I thought the Wheel Mouse was a fix for poor GUI
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The Humane Interface
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I always thought the Microsoft Wheel Mouse was (in part) a fix for poor GUI design of the type you describe.
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To make matters worse, some older Windows programs have scroll bars that do not move the page until you release the bar. Whose brilliant idea was this? You have to either mentally estimate how far you need to move the bar, or go to the tiny up/down arrows to scroll interactively.
There was a mid-nineties DOS game called Elite II Frontier that included a fine solar system simulator. You could either fly around and see the planets "yourself" or there was an in-game 3D map that could show orbits and planets at any position in time, with animation.
This was all largely written by David Braben, the author of the original Elite game. It was a fine work of art, if a bit idiosyncratic. Rendering was done in software, in a way that was not rying to be photorealistic. The game blended reality with fiction, so I have no idea how accurate the solar system simulator was.
The situation that you outline is similar to the situation affecting other public resources such as transport, schooling, or drinking water. It goes like this:
We start having inherited a reasonable public resource, cheap or free and open to everyone. The quality is good enough for the majority of people to use.
Private companies try to make money by offering a "competing" service at high cost to the user. They pressure public bodies to downgrade the public resource and use advertising to denigrate the public resource and its users.
The more affluent part of the population buy the private resource. This meets their needs so they see no reason to pay taxes to maintaing the public resource, or to expect the state to provide it.
The public resource degrades through lack of funding and interest (at least by the vocal group of affluent citizens) until it becomes a resource "for the poor". The rich end up paying lots for marginally better service, and the poor are generally out of luck.
Think of public transport. In your city, is it used by managers and professionals or only by the poor? Whose children go to the public (state run) schools? Is tap water good enough for you or do you just buy Evian?
I am reasonably well off (at least for now). However, I object to this state of affairs, not only ethically but also through self interest. I don't want to spend money and time shopping for basic services such as these. I'm much rather let the state take care of these basic things so I can spend time and money on recreation and other individual pursuits.
Thank you and the previous poster for your useful suggestion.
Indeed, we do not need two repositories. We need to avoid the developers sitting idle while trying to either update or commit.
Assuming the repository is at HQ, a solution that pulls all the updates from HQ slowly and then allows the remote developers to apply them quickly would solve the update problem.
A solution that stores commits and sends them to HQ would solve the commit problem. We will start looking into cvsq as you suggested.
Sony has argued that "Sony has spent 3 years and $500M to develop the PlayStation" whereas "Connectix spent only $150k" and "[the ruling] permits free-riding competitors to siphon off the originator's fair return soon after the original is released".
The facts of this may be true, but the reasoning is totally bogus. The law, rightly or wrongly, protects investment in technology (patents) content (copyrights). It does not protect successful platforms from competition.
The PlayStation's (still) enormous value as an asset derives only from its success and wide adoption, which guarantees that you will find games to buy for it and other users to talk about it. This is the same reason Windows is valuable.
The PlayStation's value does not derive from any technology, since that is now old hat. Perhaps if Connectix had created another cheap hardware console it could be alleged that they copied something that allows very cheap manufacturing or some such. But Connectix used a straightforward implementation on desktop hardware, so there can be no such issue.
So, one could be sorry for Sony that they now have competition, but legally they have no leg to stand on. There is no legal barrier to emulating a succesful platform, and that is a good thing, even as it allows the later players to "free ride" on the pioneer's success.
Pavlos
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I have not even read the facts of the case.
All long-lived software projects go through architectural crises as their scope expands. This is normal. It goes a bit like this:
Joe Hacker writes a small application to solve a simple problem. Simple data structures are used. Unless Joe is a genius (and maybe not so productive) no thought is spent on interactions between components.
The thing proves useful. Other developers contribute pathes. Initially the patches merely fix things and fill gaps, so the overall quality of the software rises. The software becomes a "polished" package.
After some time, there is a significant amount of contributed functionality that was outside of the original scope of the package. The underlying data structures don't quite fit it. As there is no coherent model for the interactions between components, people tend to just add things where it seems most immediately convenient. Quality suffers. The project is in a crisis of architecture.
The way to get out of the crisis is to take a step back, look at the new scope of the project, look at the way the current components ought to interact, including forseeable extensions, and design a new architecture. This is not a case of throwing the code out and starting again, but a refactoring of how things hang together. There will be a period of instability, but it will be relatively short.
These architectural crises are normal and the only way to have a successful long-lived project. Some approaches that don't work are:
The ivory tower: Design the whole architecture in the beginning and never change it. X11 is the best example.
The clean slate: Throw out all or most of the project and rewrite the central framework from scratch. See Mozilla.
The ancient ship: Do nothing. Continue to add functionality in whatever way each developer sees fit. Eventually the software resembles a sci-fi starship that has been patched here, expanded there, re-plumbed somewhere else...
As for Linux, it appears to do this very well with the even/odd release pattern. Every odd kernel release affords the developers a planned architectural crisis, so they can accommodate a new set of sunctionality cleanly. I am confident that the developers will find whatever architectural tool is needed (#ifdefs, macros, templates, modules...) to maintain everything from embedded to high-end systems in one code base. It may be till 2.5 though...
I believe you that there are not that many uses for a multiprocessor machine on a desktop at the moment, but dual processor machines are just wonderful.
I use a dual P-III/NT4 at work. It is almost never unresponsive. When I start long builds I don't have to go for a coffe for being unable to type properly. I can run the current version of the program while building the next. I can even play Quake while waiting for the build to finish.
Now if anyone could tell me where to get...
A P-II 400MHz to put in the empty slot of my home Linux machine. The damn things are off the market.
A parallel version of make for Visual C++, so the dual NT machines can actually work with both brains.
Management: Manage the project, motivate the team, sort out problems, remove obstacles, speak to customers. Setting standards (0.5).
Design: What should the product do? What approach to building it is most likely to succeed. Which design will yield an elegant system that pleases the customer? Setting standards (0.5)
HR crap: Holidays, pay, endless incoming CVs, "the company line", telling people off for coming in late/improper expenses/playing games.
Actual management is very important but does not take a genius. For most functions of management, a competent professional administrator (a high level secretary) would do better than an engineer. A good administrator manages timelines, large numbers of commitmets, resources, and the like with very high reliability and a certain detachment. The required mindset is very different from the technical person who likes to apply their entire brain power to crack each aspect of the problem in turn.
