I'm mostly involved in the Half-Life mod scene, though I can reccomend a few I've played for UT. Planet Half-Life is the best place to go for information on mods for Half-Life. A few mods I would suggest for Half-Life would be Front Line Force, Team Fortress Classic (which comes free with Half-Life), or the most popular online game in the world (its very highly rated, though I don't care for the gameplay style, basically team death match) Counter-Strike.
Frankly there is so much going on in the mod scene for Half-Life, UT, and Q3 to get me to go out and pay 40$ for something new that I'll play for a few hours before going back to some of the better mods. (This does not include Counter-Strike in my opinion.) If you want the really cool ideas, check out the Half-Life mod scene. Its amaizing what is being done with a 3(?) year old engine. Aside from that, there is some decent games on the PS2, including Gran Turismo 3 and MGS2. Nothing on X-Box nor the Gamecube is going to get me to buy those, at the moment at least.
I posted this in the last @Home discussion, but that was after about 450 posts so it basically got lost, so here it is again.
I actually just had a chat with a Comcast rep at a local technology show and it looks like that if your running Comcast@Home you might be in for a significantly better ride than the other providers have partnered with.
Comcast has been working on their own broadband cable network for a bit of time now, partly anticipating the demise of @Home as well as the issues rising out of the severe limitations that @Home put on commercial deals that Comcast wanted to pursue. Originally planned to launch in April 2002, the Comcast network, currently codenamed 'JumpStart', has been pushed forward to a potential launch January 1st 2002, assuming everything goes well. Due to the accelerated timetable there may be glitches in the initial rollout, but frankly intermittently buggy cable (assuming it will be fixed in the near future) is better than dialup in my opinion.
You will however lose your @Home email account as well as any stored messages or address book so back them up as soon as possible. Comcast will provide email services once their network is up and running. What the final name of the program I can't attest to, jumpstart.net.org and.com all seem to be taken, so its hard to say what your email address could end up being.
Obviously this is all from one source, though a Comcast representative, its best to avoid taking all this to heart until there is a final formal announcement as to their plans. I do know that Comcast@Home is up and running as of mid-day today. For how long... who is to say.
I actually just had a chat with a Comcast rep at a local technology show and it looks like that if your running Comcast@Home you might be in for a significantly better ride than the other providers have partnered with.
Comcast has been working on their own broadband cable network for a bit of time now, partly anticipating the demise of @Home as well as the issues rising out of the severe limitations that @Home put on commercial deals that Comcast wanted to pursue. Originally planned to launch in April 2002, the Comcast network, currently codenamed 'JumpStart', has been pushed forward to a potential launch January 1st 2002, assuming everything goes well. Due to the accelerated timetable there may be glitches in the initial rollout, but frankly intermittently buggy cable (assuming it will be fixed in the near future) is better than dialup in my opinion.
You will however lose your @Home email account as well as any stored messages or address book so back them up as soon as possible. Comcast will provide email services once their network is up and running. What the final name of the program I can't attest to, jumpstart.net.org and.com all seem to be taken, so its hard to say what your email address could end up being.
Obviously this is all from one source, though a Comcast representative, its best to avoid taking all this to heart until there is a final formal announcement as to their plans. I do know that Comcast@Home is up and running as of mid-day today. For how long... who is to say.
Wouldn't it be more useful to have a laptop and a more basic camera? Then you could use a firewire link (or bluetoth) to transfer the files without the limitations of the limited display/odd interface/etc that would plague the email client and web browser.
Re:Hardware reviews from Salon!??
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 1
Did you read the article? I found it very indepth and well written. The writer definately knew what he was talking about. As a once regular reader (sorry, I like it... but not enough to pay a fee) Salon has often has very good articles about current technology.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that you get that message when you try to put a non-X Box CD in the system. So its not really an error because of the X-Box, just a really horrible way for MS to have worded and displayed the message.
Re:A PS2 with different games
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This quote from the Salon article said it best (and I couldn't agree more):
"Have one look at the tanker scene in MGS2," says Keighley, "with the rain falling, the puddles splashing and the wind gushing, all at 60 frames per second. That scene by itself is more cinematic and more realistic than anything I've seen on the other consoles... Microsoft keeps telling us that Xbox is more powerful than the PS2," says Keighley, "but at least at this point MGS2 is just as impressive looking as anything I've seen on the Xbox. It just goes to show that graphic horsepower and processing speed isn't always what matters -- creativity and artistry can go a long way to making a console successful."
Its interesting, even among the musicians I know, I can't really think of any that have a very high opinion of the RIAA. Thats not to say they like Napster and the other file sharing groups either.
