Quote submission log for Knacklappen:
2002-06-23 09:08:35 Audiogalaxy Inside (articles,news) (rejected)
So, I guess the story surfaced around June 22nd, since I found a link on Wired (?) on June 23rd...
Well, my submission had been rejected but surely because there were a lot of other interesting articles queuing up, that day. In general, I think it's OK that even older stuff is worth mentioning on/. --- some readers might not have read the original article... and not everybody is willing to check 4 or 5 sites each day just to get all the news...;-)
I understand your point. A good one, but also a very naïve one...
You must recall that governments usually are closely tied to it's land's industry and in my mind, this has become the true purpose of Echelon in the post-cold war aera: Industrial Espionage.
May I quote:
"France, deeply suspicious of Britain's uniquely close intelligence
links with the US, seized on reports that Echelon cost Airbus
Industrie an 8bn contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994, after the US
intercepted communications between Riyadh and the Toulouse
headquarters of Airbus"
Wow, now "they" are switching to the "Big Guns", eh?
Personally, I think this just shows how scared certain people in the industry are. Most arguments against OSS are just BS and people with brains can easily uncover that. But throwing in National Security as a joker, the hope is that a lot of the decision makers are going into dummy mode... and maybe some do. But examples like lastest the developments in Germany point to the opposite... which just scares the hell out of the Establishment... Truely, we are living in interesting times!
If I may quote myself:
(Forget the ridiculus AutoDesk products, nobody want to design in them anyway, so no reason for data exchange...)
But I forgot about the poor bastards that have tried AutoCAD and stayed with it for a while... Even though one can argue that they have deserved no better...;-)
But in all honesty (and I acknowledge that AutoCAD is not that bad as a 2D application for e.g. architectural purposes): DXF is quite usable for translating single layers of 2D geometry (or more) to other CAD packages. You get problems with text and b-splines and certain trimmed curves but it is not impossible.
Nobody is forcing anybody into proprietary file formats. At my company, we changed from Intergraph EMS (UNIX) to a ParaSolid-based CAD package (Windows) partly for reasons of integration and simplified data exchange. And even though it was some work converting and re-modelling all necessary 3D-geometry, it was worth it. As written before: The industry has finally become aware of the restrictions and of one-way file formats like DWG and the trend is cleary towards common and standardized file formats. See STEP, see VDA-FS and I hope that the biggest of them all will be XML.
To take your example of Word's DOC-files: Open your Word document. Select all. Copy. Open StarOffice / OpenOffice. Paste, Save as XML. Done!
Or simply open the Word file in OpenOffice (will not work 100% but work astonishing well)...
It think, the industry is becoming more and more aware of the dangers of proprietary file formats.
Beeing an mechanical engineer myself, I have the problem every single day when designing in CAD. Ever tried to convert a model from Pro/Engineer to CATIA? Or EMS to IDEAS? Or...
Sure, after only some decades, they came up with exchange formats like the teethless IGES which everybody can interpret it's own way. IGES in Pro/E flavor (i.e. created by Pro/E in the way they thought is right) cannot be read by CATIA and IGES in CATIA flavor cannot be read by Pro/E. (Forget the ridiculus AutoDesk products, nobody want to design in them anyway, so no reason for data exchange...)
In recent years, the industry has become aware of the huge amount of time and money they spend on dealing with proprietary file formats and they have pushed for better standardized formats like STEP and VDA-FS. In fact, they have not only pushed, but done the job themselves...
One problem though: IGES, STEP and VDA-FS are still not public domain, they are owned by certain groups and will cost money as soon as it is feasible. So, the latest trend is XML - and this time, it's gonna be right!
BTW: One very exiting project is using XML for exchanging dynamic models between simulation programs, like this approach at my own university in Linköping, Sweden.
I have become somewhat a Code Dictator to me fellow workers because I strongly encourages them to write Beautiful Code (they will call it mobbing, though...;-) nevermind).
What I mean by this is the usual:
- Clear names for all variables, functions, procedures (etc), commented if necessary
- Comments, comments, comments
- Avoid Spaghetti Code (tm)
- Avoid recursive programming (the code maintainers will thank you)
- Avoid fancy loops with stop criteria based on dubious flags
The rule of thumb is: "Do not comment everything, you co-workers are not stupid. Comment that much that you, after not having worked with the code for at least a year, can at the second glance understand what it does and how you can modify it."
