the next 2.4 release (which come out reasonably quickly, say every month or so)
Err? 2.4.18 was released at the end of February 2002, 2.4.19 was released at the beginning of August 2002; this is October 2002, and 2.4.20 is not yet released. How can you call that every month or so?
What do you think it has that you cant use under Linux today, with the latest 2.4 kernel?
Wireless cards based on the TI ACX 100 chipset, i.e. most of the wireless cards produced since this summer. If it says "Supports 22 mbps", it is unlikely to work under Linux right now.
Baen Books, who are known on Slashdot for their Free Library, and who also offer their WebScriptions, all of which in several formats including e-books, do not to use encryption in the e-books they publish. Roughly, their argument is that it's costly, useless and unfair.
From the 6th Prime Palaver: The Library's track record shows clearly that the traditional "encryption/enforcement" policy which has been followed thus far by most of the publishing industry is just plain stupid, as well as unconscionable from the viewpoint of infringing on personal liberties. (...) the fundamental obstacle to the success of electronic publishing [is] the industry's obsession with encryption. I suggest you read the whole document, it's quite interesting.
Interesting article. Microsoft has never been so much an innovator than an integrator, taking existing technologies and bringing them to the masses (bugs included).
Kits for chatting live with online oponents have been available for some time, even though I've never had the chance to use one. What Microsoft is doing is standardizing this feature on the XBox Live. It is a huge bet for them, but perhaps the only way to save a system that is lagging behind the competition.
The question is, of course, whether the new "experience" will be "compelling" enough to save their virtual ass. Is there a slashdotter here that has already experienced online chatting? The reviewer says it actually is a good feature, is that your opinion too?
But then, even if this feature proves to be that good, Microsoft will be facing another challenge: scaling it up. As the reviewer said several times, the architecture has yet to be tested at full-charge.
As for me, sorry Microsoft, but some of your competitors have a game catalog that is much bigger than yours, including hundreds of old games that are available for a bargain. Yes, I am cheap.
Non-consensual sex with minors? What the hell are those "games"?! Where did you download them from? None of the games listed on the Best-of IF sites contain such things, as far as I know, and I've never seen mention to such games in rec.games.int-fiction or rec.arts.int-fiction.
Seriously, could you please name them, and the site you downloaded them from?
I was born around the same time as interactive fiction. Which means that I was way too young to play it, and when I grew old enough to own a computer, the genre had already disapeared from the shelves. So, there's no sentimental, "remember-the-good-ol'-days" value for me in IF.
I discovered the genre at the same time as I discovered Linux, back in around 1996. Among the few games that shipped by default with, what was it at that time? RedHat, I guess, were a few classic Scott Adams (not the Dilbert author!) games. As soon as I tried them, I didn't completely... dislike them. I liked the idea, and I love to explore and draw maps, but they were too much of the (what I learned afterwards) "guess the verb" category, something that is rightly considered a major flaw in modern IF. So, I went on to other activities, and another Linux I installed later didn't contain them, so I forgot about IF (I didn't even know the term).
Then, somehow, I remembered them in 1998, and decided to give them a second shot. Looking on the web (was I still using Altavista? wow), I found not only them, but also other, seemingly better ones. So I downloaded Theatre (a good fantastic/horror game) and finished it straight. Man that was good! And from then on, I was hooked.
There's something in (good) IF you don't find in modern, 3D-graphics games: substance, content, plot, atmosphere, characters, adult themes (not that kind of adult - though such games exist, too).
Theatre and Anchorhead are two excellent horror games. The latter is simply the best game in the Lovecraftian genre - seriously, I mean it.
Worlds Apart is an excellent SF game. By SF, I mean Science-Fiction (with capitals), as in "the author created a whole new and fascinating universe for this game", and the prime motivation of the game is actually discovering it... and yourself.