Same, I never even knew there was an issue with Palms and XP. Worked right from the start just as it had in 98. I have a Palm IIIxe by the way and sync it about everyday (I read the NY Times, C|Net and Wired News when traveling).
Well, its all about making choices. If not using CSS means that your site might not look as good as possible but more people could use it, perhaps translating into more income from adverts due to the higher traffic, then it might be worth it. Every decision you make when developing a site has its upsides and downsides.
I'm still in school so I can't really speak out of much professional experience, but the majority of designing for older browsers lies in the basic coding of the HTML and knowing what will break, where, and in what browser. Its more a trait of a thoughtful designer then anything else. Now, if your speaking in terms of writing work arounds, whether its alternate pages or browser detects, then yes, its more complex would take more time and ultimately would cost more.
I was speaking a bit more generally than server software, though aren't there a lot of flavors of Unix? In other words, one exploit that works with one might not work with another. (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just a designer) Also, I was referring to more than just bugs but also exploits. If no one (or a very small number) uses Netscape Communicator for their email then there is less incentive to try to find exploits for it.
Frankly any good designer/coder should be able to design pages that degrade gracefully even down to 3.0 browsers, depending of course on the type of site and its audience.
In my work, for the most part, I have been able to create pages that display very well on both NS4 and IE4+ Getting below that has its own challanges of course but its far from impossible. Also, in the majority of cases both IE6 and NS6 (as well as Mozilla) are pretty standards compliant. NS more than IE, but at least MS seems to be making the effot in some small way.
That is a good point, and I didn't think about the in-game rendered cut scenes from one of my favorite games Grim Fandango. The game looked so great in terms of visual style as well as basic graphical appeal that the cut scenes worked seamlessly with the story and gameplay.
What struck me about the cutscenes in Halo was that they were a bit long and not all that interesting visually despite the decent graphics. Facial animation was perhaps better than the majority of games out there but it was still pretty lacking (something that was an non-issue in Grim Fandango I should add). Perhaps it was that, in the end, I wasn't all that impressed with the in-game graphics that caused me to wish for prerendered scenes a la Red Alert. More of a personal preferance I suppose, but it was something I at least noticed when playing.
Just as a disclaimer, I'm not one to defend Microsoft is most cases. But what I think most people don't think about is that there have been so many bugs reported in MS software not only because MS releases naturally buggy software, but because the user-base is so huge that there is more of a possibility that these bugs will be found and in many cases used for unfortunately bad purpouses. If Linux/Mac OS/etc was the most widely used, you'd see much the same focus on problems with the software.
That said however, I don't care for MS and the majority of their software that I do use is out of necessity.
I actually got to play the full game (not the demo) for about 30 minutes at a local software store. I issue this as a disclaimer, I have not had the opportunity to complete the game so this is going on less of an exposure than the mentioned reviewer. However, I think that I have played enough to make some pretty solid judgments. Although the graphics were good I was not as impressed with them as I would have hoped. There was little visual flair for the majority of the beginning levels both in the level architecture and the texturing. Much like UT, everything had an unusual sheen to it that I found to be unrealistic. In my opinion, look at what is coming out of the Half-Life, UT, and Q3 mod communities for the best, most innovative, and unique level design.
Then to get into the story which is pretty much told thought the mentioned in-game cut scenes. Frankly I would have been much more impressed with pre-rendered sequences a la Final Fantasy or Red Alert. As good as the game engine might be, its hard to beat prerendered graphics and Halo doesn't change this.
The controls are also not a highpoint in the game. I am very used to playing FPS games on my PC so the transition would obviously have a few challenges. Yet even after some time playing I was not able to get into sync with the gameplay due to the button mapping.
Beyond this, Halo stuck me as little more than your standard first person shooter, perhaps on par with Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 but definitely not surpassing them and absolutely not enough reason for me to buy and X-Box.
I would bet next to none, I live in the center of a city and I can't see any stars at all. Looks like I'll be missing this one, perhaps space.com or someone will have some shots up for those of us in similar situations.
Re:XML, Writing and Jabber
on
XML for Ancients
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well, the best answer to this one was provided on the hieroglyphics page. I'm not sure if it was slashdotted after I got it (the UCLA one was down just after the first comment was posted) so I'll post the majority here.
XML is a format which allow both to describe an encoding and to write encoded files. It was chosen for a number of reasons. First, it's easy to extend an XML format. Second, it's easy to parse an XML file, an there are a lot of tools for it: people will be able to manipulate XMLMCD files without being graduate in Computer Science. Third, XML is being used for a growing number of applications --- for instance web browsers. Fourth, there's a user community for XML in the philological world : two interesting examples are the Text Encoding Initiative and the recent conference on XML and Ancient Near East.
