that we have something as cool as a worldwide computer network, and yet we've labelled practically everything on it as a "blog".
You write your thoughts down on a web page? that's a blog
You keep a travel diary on the web? That's a blog.
You keep an updated todo list on the web? That's a blog.
You keep track of your projects on a web page? That's a blog.
You keep an updated list of links to tech/news/gossip/anything? That's a blog.
Blogging is like the word "smurf".
Of *course* blogging is important if you label every fucking thing on the web "a blog".
Why can't we get over all these stupid meta-blogging articles, and realise that it's just fucking "content creation by individuals" and it doesn't need a fucking name.
# 100// River City Ransom
River City Ransom
Name: River City Ransom
Platform: NES
Developer: Technos Japan Corp.
Publisher: Technos Japan Corp.
Year Released: 1990
Why it Made the Top 100 List: Sometimes, kicking someone's ass is the solution to all of your problems. In the case of River City Ransom, it was kicking several hundred people's asses that solved Ryan's problems. The wonderful art style of thick headed toughies (also found in Technos' excellent Super Dodge Ball) makes beating the crap out of your enemies and stealing their money in order to buy upgrades to beat them up more efficiently so much fun! Fighting street gangs to get your girl back was pretty popular back in the early days of gaming, but River City Ransom brought style and light RPG elements into the mix to create one of the ultimate banger experiences.
# 099// Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Name: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Platform: PC
Developer: Blue Sky Productions
Publisher: Origin
Year Released: 1991
Why it Made the Top 100 List: Best known for being the first game to introduce full-range movement in a first-person perspective, Ultima Underworld helped usher a new era in digital entertainment. Apart from the revolutionary viewpoint, it offered a slew of innovative ideas that changed the action-RPG genre for the better. To start, you could manually change the speed and power of attacks. You could also engage in truly engrossing puzzle solving in a 3D arena. Plus, the game just plain offered a richly detailed game world for you to tear through. Blend this with solid action, cool items and spells (not to mention weapons) and you've got a recipe for gaming greatness.
# 098// BattleToads
BattleToads
Name: BattleToads
Platform: NES
Developer: Rare
Publisher: TradeWest
Year Released: 1991
Why it Made the Top 100 List: One of the best-looking titles for the NES, Battletoads borrowed heavily from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property. It took a trio of harmless amphibians and mutated them into a band of green-skinned, ass-kicking super heroes. What made the game so unique, apart from the admittedly rad hero and enemy design, was the varied gameplay. Battletoads splits between various play styles such as racing and climbing stages, all of which sported insane obstacles. And by insane, you should understand these challengers were wildly difficult. Battletoads was near impossible to complete. While theoretically possible to complete, few gamers could profess to beating the game without having to totally lie about it. Still, it's one of the best games that came out of the 8-bit era.
# 097// F-Zero
F-Zero
Name: F-Zero
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Year Released: 1990
Why it Made the Top 100 List: While it could be argued that the newer GameCube update or even the Japan-only F-Zero X Construction Kit (N64) are the best of the franchise, the original was the one that jumpstarted the genre. It capitalized on SNES's 3D-esque Mode 7 visuals to bring futuristic racing, an incredible sense of speed, and addictive drift physics to eager gamers. In the 16-bit era it provided something unexpected and truly dazzling for the home console. It was a rare gem in its time, perfectly combining presentation and functionality to create a completely new gaming experience. Even today it is respected as one of the all-time top racers.
# 096// Mafia
Mafia
Name: Mafia
Platform: PC
Developer: Illusion Softworks
Publisher: Gathering
Year Released: 2002
Why it Made the Top 100 List:Illusion Softworks really pulled out the stops with their organized crime epic in 2002. It took the free roaming style of city-based gameplay that had become popularized in the Grand Theft Auto series, but created a much more detailed world set in the classic gangster ridden '30s. This heavy third-person action game not only provided some incredible missions both in challenge and variety. The developers managed to make all of the
The solutions suggested on that page are to
(a) disable javascript in the preferences (which leads to annoying popup requesting that you turn it back on *every* time you close).