Spider and Web, an excellent spy story, is told in way that is one of the most innovative I've seen. Used in a movie, a la "Usual Suspects", it would be excellent, but this is even more magnified in a gaming setting.
Most of the games by Adam Cadre are excellent too, from Photopia, which is an almost puzzleless game that left me astonished once I finished, to the excellent Varicella (read the intro of the game on his site, you'll understand I hope), I-0 (hot, hot) and Shrapnel (what a crazy storytelling - not for newcomers), it seems this guys only produces goodness.
Same goes for other people like Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin, but I haven't played their games yet, so I can't comment.
Babel (the second game I played) is an excellent thriller-like game, in which you are trapped in a somewhat devastated Antartic scientific station, and try to understand what went wrong... and who you are.
I could and should go on and on... I like playing games, but foremostly, I love to read - science-fiction, like a lot of the geeks around, though I don't mind some more classical books. IF marries the gaming and the litterature together, and has offered me emotions that I never thought I would experience in front of a PC; I'm more used to them in front of a theatre screen or with some dead-tree in my hand.
How many times have you been in bed, thinking again and again to the game you just finished (tetris-mares don't count!), pondering life, the universe and everything?
Damn, I can't believe I've just written all this incoherent stuff - I wish I was a good writer, and able to sum this up in a few brilliant sentences. Well, here's a shitty conclusion: IF can be great, go try some good one! (you have to see it for yourself, and so on)
There's one important rule in this competition that Stephen Granade left out: please don't discuss the games in public before the competition ends. This is to avoid influencing other judges and rumors such as "this game is bullshit, don't bother playing it" and its cousin "this is the best game in the comp, try it". We want fair judgement. Of course, as soon as the competition ends, be sure that rec.games.int-fiction will burst into verbiage, as everybody there will be posting comments and reviews.
Personnally, I've played five games already, and was lucky enough that the third on my list is one of the greatest I've played. If it doesn't win the comp, then hell, this means the comp was exceptionnally good this year!:)
Of course there's crap in these fourty games: the four other games I've played are not quite good (not bad, either). So, if you intend to discover Interactive Fiction, I suggest you try one of the "best-of IF" site. Either the ones Stephen mentioned, or The Best of IF.
From the top of my head, the best IF I've played recently is:
Yup, now pirates will die a seething death as they burn music on their computers. Sucked into your own burner by an imploding disc... what a pyrotechnic ending!
... most probably spend some of it to go into space or to the Moon.
Also, a big badass Beowulf cluster would be helpful to speed up those lengthy Gentoo emerges. Look 'ma, I'm compiling Linux faster than you're booting Windows!
I'm not surprised about this behavior: after all, the Net has been mostly created in California, so there must have been some subconscious influences on its design so that it mimics the quakes that plague the area.:)
So, I'm a student here in the U.S., eating way more fast-food than I should, watching a population around me that is fatter than what we have in Europe. What do you think about the so-called junk food, and the people that eat it? Are you or would you get involved in campaigns that aim to educate people about what they eat?
purchase one of the new "nSeries" products that are being created to address a different OS support requirement other than a current standard Microsoft OS.
Are they talking Linux here, or what? Does anybody have a link to the mentioned FAQ?
Don't worry, Europe has it too. This leads sometimes to interesting and/or funny lawsuits between a pissed-off author and his "parodists". But most of the times, works of art get parodied, and nobody gives a damn.
those who don't read the stories and comment on them.
The two population are of course completely disjoint. I remember CmdrTaco saying sometime around when Slashdot began offering a subscription that the first one accounts for 80% to 90% of the users of the site.
While your comment adequately sums up the opinion I had about blogs, and is pertinent to the majority of blogs out there, I suggest you take some time to read Rebecca Blood's essay, which link has been given above in this thread. There's more to blog than this, it seems.
You are not at fault here. The Xiph.Org team was uploading the site and the binaries, and had already completed some parts of the site when you passed by.
