Yeah, that's a good point, but I'm sure it's possible to work around it somewhat with standard driver layers and backward compatability, assuming you don't want to go whole hog and make a whole new version available as an ISO.
The other option would be a two-CD system. One small CD (
Heh... "FPSBuster 3000"... that's funny.
I think that the real attraction isn't necessarily performance, but the convenience:
The game developer's life is made easier because they don't have to deal with different desktop architectures, registry cruft or driver versions. Plus, they can tweak the drivers and kernel to optimize performance for their specific game.
The user doesn't have to install anything to the hard drive, but the HD (or hd or floppy or cdrw or usb flash-drive) are all available for saving games and/or settings.
Is rebooting to switch games annoying? Maybe if you are talking about solitaire, but I don't think many people duck in and out of CounterStrike for five minutes between phone calls.
Plus, since the developer can control the ENTIRE hardware driver layer, their costs are going to go down beacuase if you call tech support with a problem, it's NOT the drivers -- you probably have a hardware problem!
This cancels out every reason you have to buy and X-box except for price, and even that advantage is vanishing with new small-form-factor low-cost motherboards and hard drives.
Perfect? No. Worth exploring? Absolutely! Maybe the gaming industry should even put together a gaming hardware support standard and develop a heavily optimized Linux Gaming Distro with an API and support tools for game developers. Most of the components are already out there (ALSA, SDL, Hotplug, etc...), they just need to be organized and polished underneath a common.
Actually, I believe the reason for using C-A-D to bring up the logon dialog is because it makes running a program that presents a fake but authentic-looking logon dialog (to collect passwords) very difficult. The idea is: if you wanted to log on, and the first thing you had to do was C-A-D, then that keystroke combo would circumvent the fake logon program (if one were running) and bring up task manager instead, letting you know things weren't right.
Now, I'm not up on NT security internals to know if this is a valid safeguard or not, but if there is an exploit to trap C-A-D and spoof the logon under Windows, it certainly isn't common. However, I know that DOS programs (like smartdrive) have been able to do that sort of thing for years to flush cache before rebooting, so I have to believe it's possible, even if it is difficult. Maybe a hacked copy of NT running on a 386 emulator under NT would work?
Such high-level/low-demand textbooks as my grad-level quantum field mechanics book ($150+ in 1993!) are expensive because of the FIXED cost of getting them written, not the variable cost of printing them. Your standard $30 intro-to psych text is much cheaper because the fixed production cost is spread out over a much larger number of units -- many many more people take intro to psych than quantum field mechanics.
Unfortunately, the variable costs are the ones that are zeroed out by e-book publishing. Unless you are looking for a best-seller that's already made back its fixed costs, so much for the revolution.
#1 - He's right.
#2 - So are you, or better yet consider this:
If CIPE were closed source, would he have even been able to write this article? Unless I missed something, nobody ever claimed OS was flawless, just that the flaws were open to scrutiny.
Isn't that why they bought Bungie and other game developers in the first place? Why does it seem like this announcement is too obvious and too late? Am I a dork for not seeing why this is news?
Thanks for the tip, but I can't get them to download because I use Firebird, and apparently, this site won't take you to a page with an actual link until you switch to IE AND agree to download all the spyware ActiveX components. Don't even mention the popups. Firebird kicks so much ass it burns.
However, despite that, Google answers all questions even though asking/. is more fun.
Ian Bell's Web Site has Elite and Elite Plus downloads, plus links to other k001 r0X0r1n9 sites... ...including this one, which also has manuals, guides and FAQs.
Man, Elite and Dungeon Master got me through adolescence. I'd certainly be willing to pay for an updated version, I just hope they don't try to 'update' the gameplay too much - they pretty much nailed it the first time.
Does anyone know if Elite and Elite 2 are still available?
All that page needs is a grey background, and it's 1995 all over again! (sigh)
I love the logo, too. WordArt r0X0rz!
Nothin' in the middle matters, huh?
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Wll, wht abt vwls? Ths r nncssry mst f th tm, t. N fct, nc y gt rd f th vwls nd mddl lttrs, y cn s hw trly wstfl th nglsh lngg rlly s!