Perhaps you could have to register to vote, much like you currently have to in many countries. This would allow the combination of multiple factors from email address, domain, IP, etc. Seeing as how your email isn't all that anonymous in general (if that was what some people are worrying about) then this solution might work. As was mentioned in an earlier post, democracy isn't easy and you have to want to be a part of it so this extra time and effort would be worth it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm mostly involved in the Half-Life mod scene, though I can reccomend a few I've played for UT. Planet Half-Life is the best place to go for information on mods for Half-Life. A few mods I would suggest for Half-Life would be Front Line Force, Team Fortress Classic (which comes free with Half-Life), or the most popular online game in the world (its very highly rated, though I don't care for the gameplay style, basically team death match) Counter-Strike.
For Unreal Tornament, check out Infiltration or Strike Force. For a list of mods and general Unreal news check out Planet Unreal.
I have heard many good things about various Q3 mods, but I have yet to play any of them so someone else would probably be better answering this one.
Frankly there is so much going on in the mod scene for Half-Life, UT, and Q3 to get me to go out and pay 40$ for something new that I'll play for a few hours before going back to some of the better mods. (This does not include Counter-Strike in my opinion.) If you want the really cool ideas, check out the Half-Life mod scene. Its amaizing what is being done with a 3(?) year old engine. Aside from that, there is some decent games on the PS2, including Gran Turismo 3 and MGS2. Nothing on X-Box nor the Gamecube is going to get me to buy those, at the moment at least.
I posted this in the last @Home discussion, but that was after about 450 posts so it basically got lost, so here it is again.
.org and .com all seem to be taken, so its hard to say what your email address could end up being.
I actually just had a chat with a Comcast rep at a local technology show and it looks like that if your running Comcast@Home you might be in for a significantly better ride than the other providers have partnered with.
Comcast has been working on their own broadband cable network for a bit of time now, partly anticipating the demise of @Home as well as the issues rising out of the severe limitations that @Home put on commercial deals that Comcast wanted to pursue. Originally planned to launch in April 2002, the Comcast network, currently codenamed 'JumpStart', has been pushed forward to a potential launch January 1st 2002, assuming everything goes well. Due to the accelerated timetable there may be glitches in the initial rollout, but frankly intermittently buggy cable (assuming it will be fixed in the near future) is better than dialup in my opinion.
You will however lose your @Home email account as well as any stored messages or address book so back them up as soon as possible. Comcast will provide email services once their network is up and running. What the final name of the program I can't attest to, jumpstart.net
Obviously this is all from one source, though a Comcast representative, its best to avoid taking all this to heart until there is a final formal announcement as to their plans. I do know that Comcast@Home is up and running as of mid-day today. For how long... who is to say.
I actually just had a chat with a Comcast rep at a local technology show and it looks like that if your running Comcast@Home you might be in for a significantly better ride than the other providers have partnered with.
.org and .com all seem to be taken, so its hard to say what your email address could end up being.
Comcast has been working on their own broadband cable network for a bit of time now, partly anticipating the demise of @Home as well as the issues rising out of the severe limitations that @Home put on commercial deals that Comcast wanted to pursue. Originally planned to launch in April 2002, the Comcast network, currently codenamed 'JumpStart', has been pushed forward to a potential launch January 1st 2002, assuming everything goes well. Due to the accelerated timetable there may be glitches in the initial rollout, but frankly intermittently buggy cable (assuming it will be fixed in the near future) is better than dialup in my opinion.
You will however lose your @Home email account as well as any stored messages or address book so back them up as soon as possible. Comcast will provide email services once their network is up and running. What the final name of the program I can't attest to, jumpstart.net
Obviously this is all from one source, though a Comcast representative, its best to avoid taking all this to heart until there is a final formal announcement as to their plans. I do know that Comcast@Home is up and running as of mid-day today. For how long... who is to say.
The New York Times (free reg, etc) is an article about the latest @Home issues. Its an interesting read.
I wonder which broadbamd providers will be left... Verizon DSL is looking pretty good at this point. What a sad result of the times.
Opps, ok... worked in the preview. lets try this again... :)
All in a days work!
Wouldn't it be more useful to have a laptop and a more basic camera? Then you could use a firewire link (or bluetoth) to transfer the files without the limitations of the limited display/odd interface/etc that would plague the email client and web browser.
Did you read the article? I found it very indepth and well written. The writer definately knew what he was talking about. As a once regular reader (sorry, I like it... but not enough to pay a fee) Salon has often has very good articles about current technology.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that you get that message when you try to put a non-X Box CD in the system. So its not really an error because of the X-Box, just a really horrible way for MS to have worded and displayed the message.
