Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?
Because the interface for Usenet is significantly more complex than the one used for email. I know that behind the scenes, both are very much alike, but my parents might just figure out how to use an email application, but they won't ever figure out Usenet. Integrating both into the same app often creates unnecessary complexity for the email part, which should be extremely straightforward. This is crucial especially because among all the old Internet services, email is used the most (close to everyone except of course in Korea), and Usenet the least (some geeks).
Okay, since you claim to be fairly knowledgeable, I'll give you the racing sims. You brought them up in the first place, and it probably wasn't too smart of me to address them considering the fact that I don't even play them online very often. But first-person shooters are what this discussion started out with, and with them all relevant and authoritative computations are done on the server side. You claimed the opposite.
Re:There's a preventive vaccine already
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 1
You have my respect for your uncommon strength of will.
Hm. Suppose I'm scared of the dangers of public roads and have been staying at home for 20 years even though it's a major inconvenience - does that also get your respect? Of course I do leave the house (sometimes...) but you get my point, I'm impressed by his behaviour in much the same way as I am impressed by someone who, blindfolded, manages to name 20 brands of toilet paper only by their texture on TV. Impressive, but personally, I just look at the label.
This appears to be an issue with Steam specifically, not game architecture (or even Half Life architechture) generically, and just what Steam is doing, well, I admit I haven't a clue.
It's not an issue with Steam. All dedicated servers for current generation multiplayer FPS games have similar hardware requirements. When Tribes: Vengeance was released this was quite an issue, if I recall correctly.
And as for server-sided calculation, well, shrug, I think you're wrong. All modern games calculate all gameplay-related physics on the server, no input from the client is required apart from the relayed/interpreted user input (ie mouse, keyboard, etc.). Calculating the physics for a 32-player game of T:V is possible, as are the physics of a 10 car race - both should be obvious, since a single computer can and does handle both in single player games. It's non-trivial, which explains the relatively higher system requirements. It can't be too hard though, since the client has to be able to calculate the physics and still leave most of the system free to create graphics and sound and remain responsible, which entails that the physics we have in today's games are still fairly simplistic by comparison to what scientific, non-realtime simulations can do. But then, we just need corpses toppling over comically, not atoms and or muons. And I'd hope that car manufacturers have better traction simulations than those of say, Richard Burns Rally - which are already really good as far as PC racing games are concerned. Whether the client "trusts" the server is immaterial in this context - it better adapt to what the server says, or else the game just isn't playable, but this is stricly a one way adaptation, they don't meed in the middle. No trust is necessary since the server is in the position of power, metaphorically speaking.
Who said anything about running physics on the server? The server doesn't run any physics at all, it simply collates the data, which is why servers are often older machines sitting off in a corner somewhere. The server is the device that needs maximum bandwidth, not cpu power.
You say that, even though you seem to acknowledge that the server should not trust client data in a reply to my post below.
The fact is that the physics are probably calculated (in whatever manner or precision I don't care) on the server as well as on the clients: the latter so that the client can display something while waiting for the server, the former because the server must never trust any client to do any real work for it. In fact, given a sufficiently fast connection, clients might drop processing physics, but the server has to do it, simply because there is no other way.
And in fact, older machines might not be up to the task anymore these days, I just did some searching around and here is from a post on the srcds.com forums:
again, a 2.4ghz p4 and 256mb ddr266ish memory
8 person HL2DM running maxed on dm_lockdown CPU: 20% - 28% Memory: ~25%
16 person CS:S (i bumped it up) running maxed on de_dust CPU: 20% - 35% (stays higher during heavy firefights) Memory: ~22%
I guess it's worse with games like T:V and UT2004 that sometimes have 20 to 30 players on. The days when you could have three dedicated servers running simultaneously on a an old P2 are gone...
A location grid is sent to the server (just a triplet of numbers for each object), which colates them, then sends the results to the client machines, which merely have to display them.
So you think the server trusts the data it gets from the client? I would hope not...
Instead, they're stuck with current technology - but that's not a problem because while their main enemies fly around in giant starships they let their troops run around in what seems to be medieval armor with ineffective energy weapons. And of course, you get the "we're about to die, but we can fix it by reversing the polarity of 'x'" episodes, too, just about everytime they're stuck with alien technology they don't understand. Although they apparently understand it well enough to hack and repair it.