Which leads to further suggestions to:
(b) Go to $HOME/.adobe/Acrobat/7.0/JavaScripts and remove "glob.settings.js". Create a symbolic link with that name to "/dev/null". That should stop the dialog box.
Or
(c) block the main site that it seems to talk to: www.remoteapproach.com
My solution was to:
(d) turn on the proxy settings preferences and point it to somewhere that won't resolve.
"In the Star Tribune [G], they write that "PC games fell 6.2 percent through the first 10 months of this year, making the first such decline ever." They go on to say that consoles will break record sales this year, and that there is a shift towards console gaming from PC. Is this due to the fact that there are now three major contenders (XBox, Playstation 2, Game Cube) and all the advanced features they offer (DVD ability on the first two etc)? I, for one, will continue with my Battlefield 1942 on my PC."
Console games are winning the sales race with PC games news freetime - travel - homezone - cars - shopping - workavenue - communities metro / region - nation / world - politics - business - sports - variety - opinion - fun & games - talk index ap business news ap finanzas technology business calendar business forum company earnings reports company press releases consumer news data bank everybody's business photos business projects 2002: economic forecast due diligence: corporations and accounting practices mall of america 10th anniversary mn tobacco settlement star tribune 100 executive compensation executive compensation --> top 25 grantmakers nonprofit 100 banking on women venture capital --> archivestories photo reprints projects contact us corrections feedback Console games are winning the sales race with PC games Steve AlexanderStar Tribune Published Dec. 11, 2002GAME11
There is a war being fought for the hearts of consumers who love games. On one side is the venerable PC, on the other side the video-game console.
The consoles are winning.
The NPD Group of Port Washington, N.Y., is expected to announce today that unit sales of PC games fell 6.2 percent through the first 10 months of this year, marking the first such decline ever.
Meanwhile, NPD projects that console video-game sales will break all sales records this year, with hardware and software sales totaling more than $10 billion, up from $9.4 billion in 2001. Of that, about $5 billion represents video-game sales. PC game sales are projected to reach only $1.4 billion, or flat with 2001, said Steve Koenig, an analyst at NPD's PC software tracking division.
"The shift to buying video games is definitely the main reason behind flagging sales of PC games," Koenig said.
Game consoles now rival PCs in the quality of game play, graphics and sound, and recently have entered online gaming, formerly available only on PCs, he said.
Consumers whose primary interest is gaming can more economically buy a $150 Nintendo GameCube or a $200 Microsoft Xbox or Sony PlayStation 2 than a PC, which costs a minimum of $500 and typically is closer to $1,000.
Video games also have benefited from the growth in the game-playing population, which is due to the aging crowd of players who cut their teeth on PC games, before the advent of improved console machines, such as Sony's first PlayStation.
Studies have shown that people of all ages play some computer games, but the bulk of the audience for both video games and PC games now is 34 and younger, said Richard Ow, another NPD analyst.
Advertising
The shift to video games has been evident in TV advertising this season. Two of the most-advertised titles -- "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell," about a stealthy spy, and "007 Nightfire," about the glitzy adventures of James Bond -- have been advertised for use on a console, not a PC.
The shift to the video-game console as the chief game-playing machine began with the fall 2000 introduction of the Sony PlayStation 2 and accelerated last fall with the availability of the Microsoft Xbox, Koenig said. Until the introduction of the PlayStation 2, PC games always were a little more sophisticated and capable, while console games generally were regarded as being for younger children, he said.
"PlayStation 2 changed things, likely forever. It began a shift over to the console form of gaming," Koenig said. "For game players, there may be some surprise that this has happened so quickly. I think maybe they expected it over a three-to four-year period."
Game developers appear to have seen the trend coming. From January through October this year, they produced 9.6 percent fewer new PC titles than they did a year ago, or 750 titles in 2002 vs. 830 in 2001, Koenig said.
"The game-console market is very hot, and so marketers of gaming software are putting their development dollars into that," he said.