The problem is, the team had been in contact with Slashdot for more than a week, asking them to wait until everything was ready. There were lots of signs that 1.0 was coming: the code went gold approximately ten days ago (tada! one Slashdot story!), a first release date was announced (tada! one Slashdot story!), then postponed, the Vorbis I Specification was posted to CVS (tada! one Slashdot story!), then they uploaded the sites and binaries (tada! your Slashdot story!) and announced the release to the world (tada! one updated Slashdot story!).
So really, it's Michael fault here. He approved your story, instead of waiting a bit more. But then, Slashdot has a whole history of, well... slashdotting.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Do they need 20% less stimulation? :)
the next 2.4 release (which come out reasonably quickly, say every month or so)
Err? 2.4.18 was released at the end of February 2002, 2.4.19 was released at the beginning of August 2002; this is October 2002, and 2.4.20 is not yet released. How can you call that every month or so?
What do you think it has that you cant use under Linux today, with the latest 2.4 kernel?
Wireless cards based on the TI ACX 100 chipset, i.e. most of the wireless cards produced since this summer. If it says "Supports 22 mbps", it is unlikely to work under Linux right now.
Just like my 11 mbps wireless connection I guess. Right now, I've got a "Very Good" connection quality, and I rarely go above 2 mbps.
We'll have to wait the first tests by independant people to see how these 10 mbps live up in real-life reality.
Baen Books, who are known on Slashdot for their Free Library, and who also offer their WebScriptions, all of which in several formats including e-books, do not to use encryption in the e-books they publish. Roughly, their argument is that it's costly, useless and unfair.
From the 6th Prime Palaver: The Library's track record shows clearly that the traditional "encryption/enforcement" policy which has been followed thus far by most of the publishing industry is just plain stupid, as well as unconscionable from the viewpoint of infringing on personal liberties. (...) the fundamental obstacle to the success of electronic publishing [is] the industry's obsession with encryption. I suggest you read the whole document, it's quite interesting.
Interesting article. Microsoft has never been so much an innovator than an integrator, taking existing technologies and bringing them to the masses (bugs included).
Kits for chatting live with online oponents have been available for some time, even though I've never had the chance to use one. What Microsoft is doing is standardizing this feature on the XBox Live. It is a huge bet for them, but perhaps the only way to save a system that is lagging behind the competition.
The question is, of course, whether the new "experience" will be "compelling" enough to save their virtual ass. Is there a slashdotter here that has already experienced online chatting? The reviewer says it actually is a good feature, is that your opinion too?
But then, even if this feature proves to be that good, Microsoft will be facing another challenge: scaling it up. As the reviewer said several times, the architecture has yet to be tested at full-charge.
As for me, sorry Microsoft, but some of your competitors have a game catalog that is much bigger than yours, including hundreds of old games that are available for a bargain. Yes, I am cheap.
I know of no distribution that would ship a stock kernel.
Uuh... Slackware? Gentoo Linux (optional)?
Non-consensual sex with minors? What the hell are those "games"?! Where did you download them from? None of the games listed on the Best-of IF sites contain such things, as far as I know, and I've never seen mention to such games in rec.games.int-fiction or rec.arts.int-fiction.
Seriously, could you please name them, and the site you downloaded them from?
Somehow, I forgot some URLs. Here are Adam Cadre's games, and Emily Short's ones (scroll down a bit).
I was born around the same time as interactive fiction. Which means that I was way too young to play it, and when I grew old enough to own a computer, the genre had already disapeared from the shelves. So, there's no sentimental, "remember-the-good-ol'-days" value for me in IF.
I discovered the genre at the same time as I discovered Linux, back in around 1996. Among the few games that shipped by default with, what was it at that time? RedHat, I guess, were a few classic Scott Adams (not the Dilbert author!) games. As soon as I tried them, I didn't completely... dislike them. I liked the idea, and I love to explore and draw maps, but they were too much of the (what I learned afterwards) "guess the verb" category, something that is rightly considered a major flaw in modern IF. So, I went on to other activities, and another Linux I installed later didn't contain them, so I forgot about IF (I didn't even know the term).