This reminds me of that old programming axiom:
Every program has at least one bug.
Every program can be reduced in size by at least one instruction.
Therefore, by induction every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
Obviously, the next step is for Microsoft to start throwing the patches on the game disks -- watch for an 'update firmware' message the first time you boot the game.
Well, OK, VOD Metadata isn't, but still, doesn't the trademark/servicemark grant the markholder the right to control ALL use of the said mark, thus restricting non-partners from using them?
Have other "open" projects TM/SM their key buzzwords?
In a nutshell, the IP address space was designed so that information about routing was built in to the addresses themselves by dividing it into two parts: a network (n) part and a host (h) part. Since they wanted as much flexibility as possible to assign big networks and little networks with just enough hosts, they broke the address space into classes A,B,C, etc. that could be determined by inspection of value of the first octet.
To deterimine the class of the address, you first you have to write out the first octet of the address in binary.
If the first octet starts with 0 binary (meaning the first octet itself is between 0 and 127 decimal), then it is a CLASS A address. The first octet is the network address and the last three octets are taken together to be the host address (n.h.h.h). This means it has a netmask of/8 or 255.0.0.0 and there are 2^24 individual hosts available for addressing and/or subnetting. Note that the loopback 127.0.0.1 and the 10.0.0.0 nets are both class A.
If the first octet starts with 10 binary (meaning the first octet is between 128 and 191), it's a CLASS B with two octets for the net address and two for the host (n.n.h.h). It has a netmask of/16 or 255.255.0.0 with 2^16 hosts to address or subnet.
If the first octet starts with 110 binary (meaning it's between 192 and 223 decimal), it's a CLASS C with three octets to specify the network and one for the host (n.n.n.h). These have netmask/24 or 255.255.255.0 with 2^8=256 host addresses.
Of course, this is all goes out the window with CIDR. High-speed dedicated routers brought the realization that the class-ful blocks we unnecessary and you could just use the subnet mask itself to determine routing. This allowed them to use more flexible rules to arbitrarily divide the address blocks into smaller chunks like/2,/3,/15. etc.
I found that same article a couple of days ago, and to be honest, I really don't know what to think about it. Parts of it are so laughably ignorant that it **sounds** like a shill piece, but it COULD be ironic satire -- know what I mean? I actually checked the date to see if it was published on April 1! The thing I found so weird is that he COULD have made a case that MS gets a bad rap. After all - there ARE more desktops running Windows that all other OSs combined. However, he completely blows his credibility by pushing his argument in ludicrous directions. I would be willing to be that there aren't more than three CIOs who are ticked at MS for ommitting junkets to the Bahamas, but there are probably THOUSANDS who are looking at Linux alternitives solely because of Open Licensing 6.0.
Does anyone know anything about this guy? Maybe someone has a page of quotes?
My favorite from the article:
"Also, SCO was hit recently with a major denial of service attack and they run a Linux distribution."
What does the target OS have to do with a DOS attack? Unless the box was hacked and DOSd internally by shutting down ports or something, and even then a defacement or stealth logger would have been more likely.
"...people who can't tell the LAN cable from the WAN cable..."
The mental image I had on reading this was priceless - A dad sitting at home on the phone with a red RJ45 patch cable in one hand and a green RJ45 patch cable in the other.
"So the WAN cable is
red, you say?... hold on a second.... HONEY, GO UNPLUG THE RED EXTENSION CORD FROM THE GARAGE - SOMEONE MIGHT TRY TO HACK OUR WEEDWHACKER!"
...but if that was going to work, I would think that someone would have already tried it against:
1. Microsoft
2. Credit card companies
3. The Phone Company (ALL of them - local AND long distance)
4. Cowboy Neal -- why should HE have a monopoly on irrelevance?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's a good point, but I'm sure it's possible to work around it somewhat with standard driver layers and backward compatability, assuming you don't want to go whole hog and make a whole new version available as an ISO.
The other option would be a two-CD system. One small CD (
Heh... "FPSBuster 3000"... that's funny.