Revenue from PC game sales are projected to remain virtually flat for the full year, despite the unit sales decline, because prices have increased. Some top-selling PC games sell for more than $50, a price once viewed as impregnable, according to NPD, which produces widely followed market research that is based on actual retail sales.
Consumers won't see the apparent decline of the PC game reflected at their local electronics store yet. And in the short term, the greatest impact will be felt by the console makers -- Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
"The real winners are the console companies, because they will be getting more and more licensing fees," Koenig said. Game developers pay licensing fees to the game-console makers for the rights to produce games for a particular console. There are no comparable fees for developing PC games, he said.
PC games still here
But no one is predicting the demise of PC game-playing just yet. Koenig believes PCs are likely to hold on to their core audience of sophisticated game enthusiasts and are likely to continue their lead in online gaming because PCs are more suited to it. Meanwhile, the broader audience is likely to continue to migrate toward the video-game consoles.
"There is a generally held belief that PC games will continue to be under sales pressure from console games in 2003 and likely beyond," Koenig said. "It is painfully evident that PC developers will have to do something to attract game buyers to the PC."
Failure to do so could have a sweeping effect, Koenig said. Games long have been one of the reasons people upgraded to newer PCs, because the games often required faster chips, add-on memory, disk drives and graphics boards in order to function properly. But the absence of such reasons for consumers to upgrade their PCs could be bad news for an industry already hit by slack sales. Consumers already have found that older PCs handle most other computing tasks as well as newer, faster models.
But the future of PCs as game machines is clouded by uncertainty over what next-generation game consoles may look like, Koenig said. He believes consoles may begin to resemble PCs that are in the living room instead of in a home office.
While today's PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles can play games, DVD movies and audio CDs, future consoles also may incorporate TV accessories, such as DVD recorders and personal video recorders, which seek out and record programs by automatically browsing TV listings, he said.
"The Xbox already is half a step toward being a PC in the living room," Koenig said. "The next-generation game consoles might look more like PCs and are likely to offer a great deal of utility."
-- Steve Alexander is at alex@startribune.com.
Return to top Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. Utilities Email this storyPrint this story Search News Classifieds Advertising Web More search options
"On December 14, 1900, Max Planck [G] presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets, which he called "quanta." Today is the 100th birthday of Quantum Physics [G]."
Merkac Dot - Google Links, Slashdot Summary
on
Old Age Simulator
·
· Score: 1
"Tired of being young and healthy? Now you can simulate your own old age [G]. This story describes a sensory-modification suit which, among other things, selectively blocks out certain sound frequencies, and lets you experience arthritis."
Star Wars Galaxies Only to Allow One Character Per Account Games [G] | Posted by chrisd on Saturday December 14, @04:08AM from the one-one-r2d2-per-customer dept. frotty writes "The developers of Star Wars Galaxies recently announced [G] that the game would only allow a single character per purchased account on any server. This has outraged some, and relieved others." Click on the link to see the reasoning behind this move.
Merkac Dot - Google Links, Slashdot Summary
on
Mandrake News
·
· Score: -1, Redundant
Merkac Dot - The Slashdot Summariser In the footsteps of alterslash comes another slashdot summariser - Hoping to ease your slashdot browsing. This is the story with all links pointing to the google cached versions. See Merkac Dot for the full summary
Mandrake News Linux Mandrake [G] | Posted by michael on Saturday December 14, @01:47AM from the putting-along dept. DCowern writes "Mandrake yesterday released their FY2001-2002 earnings and I'm glad to say it's looking real good for them. They've cut operating costs by 42% and increased revenues by 31%. They're still not quite in the black yet but they're expecting to break even month-to-month beginning in February. The full report is here [G]. In other news, Mandrake announced two new programs yesterday. The first is Multi Network Firewall [G], which looks like an extremely nice package for running small to medium-sized networks. The second program, and my favorite, is their "OS refugee [G]" offer."
In my opinion, jim drew is the biggest lying sack of shite this side of anywhere. There's always one more lie to be told
Start with the 'emplant' system for the ye-olde amiga, which was supposed to emulate every system under the sun. In the end it only really emulated the 68k mac, and even then, the emplant hardware ended up being just a humongous dongle. (I think it did a couple of 8 bit systems as well?).
