I use two schemes to help me out. First, I use Whisper to store my passwords. It's fairly secure, requiring a password to access, though I suppose it can be opened using various attacks on the MS Access database file password storage.
Second, I use the password generator in Whisper to create patterned passwords. My employer requires 10-digit passwords with at least one number and a combination of upper and lower case. From Whisper, I use the pattern cvcvcvcV## ("c"onsonent, "v"owel, capital "V"owel and two numerals). This gives me a password which is easy to remember because it can be pronounced. Alternating consonents and vowels generally makes a pseudo-word, for example: romabuL45. You can "say" this better than qt1l#Gikx at least in my opinion.
What I don't understand is where the $300,000 comes from! 3.5 million hits a month equals something like 16kb/s constant upload, which is nothing, really. Even if he had a bandwith cap (which is unlikely), he couldn't have run up $300,000 in expenses. That means he now trying to charge for the work he initially volunteered, and carried through by shutting down the web page. Have fun in jail, Pat!
For those who missed the link, or didn't even read the article before posting, here's a list of other hardware MS Research is (or has been) working on. Stick to software, guys!
I'm not sure I agree with the porting strategem. Getting MX to work on Wine is all fine and dandy, but basing the full port to Linux on the acceptance of the Wine port seems silly. Yes, I know it saves money doing it this way, but that's kind of like changing the tires on your 15-year-old car and expecting people to buy it for full price; not very likely.
I have used Linux frequently, both as a software developer and an end-user, and I have rarely had any call to use Wine (though it is a great tool). As a developer, though, I would be really leery of using this kind of potentially unstable platform for my bread-and-butter work.
The bottom line is that MX works on Windows, so I run it on Windows. If it gets ported fully to Linux with the same support and the Windows version, then great, I'd consider using it on Windows (especially if the same box came with both versions!) I'm not about to fiddle around getting it running on Linux, and I doubt many other developers will either. (Why are you so afraid of Linux, Macromedia??)
"...the biggest thing to ever hit multiplayer gaming...the granddaddy of all multiplayer competition...most exciting multiplayer title ever to grace the PC."
Somehow I doubt these spurious claims. I remember playing Quake III Arena and the original UT (in fact I still enjoy playing both), and those were the biggest things ever to hit multiplayer gaming. The adrenaline rush from playing at breakneck speeds against human opponents was fantastic! Initially, I had to decide which one would get my $50, and went with UT because of the different gameplay modes. I was highly disappointed with UT2003, especially since the assault mode was dropped. I'm glad to see UT2004 has assault mode back in, but I'm still looking forward to Doom III and Half-Life 2 far more than this release.
Carmack: Where's my Doom III? It's been nearly a year since I asked that last!
Everytime the RIAA or MPAA comes up with another hardware scheme of protecting their content, determined hackers always circumvent it in short order. So far they've failed to protect CDs, DVDs, even satellite signals. They're not likely to succeed for long with this new idea, either. You get a digital tuner with the new technology, flash the firmware with hacked ROM and do what you want, per usual.
Granted, we aren't able to emulate the human brain, regardless of the amount of computing power we have. That's not necessary for modern games, though. Even in a Quake 3 Arena type game, where the "human" qualities of the opponents are highly exposed, the bots don't need completely human qualities. They just need to react in a "realistic" manner.
If I toss a rocket down the hall, they should find cover. They should chase me when I run away, etc. They don't require "human-level" intelligence to provide realistic game-play.
SGI designed OpenGL with a client/server architecture from the ground up. With current high-speed internet connections, this is becoming more feasible. You're not going to get frame rates in the hundreds per second, but with texture caching and data compression, OpenGL could be a good solution to this.
Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about: game-play. Improvements in AI, interface, etc.
Plus, we DO know HOW to make great AI. Neural computing, Fuzzy logic. Using brute force methods, we can make programs that beat (or at least challenge) the world's greatest chess players. The problem is computing power. Deep Blue takes a significant amount of time to calculate a move. This is acceptable in chess; it isn't in "real-time" games like an FPS.