You need one of these!
I think that the real attraction isn't necessarily performance, but the convenience:
The game developer's life is made easier because they don't have to deal with different desktop architectures, registry cruft or driver versions. Plus, they can tweak the drivers and kernel to optimize performance for their specific game.
The user doesn't have to install anything to the hard drive, but the HD (or hd or floppy or cdrw or usb flash-drive) are all available for saving games and/or settings.
Is rebooting to switch games annoying? Maybe if you are talking about solitaire, but I don't think many people duck in and out of CounterStrike for five minutes between phone calls.
Plus, since the developer can control the ENTIRE hardware driver layer, their costs are going to go down beacuase if you call tech support with a problem, it's NOT the drivers -- you probably have a hardware problem!
This cancels out every reason you have to buy and X-box except for price, and even that advantage is vanishing with new small-form-factor low-cost motherboards and hard drives.
Perfect? No. Worth exploring? Absolutely! Maybe the gaming industry should even put together a gaming hardware support standard and develop a heavily optimized Linux Gaming Distro with an API and support tools for game developers. Most of the components are already out there (ALSA, SDL, Hotplug, etc...), they just need to be organized and polished underneath a common
Actually, I believe the reason for using C-A-D to bring up the logon dialog is because it makes running a program that presents a fake but authentic-looking logon dialog (to collect passwords) very difficult. The idea is: if you wanted to log on, and the first thing you had to do was C-A-D, then that keystroke combo would circumvent the fake logon program (if one were running) and bring up task manager instead, letting you know things weren't right.
Now, I'm not up on NT security internals to know if this is a valid safeguard or not, but if there is an exploit to trap C-A-D and spoof the logon under Windows, it certainly isn't common. However, I know that DOS programs (like smartdrive) have been able to do that sort of thing for years to flush cache before rebooting, so I have to believe it's possible, even if it is difficult. Maybe a hacked copy of NT running on a 386 emulator under NT would work?
Right, but it has nothing to do with convenience.
Such high-level/low-demand textbooks as my grad-level quantum field mechanics book ($150+ in 1993!) are expensive because of the FIXED cost of getting them written, not the variable cost of printing them. Your standard $30 intro-to psych text is much cheaper because the fixed production cost is spread out over a much larger number of units -- many many more people take intro to psych than quantum field mechanics.
Unfortunately, the variable costs are the ones that are zeroed out by e-book publishing. Unless you are looking for a best-seller that's already made back its fixed costs, so much for the revolution.
The BEST line from the article:
"Click on a picture to enlarge it - probably beyond life size..."
IIRC, and I very well could be wrong, they use predictive AUTO-dialers that call selected numbers from a database, not sequentially.
Yeah, 50 million households who just handed their home phone numbers to every telemarketer in America.
#1 - He's right.
#2 - So are you, or better yet consider this:
If CIPE were closed source, would he have even been able to write this article? Unless I missed something, nobody ever claimed OS was flawless, just that the flaws were open to scrutiny.
Yeah, they should have called it Permission Management Services.
Yeah, and here are three little words for Infinium: Duke Nukem Forever
'Nuff said.
Isn't that why they bought Bungie and other game developers in the first place? Why does it seem like this announcement is too obvious and too late? Am I a dork for not seeing why this is news?
Boy, some days the comedy just writes itself, don't it.
Thanks for the tip, but I can't get them to download because I use Firebird, and apparently, this site won't take you to a page with an actual link until you switch to IE AND agree to download all the spyware ActiveX components. Don't even mention the popups. Firebird kicks so much ass it burns.
However, despite that, Google answers all questions even though asking
Ian Bell's Web Site has Elite and Elite Plus downloads, plus links to other k001 r0X0r1n9 sites...
Cheerio!
Man, Elite and Dungeon Master got me through adolescence. I'd certainly be willing to pay for an updated version, I just hope they don't try to 'update' the gameplay too much - they pretty much nailed it the first time.
Does anyone know if Elite and Elite 2 are still available?
All that page needs is a grey background, and it's 1995 all over again! (sigh)
I love the logo, too. WordArt r0X0rz!