This guys been lying about his emulation for at least 10 years. Don't hold your breath for a PPC emulator.
Firstly it's spelt "Sydney". The Olympics were only held there. We thought you might have noticed.
Secondly, the so-called 'dominance' of our species is really self-evident in the way it's just our species that rapes the planet.
Dominance shouldn't be about the size of anything. It's what you do with it that counts. E.g. Look at what the dolphins are doing with their brains. Nothing much really. Just living and getting by.
lightweight security devices. You pop the lid on my computer and the magnetic surge from these things wipe out all data
Colour one side black and the other side white and mount on a rotating skewer. Position near an existing magnet and expose one side of the plastic to light. As the plasticmagnet changes properties it'll move relative to the existing magnet - use the motion to generate electricity
Fridge magnets which can tell if some fat bastard is blocking the light to the door of the fridge.
If the target audience is just you, then you can do mathematics in just about any language you want. Consider it a challenge to try and write an algebraic manipulator in C - but it's possible (albeit possibly very very ugly).
Since most programming is logic (a branch of mathematics), many people think it should be easy to code arbitrary mathematical ideas in code: it's not. Mostly you need some sort of well defined problem to solve and then writing a specific solution - e.g. writing code to figure out the sum of all the primes less than 1000 isn't too hard. But trying to write a program that will accept arbitrary input and sum that given sequence is hard: e.g. the program should be able to have a user input: i want the sum of all numbers between 12 and 12^12^12 which have no 7's in them.
This later wouldn't be too hard to hardcode but would be quite a challenge to write a general engine which would accept this type of input.
To summarise the summary of the summary: Pick a specific problem, pick a specific language and go for it. Otherwise but a copy of Matlab (or go with Octave) and knock yourself out:)
-- merkac
Slashdot Mirror
cross-pollinated via Make.
You write your thoughts down on a web page? that's a blog
You keep a travel diary on the web? That's a blog.
You keep an updated todo list on the web? That's a blog.
You keep track of your projects on a web page? That's a blog.
You keep an updated list of links to tech/news/gossip/anything? That's a blog.
Blogging is like the word "smurf".
Of *course* blogging is important if you label every fucking thing on the web "a blog".
Why can't we get over all these stupid meta-blogging articles, and realise that it's just fucking "content creation by individuals" and it doesn't need a fucking name.
or here for the full res version.
# 100 // River City Ransom
River City Ransom
Name: River City Ransom
Platform: NES
Developer: Technos Japan Corp.
Publisher: Technos Japan Corp.
Year Released: 1990
Why it Made the Top 100 List: Sometimes, kicking someone's ass is the solution to all of your problems. In the case of River City Ransom, it was kicking several hundred people's asses that solved Ryan's problems. The wonderful art style of thick headed toughies (also found in Technos' excellent Super Dodge Ball) makes beating the crap out of your enemies and stealing their money in order to buy upgrades to beat them up more efficiently so much fun! Fighting street gangs to get your girl back was pretty popular back in the early days of gaming, but River City Ransom brought style and light RPG elements into the mix to create one of the ultimate banger experiences.
# 099 // Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Name: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Platform: PC
Developer: Blue Sky Productions
Publisher: Origin
Year Released: 1991
Why it Made the Top 100 List: Best known for being the first game to introduce full-range movement in a first-person perspective, Ultima Underworld helped usher a new era in digital entertainment. Apart from the revolutionary viewpoint, it offered a slew of innovative ideas that changed the action-RPG genre for the better. To start, you could manually change the speed and power of attacks. You could also engage in truly engrossing puzzle solving in a 3D arena. Plus, the game just plain offered a richly detailed game world for you to tear through. Blend this with solid action, cool items and spells (not to mention weapons) and you've got a recipe for gaming greatness.