Don't get me wrong, I like Stargate (up to season 6, which is where I am now) a lot, but man there are plot holes the size of mother ships in there. A dictionary entry to "suspension of disbelief" could read "the primary skill of a person watching SG-1".
That's what I thought, but keep in mind that in another EU country you can get arrested for publicly supporting certain political parties. Namely, in Germany it's against the law to be part of certain neo-nazi ideologies and holocaust denial. And in fact, I'm not sure I'm opposed to that eevn though it's certainly a limitation of my right of free speech. But then, what gives me the right to tell the Turkish government which ideologies are "dangerous". I guess that's why this kind of legislation is never a good idea in the first place.
OTOH, of course the situation is not the same. It's not illegal to report about illegal ideologies in Germany, even if you did so in a rather positive way, I guess. There certainly are Wikipedia entries about them.
Well, they're not for everyone. People with handicaps such as grotesquely large hands will have to use specialised solutions, as always.
Re:It's scarey they think that is a solution
on
Tin Foil Passports?
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· Score: 1
I just checked this, and you're right: when travelling to France or the Netherlands I need to be have some ID. Either my passport, or my national ID card, which is more convenient. I guess the same will be true for those EU countries other than Germany that also have their own national ID card.
I don't see what the big deal is, though, but then I was brought up in a country where having an ID card is taken for granted. The cool thing about the Schengen countries is that you don't have to pass through some border control post. I don't like waiting in line for an hour. I could care less if I need to be able to identify myself when passing the border.
There should be zero tolerance for people who drive under the influence, *any* influence.
Nice, except that it doesn't work. Anything can act as an influence: listening to the radio, talking to or arguing with other people in the car, being tired, having had too much sugar in the morning coffee, using cell phones, being depressed, being euphoric, wearing uncomfortable shoes, and so on.
You have to draw the line somewhere, and zero is not where you will want to draw it. (It typically isn't, by the way, even if "zero tolerance" sounds very snazzy.)
Note that I'm not arguing against outlawing "stoned driving", I'm really not qualified to pass judgement on that one.:)
The real question here is: are your options 1 and 2 correct?
1) The company does nothing. They loose sales. Bad for them.
Does a lack of invasive copy protection lead to decrease sales? Or, the other way round: do invasive copy protection schemes increase sales? And in a related issue:
2) The company builds in DRM. This causes consumers to complain. Bad for us.
Could the consumer aggravation lead to decreased sales? Does it have any other side effects for the company that could eventually lead to decreased sales?
Of course, the answers might well be that invasive schemes do actually increase sales by some margin and the consumer aggravation isn't something to worry about. There are few people who won't buy a game because of the current and previous "sins" of a developer or publisher.
On the other hand, many people quite correctly argue that many invasive schemes annoy the paying customer, but don't do much more than inconvenience the typical pirate. Publishers often claim that copy protection serves to prevent casual pirates from copying the game. I don't think that works anymore: cd cracks are incredibly easy to find on both the web and in filesharing networks. Then you get only the bad aspects, and even if you don't care about your customers hating you, you don't get out of anything.
Haven't had any luck with that, either, in a very similar situation. I bought HL2 in the stores since it's easier on my mind than borrowing a CC (don't have one), and also because the game was actually cheaper that way - the mind boggles.
I'm also in Germany, but as far as I have heard, it doesn't work anywhere. Using a retail CD key to download the files from Steam downloads an additional package (source shared securom.gcf). Bah. Extremely annoying, since a) the fucking game already has a working copy protection b) you can't use a no-cd crack and c) I don't actually have a DVD drive on my own. I borrowed one and can keep it pretty much as long as I want, but it's still a pain. And the only situation where their real copy protection (ie Steam) doesn't work perfectly - when you prevent the game/platform from accessing the net - is the one situation when you can actually use a no-cd crack after all. Bah. Really pisses me off.
WhoLockMe - appears on the right click menu in explorer, and shows what is causing a file to be locked. Again, this can be done at the command line, but this makes life that little bit easier.