This of course is hard for a beginner, but the more practice you get, the better you become. The key is to not just dropping in comments there and there, but to consistantly and consequently document your code.
Man, this was probably _THE_ funniest review I ever read, I must bookmark it and read it at least once a month!:-))) You can go to rest now, because you will probably never ever write something that shockingly funny again!
But I think it might have the opposite effect on me: Now I am really interested in seeing this piece of crap, it seems to be the ultimate trash, like 100 times worse than "X-Files - The Movie" (which for a long time was the peak)...
BTW, Wolfgang P. really directed a lot of crappy movies ("Independance Day", "Star Gate"... shiver...) but "Das Boot" _was_ great, no doubt about it. Nice of you to give him credit for it.
Well, to be completely correct, it was the Polish who laid the ground for dechiffring Engima. And they got some inpout from the French Secret Service. Without the French and Polish work on this, the British would never had a chance. And yes, there was no American around to even clean the floor at Bletchley Park...
Well, maybe the employee is using transportable memory media because it is an easy way to take work, done at home, to the office? It is in my case and I never go to work without some CF cards.
Asked a guy from HelplessDesk, I got the answer that I should mail the files to me.... right! Some 20MB via email.../Knacklappen
The shining exception: Deus Ex. 3D but great! I got early home from work and stayed up until 3a.m. just to play it through. And when I did... I started over in the hardest level, just to prove to myself that it can be done. 3 intense weeks but... wow... I loved every single day.
There are very few other occasions where I went that crazy about a game, the first PRINCE OF PERSIA maybe and INDIANA JONES 3 (the adventure from LucasFilm). Oh yes, COMANCHE of course (3D and realistic scenery but more arcade-style than simulation).
Hmm... OK there may be a whole bunch of games that I went crazy about... but... I agree: "Realism may already have killed gaming." Or actually, the wrong impression of the software industry, that a game simply have to be realistic 3D in order to sell well... Who has planted this stupid idea in their heads??
Clearly, Simulations (like FS, F1GP (etc)) only profit from more realism. After all, that's the idea.
Then, in the opposite corner, there are arcade games like DONKEY KONG or the beloved GIANA SISTERS. They are meant to be surreal. Again, that's the idea!
And then, there are all sorts in between. Like the first part of COMANCHE which was a chopter arcade game, rather than yet another simulation (like GUNSHIP) by MicroProse. OK, i forgot the cool LHX which came long before COMANCHE, but you are getting my point.
Wolfenstein3D was the first sign of 3D-FPS becaming feasible. DOOM was a revolution and the first night after playing DOOM, I had bad dreams! And I loved it!!! And DARK FORCES, a DOOM with vectors and within the StarWars universe...!
But somewhere there, the software companies fogot that there is a need for simplier games, too.
Nowadays it seems that everything has to be 3D and superealistic in order to be a big seller. Man, I loved the LucasArts Adventures a lot (MANIAC MANSION 1+2, ZAK MC KRACKEN, LOOM, INDY3+4, MONKEY ISLAND1+2+3, SAM & MAX just to name some)... but then, MONKEY ISLAND 4 had to be 3D...!! Why, oh Good Lord (I mean, George)???
They ruined the perfect Point & Click environment. In my mind, that was one of the points that made the LucasFilm/LucasArts games superior to Sierra's...
Talking about SIERRA/DYNAMICS: Anybody remembering THE INCREDIBLE MACHINE? This was a great game, totally unrealistic but great! No, sorry, it was great _because_ it was unrealistic.
Sorry for this long posting, I guess nobody will ever read it anyway. But my point is that software companies and developer teams are just so obsessed with the graphics and sound, that they forget the very essence of a great game. Sure, it is hard to identify exactly what it is that makes lifts a game to cult status, but it ain't nice gfx and sfx alone (proved by ACTIVISION and OCEAN with tons of horrible games based on licensed movie characters/plots)
Counter example: DEUS EX. But, is it _really_ a counter example? I loved it for the incredible dense plot and the paranoid athmosphere... Something, QUAKE never had.
Dunno, but I always found batch programming to model my sex life most correct...;-))
Ehhh... OK, you got me there... It's Assembler and all those NMI's... damn...;-)
Well, I stumbled about the comment by JK, too. And I am not sure whether he is aware of that Jules Verne was French...