# 098 // BattleToads
BattleToads
Name: BattleToads
Platform: NES
Developer: Rare
Publisher: TradeWest
Year Released: 1991
Why it Made the Top 100 List: One of the best-looking titles for the NES, Battletoads borrowed heavily from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles property. It took a trio of harmless amphibians and mutated them into a band of green-skinned, ass-kicking super heroes. What made the game so unique, apart from the admittedly rad hero and enemy design, was the varied gameplay. Battletoads splits between various play styles such as racing and climbing stages, all of which sported insane obstacles. And by insane, you should understand these challengers were wildly difficult. Battletoads was near impossible to complete. While theoretically possible to complete, few gamers could profess to beating the game without having to totally lie about it. Still, it's one of the best games that came out of the 8-bit era.
# 097 // F-Zero
F-Zero
Name: F-Zero
Platform: SNES
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Year Released: 1990
Why it Made the Top 100 List: While it could be argued that the newer GameCube update or even the Japan-only F-Zero X Construction Kit (N64) are the best of the franchise, the original was the one that jumpstarted the genre. It capitalized on SNES's 3D-esque Mode 7 visuals to bring futuristic racing, an incredible sense of speed, and addictive drift physics to eager gamers. In the 16-bit era it provided something unexpected and truly dazzling for the home console. It was a rare gem in its time, perfectly combining presentation and functionality to create a completely new gaming experience. Even today it is respected as one of the all-time top racers.
# 096 // Mafia
Mafia
Name: Mafia
Platform: PC
Developer: Illusion Softworks
Publisher: Gathering
Year Released: 2002
Why it Made the Top 100 List:Illusion Softworks really pulled out the stops with their organized crime epic in 2002. It took the free roaming style of city-based gameplay that had become popularized in the Grand Theft Auto series, but created a much more detailed world set in the classic gangster ridden '30s. This heavy third-person action game not only provided some incredible missions both in challenge and variety. The developers managed to make all of the
See the full story
Not really an unbiased source, but it explains the source of the myth and gives its version of the events.
(a) disable javascript in the preferences (which leads to annoying popup requesting that you turn it back on *every* time you close).
Which leads to further suggestions to:
(b) Go to $HOME/.adobe/Acrobat/7.0/JavaScripts and remove "glob.settings.js". Create a symbolic link with that name to "/dev/null". That should stop the dialog box.
Or
(c) block the main site that it seems to talk to: www.remoteapproach.com
My solution was to:
(d) turn on the proxy settings preferences and point it to somewhere that won't resolve.
How does a "diskless PVR" work?
Just where does it record to?
All story links point to the google cache. See Merkac Dot for the full slashdot summary
"In the Star Tribune [G], they write that "PC games fell 6.2 percent through the first 10 months of this year, making the first such decline ever." They go on to say that consoles will break record sales this year, and that there is a shift towards console gaming from PC. Is this due to the fact that there are now three major contenders (XBox, Playstation 2, Game Cube) and all the advanced features they offer (DVD ability on the first two etc)? I, for one, will continue with my Battlefield 1942 on my PC."
Mirrored Link: Star Tribune
Console games are winning the sales race with PC games news freetime - travel - homezone - cars - shopping - workavenue - communities metro / region - nation / world - politics - business - sports - variety - opinion - fun & games - talk index ap business news ap finanzas technology business calendar business forum company earnings reports company press releases consumer news data bank everybody's business photos business projects 2002: economic forecast due diligence: corporations and accounting practices mall of america 10th anniversary mn tobacco settlement star tribune 100 executive compensation executive compensation --> top 25 grantmakers nonprofit 100 banking on women venture capital --> archivestories photo reprints projects contact us corrections feedback Console games are winning the sales race with PC games Steve AlexanderStar Tribune Published Dec. 11, 2002GAME11
There is a war being fought for the hearts of consumers who love games. On one side is the venerable PC, on the other side the video-game console.
The consoles are winning.
The NPD Group of Port Washington, N.Y., is expected to announce today that unit sales of PC games fell 6.2 percent through the first 10 months of this year, marking the first such decline ever.