"There were critical points in the evolution of this stuff," Carmack says, "getting into first person at all, then getting into arbitrary 3-D, and then getting into hardware acceleration....But the critical goals have been met. There's still infinite refinement that we can do on all these different things, but...we can build an arbitrary representational world at some level of fidelity. We can be improving our fidelity and our special effects and all that. But we have the fundamental tools necessary to be doing games that are a simulation of the world."
This article highlights how far we have come as game developers. id has been the "poster child" of the game development community, with the majority of other game developers following their lead. Doom III will continue this trend.
The next generation of games is going to be outstanding!
This article gives a great view of where we can be going with new technology. How realistic will games be in 10 years? My guess is that the graphic reality will become nearly indistinguishable from real life, but the greatest innovations will be in game-play. Interfacing with a keyboard/mouse/joystick isn't realistic. Voice control and force-feedback-like technologies are the way of the future, if our computing power can support it.
Kudos to Carmack on 10 years of FPS game design. Here's to the next 10!
Apparently the Indian government made a mistake in their CBA. Negative means lost money, people!
How on Earth (pun intended) can this be justified? While the US/USSR space race gave us lots of new technologies (was the microwave part of that? Tang?), there is nothing to be gained for India by doing the same at this late stage.
This is obviously part of their on-going dance with Pakistan. Kinda makes me hate politics...
I have an Inspiron 8100 which came with the ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility (M7). I have bought both the GeForce 2 Go and Geforce 4 440 and use all 3 interchangably depending on what I want to do. As a driver and game developer, there's nothing nicer than having portable graphics power. The main reason I wanted the NVIDIA cards was that the ATI doesn't have support for paletted textures in OpenGL. When the GF4 came out, I picked it up right away to get at those shaders. Only problem I've encountered so far is that the S-video output is greyscale on the NVIDIA cards. Probably a pin-out problem, but I don't use it much anyway.
I'm glad to finally see a positive movement among the pro-"Open Source" people. It's pretty tiring to continually be reading the usual rhetoric, "Linux rules!!" and "Micro$oft suckz" over and over again. This also project a negative stereotype of the "typical" Open Source software users to those who might be considering a change away from expensive sole-proprietorship software. I only hope they get a significant enough turn-out to actually look like Open Source stands for something. Unfortunately, I won't be flying down from Waterloo, Ontario, but my boss is going to be there.
I am always amazed by the gullibility of the general populice. How can people honestly believe that a modern government could harbour ANY kind of conspiracy given that they can't even keep the affair of a President with an intern secret??
If there really were aliens on earth, UFOs circling the solar system, etc., you'd be guaranteed that somebody, somewhere who wasn't hushed up by "the government" would have reported it on the 'net.
Conspiracy theories are just another method for selling media to the masses.
This will (in about 5 years) make a huge difference to the embedded systems market, especially for military applications. Defense systems are perpetually chawing at the bit for more processing power in embedded display systems. This could finally help.
I'm SOOO sick of looking at 600/700/7000 series systems with no power! "Power" PC my butt!
The announcement says nothing about being "Open Source". This will be a closed, protected program that Sony will "openly license" to hardware and software vendors. Hacking OpenMG X will be a DMCA crime, most likely.
The word "open" is REALLY getting abused lately...
I notice a lot of discussion about DirectX 8.1 and DX9 support (or lack thereof), but what about OpenGL?
What version of OpenGL is Trident buying into with this new chip (1.2/3/4 2.0)? Which shader programmer will they support? Will they have their own extensions?
If they are trying to get into the sub-$100 market, OpenGL becomes important since many low-end systems are used for non-Windows OSes.
Learning a new language isn't going to help you avoid debugging. C can do anything Fortran can do (but not vice-versa!)
Fortran is a simple language to learn, but so is C. Mastery of either is difficult.