There are two aspects of management that cannot be done by an administrator. Motivating the team and ensuring high standards. To motivate the team, a manager can use praise, pressure (rarely helps), and persuasion. You can get infinite supplies of pressure from upper management if you ask, but it is almost never wise to apply it to your staff. Your supply of praise and persuasion comes from the respect that your staff have for you. A great engineer or a great manager will command respect and so can use praise and persuasion. An acknowledged administrator cannot, which leaves only pressure, and this is why so much management sucks. As for ensuring high standards, the management aspect of this is only half the picture. It is when manager says "the product has to be better" or "we must do better than this", and so the same principles as for motivation apply.
The second task, design, is by far the most important aspect in influencing the success of projects that are mainly technology bounded. It includes specifying the product from the point of view of the customer, if that is not already done by upper management. Then it involves guessing the right path. This is the black art, the magic trick, where a good designer can make the thing fly or (more likely) a bad one can take it down the drain.
Software engineering is not yet at a stage where projects can be run predictably in a well-proven way. Until then, a correctly designed project sails to completion and a poorly thought out project never gets there. Since this is extremely important and there is no simple formula, most companies, very wisely, promote their most experienced and capable technical people (though not necessarily the cleverest coders) into management, in the hope that they can guide their projects to success. It is not always understood that they guide them through class diagrams, refactoring, and design patterns, not Gannt charts and top-10 risk lists.
A third aspect of design is implementing high standards directly, by specific design choices. Whereas the non-technical manager can say "we must have fewer bugs", the designer can say "we must build the network interface like this so that we have fewer bugs", and actually sell this to the team. This is extremely difficult to do because, again, the recommendations will only be followed to the extent that the team respects the designer.
As for the HR (Human Resources) stuff, it sucks. This is not so much because it's boring (it is, except for hiring new staff) but because it is adversarial. A manager is an agent of the Company and must side with the Company when its interests cross those of the staff. A lucky and capable manager can, at best, ensure that this happens very rarely. An unlucky one will be seen (correctly) to have fallen to the dark side.
Now, in an ideal world, the most capable people in the institution would be designers. They would work together with an accomplished administrator/leader no senior than themselves. As far as possible, HR issues would be avoided or handled by off-team staff. If you are very lucky, you might work in a shop like that. More likely you would have these problems:
There is only a manager, who is basically an administrator, and no designer. This is the common PHB case and few projects survive it.
The designer has to do management because the manager can't assess or estimate the work and won't ask.
The designer fails to do design because he's not very good or does not command enough respect.
The designer and/or the manager are totally bogged down in HR stuff. This is not so bad if you have very good developers, who unofficially act as designers.
A technical person who might make a good designer is lumped with all three management roles and so does poorly.
So, then: My advice to the original poster is see what exactly out of the things that managers do you want to do and feel you can do. Go to your higer management and explain that. Ask them to find other people well suited for the remaining roles. Both you and your company will be a lot happier that way.
In the press in general, and the computer press is no exception, a "good" or "exciting" thing is one that looks like it's gonna make the doers a large amount of money. It may be neutral or bad for the general public, but if it is financially good for the person who does it, it's good.
So a "good" thing is a new secure digital distribution format. A way of selling public databases. A "good" thing is basically a new way of way of making money for some people. A thing that is good in an unselfish way, such as a volunteer project, a free display of art, or a public protest is rarely good. Usually it is "weird".
That way we can all subscribe to the unspoken fiction that one day we shall be the lucky ones, we shall be the ones who will see the way and make money, and may god keep us safe until then...
I honestly don't think that Mozilla will ever be a good browser. This is not for lack of skill or effor, it's just that the aims of the project make no sense. I think Mozilla will get more and more bloated and unreliable until the more useful open source parts leave and find other homes.
On Linux, Mozilla (M17) is slow, crash-prone, does not have full crypto, and has instead ugly fonts, impossible to use dialogs and other GUI components, useless sidebars and button bars, and an annoying look in all of its two useless themes. On Windows it looks and runs slightly better, but then IE5 looks and runs OK on Windows too.
I don't know why Mozilla calls releases "milestones". A milestone implies some concrete goals, and you release when you meet them. Mozilla milestones so far seem to be just regular releases with no clear aims.
I use Communicator 4.73 when I need SSL (web-mail) and cookies (Slashdot). For every other use I try to use Galeon, which is based on the Gecko HTML component (from Mozilla) in a regular GTK application shell. It's slightly less reliable and lacks crypto and cookies, but it is sane. It looks as it they will get JavaScript working (it mostly does) and Java and then it will be an extremely usable browser. Where it goes wrong is with the &%$£^(*& Mozilla UI components, such as the directory view.
I want a 100% solid browser with a native (preferably GTK) GUI that does JavaScript (sadly), Java, SSL, and cookies. I want GNOME to launch my mail client, news client, and and ICQ client, not the broswer. If it has extra features, they should be user-centerd features like ad-filtering or tabbed multi-document windows (galeon has a nice crash-recovery feature). I believe Galeon is getting there, Mozilla isn't. Chuck it. The aims of the Netscape company have never been too sensible or noble, get the source out and build a good thing out of it.
There are three things that a technical manager does in a commercial environment, if indeed they are worth their position.
Actually manage the project. Decide who does what when, book resources, order dependencies, plan to try and meet the deadline, decide how to deal with crises. Open Source projects could use very small amounts of this, mostly motivation. More management is usually not needed or welcome since there are no deadlines and the developers are volunteers and want to organize their own tasks.
Control the architecture of the project. Define what is to be built. Choose what overall approach to take. Decide how to solve particular technical problems. Ensure quality of work. This is definitely needed in Open Source projects. Either a single architect or some elite group of well-respected and active developers does it.
Ensure that developers put in their full day's work, evaluate their performance, promote them, select new ones to be hired. This is obviously an artifact of the employer/employee relationship, which is inherently adversarial and so requires a large amount of formal monitoring.
In my opinion, Open Source projects are limited by architectural vision more than anything else, and this is a sort of failure of management. Either there is not much vision and the project yields an outstanding implementation of archaic ideas, or there is one overloaded visionary (the compromise that works OK in practice), or there is fine vision but the visionaries fail to communicate it to the masses and the project never manages to turn into actual code.
Several posters have asked "why do they want to use Linux in a car, phone, etc?". Please bear in mind that the term Embedded System may mean a very high level system in many cases:
Audio appliances with MP3 or CDR capabilities.
Digital video boxes (like the Tivio). Includes capture, store on disk, GUI.