Meanwhile, NPD projects that console video-game sales will break all sales records this year, with hardware and software sales totaling more than $10 billion, up from $9.4 billion in 2001. Of that, about $5 billion represents video-game sales. PC game sales are projected to reach only $1.4 billion, or flat with 2001, said Steve Koenig, an analyst at NPD's PC software tracking division.
"The shift to buying video games is definitely the main reason behind flagging sales of PC games," Koenig said.
Game consoles now rival PCs in the quality of game play, graphics and sound, and recently have entered online gaming, formerly available only on PCs, he said.
Consumers whose primary interest is gaming can more economically buy a $150 Nintendo GameCube or a $200 Microsoft Xbox or Sony PlayStation 2 than a PC, which costs a minimum of $500 and typically is closer to $1,000.
Video games also have benefited from the growth in the game-playing population, which is due to the aging crowd of players who cut their teeth on PC games, before the advent of improved console machines, such as Sony's first PlayStation.
Studies have shown that people of all ages play some computer games, but the bulk of the audience for both video games and PC games now is 34 and younger, said Richard Ow, another NPD analyst.
Advertising
The shift to video games has been evident in TV advertising this season. Two of the most-advertised titles -- "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell," about a stealthy spy, and "007 Nightfire," about the glitzy adventures of James Bond -- have been advertised for use on a console, not a PC.
The shift to the video-game console as the chief game-playing machine began with the fall 2000 introduction of the Sony PlayStation 2 and accelerated last fall with the availability of the Microsoft Xbox, Koenig said. Until the introduction of the PlayStation 2, PC games always were a little more sophisticated and capable, while console games generally were regarded as being for younger children, he said.
"PlayStation 2 changed things, likely forever. It began a shift over to the console form of gaming," Koenig said. "For game players, there may be some surprise that this has happened so quickly. I think maybe they expected it over a three-to four-year period."
Game developers appear to have seen the trend coming. From January through October this year, they produced 9.6 percent fewer new PC titles than they did a year ago, or 750 titles in 2002 vs. 830 in 2001, Koenig said.
"The game-console market is very hot, and so marketers of gaming software are putting their development dollars into that," he said.
Revenue from PC game sales are projected to remain virtually flat for the full year, despite the unit sales decline, because prices have increased. Some top-selling PC games sell for more than $50, a price once viewed as impregnable, according to NPD, which produces widely followed market research that is based on actual retail sales.
Consumers won't see the apparent decline of the PC game reflected at their local electronics store yet. And in the short term, the greatest impact will be felt by the console makers -- Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.
"The real winners are the console companies, because they will be getting more and more licensing fees," Koenig said. Game developers pay licensing fees to the game-console makers for the rights to produce games for a particular console. There are no comparable fees for developing PC games, he said.
PC games still here
But no one is predicting the demise of PC game-playing just yet. Koenig believes PCs are likely to hold on to their core audience of sophisticated game enthusiasts and are likely to continue their lead in online gaming because PCs are more suited to it. Meanwhile, the broader audience is likely to continue to migrate toward the video-game consoles.
"There is a generally held belief that PC games will continue to be under sales pressure from console games in 2003 and likely beyond," Koenig said. "It is painfully evident that PC developers will have to do something to attract game buyers to the PC."
Failure to do so could have a sweeping effect, Koenig said. Games long have been one of the reasons people upgraded to newer PCs, because the games often required faster chips, add-on memory, disk drives and graphics boards in order to function properly. But the absence of such reasons for consumers to upgrade their PCs could be bad news for an industry already hit by slack sales. Consumers already have found that older PCs handle most other computing tasks as well as newer, faster models.
But the future of PCs as game machines is clouded by uncertainty over what next-generation game consoles may look like, Koenig said. He believes consoles may begin to resemble PCs that are in the living room instead of in a home office.
While today's PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles can play games, DVD movies and audio CDs, future consoles also may incorporate TV accessories, such as DVD recorders and personal video recorders, which seek out and record programs by automatically browsing TV listings, he said.
"The Xbox already is half a step toward being a PC in the living room," Koenig said. "The next-generation game consoles might look more like PCs and are likely to offer a great deal of utility."
