Source project doesn't have the features that a Linux user wants, they'll usually go with the closed-source alternative that does. Even if it costs money.
Yeah, well, according to those guys, Microsoft beats sex. I'd be a little leary of them...
Didn't you notice that the Games section is the only section, aside from book reviews, that's coming up with Slashdot-original content? And it's the only section where the original content was written by an employee instead of a regular reader like honestpuck?
It's a good move for Slashdot, and there's really no other place to put that content.
That's why we have different Open Source licenses. There's the GPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.
Each is tailored to a different situation. And let's not get into a debate about Open Source vs. Free Software. Not again. Please. For the curious, read this and this, instead. Or just do a search for open source vs free software.
Sure a four-dimensional logo would be neat, but animated GIFs became unpopular with geeks years ago.
Besides, how would you get the logo to change on paper?