In-car navigation system. Includes GPS receiver, LCD map display, DVD to store map.
Medical scanning equipment. Includes networking, database, image display and GUI.
Industrial machinery. Includes networking, control GUI.
Electronic Point Of Sale systems (cash registers). Include database, networking, GUI.
Voice mail and digital telephony systems.
Web boxes. Web browsing and email appliances for the home.
Many of these devices are currently manufactured with stock PC components. They may run various operating systems including Linux, Windows, and DOS (a fine real-time OS, in a sense). An industry initiative to develop a sutable version of Linux makes good sense.
First, corporations did not build the internet. Governments in the US and around the world built it as an academic network and it was functioning very well, at a large scale, by 1995 or so when the corporate world jumped in in force. To be fair, the large private US universities were also instrumental in building it, but I think that doesn't weaken the point. Second, Capitalism does require poverty. Sorry, but it does. The poor are needed to work in factories or other menial jobs and to perform services for the rich. For example, the rich enjoy having poor people to act as waiters, gardners, cleaners, etc. A model of a society with roughly equal, high general wealth, where everyone is some kind of professional and markets work very efficiently, is conceivable, but Capitalism is not it. Where Capitalism wins, for example the reson it wins over monarchy or colonial tyrrany, is that it builds a wealth pyramid from rich to poor, wheras other systems have had two rigidly separate classes. The results are manifold: Capable people are rewarded where otherwise they would make very good reformers. Excellence is rewarded, and so high production of material goods, technology, etc. takes place. There is room for people to move up or down economically, and the fear of being demoted (and in penury) is a great motivator to keep your head down and work. This is beginning to fail as a large part of the population is off the bottom of the pyramid and has little to lose. The system rewards cooperation (of individuals with capital) and this creates a large class of professional technocrats, managers, etc. who maintain it. Most/. readers are or wil be in this group. This makes Capitalism extremely hard to unseat. Pavlos
Normally you get mitochondrial DNA from your mother because she provides the egg and nuclear DNA from both parents. In the case of Dolly she got nuclear DNA from the prototype only, through cloning, and mitochondrial DNA from the sheep that provided the egg. The scientists could have taken an egg from the prototype as well (if it was a ewe), and thus have kept the right mitochondria, but I guess that would have confused the experiment.
The point is that it doesn't matter. Mitochondrial DNA should be very well debugged by now, so it shouldn't matter which one you have.
I have had a cursory look at the GenKey source, and I have only a passing understanding of cryptography concepts, but It seems to me that this program does not unbias the source of random data. IT IS THEREFORE USELESS.
Explanation:
The One Time Pad is secure, if impractical, only if the key consists of truly random bits. If the key is a sound file, an image, a set of "random" keystrokes etc it will not be truly random. It will have statistical properties , or "bias", that will reveal part or all of your message. For example sound values tend to follow periodic patterns.
It is true that the input stream may contain enough randomness, or "entropy", to encrypt your message. But generally you have to record a large amount of data containing randomness, say audio, and run it through an algorithm that generates a much smaller, unbiased random stream.
There are some ingenious algorithms to do this removal of bias if the sources are entirely random but biased, eg. weighted coins. It is not possible to write a general purpose utility since you do not know how random your source is, and therefore how many source bits to consume per key bit. The program in question appears to mix the source bits in an ad-hoc way that seems, well, crap.
Personally, when I want some random bits I run md5sum, type a few pages of "random" keystrokes and press ^D. Out come 16 bytes that I can be pretty confident are random.
I grant you that Security Through Obscurity is far more interesting than real cryptographic or algorithmic security, allowing the administrators to play stimulating cat-and-mouse games with the attackers.
The point of cryptographic security is that a very large amount of carefully verified work, the work of experts which cannot be easily duplicated, can be invested in the cryptosystem. The system can then be used by anyone, expert or not, any number of times, by just providing a passphrase. STO requires an expert to devise a new intricate ploy each time.
Cryptography relies on certain algorithms having a minimum order-of-magnitude cost, and hence is vulnerable to spectacular algorithmic advances, but the problems are never meant to be intractable in the sense of "mysterious". A properly peer-reviewed cryptosystem is not weakened even if all of the scientists who invented it subsequently become traitors.
Pavlos
PS. Your point about engendering a false sense of security is correct, but the reason is that the users of the system wchoose weak passwords, leak them, etc.
PSS. Your point about encryption vs. hiding data in your drive is a revelation. I have already ordered my 340282366920938463463374607431GB hard drive!
That there is art in computer programming should not be surprising. After all, art is evident in the design of bridges, sailing ships, and Boeing 747s, even though these are all intended to be practical constructions.
Our species has always made aesthetics a major aspect of the design of every artifact, from houses to cooking utensils, and that is a fine tradition, for it makes our lives richer. Only a relatively small proportion of the art in the world is created by "artists" and encapsulated in objects of no other purpose.
This is a tradition which is threatened by science and, more so, economics. Science allows us to see objectively a more efficient way of achieving some thing, which is good, but then economics forces us to follow that route to extremes, and thus gives rise to a form of engineering devoid of aesthetics or elegance.
As an computer scientist and professinal developer, I am motivated by the desire to create beautifully crafted things, things which have the potential to be admired. I aspire to be a master craftsman, not an engineer, and it saddens me when commercial pressure forces us to follow a practical but inelegant approach.
I understand that the immediate worry is over being sued, not about actually harming the kids, but let's look at that for a moment.
What is the perceived danger from the internet? Take racism, porn and information (such as drugs or bomb making) in turn:
The child may easily find a site that is openly hostile to their culture, such as a Nazi site (or CNN, depending on the culture). This will teach them their culture has enemies. Good. If you were living near a minefield you wouldn't think of shielding your children from the images of victims to protect their innocense, would you? No, you would welcome the chance to acknowledge the risks and provide comfort.
Then there is porn. The great majority of it is extremely distasteful but that is because of money, not sex. Lurid descriptions of unaffectionate and relatively unarousing activities will be sprawled over the lower ranks of just about any search result page, like trinket hawkers in package tour destinations. This will expose the child to great rudeness and, if they are actually interested to look at the porn, frustration as they click on the link and ten separate browser windows full of banner ads pop up. The child will quickly form the impression that porn is a world where women apparently made of shiny plastic perform stylish sexual acrobatics while asking for your credit card number. A parent ought to explain that this false commercial crap and advise their boy or girl to seek affection among their real-life friends, as kids have done for ages.