Its interesting, even among the musicians I know, I can't really think of any that have a very high opinion of the RIAA. Thats not to say they like Napster and the other file sharing groups either.
Same, I never even knew there was an issue with Palms and XP. Worked right from the start just as it had in 98. I have a Palm IIIxe by the way and sync it about everyday (I read the NY Times, C|Net and Wired News when traveling).
Isn't the Ricochet network being restarted by its new owner? Here is a C|Net article on it.
Well, its all about making choices. If not using CSS means that your site might not look as good as possible but more people could use it, perhaps translating into more income from adverts due to the higher traffic, then it might be worth it. Every decision you make when developing a site has its upsides and downsides.
I'm still in school so I can't really speak out of much professional experience, but the majority of designing for older browsers lies in the basic coding of the HTML and knowing what will break, where, and in what browser. Its more a trait of a thoughtful designer then anything else. Now, if your speaking in terms of writing work arounds, whether its alternate pages or browser detects, then yes, its more complex would take more time and ultimately would cost more.
I was speaking a bit more generally than server software, though aren't there a lot of flavors of Unix? In other words, one exploit that works with one might not work with another. (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just a designer) Also, I was referring to more than just bugs but also exploits. If no one (or a very small number) uses Netscape Communicator for their email then there is less incentive to try to find exploits for it.
Frankly any good designer/coder should be able to design pages that degrade gracefully even down to 3.0 browsers, depending of course on the type of site and its audience.
In my work, for the most part, I have been able to create pages that display very well on both NS4 and IE4+ Getting below that has its own challanges of course but its far from impossible. Also, in the majority of cases both IE6 and NS6 (as well as Mozilla) are pretty standards compliant. NS more than IE, but at least MS seems to be making the effot in some small way.
That is a good point, and I didn't think about the in-game rendered cut scenes from one of my favorite games Grim Fandango. The game looked so great in terms of visual style as well as basic graphical appeal that the cut scenes worked seamlessly with the story and gameplay.
What struck me about the cutscenes in Halo was that they were a bit long and not all that interesting visually despite the decent graphics. Facial animation was perhaps better than the majority of games out there but it was still pretty lacking (something that was an non-issue in Grim Fandango I should add). Perhaps it was that, in the end, I wasn't all that impressed with the in-game graphics that caused me to wish for prerendered scenes a la Red Alert. More of a personal preferance I suppose, but it was something I at least noticed when playing.
Just as a disclaimer, I'm not one to defend Microsoft is most cases. But what I think most people don't think about is that there have been so many bugs reported in MS software not only because MS releases naturally buggy software, but because the user-base is so huge that there is more of a possibility that these bugs will be found and in many cases used for unfortunately bad purpouses. If Linux/Mac OS/etc was the most widely used, you'd see much the same focus on problems with the software.
That said however, I don't care for MS and the majority of their software that I do use is out of necessity.
I actually got to play the full game (not the demo) for about 30 minutes at a local software store. I issue this as a disclaimer, I have not had the opportunity to complete the game so this is going on less of an exposure than the mentioned reviewer. However, I think that I have played enough to make some pretty solid judgments. Although the graphics were good I was not as impressed with them as I would have hoped. There was little visual flair for the majority of the beginning levels both in the level architecture and the texturing. Much like UT, everything had an unusual sheen to it that I found to be unrealistic. In my opinion, look at what is coming out of the Half-Life, UT, and Q3 mod communities for the best, most innovative, and unique level design. Then to get into the story which is pretty much told thought the mentioned in-game cut scenes. Frankly I would have been much more impressed with pre-rendered sequences a la Final Fantasy or Red Alert. As good as the game engine might be, its hard to beat prerendered graphics and Halo doesn't change this. The controls are also not a highpoint in the game. I am very used to playing FPS games on my PC so the transition would obviously have a few challenges. Yet even after some time playing I was not able to get into sync with the gameplay due to the button mapping. Beyond this, Halo stuck me as little more than your standard first person shooter, perhaps on par with Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 but definitely not surpassing them and absolutely not enough reason for me to buy and X-Box.
I would bet next to none, I live in the center of a city and I can't see any stars at all. Looks like I'll be missing this one, perhaps space.com or someone will have some shots up for those of us in similar situations.
Perhaps you could have to register to vote, much like you currently have to in many countries. This would allow the combination of multiple factors from email address, domain, IP, etc. Seeing as how your email isn't all that anonymous in general (if that was what some people are worrying about) then this solution might work. As was mentioned in an earlier post, democracy isn't easy and you have to want to be a part of it so this extra time and effort would be worth it.