Thanks, that sounds very helpful. And at 100k uncompressed it's very sleek. I second your recommendation of the SysInternals utilities - they're great. Process Explorer, Filemon, Regmon, and the internet utilities are all indispensible.
And I couldn't disagree more than "70%" of the game is spent running from the combine. After the you get out of the boat you're given an objective (not naming it for sake of spoilers) and the game progresses at a fine pace from their.
Yes, after you ran from A to B, you're given an objective, and it's "run from B to C".
In terms of the game itself, I haven't played Half Life (1), so I really don't understand what is going on, or why. Vague references from the in game charecters hint at what is going on, but I really think I would have needed to play the first game to understand.
I have played the first game and I don't know what the hell is going on. It's got nothing to do with you, it's just that the story fucking sucks. Yes, HL2's story sucks, even if it's considered treason to say so. That said, I'm only at about 75 to 80% of the game (according to a friend who is done). But up to this point, there was essentially no story, and, what is far worse, no obvious motivation to what I'm doing. Don't get me wrong, the game is a lot of fun! I don't care so much for the weapons, but the gameplay itself is top notch, the levels are great, the vehicles more fun than frustrating, and what they call interactivity, namely the ability to throw around stuff is well integrated into most aspects of the game. However, the game seems very linear, which is a good thing since it's linearity is really the only thing giving the game direction. Up to now - after seeing $person in the prison - the main objectives were to get from A to B, from B to C, and from C to D, with increasingly more weapons and using various forms of transportation. Or, in other words, the first thing you really do in the game, that is, run away from Combine troopers in the only direction you can run (since all other directions are barred) is basically what you will be doing for the next 70% of the game. Only that it's in a ship or a car and you have to remove obstacles and open doors on your way. There is some sort of storyline in the background, but it's fairly irrelevant to the gameplay itself, you could use any number of stories to fabricate the exact same gameplay, down to the buildings, vehicles, allies and enemies.
Compare this to a story based FPS like Deus Ex, where the story was a key part of the game. Even the original HL as I recall it integrated the story better into the game itself - hell, Doom 3 did. And you certainly were more aware of the story in both games, even if their storylines were cliched and bland.
There is research done in this direction (not by the DOD I would assume) - each piece of equipment has an "environmental backpack" which consists of the emissions generated and the resources used during it's research and development. Obviously, this is not exactly an easy thing to define clearly, or for that matter to measure. Also, the emissions generated during it's usage are typically considered more important simply due to the fact that the environmental backpack is a fixed cost (per item) while otherwise the emissions increase with usage. I guess (but don't know) the direct emissions of, say, a car are greater than the backpack emissions after a few months of average usage.
This all applies very much to computer parts, which have a relatively huge backpack compared to their direct emissions (ie. by power consumption): Recent research by the German-based Wuppertal Institute as part of a large-scale investigation of Digital Europe showed that a 200g handheld computer requires the equivalent of 58 kilograms of raw materials in its manufacture, a massive overhead that we rarely think about. (from an undated article)
Just buy a new cooler. Cheap 80x80mm ones go for like 15 bucks, and they perform just as well as your current one. In most systems, either the graphics card of the PSU/case fans ought to be the noisiest, I think.
So you are claiming that RFID chips are extremely small, implantable devices capable of storing non-trivial amounts of information, able to be accessed over 750 miles? If only Dell knew, they could just use one instead of both hard drive and wireless NIC.
All the "VeriChip" seems to do at the moment is store - aha! - a single, fixed number. The article alleges that it's possible to make it writable and to store more information on it, but it doesn't go on to explain how that's possible given the contraints of an RFID chip. It's not a technical publication though, so anything they write must be taken with caution, anyway.
Your quote of the Wal-Mart article is misleading: "Proctor & Gamble teamed with the retail giant in the test over a four month-period which allowed researchers to view the Wal-Mart shelves from company headquarters some 750 miles away." No claim is made that RFID chips can be read at that distance, which is good because it's really ludicrous. Heck, 750 feet would still be ludicrous. 750 mm for passive RFID is something they're working on.