And to just reply to your rude reply: Jules Verne also described the Russian, Hungarian, German and of course the French society. May be _you_ should read some more JV-books... Ever heard of Mathias Sandorf? Or Michel Strogoff? Look here and next time think before flaming a fellow Slashdotter.
You can't port OS X to Intel simply because this would blow Hollywoods latest good/bad-clichés:
According to Wired Good guys use Apple Macs, the baddies use Windows PCs.
LOL...
But I thought about it and except for Milennium I really can't come up with any counter-example...
All the best, man... and don't try to teach her that when you're in bed you either want to sleep or... it's quite sure one _doen't_ want to talk in bed, ever! Well, you have lived together for some time so you should have tried to teach her anyway already, beeing the pessimist I am I guess without success...:-))
GOOD LUCK TO YOU BOTH!
True, was about to naming Lem myself. Unfortunately some of his novels are little too close in the future or were, when he wrote them. In particular, I think of "The Astronauts" which he wrote in 1951. In German, the book's title is "Planet des Todes" and I'm not sure if it has ever been translated into English. At least it is not listed here.
Well, the bottom line is, that the book, which deals with the topic of alien civilisations, space travel etc, was written 8 years before the Sputnik was launched, 10 years before Gagarin made his first flight!
Well, the "mistake" was, that the book lists some "historical events", among others intercontinental delivery via rockets (Lem calls them "rocket trains") - supposedly happend in the 60's. When I read this book first somewhere in the 80's, I really scratched my head and had a looong look into my history books...:-)
Otherwise, the novel is great, though. A typical Lem. Seems to me like this was one of the first books he wrote (if not the first one).
>The bitchy part comes when you want to change what program opens what extensions in IE
Well, that's even bitchy in NetScape 4.x - includes registry hack...
Our helpdesk guys had this problem where QuickTime stole.TIF and they couldn't get this changed even by uninstalling QT. Helplessdesk, as always...
Slashdot Mirror
Quote submission log for Knacklappen:
/. --- some readers might not have read the original article... and not everybody is willing to check 4 or 5 sites each day just to get all the news... ;-)
2002-06-23 09:08:35 Audiogalaxy Inside (articles,news) (rejected)
So, I guess the story surfaced around June 22nd, since I found a link on Wired (?) on June 23rd...
Well, my submission had been rejected but surely because there were a lot of other interesting articles queuing up, that day. In general, I think it's OK that even older stuff is worth mentioning on
I understand your point. A good one, but also a very naïve one...
. html
0 . tml
;-)
You must recall that governments usually are closely tied to it's land's industry and in my mind, this has become the true purpose of Echelon in the post-cold war aera: Industrial Espionage.
May I quote: "France, deeply suspicious of Britain's uniquely close intelligence links with the US, seized on reports that Echelon cost Airbus Industrie an 8bn contract with Saudi Arabia in 1994, after the US intercepted communications between Riyadh and the Toulouse headquarters of Airbus"
Some more links:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/5604/data
http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/highlights.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,34932,0
And, yes, don't believe in a conspiracy unless it has been denied...
Wow, now "they" are switching to the "Big Guns", eh?
Personally, I think this just shows how scared certain people in the industry are. Most arguments against OSS are just BS and people with brains can easily uncover that. But throwing in National Security as a joker, the hope is that a lot of the decision makers are going into dummy mode... and maybe some do. But examples like lastest the developments in Germany point to the opposite... which just scares the hell out of the Establishment... Truely, we are living in interesting times!
If I may quote myself: ;-)
(Forget the ridiculus AutoDesk products, nobody want to design in them anyway, so no reason for data exchange...)
But I forgot about the poor bastards that have tried AutoCAD and stayed with it for a while... Even though one can argue that they have deserved no better...
But in all honesty (and I acknowledge that AutoCAD is not that bad as a 2D application for e.g. architectural purposes): DXF is quite usable for translating single layers of 2D geometry (or more) to other CAD packages. You get problems with text and b-splines and certain trimmed curves but it is not impossible.