Commercial porn aside, if a child is so lucky as to stumble onto a site that some couple put up of themselves making love, well what is so bad about that? As far as I recall from myself and friends occasionally seeing real people have sex, the child may be aroused or bored, or possibly a bit jealous, but not disturbed. There are indeed some sites that appear disturbing (such as S&M), or that are genuinely disturbing (not consensual), but the imagery is so frightening that I doubt the child will want to immerse themselves in these activities. Rather I imagine the child may need some reassurance as they would for racism. This is a risk to innocence, but I'm not sure it's a bigger risk than innocence.
Then there are the bomb making and drug taking information sites. These are real freedom of information issues that are genuinely going to make hard work for the parents, in the same way as notions of religious reformation would have done centuries ago. The parents will have to make the case for their preferred value systems and their views of life and personal fulfillment to the children. As well they should. When were they thinking of having these discussions? Not knowing anything about drugs will only help your kid be poisoned faster. Having to counter drug positive sites might give parents a chance to come up with some vaguely convincing reasons to avoid them, and would certainly reduce the attraction of the taboo.
It looks as if Pepsi has made a mistake and offered the jet for too few points. To me this is like advertising something that appears to be amazing value (as well as amazing itself) in among your normal products.
Judges recognize this as a cunning advertising ploy and tend to discourage it by ruling in favor of the person who calls the improbable offer. A judge will not, in general, uphold a contract that the company is clearly unable to deliver, or that would surely drive them out of business. Thus it would be reasonable for Pepsi (or any large company) to be held to this whereas your local shop would be let off.
The judge may be sympathetic if the company could convincingly claim that the incident was a mistake, in which case the person should probably be reinbursed for the cost of raising the ludicrous amount of prize tokens (bananas, ring pulls, or whatever).
In the end of the day the judge has to decide who is the least evil. The big corporation who is getting away with an irresponsible attention grabbing stunt, or the speculative smartass who calls their bluff. I imagine it is not without some glee when they rule in favor of the smartass.
This sort of case is usually speculative, not frivolous. The plaintiff does not have to claim to be so stupid as to have suffered some damage that the defendent had a duty to prevent. They only have to claim "you said you would sell me this so please do".
Firstly, how is a member of the poblic supposed to know the value of the jet. Sure, $700000 seems low, but how should one know if the thing ought to cost $1M, $10M, or $100M. One could probably estimate that a fully functioning state of the art fighter jet would be in the tens of $M, but the Harrier may be thought of as some sort of vintage aircraft (it looks old fashined) and was obviously portrayed as a recreational vehicle, not a weapon.
Secondly, how are we to know the value of the jet promotion to Pepsi. The publicity gained by actually offering a jet may be worth over $100M to Pepsi for all I know.
Third, it is common to offer one ludicrously valuable Grand Prize in a contest of otherwise lackluster but numerous prizes because it increases the perceived value of all the other prizes. Many children (or not very realistic adults) will likely have bought cans of Pepsi because they thought, however subconsciously, that SOMEDAY they might get the jet.
Finally, it is a promotion for fuck' sake! You are supposed to get things for free.
I agree that Pepsi could claim that they have made an honest mistake and be let off. Presumably if an adverst displays an entirely wrong price for an item there is some precedent for what to do when people come to claim it. Pepsi's position is more suspect in this case since it may have benefited from displaying the jet (eg. by the offer getting talked about).
I do NOT agree that the case was frivolous, or the man stupid, or whatever, because a jet is an "unbelievable" or "innapropriate" prize. Pepsi could definitely afford to give one away. What kid would not like to have one? If the number of points was appropriate I would fully expect Pepsi to provide the jet, with a pilot for some period, as the grand prize.
I think neither all of use here who say that the kid should get the jet nor the kid himself think that the jet was a reasonable offer. I agree that one could only be mocked for claiming that they expected Pepsi to happily hand out the jet. I think that the kid thought, as did everyone else, that Pepsi had been caught out.
However, the offer is certainly realizable. Harrier jets are in production and pepsi could certainly buy one, presumably without the weapons. Nor is it unreasonable for average people to want to own the jet. Sure, you would need a trained pilot to fly it byt you could hire one and charge for rides, or enjoy them with your friends. There is at least one Russian company offering rides on military jets for about $10000.
I do not know if the offer is unreasonable in terms of value, but it does not seem so compared to a lottery. If a jet costs $25M that is ony 35x the "ticket" price. If people had to buy Pepsi cans to raise the points, and a few tens of people had tried, Pepsi would be making a profit. Presumably it is understood that there is only one jet and that it would go to the first winner, or one chosen at random, as is common practice.
Pepsi's major mistake seems to be to allow arbitrary numbers of points to be bought. They could perhaps claim that buying points is intended to "top up" prize amounts and ask the guy to earn the points for the jet.
I agree that this is a speculative case and perhaps Pepsi ought to be fined rather than pay the plaintiff, but I would still like to see them lose.
I don't think that it's reasonable for the guy to own a harrier jet any more that it would be for an individual to own field artillery or air to air missiles.
However, Pepsi should be forced to compensate the person with something of equivalent value to the advertised jet. They have made a promise, they screwed up the amounts and now they have to pay up. Tough. They should be careful about promising things.
The only other possible settlement would be for Pepsi not to have to pay the man but to be severly fined for false advertising. Pepsi presumably gained increased sales by having the jet in the advert so it should be fined to nullify this gain and discourage this sort of lying in the future.
I have a Debian 2.1, kernel 2.2.6, glibc, Xfree86 3.3.2 with the new NVIDIA 3.3.3.1 server.
I found that Q3 worked acceptably at 800x600 resolution but only in a window. It looks great too, even at 16bpp. All the OpenGL features, such as textures on jump pods, portals, marks on walls etc. work correctly.
To get a pleasant game experience I added an 800x600 mode to my X server, switch to that with CTRL ALT +, and carefully scroll the view to match the window before entering the arena, while I still have use of the mouse.
This was a bit of a mess to set up for debian. First, converting the.rpm to a.deb and then installing it doesn't work because the files end up in/usr/local/games and it seems to need write access to the game directory to write a config file. Better to convert to.tgz (with "alien") and unpack in your home directory. Next, it tried to start in full screen mode and failed, causing the game graphics to appear in an otherwise garbled screen. It doesn't seen able to exit this mode so I had to kill the X server several times to get it working. After much frobbing I eventually managed to convince it to run in a window and save the configuration file. No problems after that. My advice is, run once until it saves a config file and then edit the file to set the "in window" option.