The GPS article reference is especially humorous: no doubt you can implant a lot of things into a human, go nuts with it, but it doesn't have to do anything with RFID. Or in other words, RFID is not a cover term meaning "anything transmitting wireless that is small". The article doesn't even mention RFID.
Slashdot Mirror
Profit!!! Better late than never.
Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?
Because the interface for Usenet is significantly more complex than the one used for email. I know that behind the scenes, both are very much alike, but my parents might just figure out how to use an email application, but they won't ever figure out Usenet. Integrating both into the same app often creates unnecessary complexity for the email part, which should be extremely straightforward. This is crucial especially because among all the old Internet services, email is used the most (close to everyone except of course in Korea), and Usenet the least (some geeks).
It's not dead, but at least in Korea, MP3 is only for old people.
You're guessing right. Peta = 1000 Tera = 10^15. Wikipedia is your friend.
Yep. Embrace and extend.
Okay, since you claim to be fairly knowledgeable, I'll give you the racing sims. You brought them up in the first place, and it probably wasn't too smart of me to address them considering the fact that I don't even play them online very often. But first-person shooters are what this discussion started out with, and with them all relevant and authoritative computations are done on the server side. You claimed the opposite.
You have my respect for your uncommon strength of will.
Hm. Suppose I'm scared of the dangers of public roads and have been staying at home for 20 years even though it's a major inconvenience - does that also get your respect? Of course I do leave the house (sometimes...) but you get my point, I'm impressed by his behaviour in much the same way as I am impressed by someone who, blindfolded, manages to name 20 brands of toilet paper only by their texture on TV. Impressive, but personally, I just look at the label.
This appears to be an issue with Steam specifically, not game architecture (or even Half Life architechture) generically, and just what Steam is doing, well, I admit I haven't a clue.
It's not an issue with Steam. All dedicated servers for current generation multiplayer FPS games have similar hardware requirements. When Tribes: Vengeance was released this was quite an issue, if I recall correctly.
And as for server-sided calculation, well, shrug, I think you're wrong. All modern games calculate all gameplay-related physics on the server, no input from the client is required apart from the relayed/interpreted user input (ie mouse, keyboard, etc.). Calculating the physics for a 32-player game of T:V is possible, as are the physics of a 10 car race - both should be obvious, since a single computer can and does handle both in single player games. It's non-trivial, which explains the relatively higher system requirements.
It can't be too hard though, since the client has to be able to calculate the physics and still leave most of the system free to create graphics and sound and remain responsible, which entails that the physics we have in today's games are still fairly simplistic by comparison to what scientific, non-realtime simulations can do. But then, we just need corpses toppling over comically, not atoms and or muons. And I'd hope that car manufacturers have better traction simulations than those of say, Richard Burns Rally - which are already really good as far as PC racing games are concerned.
Whether the client "trusts" the server is immaterial in this context - it better adapt to what the server says, or else the game just isn't playable, but this is stricly a one way adaptation, they don't meed in the middle. No trust is necessary since the server is in the position of power, metaphorically speaking.
You say that, even though you seem to acknowledge that the server should not trust client data in a reply to my post below.
The fact is that the physics are probably calculated (in whatever manner or precision I don't care) on the server as well as on the clients: the latter so that the client can display something while waiting for the server, the former because the server must never trust any client to do any real work for it. In fact, given a sufficiently fast connection, clients might drop processing physics, but the server has to do it, simply because there is no other way.
And in fact, older machines might not be up to the task anymore these days, I just did some searching around and here is from a post on the srcds.com forums:I guess it's worse with games like T:V and UT2004 that sometimes have 20 to 30 players on. The days when you could have three dedicated servers running simultaneously on a an old P2 are gone...
Hawaii is in North America?
A location grid is sent to the server (just a triplet of numbers for each object), which colates them, then sends the results to the client machines, which merely have to display them.
So you think the server trusts the data it gets from the client? I would hope not...
Instead, they're stuck with current technology - but that's not a problem because while their main enemies fly around in giant starships they let their troops run around in what seems to be medieval armor with ineffective energy weapons. And of course, you get the "we're about to die, but we can fix it by reversing the polarity of 'x'" episodes, too, just about everytime they're stuck with alien technology they don't understand. Although they apparently understand it well enough to hack and repair it.