Nobody is forcing anybody into proprietary file formats. At my company, we changed from Intergraph EMS (UNIX) to a ParaSolid-based CAD package (Windows) partly for reasons of integration and simplified data exchange. And even though it was some work converting and re-modelling all necessary 3D-geometry, it was worth it. As written before: The industry has finally become aware of the restrictions and of one-way file formats like DWG and the trend is cleary towards common and standardized file formats. See STEP, see VDA-FS and I hope that the biggest of them all will be XML.
To take your example of Word's DOC-files: Open your Word document. Select all. Copy. Open StarOffice / OpenOffice. Paste, Save as XML. Done! Or simply open the Word file in OpenOffice (will not work 100% but work astonishing well)...
It think, the industry is becoming more and more aware of the dangers of proprietary file formats.
Beeing an mechanical engineer myself, I have the problem every single day when designing in CAD. Ever tried to convert a model from Pro/Engineer to CATIA? Or EMS to IDEAS? Or...
Sure, after only some decades, they came up with exchange formats like the teethless IGES which everybody can interpret it's own way. IGES in Pro/E flavor (i.e. created by Pro/E in the way they thought is right) cannot be read by CATIA and IGES in CATIA flavor cannot be read by Pro/E. (Forget the ridiculus AutoDesk products, nobody want to design in them anyway, so no reason for data exchange...)
In recent years, the industry has become aware of the huge amount of time and money they spend on dealing with proprietary file formats and they have pushed for better standardized formats like STEP and VDA-FS. In fact, they have not only pushed, but done the job themselves...
One problem though: IGES, STEP and VDA-FS are still not public domain, they are owned by certain groups and will cost money as soon as it is feasible. So, the latest trend is XML - and this time, it's gonna be right!
BTW: One very exiting project is using XML for exchanging dynamic models between simulation programs, like this approach at my own university in Linköping, Sweden.
I have become somewhat a Code Dictator to me fellow workers because I strongly encourages them to write Beautiful Code (they will call it mobbing, though... ;-) nevermind).
What I mean by this is the usual:
- Clear names for all variables, functions, procedures (etc), commented if necessary
- Comments, comments, comments
- Avoid Spaghetti Code (tm)
- Avoid recursive programming (the code maintainers will thank you)
- Avoid fancy loops with stop criteria based on dubious flags
The rule of thumb is: "Do not comment everything, you co-workers are not stupid. Comment that much that you, after not having worked with the code for at least a year, can at the second glance understand what it does and how you can modify it."
This of course is hard for a beginner, but the more practice you get, the better you become. The key is to not just dropping in comments there and there, but to consistantly and consequently document your code.
Man, this was probably _THE_ funniest review I ever read, I must bookmark it and read it at least once a month! :-))) You can go to rest now, because you will probably never ever write something that shockingly funny again!
But I think it might have the opposite effect on me: Now I am really interested in seeing this piece of crap, it seems to be the ultimate trash, like 100 times worse than "X-Files - The Movie" (which for a long time was the peak)...
BTW, Wolfgang P. really directed a lot of crappy movies ("Independance Day", "Star Gate"... shiver...) but "Das Boot" _was_ great, no doubt about it. Nice of you to give him credit for it.
Well, to be completely correct, it was the Polish who laid the ground for dechiffring Engima. And they got some inpout from the French Secret Service. Without the French and Polish work on this, the British would never had a chance. And yes, there was no American around to even clean the floor at Bletchley Park...
Well, maybe the employee is using transportable memory media because it is an easy way to take work, done at home, to the office? It is in my case and I never go to work without some CF cards. Asked a guy from HelplessDesk, I got the answer that I should mail the files to me.... right! Some 20MB via email... /Knacklappen
Exactly my point.
The shining exception: Deus Ex. 3D but great! I got early home from work and stayed up until 3a.m. just to play it through. And when I did... I started over in the hardest level, just to prove to myself that it can be done. 3 intense weeks but... wow... I loved every single day.
There are very few other occasions where I went that crazy about a game, the first PRINCE OF PERSIA maybe and INDIANA JONES 3 (the adventure from LucasFilm). Oh yes, COMANCHE of course (3D and realistic scenery but more arcade-style than simulation).
Hmm... OK there may be a whole bunch of games that I went crazy about... but... I agree: "Realism may already have killed gaming." Or actually, the wrong impression of the software industry, that a game simply have to be realistic 3D in order to sell well... Who has planted this stupid idea in their heads??
I think we should differenciate a little.