Because is it so popular, the support base for C is much larger than for Fortran, so I would suggest sticking with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I use two schemes to help me out. First, I use Whisper to store my passwords. It's fairly secure, requiring a password to access, though I suppose it can be opened using various attacks on the MS Access database file password storage. Second, I use the password generator in Whisper to create patterned passwords. My employer requires 10-digit passwords with at least one number and a combination of upper and lower case. From Whisper, I use the pattern cvcvcvcV## ("c"onsonent, "v"owel, capital "V"owel and two numerals). This gives me a password which is easy to remember because it can be pronounced. Alternating consonents and vowels generally makes a pseudo-word, for example: romabuL45. You can "say" this better than qt1l#Gikx at least in my opinion.
What I don't understand is where the $300,000 comes from! 3.5 million hits a month equals something like 16kb/s constant upload, which is nothing, really. Even if he had a bandwith cap (which is unlikely), he couldn't have run up $300,000 in expenses. That means he now trying to charge for the work he initially volunteered, and carried through by shutting down the web page. Have fun in jail, Pat!
For those who missed the link, or didn't even read the article before posting, here's a list of other hardware MS Research is (or has been) working on. Stick to software, guys!
I'm not sure I agree with the porting strategem. Getting MX to work on Wine is all fine and dandy, but basing the full port to Linux on the acceptance of the Wine port seems silly. Yes, I know it saves money doing it this way, but that's kind of like changing the tires on your 15-year-old car and expecting people to buy it for full price; not very likely. I have used Linux frequently, both as a software developer and an end-user, and I have rarely had any call to use Wine (though it is a great tool). As a developer, though, I would be really leery of using this kind of potentially unstable platform for my bread-and-butter work. The bottom line is that MX works on Windows, so I run it on Windows. If it gets ported fully to Linux with the same support and the Windows version, then great, I'd consider using it on Windows (especially if the same box came with both versions!) I'm not about to fiddle around getting it running on Linux, and I doubt many other developers will either. (Why are you so afraid of Linux, Macromedia??)
"...the biggest thing to ever hit multiplayer gaming...the granddaddy of all multiplayer competition...most exciting multiplayer title ever to grace the PC." Somehow I doubt these spurious claims. I remember playing Quake III Arena and the original UT (in fact I still enjoy playing both), and those were the biggest things ever to hit multiplayer gaming. The adrenaline rush from playing at breakneck speeds against human opponents was fantastic! Initially, I had to decide which one would get my $50, and went with UT because of the different gameplay modes. I was highly disappointed with UT2003, especially since the assault mode was dropped. I'm glad to see UT2004 has assault mode back in, but I'm still looking forward to Doom III and Half-Life 2 far more than this release. Carmack: Where's my Doom III? It's been nearly a year since I asked that last!
Everytime the RIAA or MPAA comes up with another hardware scheme of protecting their content, determined hackers always circumvent it in short order. So far they've failed to protect CDs, DVDs, even satellite signals. They're not likely to succeed for long with this new idea, either. You get a digital tuner with the new technology, flash the firmware with hacked ROM and do what you want, per usual.
Granted, we aren't able to emulate the human brain, regardless of the amount of computing power we have. That's not necessary for modern games, though. Even in a Quake 3 Arena type game, where the "human" qualities of the opponents are highly exposed, the bots don't need completely human qualities. They just need to react in a "realistic" manner.
If I toss a rocket down the hall, they should find cover. They should chase me when I run away, etc. They don't require "human-level" intelligence to provide realistic game-play.
SGI designed OpenGL with a client/server architecture from the ground up. With current high-speed internet connections, this is becoming more feasible. You're not going to get frame rates in the hundreds per second, but with texture caching and data compression, OpenGL could be a good solution to this.
This page is a good reference on this.
Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about: game-play. Improvements in AI, interface, etc.
Plus, we DO know HOW to make great AI. Neural computing, Fuzzy logic. Using brute force methods, we can make programs that beat (or at least challenge) the world's greatest chess players. The problem is computing power. Deep Blue takes a significant amount of time to calculate a move. This is acceptable in chess; it isn't in "real-time" games like an FPS.