Best of luck Pavlos Papageorgiou pavlos@please.avoid.spam.voxar.com
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I always thought the Microsoft Wheel Mouse was (in part) a fix for poor GUI design of the type you describe.
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To make matters worse, some older Windows programs have scroll bars that do not move the page until you release the bar. Whose brilliant idea was this? You have to either mentally estimate how far you need to move the bar, or go to the tiny up/down arrows to scroll interactively.
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Pavlos
There was a mid-nineties DOS game called Elite II Frontier that included a fine solar system simulator. You could either fly around and see the planets "yourself" or there was an in-game 3D map that could show orbits and planets at any position in time, with animation.
This was all largely written by David Braben, the author of the original Elite game. It was a fine work of art, if a bit idiosyncratic. Rendering was done in software, in a way that was not rying to be photorealistic. The game blended reality with fiction, so I have no idea how accurate the solar system simulator was.
Pavlos
There is nothing wrong with the conclusion that cities cause crime. They always did. Think middle ages. Third world capitals. US "bad areas".
Pavlos
The situation that you outline is similar to the situation affecting other public resources such as transport, schooling, or drinking water. It goes like this:
We start having inherited a reasonable public resource, cheap or free and open to everyone. The quality is good enough for the majority of people to use.
Private companies try to make money by offering a "competing" service at high cost to the user. They pressure public bodies to downgrade the public resource and use advertising to denigrate the public resource and its users.
The more affluent part of the population buy the private resource. This meets their needs so they see no reason to pay taxes to maintaing the public resource, or to expect the state to provide it.
The public resource degrades through lack of funding and interest (at least by the vocal group of affluent citizens) until it becomes a resource "for the poor". The rich end up paying lots for marginally better service, and the poor are generally out of luck.
Think of public transport. In your city, is it used by managers and professionals or only by the poor? Whose children go to the public (state run) schools? Is tap water good enough for you or do you just buy Evian?
I am reasonably well off (at least for now). However, I object to this state of affairs, not only ethically but also through self interest. I don't want to spend money and time shopping for basic services such as these. I'm much rather let the state take care of these basic things so I can spend time and money on recreation and other individual pursuits.
Pavlos
Thank you and the previous poster for your useful suggestion.
Indeed, we do not need two repositories. We need to avoid the developers sitting idle while trying to either update or commit.
Assuming the repository is at HQ, a solution that pulls all the updates from HQ slowly and then allows the remote developers to apply them quickly would solve the update problem.
A solution that stores commits and sends them to HQ would solve the commit problem. We will start looking into cvsq as you suggested.
Pavlos
The facts of this may be true, but the reasoning is totally bogus. The law, rightly or wrongly, protects investment in technology (patents) content (copyrights). It does not protect successful platforms from competition.
The PlayStation's (still) enormous value as an asset derives only from its success and wide adoption, which guarantees that you will find games to buy for it and other users to talk about it. This is the same reason Windows is valuable.
The PlayStation's value does not derive from any technology, since that is now old hat. Perhaps if Connectix had created another cheap hardware console it could be alleged that they copied something that allows very cheap manufacturing or some such. But Connectix used a straightforward implementation on desktop hardware, so there can be no such issue.
So, one could be sorry for Sony that they now have competition, but legally they have no leg to stand on. There is no legal barrier to emulating a succesful platform, and that is a good thing, even as it allows the later players to "free ride" on the pioneer's success.
Pavlos
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I have not even read the facts of the case.
Joe Hacker writes a small application to solve a simple problem. Simple data structures are used. Unless Joe is a genius (and maybe not so productive) no thought is spent on interactions between components.
The thing proves useful. Other developers contribute pathes. Initially the patches merely fix things and fill gaps, so the overall quality of the software rises. The software becomes a "polished" package.
After some time, there is a significant amount of contributed functionality that was outside of the original scope of the package. The underlying data structures don't quite fit it. As there is no coherent model for the interactions between components, people tend to just add things where it seems most immediately convenient. Quality suffers. The project is in a crisis of architecture.
The way to get out of the crisis is to take a step back, look at the new scope of the project, look at the way the current components ought to interact, including forseeable extensions, and design a new architecture. This is not a case of throwing the code out and starting again, but a refactoring of how things hang together. There will be a period of instability, but it will be relatively short.
These architectural crises are normal and the only way to have a successful long-lived project. Some approaches that don't work are:
The ivory tower: Design the whole architecture in the beginning and never change it. X11 is the best example.
The clean slate: Throw out all or most of the project and rewrite the central framework from scratch. See Mozilla.
The ancient ship: Do nothing. Continue to add functionality in whatever way each developer sees fit. Eventually the software resembles a sci-fi starship that has been patched here, expanded there, re-plumbed somewhere else...
As for Linux, it appears to do this very well with the even/odd release pattern. Every odd kernel release affords the developers a planned architectural crisis, so they can accommodate a new set of sunctionality cleanly. I am confident that the developers will find whatever architectural tool is needed (#ifdefs, macros, templates, modules...) to maintain everything from embedded to high-end systems in one code base. It may be till 2.5 though...
Pavlos
I use a dual P-III/NT4 at work. It is almost never unresponsive. When I start long builds I don't have to go for a coffe for being unable to type properly. I can run the current version of the program while building the next. I can even play Quake while waiting for the build to finish.
Now if anyone could tell me where to get...
A P-II 400MHz to put in the empty slot of my home Linux machine. The damn things are off the market.
A parallel version of make for Visual C++, so the dual NT machines can actually work with both brains.
Pavlos
Management: Manage the project, motivate the team, sort out problems, remove obstacles, speak to customers. Setting standards (0.5).
Design: What should the product do? What approach to building it is most likely to succeed. Which design will yield an elegant system that pleases the customer? Setting standards (0.5)
HR crap: Holidays, pay, endless incoming CVs, "the company line", telling people off for coming in late/improper expenses/playing games.
Actual management is very important but does not take a genius. For most functions of management, a competent professional administrator (a high level secretary) would do better than an engineer. A good administrator manages timelines, large numbers of commitmets, resources, and the like with very high reliability and a certain detachment. The required mindset is very different from the technical person who likes to apply their entire brain power to crack each aspect of the problem in turn.