Wll, wht abt vwls? Ths r nncssry mst f th tm, t. N fct, nc y gt rd f th vwls nd mddl lttrs, y cn s hw trly wstfl th nglsh lngg rlly s!
This reminds me of that old programming axiom:
Every program has at least one bug.
Every program can be reduced in size by at least one instruction.
Therefore, by induction every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
Well, it'll break Linux... anyone want to call support about THAT one?!
Obviously, the next step is for Microsoft to start throwing the patches on the game disks -- watch for an 'update firmware' message the first time you boot the game.
Maybe I've just being stupid because I've got a case of the Mondays, but how can it be open if the all of the key buzzwords are trademarked?
To wit, from the nav menu on the front page:
Cable Modem/DOCSIS(TM)
CableHome(TM)
PacketCable(TM)
OpenCable(TM)
Go2Broadband(SM)
VOD Metadata
Well, OK, VOD Metadata isn't, but still, doesn't the trademark/servicemark grant the markholder the right to control ALL use of the said mark, thus restricting non-partners from using them?
Have other "open" projects TM/SM their key buzzwords?
Webopedia TCP/IP Entry
Sangoma's TCP/IP Routing Tutorial
In a nutshell, the IP address space was designed so that information about routing was built in to the addresses themselves by dividing it into two parts: a network (n) part and a host (h) part. Since they wanted as much flexibility as possible to assign big networks and little networks with just enough hosts, they broke the address space into classes A,B,C, etc. that could be determined by inspection of value of the first octet.
To deterimine the class of the address, you first you have to write out the first octet of the address in binary.
If the first octet starts with 0 binary (meaning the first octet itself is between 0 and 127 decimal), then it is a CLASS A address. The first octet is the network address and the last three octets are taken together to be the host address (n.h.h.h). This means it has a netmask of
If the first octet starts with 10 binary (meaning the first octet is between 128 and 191), it's a CLASS B with two octets for the net address and two for the host (n.n.h.h). It has a netmask of
If the first octet starts with 110 binary (meaning it's between 192 and 223 decimal), it's a CLASS C with three octets to specify the network and one for the host (n.n.n.h). These have netmask
Of course, this is all goes out the window with CIDR. High-speed dedicated routers brought the realization that the class-ful blocks we unnecessary and you could just use the subnet mask itself to determine routing. This allowed them to use more flexible rules to arbitrarily divide the address blocks into smaller chunks like
I'm sorry, but the quote in your comment has a typo -- there are too many 'o's between the words 'poorly' and 'negative'.
I found that same article a couple of days ago, and to be honest, I really don't know what to think about it. Parts of it are so laughably ignorant that it **sounds** like a shill piece, but it COULD be ironic satire -- know what I mean? I actually checked the date to see if it was published on April 1! The thing I found so weird is that he COULD have made a case that MS gets a bad rap. After all - there ARE more desktops running Windows that all other OSs combined. However, he completely blows his credibility by pushing his argument in ludicrous directions. I would be willing to be that there aren't more than three CIOs who are ticked at MS for ommitting junkets to the Bahamas, but there are probably THOUSANDS who are looking at Linux alternitives solely because of Open Licensing 6.0.
Does anyone know anything about this guy? Maybe someone has a page of quotes?
My favorite from the article:
"Also, SCO was hit recently with a major denial of service attack and they run a Linux distribution."
What does the target OS have to do with a DOS attack? Unless the box was hacked and DOSd internally by shutting down ports or something, and even then a defacement or stealth logger would have been more likely.
Ugh!
"...people who can't tell the LAN cable from the WAN cable..."
The mental image I had on reading this was priceless - A dad sitting at home on the phone with a red RJ45 patch cable in one hand and a green RJ45 patch cable in the other.
Yeah, I know, it's early.
...but if that was going to work, I would think that someone would have already tried it against:
1. Microsoft
2. Credit card companies
3. The Phone Company (ALL of them - local AND long distance)
4. Cowboy Neal -- why should HE have a monopoly on irrelevance?