"There were critical points in the evolution of this stuff," Carmack says, "getting into first person at all, then getting into arbitrary 3-D, and then getting into hardware acceleration....But the critical goals have been met. There's still infinite refinement that we can do on all these different things, but...we can build an arbitrary representational world at some level of fidelity. We can be improving our fidelity and our special effects and all that. But we have the fundamental tools necessary to be doing games that are a simulation of the world."
This article highlights how far we have come as game developers. id has been the "poster child" of the game development community, with the majority of other game developers following their lead. Doom III will continue this trend.
The next generation of games is going to be outstanding!
This article gives a great view of where we can be going with new technology. How realistic will games be in 10 years? My guess is that the graphic reality will become nearly indistinguishable from real life, but the greatest innovations will be in game-play. Interfacing with a keyboard/mouse/joystick isn't realistic. Voice control and force-feedback-like technologies are the way of the future, if our computing power can support it.
Kudos to Carmack on 10 years of FPS game design. Here's to the next 10!
Check out this article. Gee, that looks familiar.
Apparently the Indian government made a mistake in their CBA. Negative means lost money, people!
How on Earth (pun intended) can this be justified? While the US/USSR space race gave us lots of new technologies (was the microwave part of that? Tang?), there is nothing to be gained for India by doing the same at this late stage.
This is obviously part of their on-going dance with Pakistan. Kinda makes me hate politics...
I have an Inspiron 8100 which came with the ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility (M7). I have bought both the GeForce 2 Go and Geforce 4 440 and use all 3 interchangably depending on what I want to do. As a driver and game developer, there's nothing nicer than having portable graphics power. The main reason I wanted the NVIDIA cards was that the ATI doesn't have support for paletted textures in OpenGL. When the GF4 came out, I picked it up right away to get at those shaders. Only problem I've encountered so far is that the S-video output is greyscale on the NVIDIA cards. Probably a pin-out problem, but I don't use it much anyway.
I'm glad to finally see a positive movement among the pro-"Open Source" people. It's pretty tiring to continually be reading the usual rhetoric, "Linux rules!!" and "Micro$oft suckz" over and over again. This also project a negative stereotype of the "typical" Open Source software users to those who might be considering a change away from expensive sole-proprietorship software. I only hope they get a significant enough turn-out to actually look like Open Source stands for something. Unfortunately, I won't be flying down from Waterloo, Ontario, but my boss is going to be there.
I am always amazed by the gullibility of the general populice. How can people honestly believe that a modern government could harbour ANY kind of conspiracy given that they can't even keep the affair of a President with an intern secret?? If there really were aliens on earth, UFOs circling the solar system, etc., you'd be guaranteed that somebody, somewhere who wasn't hushed up by "the government" would have reported it on the 'net. Conspiracy theories are just another method for selling media to the masses.
Maybe if he stopped screwing around with this Doom III might actually get out the door before the Mars landing.
This will (in about 5 years) make a huge difference to the embedded systems market, especially for military applications. Defense systems are perpetually chawing at the bit for more processing power in embedded display systems. This could finally help. I'm SOOO sick of looking at 600/700/7000 series systems with no power! "Power" PC my butt!
I keep hearing a funeral march from my C code...
What were they thinking?
The announcement says nothing about being "Open Source". This will be a closed, protected program that Sony will "openly license" to hardware and software vendors. Hacking OpenMG X will be a DMCA crime, most likely. The word "open" is REALLY getting abused lately...
I was going to reply, but I have to piss...BRB.
I notice a lot of discussion about DirectX 8.1 and DX9 support (or lack thereof), but what about OpenGL? What version of OpenGL is Trident buying into with this new chip (1.2/3/4 2.0)? Which shader programmer will they support? Will they have their own extensions? If they are trying to get into the sub-$100 market, OpenGL becomes important since many low-end systems are used for non-Windows OSes.
Learning a new language isn't going to help you avoid debugging. C can do anything Fortran can do (but not vice-versa!) Fortran is a simple language to learn, but so is C. Mastery of either is difficult. Because is it so popular, the support base for C is much larger than for Fortran, so I would suggest sticking with it.