There are two aspects of management that cannot be done by an administrator. Motivating the team and ensuring high standards. To motivate the team, a manager can use praise, pressure (rarely helps), and persuasion. You can get infinite supplies of pressure from upper management if you ask, but it is almost never wise to apply it to your staff. Your supply of praise and persuasion comes from the respect that your staff have for you. A great engineer or a great manager will command respect and so can use praise and persuasion. An acknowledged administrator cannot, which leaves only pressure, and this is why so much management sucks. As for ensuring high standards, the management aspect of this is only half the picture. It is when manager says "the product has to be better" or "we must do better than this", and so the same principles as for motivation apply.
The second task, design, is by far the most important aspect in influencing the success of projects that are mainly technology bounded. It includes specifying the product from the point of view of the customer, if that is not already done by upper management. Then it involves guessing the right path. This is the black art, the magic trick, where a good designer can make the thing fly or (more likely) a bad one can take it down the drain.
Software engineering is not yet at a stage where projects can be run predictably in a well-proven way. Until then, a correctly designed project sails to completion and a poorly thought out project never gets there. Since this is extremely important and there is no simple formula, most companies, very wisely, promote their most experienced and capable technical people (though not necessarily the cleverest coders) into management, in the hope that they can guide their projects to success. It is not always understood that they guide them through class diagrams, refactoring, and design patterns, not Gannt charts and top-10 risk lists.
A third aspect of design is implementing high standards directly, by specific design choices. Whereas the non-technical manager can say "we must have fewer bugs", the designer can say "we must build the network interface like this so that we have fewer bugs", and actually sell this to the team. This is extremely difficult to do because, again, the recommendations will only be followed to the extent that the team respects the designer.
As for the HR (Human Resources) stuff, it sucks. This is not so much because it's boring (it is, except for hiring new staff) but because it is adversarial. A manager is an agent of the Company and must side with the Company when its interests cross those of the staff. A lucky and capable manager can, at best, ensure that this happens very rarely. An unlucky one will be seen (correctly) to have fallen to the dark side.
Now, in an ideal world, the most capable people in the institution would be designers. They would work together with an accomplished administrator/leader no senior than themselves. As far as possible, HR issues would be avoided or handled by off-team staff. If you are very lucky, you might work in a shop like that. More likely you would have these problems:
There is only a manager, who is basically an administrator, and no designer. This is the common PHB case and few projects survive it.
The designer has to do management because the manager can't assess or estimate the work and won't ask.
The designer fails to do design because he's not very good or does not command enough respect.
The designer and/or the manager are totally bogged down in HR stuff. This is not so bad if you have very good developers, who unofficially act as designers.
A technical person who might make a good designer is lumped with all three management roles and so does poorly.
So, then: My advice to the original poster is see what exactly out of the things that managers do you want to do and feel you can do. Go to your higer management and explain that. Ask them to find other people well suited for the remaining roles. Both you and your company will be a lot happier that way.
So a "good" thing is a new secure digital distribution format. A way of selling public databases. A "good" thing is basically a new way of way of making money for some people. A thing that is good in an unselfish way, such as a volunteer project, a free display of art, or a public protest is rarely good. Usually it is "weird".
That way we can all subscribe to the unspoken fiction that one day we shall be the lucky ones, we shall be the ones who will see the way and make money, and may god keep us safe until then...
I honestly don't think that Mozilla will ever be a good browser. This is not for lack of skill or effor, it's just that the aims of the project make no sense. I think Mozilla will get more and more bloated and unreliable until the more useful open source parts leave and find other homes.
On Linux, Mozilla (M17) is slow, crash-prone, does not have full crypto, and has instead ugly fonts, impossible to use dialogs and other GUI components, useless sidebars and button bars, and an annoying look in all of its two useless themes. On Windows it looks and runs slightly better, but then IE5 looks and runs OK on Windows too.
I don't know why Mozilla calls releases "milestones". A milestone implies some concrete goals, and you release when you meet them. Mozilla milestones so far seem to be just regular releases with no clear aims.
I use Communicator 4.73 when I need SSL (web-mail) and cookies (Slashdot). For every other use I try to use Galeon, which is based on the Gecko HTML component (from Mozilla) in a regular GTK application shell. It's slightly less reliable and lacks crypto and cookies, but it is sane. It looks as it they will get JavaScript working (it mostly does) and Java and then it will be an extremely usable browser. Where it goes wrong is with the &%$£^(*& Mozilla UI components, such as the directory view.
I want a 100% solid browser with a native (preferably GTK) GUI that does JavaScript (sadly), Java, SSL, and cookies. I want GNOME to launch my mail client, news client, and and ICQ client, not the broswer. If it has extra features, they should be user-centerd features like ad-filtering or tabbed multi-document windows (galeon has a nice crash-recovery feature). I believe Galeon is getting there, Mozilla isn't. Chuck it. The aims of the Netscape company have never been too sensible or noble, get the source out and build a good thing out of it.
Pavlos
Actually manage the project. Decide who does what when, book resources, order dependencies, plan to try and meet the deadline, decide how to deal with crises. Open Source projects could use very small amounts of this, mostly motivation. More management is usually not needed or welcome since there are no deadlines and the developers are volunteers and want to organize their own tasks.
Control the architecture of the project. Define what is to be built. Choose what overall approach to take. Decide how to solve particular technical problems. Ensure quality of work. This is definitely needed in Open Source projects. Either a single architect or some elite group of well-respected and active developers does it.
Ensure that developers put in their full day's work, evaluate their performance, promote them, select new ones to be hired. This is obviously an artifact of the employer/employee relationship, which is inherently adversarial and so requires a large amount of formal monitoring.
In my opinion, Open Source projects are limited by architectural vision more than anything else, and this is a sort of failure of management. Either there is not much vision and the project yields an outstanding implementation of archaic ideas, or there is one overloaded visionary (the compromise that works OK in practice), or there is fine vision but the visionaries fail to communicate it to the masses and the project never manages to turn into actual code.
Pavlos
Several posters have asked "why do they want to use Linux in a car, phone, etc?". Please bear in mind that the term Embedded System may mean a very high level system in many cases:
Audio appliances with MP3 or CDR capabilities.
Digital video boxes (like the Tivio). Includes capture, store on disk, GUI.
In-car navigation system. Includes GPS receiver, LCD map display, DVD to store map.
Medical scanning equipment. Includes networking, database, image display and GUI.
Industrial machinery. Includes networking, control GUI.
Electronic Point Of Sale systems (cash registers). Include database, networking, GUI.
Voice mail and digital telephony systems.