Don't get me wrong, I like Stargate (up to season 6, which is where I am now) a lot, but man there are plot holes the size of mother ships in there. A dictionary entry to "suspension of disbelief" could read "the primary skill of a person watching SG-1".
That's what I thought, but keep in mind that in another EU country you can get arrested for publicly supporting certain political parties. Namely, in Germany it's against the law to be part of certain neo-nazi ideologies and holocaust denial.
And in fact, I'm not sure I'm opposed to that eevn though it's certainly a limitation of my right of free speech. But then, what gives me the right to tell the Turkish government which ideologies are "dangerous". I guess that's why this kind of legislation is never a good idea in the first place.
OTOH, of course the situation is not the same. It's not illegal to report about illegal ideologies in Germany, even if you did so in a rather positive way, I guess. There certainly are Wikipedia entries about them.
Well, they're not for everyone. People with handicaps such as grotesquely large hands will have to use specialised solutions, as always.
I just checked this, and you're right: when travelling to France or the Netherlands I need to be have some ID. Either my passport, or my national ID card, which is more convenient. I guess the same will be true for those EU countries other than Germany that also have their own national ID card.
I don't see what the big deal is, though, but then I was brought up in a country where having an ID card is taken for granted. The cool thing about the Schengen countries is that you don't have to pass through some border control post. I don't like waiting in line for an hour. I could care less if I need to be able to identify myself when passing the border.
There should be zero tolerance for people who drive under the influence, *any* influence.
:)
Nice, except that it doesn't work. Anything can act as an influence: listening to the radio, talking to or arguing with other people in the car, being tired, having had too much sugar in the morning coffee, using cell phones, being depressed, being euphoric, wearing uncomfortable shoes, and so on.
You have to draw the line somewhere, and zero is not where you will want to draw it. (It typically isn't, by the way, even if "zero tolerance" sounds very snazzy.)
Note that I'm not arguing against outlawing "stoned driving", I'm really not qualified to pass judgement on that one.
The real question here is: are your options 1 and 2 correct?
1) The company does nothing. They loose sales. Bad for them.
Does a lack of invasive copy protection lead to decrease sales? Or, the other way round: do invasive copy protection schemes increase sales? And in a related issue:
2) The company builds in DRM. This causes consumers to complain. Bad for us.
Could the consumer aggravation lead to decreased sales? Does it have any other side effects for the company that could eventually lead to decreased sales?
Of course, the answers might well be that invasive schemes do actually increase sales by some margin and the consumer aggravation isn't something to worry about. There are few people who won't buy a game because of the current and previous "sins" of a developer or publisher.
On the other hand, many people quite correctly argue that many invasive schemes annoy the paying customer, but don't do much more than inconvenience the typical pirate. Publishers often claim that copy protection serves to prevent casual pirates from copying the game. I don't think that works anymore: cd cracks are incredibly easy to find on both the web and in filesharing networks.
Then you get only the bad aspects, and even if you don't care about your customers hating you, you don't get out of anything.
Haven't had any luck with that, either, in a very similar situation. I bought HL2 in the stores since it's easier on my mind than borrowing a CC (don't have one), and also because the game was actually cheaper that way - the mind boggles.
I'm also in Germany, but as far as I have heard, it doesn't work anywhere. Using a retail CD key to download the files from Steam downloads an additional package (source shared securom.gcf). Bah. Extremely annoying, since a) the fucking game already has a working copy protection b) you can't use a no-cd crack and c) I don't actually have a DVD drive on my own. I borrowed one and can keep it pretty much as long as I want, but it's still a pain.
And the only situation where their real copy protection (ie Steam) doesn't work perfectly - when you prevent the game/platform from accessing the net - is the one situation when you can actually use a no-cd crack after all. Bah. Really pisses me off.
WhoLockMe - appears on the right click menu in explorer, and shows what is causing a file to be locked. Again, this can be done at the command line, but this makes life that little bit easier.
Thanks, that sounds very helpful. And at 100k uncompressed it's very sleek. I second your recommendation of the SysInternals utilities - they're great. Process Explorer, Filemon, Regmon, and the internet utilities are all indispensible.