Then, somehow, I remembered them in 1998, and decided to give them a second shot. Looking on the web (was I still using Altavista? wow), I found not only them, but also other, seemingly better ones. So I downloaded Theatre (a good fantastic/horror game) and finished it straight. Man that was good! And from then on, I was hooked.
There's something in (good) IF you don't find in modern, 3D-graphics games: substance, content, plot, atmosphere, characters, adult themes (not that kind of adult - though such games exist, too).
Theatre and Anchorhead are two excellent horror games. The latter is simply the best game in the Lovecraftian genre - seriously, I mean it.
Worlds Apart is an excellent SF game. By SF, I mean Science-Fiction (with capitals), as in "the author created a whole new and fascinating universe for this game", and the prime motivation of the game is actually discovering it... and yourself.
Spider and Web, an excellent spy story, is told in way that is one of the most innovative I've seen. Used in a movie, a la "Usual Suspects", it would be excellent, but this is even more magnified in a gaming setting.
Most of the games by Adam Cadre are excellent too, from Photopia, which is an almost puzzleless game that left me astonished once I finished, to the excellent Varicella (read the intro of the game on his site, you'll understand I hope), I-0 (hot, hot) and Shrapnel (what a crazy storytelling - not for newcomers), it seems this guys only produces goodness.
Same goes for other people like Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin, but I haven't played their games yet, so I can't comment.
Babel (the second game I played) is an excellent thriller-like game, in which you are trapped in a somewhat devastated Antartic scientific station, and try to understand what went wrong... and who you are.
I could and should go on and on... I like playing games, but foremostly, I love to read - science-fiction, like a lot of the geeks around, though I don't mind some more classical books. IF marries the gaming and the litterature together, and has offered me emotions that I never thought I would experience in front of a PC; I'm more used to them in front of a theatre screen or with some dead-tree in my hand.
How many times have you been in bed, thinking again and again to the game you just finished (tetris-mares don't count!), pondering life, the universe and everything?
Damn, I can't believe I've just written all this incoherent stuff - I wish I was a good writer, and able to sum this up in a few brilliant sentences. Well, here's a shitty conclusion: IF can be great, go try some good one! (you have to see it for yourself, and so on)
Personnally, I've played five games already, and was lucky enough that the third on my list is one of the greatest I've played. If it doesn't win the comp, then hell, this means the comp was exceptionnally good this year!
Of course there's crap in these fourty games: the four other games I've played are not quite good (not bad, either). So, if you intend to discover Interactive Fiction, I suggest you try one of the "best-of IF" site. Either the ones Stephen mentioned, or The Best of IF.
From the top of my head, the best IF I've played recently is:
Yup, now pirates will die a seething death as they burn music on their computers. Sucked into your own burner by an imploding disc... what a pyrotechnic ending!
... most probably spend some of it to go into space or to the Moon. Also, a big badass Beowulf cluster would be helpful to speed up those lengthy Gentoo emerges. Look 'ma, I'm compiling Linux faster than you're booting Windows!
I'm not surprised about this behavior: after all, the Net has been mostly created in California, so there must have been some subconscious influences on its design so that it mimics the quakes that plague the area. :)
So, I'm a student here in the U.S., eating way more fast-food than I should, watching a population around me that is fatter than what we have in Europe. What do you think about the so-called junk food, and the people that eat it? Are you or would you get involved in campaigns that aim to educate people about what they eat?
purchase one of the new "nSeries" products that are being created to address a different OS support requirement other than a current standard Microsoft OS. Are they talking Linux here, or what? Does anybody have a link to the mentioned FAQ?
When you say "laizze-faire" I suppose you mean "laisser-faire"? :)
Don't worry, Europe has it too. This leads sometimes to interesting and/or funny lawsuits between a pissed-off author and his "parodists". But most of the times, works of art get parodied, and nobody gives a damn.