Web boxes. Web browsing and email appliances for the home.
Many of these devices are currently manufactured with stock PC components. They may run various operating systems including Linux, Windows, and DOS (a fine real-time OS, in a sense). An industry initiative to develop a sutable version of Linux makes good sense.
First, corporations did not build the internet. Governments in the US and around the world built it as an academic network and it was functioning very well, at a large scale, by 1995 or so when the corporate world jumped in in force. To be fair, the large private US universities were also instrumental in building it, but I think that doesn't weaken the point. Second, Capitalism does require poverty. Sorry, but it does. The poor are needed to work in factories or other menial jobs and to perform services for the rich. For example, the rich enjoy having poor people to act as waiters, gardners, cleaners, etc. A model of a society with roughly equal, high general wealth, where everyone is some kind of professional and markets work very efficiently, is conceivable, but Capitalism is not it. Where Capitalism wins, for example the reson it wins over monarchy or colonial tyrrany, is that it builds a wealth pyramid from rich to poor, wheras other systems have had two rigidly separate classes. The results are manifold: Capable people are rewarded where otherwise they would make very good reformers. Excellence is rewarded, and so high production of material goods, technology, etc. takes place. There is room for people to move up or down economically, and the fear of being demoted (and in penury) is a great motivator to keep your head down and work. This is beginning to fail as a large part of the population is off the bottom of the pyramid and has little to lose. The system rewards cooperation (of individuals with capital) and this creates a large class of professional technocrats, managers, etc. who maintain it. Most /. readers are or wil be in this group. This makes Capitalism extremely hard to unseat. Pavlos
Normally you get mitochondrial DNA from your mother because she provides the egg and nuclear DNA from both parents. In the case of Dolly she got nuclear DNA from the prototype only, through cloning, and mitochondrial DNA from the sheep that provided the egg. The scientists could have taken an egg from the prototype as well (if it was a ewe), and thus have kept the right mitochondria, but I guess that would have confused the experiment.
The point is that it doesn't matter. Mitochondrial DNA should be very well debugged by now, so it shouldn't matter which one you have.
Pavlos
I have had a cursory look at the GenKey source, and I have only a passing understanding of cryptography concepts, but It seems to me that this program does not unbias the source of random data. IT IS THEREFORE USELESS.
Explanation:
The One Time Pad is secure, if impractical, only if the key consists of truly random bits. If the key is a sound file, an image, a set of "random" keystrokes etc it will not be truly random. It will have statistical properties , or "bias", that will reveal part or all of your message. For example sound values tend to follow periodic patterns.
It is true that the input stream may contain enough randomness, or "entropy", to encrypt your message. But generally you have to record a large amount of data containing randomness, say audio, and run it through an algorithm that generates a much smaller, unbiased random stream.
There are some ingenious algorithms to do this removal of bias if the sources are entirely random but biased, eg. weighted coins. It is not possible to write a general purpose utility since you do not know how random your source is, and therefore how many source bits to consume per key bit. The program in question appears to mix the source bits in an ad-hoc way that seems, well, crap.
Personally, when I want some random bits I run md5sum, type a few pages of "random" keystrokes and press ^D. Out come 16 bytes that I can be pretty confident are random.
Pavlos
I grant you that Security Through Obscurity is far more interesting than real cryptographic or algorithmic security, allowing the administrators to play stimulating cat-and-mouse games with the attackers.
The point of cryptographic security is that a very large amount of carefully verified work, the work of experts which cannot be easily duplicated, can be invested in the cryptosystem. The system can then be used by anyone, expert or not, any number of times, by just providing a passphrase. STO requires an expert to devise a new intricate ploy each time.
Cryptography relies on certain algorithms having a minimum order-of-magnitude cost, and hence is vulnerable to spectacular algorithmic advances, but the problems are never meant to be intractable in the sense of "mysterious". A properly peer-reviewed cryptosystem is not weakened even if all of the scientists who invented it subsequently become traitors.
Pavlos
PS. Your point about engendering a false sense of security is correct, but the reason is that the users of the system wchoose weak passwords, leak them, etc.
PSS. Your point about encryption vs. hiding data in your drive is a revelation. I have already ordered my 340282366920938463463374607431GB hard drive!
That there is art in computer programming should not be surprising. After all, art is evident in the design of bridges, sailing ships, and Boeing 747s, even though these are all intended to be practical constructions.
Our species has always made aesthetics a major aspect of the design of every artifact, from houses to cooking utensils, and that is a fine tradition, for it makes our lives richer. Only a relatively small proportion of the art in the world is created by "artists" and encapsulated in objects of no other purpose.
This is a tradition which is threatened by science and, more so, economics. Science allows us to see objectively a more efficient way of achieving some thing, which is good, but then economics forces us to follow that route to extremes, and thus gives rise to a form of engineering devoid of aesthetics or elegance.
As an computer scientist and professinal developer, I am motivated by the desire to create beautifully crafted things, things which have the potential to be admired. I aspire to be a master craftsman, not an engineer, and it saddens me when commercial pressure forces us to follow a practical but inelegant approach.
Pavlos
I understand that the immediate worry is over being sued, not about actually harming the kids, but let's look at that for a moment.
What is the perceived danger from the internet? Take racism, porn and information (such as drugs or bomb making) in turn:
The child may easily find a site that is openly hostile to their culture, such as a Nazi site (or CNN, depending on the culture). This will teach them their culture has enemies. Good. If you were living near a minefield you wouldn't think of shielding your children from the images of victims to protect their innocense, would you? No, you would welcome the chance to acknowledge the risks and provide comfort.
Then there is porn. The great majority of it is extremely distasteful but that is because of money, not sex. Lurid descriptions of unaffectionate and relatively unarousing activities will be sprawled over the lower ranks of just about any search result page, like trinket hawkers in package tour destinations. This will expose the child to great rudeness and, if they are actually interested to look at the porn, frustration as they click on the link and ten separate browser windows full of banner ads pop up. The child will quickly form the impression that porn is a world where women apparently made of shiny plastic perform stylish sexual acrobatics while asking for your credit card number. A parent ought to explain that this false commercial crap and advise their boy or girl to seek affection among their real-life friends, as kids have done for ages.