And I couldn't disagree more than "70%" of the game is spent running from the combine. After the you get out of the boat you're given an objective (not naming it for sake of spoilers) and the game progresses at a fine pace from their.
Yes, after you ran from A to B, you're given an objective, and it's "run from B to C".
In terms of the game itself, I haven't played Half Life (1), so I really don't understand what is going on, or why. Vague references from the in game charecters hint at what is going on, but I really think I would have needed to play the first game to understand.
I have played the first game and I don't know what the hell is going on. It's got nothing to do with you, it's just that the story fucking sucks. Yes, HL2's story sucks, even if it's considered treason to say so. That said, I'm only at about 75 to 80% of the game (according to a friend who is done). But up to this point, there was essentially no story, and, what is far worse, no obvious motivation to what I'm doing.
Don't get me wrong, the game is a lot of fun! I don't care so much for the weapons, but the gameplay itself is top notch, the levels are great, the vehicles more fun than frustrating, and what they call interactivity, namely the ability to throw around stuff is well integrated into most aspects of the game.
However, the game seems very linear, which is a good thing since it's linearity is really the only thing giving the game direction. Up to now - after seeing $person in the prison - the main objectives were to get from A to B, from B to C, and from C to D, with increasingly more weapons and using various forms of transportation. Or, in other words, the first thing you really do in the game, that is, run away from Combine troopers in the only direction you can run (since all other directions are barred) is basically what you will be doing for the next 70% of the game. Only that it's in a ship or a car and you have to remove obstacles and open doors on your way.
There is some sort of storyline in the background, but it's fairly irrelevant to the gameplay itself, you could use any number of stories to fabricate the exact same gameplay, down to the buildings, vehicles, allies and enemies.
Compare this to a story based FPS like Deus Ex, where the story was a key part of the game. Even the original HL as I recall it integrated the story better into the game itself - hell, Doom 3 did. And you certainly were more aware of the story in both games, even if their storylines were cliched and bland.
Looking at the quality of education these days, that will go a long way. ;)
There is research done in this direction (not by the DOD I would assume) - each piece of equipment has an "environmental backpack" which consists of the emissions generated and the resources used during it's research and development. Obviously, this is not exactly an easy thing to define clearly, or for that matter to measure. Also, the emissions generated during it's usage are typically considered more important simply due to the fact that the environmental backpack is a fixed cost (per item) while otherwise the emissions increase with usage. I guess (but don't know) the direct emissions of, say, a car are greater than the backpack emissions after a few months of average usage.
This all applies very much to computer parts, which have a relatively huge backpack compared to their direct emissions (ie. by power consumption): Recent research by the German-based Wuppertal Institute as part of a large-scale investigation of Digital Europe showed that a 200g handheld computer requires the equivalent of 58 kilograms of raw materials in its manufacture, a massive overhead that we rarely think about. (from an undated article)
Just buy a new cooler. Cheap 80x80mm ones go for like 15 bucks, and they perform just as well as your current one. In most systems, either the graphics card of the PSU/case fans ought to be the noisiest, I think.
So you are claiming that RFID chips are extremely small, implantable devices capable of storing non-trivial amounts of information, able to be accessed over 750 miles? If only Dell knew, they could just use one instead of both hard drive and wireless NIC.
All the "VeriChip" seems to do at the moment is store - aha! - a single, fixed number. The article alleges that it's possible to make it writable and to store more information on it, but it doesn't go on to explain how that's possible given the contraints of an RFID chip. It's not a technical publication though, so anything they write must be taken with caution, anyway.
Your quote of the Wal-Mart article is misleading: "Proctor & Gamble teamed with the retail giant in the test over a four month-period which allowed researchers to view the Wal-Mart shelves from company headquarters some 750 miles away." No claim is made that RFID chips can be read at that distance, which is good because it's really ludicrous. Heck, 750 feet would still be ludicrous. 750 mm for passive RFID is something they're working on.
The GPS article reference is especially humorous: no doubt you can implant a lot of things into a human, go nuts with it, but it doesn't have to do anything with RFID. Or in other words, RFID is not a cover term meaning "anything transmitting wireless that is small". The article doesn't even mention RFID.