Clearly, Simulations (like FS, F1GP (etc)) only profit from more realism. After all, that's the idea.
Then, in the opposite corner, there are arcade games like DONKEY KONG or the beloved GIANA SISTERS. They are meant to be surreal. Again, that's the idea!
And then, there are all sorts in between. Like the first part of COMANCHE which was a chopter arcade game, rather than yet another simulation (like GUNSHIP) by MicroProse. OK, i forgot the cool LHX which came long before COMANCHE, but you are getting my point.
Wolfenstein3D was the first sign of 3D-FPS becaming feasible. DOOM was a revolution and the first night after playing DOOM, I had bad dreams! And I loved it!!! And DARK FORCES, a DOOM with vectors and within the StarWars universe...!
But somewhere there, the software companies fogot that there is a need for simplier games, too.
Nowadays it seems that everything has to be 3D and superealistic in order to be a big seller. Man, I loved the LucasArts Adventures a lot (MANIAC MANSION 1+2, ZAK MC KRACKEN, LOOM, INDY3+4, MONKEY ISLAND1+2+3, SAM & MAX just to name some)... but then, MONKEY ISLAND 4 had to be 3D...!! Why, oh Good Lord (I mean, George)??? They ruined the perfect Point & Click environment. In my mind, that was one of the points that made the LucasFilm/LucasArts games superior to Sierra's...
Talking about SIERRA/DYNAMICS: Anybody remembering THE INCREDIBLE MACHINE? This was a great game, totally unrealistic but great! No, sorry, it was great _because_ it was unrealistic.
Sorry for this long posting, I guess nobody will ever read it anyway. But my point is that software companies and developer teams are just so obsessed with the graphics and sound, that they forget the very essence of a great game. Sure, it is hard to identify exactly what it is that makes lifts a game to cult status, but it ain't nice gfx and sfx alone (proved by ACTIVISION and OCEAN with tons of horrible games based on licensed movie characters/plots)
Counter example: DEUS EX. But, is it _really_ a counter example? I loved it for the incredible dense plot and the paranoid athmosphere... Something, QUAKE never had.
Dunno, but I always found batch programming to model my sex life most correct... ;-))
;-)
Ehhh... OK, you got me there... It's Assembler and all those NMI's... damn...
Well, I stumbled about the comment by JK, too. And I am not sure whether he is aware of that Jules Verne was French... And to just reply to your rude reply: Jules Verne also described the Russian, Hungarian, German and of course the French society. May be _you_ should read some more JV-books... Ever heard of Mathias Sandorf? Or Michel Strogoff? Look here and next time think before flaming a fellow Slashdotter.
You can't port OS X to Intel simply because this would blow Hollywoods latest good/bad-clichés: According to Wired Good guys use Apple Macs, the baddies use Windows PCs. LOL... But I thought about it and except for Milennium I really can't come up with any counter-example...
All the best, man... and don't try to teach her that when you're in bed you either want to sleep or... it's quite sure one _doen't_ want to talk in bed, ever! Well, you have lived together for some time so you should have tried to teach her anyway already, beeing the pessimist I am I guess without success... :-))
GOOD LUCK TO YOU BOTH!
Beleive him? NI! ;-))
True, was about to naming Lem myself. Unfortunately some of his novels are little too close in the future or were, when he wrote them. In particular, I think of "The Astronauts" which he wrote in 1951. In German, the book's title is "Planet des Todes" and I'm not sure if it has ever been translated into English. At least it is not listed here. Well, the bottom line is, that the book, which deals with the topic of alien civilisations, space travel etc, was written 8 years before the Sputnik was launched, 10 years before Gagarin made his first flight! Well, the "mistake" was, that the book lists some "historical events", among others intercontinental delivery via rockets (Lem calls them "rocket trains") - supposedly happend in the 60's. When I read this book first somewhere in the 80's, I really scratched my head and had a looong look into my history books... :-)
Otherwise, the novel is great, though. A typical Lem. Seems to me like this was one of the first books he wrote (if not the first one).
>The bitchy part comes when you want to change what program opens what extensions in IE Well, that's even bitchy in NetScape 4.x - includes registry hack... Our helpdesk guys had this problem where QuickTime stole .TIF and they couldn't get this changed even by uninstalling QT. Helplessdesk, as always...