- those who read the stories and follow the links;
- those who don't read the stories and comment on them.
The two population are of course completely disjoint. I remember CmdrTaco saying sometime around when Slashdot began offering a subscription that the first one accounts for 80% to 90% of the users of the site.While your comment adequately sums up the opinion I had about blogs, and is pertinent to the majority of blogs out there, I suggest you take some time to read Rebecca Blood's essay, which link has been given above in this thread. There's more to blog than this, it seems.
To think that I would one day ask that. Thank you Sebastopol for asking a question I have never dared to ask. Thank you devon for this great link.
I don't know if Rebecca Blood's essay was mentioned on Slashdot when it was published, but it is definitely worthy of being some "Stuff that matters."
Damn, it almost makes me want to start a blog.
An surprised anonymous wrote: I'm surprised nobody mentioned this yet...
And now, are you surprised nobody's commenting on this story? Perhaps there's a pattern, here.
You are not at fault here. The Xiph.Org team was uploading the site and the binaries, and had already completed some parts of the site when you passed by.
:)
The problem is, the team had been in contact with Slashdot for more than a week, asking them to wait until everything was ready. There were lots of signs that 1.0 was coming: the code went gold approximately ten days ago (tada! one Slashdot story!), a first release date was announced (tada! one Slashdot story!), then postponed, the Vorbis I Specification was posted to CVS (tada! one Slashdot story!), then they uploaded the sites and binaries (tada! your Slashdot story!) and announced the release to the world (tada! one updated Slashdot story!).
So really, it's Michael fault here. He approved your story, instead of waiting a bit more. But then, Slashdot has a whole history of, well... slashdotting.
... Jack Moffitt of Ogg Vorbis fame? :)
Here are the md5sums of the files I downloaded from a mirror. * indicates md5sums that have been confirmed by insiders at Xiph.Org.
b1422a6ff7f58131921b9f2fabe2295c libao-0.8.3.tar.gz *
7d4fbdc48b443109618e9739648302bd libao-0.8.3.zip *
6e840822cf8d6a680917383444afe361 libogg-1.0-1.i386.rpm
c0f08ce15f1b0fe44539facc8dd0108a libogg-1.0-1.src.rpm
382a7089f42e6f82e7d658c1cb8ee236 libogg-1.0.tar.gz *
b0cb84b5f03321eb0fbe2c07350205e9 libogg-1.0.zip *
f5f8e08a0afbc3e0196955c4aa73b78a libogg-devel-1.0-1.i386.rpm
c461acec225454aeca034eeca7ecf62e libvorbis-1.0-1.i386.rpm
daec58d8a9d550889391f3f971c9840b libvorbis-1.0-1.src.rpm
d1ad94fe8e240269c790e18992171e53 libvorbis-1.0.tar.gz *
d300b3e50b97a4f4c14ceab8124db539 libvorbis-1.0.zip *
941621aee4865417f4c34b571b74f04a libvorbis-devel-1.0-1.i386.rpm
08090c4f17f531fc9b815b09d9d53a50 oggdropXPd.zip
5e81e5bff436dbe122531db0b63a053e oggvorbis-macosx-libs1.0.tar.gz
7ac318eb6ab3551059fa7232618be2ea oggvorbis-win32sdk-1.0.zip
d956ed3e3af7e0c8623142256f4d331d vorbis-tools-1.0-win32.zip
c0a9fee54835e9c5b32d1f42c02964c9 vorbis-tools-1.0.tar.gz *
e745ccaf378aeb6d057327b391803150 vorbis-tools-1.0.zip *
4ed76d186209fe2eafa5e77854e5d6d8 vorbis-x86linux-libs-1.0.tar.gz
Ogg rules, check it for yourself: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html. Don't reply before having read the page and listened to the samples. :)