Commercial porn aside, if a child is so lucky as to stumble onto a site that some couple put up of themselves making love, well what is so bad about that? As far as I recall from myself and friends occasionally seeing real people have sex, the child may be aroused or bored, or possibly a bit jealous, but not disturbed. There are indeed some sites that appear disturbing (such as S&M), or that are genuinely disturbing (not consensual), but the imagery is so frightening that I doubt the child will want to immerse themselves in these activities. Rather I imagine the child may need some reassurance as they would for racism. This is a risk to innocence, but I'm not sure it's a bigger risk than innocence.
Then there are the bomb making and drug taking information sites. These are real freedom of information issues that are genuinely going to make hard work for the parents, in the same way as notions of religious reformation would have done centuries ago. The parents will have to make the case for their preferred value systems and their views of life and personal fulfillment to the children. As well they should. When were they thinking of having these discussions? Not knowing anything about drugs will only help your kid be poisoned faster. Having to counter drug positive sites might give parents a chance to come up with some vaguely convincing reasons to avoid them, and would certainly reduce the attraction of the taboo.
Pavlos
It looks as if Pepsi has made a mistake and offered the jet for too few points. To me this is like advertising something that appears to be amazing value (as well as amazing itself) in among your normal products.
Judges recognize this as a cunning advertising ploy and tend to discourage it by ruling in favor of the person who calls the improbable offer. A judge will not, in general, uphold a contract that the company is clearly unable to deliver, or that would surely drive them out of business. Thus it would be reasonable for Pepsi (or any large company) to be held to this whereas your local shop would be let off.
The judge may be sympathetic if the company could convincingly claim that the incident was a mistake, in which case the person should probably be reinbursed for the cost of raising the ludicrous amount of prize tokens (bananas, ring pulls, or whatever).
In the end of the day the judge has to decide who is the least evil. The big corporation who is getting away with an irresponsible attention grabbing stunt, or the speculative smartass who calls their bluff. I imagine it is not without some glee when they rule in favor of the smartass.
This sort of case is usually speculative, not frivolous. The plaintiff does not have to claim to be so stupid as to have suffered some damage that the defendent had a duty to prevent. They only have to claim "you said you would sell me this so please do".
Pavlos
Firstly, how is a member of the poblic supposed to know the value of the jet. Sure, $700000 seems low, but how should one know if the thing ought to cost $1M, $10M, or $100M. One could probably estimate that a fully functioning state of the art fighter jet would be in the tens of $M, but the Harrier may be thought of as some sort of vintage aircraft (it looks old fashined) and was obviously portrayed as a recreational vehicle, not a weapon.
Secondly, how are we to know the value of the jet promotion to Pepsi. The publicity gained by actually offering a jet may be worth over $100M to Pepsi for all I know.
Third, it is common to offer one ludicrously valuable Grand Prize in a contest of otherwise lackluster but numerous prizes because it increases the perceived value of all the other prizes. Many children (or not very realistic adults) will likely have bought cans of Pepsi because they thought, however subconsciously, that SOMEDAY they might get the jet.
Finally, it is a promotion for fuck' sake! You are supposed to get things for free.
Pavlos
I agree that Pepsi could claim that they have made an honest mistake and be let off. Presumably if an adverst displays an entirely wrong price for an item there is some precedent for what to do when people come to claim it. Pepsi's position is more suspect in this case since it may have benefited from displaying the jet (eg. by the offer getting talked about).
I do NOT agree that the case was frivolous, or the man stupid, or whatever, because a jet is an "unbelievable" or "innapropriate" prize. Pepsi could definitely afford to give one away. What kid would not like to have one? If the number of points was appropriate I would fully expect Pepsi to provide the jet, with a pilot for some period, as the grand prize.
Pavlos
I think neither all of use here who say that the kid should get the jet nor the kid himself think that the jet was a reasonable offer. I agree that one could only be mocked for claiming that they expected Pepsi to happily hand out the jet. I think that the kid thought, as did everyone else, that Pepsi had been caught out.
However, the offer is certainly realizable. Harrier jets are in production and pepsi could certainly buy one, presumably without the weapons. Nor is it unreasonable for average people to want to own the jet. Sure, you would need a trained pilot to fly it byt you could hire one and charge for rides, or enjoy them with your friends. There is at least one Russian company offering rides on military jets for about $10000.
I do not know if the offer is unreasonable in terms of value, but it does not seem so compared to a lottery. If a jet costs $25M that is ony 35x the "ticket" price. If people had to buy Pepsi cans to raise the points, and a few tens of people had tried, Pepsi would be making a profit. Presumably it is understood that there is only one jet and that it would go to the first winner, or one chosen at random, as is common practice.
Pepsi's major mistake seems to be to allow arbitrary numbers of points to be bought. They could perhaps claim that buying points is intended to "top up" prize amounts and ask the guy to earn the points for the jet.
I agree that this is a speculative case and perhaps Pepsi ought to be fined rather than pay the plaintiff, but I would still like to see them lose.
Pavlos
I don't think that it's reasonable for the guy to own a harrier jet any more that it would be for an individual to own field artillery or air to air missiles.
However, Pepsi should be forced to compensate the person with something of equivalent value to the advertised jet. They have made a promise, they screwed up the amounts and now they have to pay up. Tough. They should be careful about promising things.
The only other possible settlement would be for Pepsi not to have to pay the man but to be severly fined for false advertising. Pepsi presumably gained increased sales by having the jet in the advert so it should be fined to nullify this gain and discourage this sort of lying in the future.
Pavlos
I have a Debian 2.1, kernel 2.2.6, glibc, Xfree86 3.3.2 with the new NVIDIA 3.3.3.1 server.
.rpm to a .deb and then installing it doesn't work because the files end up in /usr/local/games and it seems to need write access to the game directory to write a config file. Better to convert to .tgz (with "alien") and unpack in your home directory. Next, it tried to start in full screen mode and failed, causing the game graphics to appear in an otherwise garbled screen. It doesn't seen able to exit this mode so I had to kill the X server several times to get it working. After much frobbing I eventually managed to convince it to run in a window and save the configuration file. No problems after that. My advice is, run once until it saves a config file and then edit the file to set the "in window" option.
I found that Q3 worked acceptably at 800x600 resolution but only in a window. It looks great too, even at 16bpp. All the OpenGL features, such as textures on jump pods, portals, marks on walls etc. work correctly.
To get a pleasant game experience I added an 800x600 mode to my X server, switch to that with CTRL ALT +, and carefully scroll the view to match the window before entering the arena, while I still have use of the mouse.
This was a bit of a mess to set up for debian. First, converting the
Best of luck
Pavlos Papageorgiou
pavlos@please.avoid.spam.voxar.com