-- Steve Alexander is at alex@startribune.com.
Return to top Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved. Utilities Email this storyPrint this story Search News Classifieds Advertising Web More search options
All story links point to the google cache. See Merkac Dot for the full slashdot summary
"On December 14, 1900, Max Planck [G] presented experimental results in front of the German Physical Society and announced that they could best be explained if energy exists in discrete packets, which he called "quanta." Today is the 100th birthday of Quantum Physics [G]."
All story links point to the google cache. See Merkac Dot for the full slashdot summary
"Tired of being young and healthy? Now you can simulate your own old age [G]. This story describes a sensory-modification suit which, among other things, selectively blocks out certain sound frequencies, and lets you experience arthritis."
All story links point to the google cache. See Merkac Dot for the full slashdot summary
Star Wars Galaxies Only to Allow One Character Per Account Games [G] | Posted by chrisd on Saturday December 14, @04:08AM
from the one-one-r2d2-per-customer dept.
frotty writes "The developers of Star Wars Galaxies recently announced [G] that the game would only allow a single character per purchased account on any server. This has outraged some, and relieved others." Click on the link to see the reasoning behind this move.
In the footsteps of alterslash comes another slashdot summariser - Hoping to ease your slashdot browsing.
This is the story with all links pointing to the google cached versions. See Merkac Dot for the full summary
Mandrake News Linux Mandrake [G] | Posted by michael on Saturday December 14, @01:47AM
from the putting-along dept.
DCowern writes "Mandrake yesterday released their FY2001-2002 earnings and I'm glad to say it's looking real good for them. They've cut operating costs by 42% and increased revenues by 31%. They're still not quite in the black yet but they're expecting to break even month-to-month beginning in February. The full report is here [G]. In other news, Mandrake announced two new programs yesterday. The first is Multi Network Firewall [G], which looks like an extremely nice package for running small to medium-sized networks. The second program, and my favorite, is their "OS refugee [G]" offer."
Start with the 'emplant' system for the ye-olde amiga, which was supposed to emulate every system under the sun. In the end it only really emulated the 68k mac, and even then, the emplant hardware ended up being just a humongous dongle. (I think it did a couple of 8 bit systems as well?).
This guys been lying about his emulation for at least 10 years. Don't hold your breath for a PPC emulator.
Don't believe his hype
merkac
Secondly, the so-called 'dominance' of our species is really self-evident in the way it's just our species that rapes the planet.
Dominance shouldn't be about the size of anything. It's what you do with it that counts. E.g. Look at what the dolphins are doing with their brains. Nothing much really. Just living and getting by.
Who's the more intelligent?
merkac - (side references to Doug Adams)
- lightweight security devices. You pop the lid on my computer and the magnetic surge from these things wipe out all data
- Colour one side black and the other side white and mount on a rotating skewer. Position near an existing magnet and expose one side of the plastic to light. As the plasticmagnet changes properties it'll move relative to the existing magnet - use the motion to generate electricity
- Fridge magnets which can tell if some fat bastard is blocking the light to the door of the fridge.
merkacEven lame supports ogg coding through libogg.
merkac
If the target audience is just you, then you can do mathematics in just about any language you want. Consider it a challenge to try and write an algebraic manipulator in C - but it's possible (albeit possibly very very ugly).
Since most programming is logic (a branch of mathematics), many people think it should be easy to code arbitrary mathematical ideas in code: it's not. Mostly you need some sort of well defined problem to solve and then writing a specific solution - e.g. writing code to figure out the sum of all the primes less than 1000 isn't too hard. But trying to write a program that will accept arbitrary input and sum that given sequence is hard: e.g. the program should be able to have a user input: i want the sum of all numbers between 12 and 12^12^12 which have no 7's in them.
This later wouldn't be too hard to hardcode but would be quite a challenge to write a general engine which would accept this type of input.
To summarise the summary of the summary: Pick a specific problem, pick a specific language and go for it. Otherwise but a copy of Matlab (or go with Octave) and knock yourself out :)
-- merkac