Yes.
1) Full installer. InstallShield, installs the entire game to version 21 (which is being validated by betas tonight and tomorrow). No patching. Done. We'll deal
with future updates once the smoke clears. 1.8GB utorrent or whatever you like. No MTX involved.
2) Incremental patches for people that already installed. Once again a simple patching. I think he will make a program to do the patching to get everyone up
to version 21 and then we can all take a breather and figure out how to proceed.
3) Sorry about this. We didn't expect this many people (we thought may a few thousand people tops, not the numbers we are getting).
4) Probably will put the fire under the asses of the powers that be to make an MW5. Obviously there is an interest:)
5) Sorry for any inconveniece. We do this on our own time and dime.
We are going with a flat installer. The MTX thing was a total disaster. We should have this ready for downlaod via bittorrent in a few days.
This will be a complete install up to version 21 (which has numerous issues fixed). Hopefully this will get everyone the game installed, and playing.
Will also give us some breathing room to get this MTX thing redesigned to do what it needs to do. We never expect this many people.
Actually this is free, as in beer.
We're targeting this weekend for the free release patch. In meantime go to http://www.mektek.net/ download MTX and get the.0017 and.0018 patch.
When betas are done going over.0019 update (which removes the CD requirement), you'll already be 90% of the way there.
And, yes, we will continue to move this old game back into the 31st century where it belongs. Did someone say MMO?:O
All you young bucks, let me tell you somethig.
Back in the good ol' days when I was a programmer, we didn't have all these fancy "windows" and "icons". All we had were 1's and 0's. And sometimes we didn't have any 1's. Once I wrote a database using only 0's.
And we liked it.
Chapter 28 It was a long time before anyone spoke.
Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.
"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.
"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly. "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl.
"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"
A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.
"Well, you know, it's just Everything... Everything..." offered Phouchg weakly.
"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
"Oh terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a tiny tear.
"Look, alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can you just please tell us the Question?"
"The Ultimate Question?"
"Yes!"
"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
"Yes!"
Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.
"Tricky," he said.
"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl.
Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.
Finally: "No," he said firmly.
Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.
"But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.
They both looked up sharply.
"Who?" "Tell us!"
Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had made the recording he assumed.
"I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. "A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate - and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called... The Earth."
Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.
"What a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling...
Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires.
Chapter 26 "Yes, very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the salient points of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things."
"That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man. "If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half completed I'm afraid - we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and..."
"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."
"No," said Slartibartfast, "it won't be," and he turned the aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.
Chapter 27 Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library. The old man frowned as they stepped in.
"Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode blew in one of the life-support computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who's going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?"
He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.
"It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments. "Here," he said, "hold these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur.
The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him.
He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but somewhat the worse for wear - many were cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was shining, a fresh breeze danced lightly through the trees, and the odd sensation that all the buildings were quietly humming was probably caused by the fact that the square and all the streets around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a band was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air.
Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone's attention.
A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy.
"O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out. "Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known... The Time of Waiting is over!"
Wild cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air.
"Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader. "The Day of the Answer!"
Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.
"Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problem
From "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
Chapter 25 There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan- dimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.
And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.
It was the size of a small city.
Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.
On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks.
Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.
For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel.
The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep.
It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into existence?" Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.
"Your task, O Computer..." began Fook.
"No, wait a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried. "We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not making do with second best. Deep Thought," he addressed the computer, "are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?"
"I described myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought, "and such I am."
Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat.
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus - mention it not."
"And are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"
"A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Lunkwill leaned forward again.
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the G
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. 1) Full installer. InstallShield, installs the entire game to version 21 (which is being validated by betas tonight and tomorrow). No patching. Done. We'll deal with future updates once the smoke clears. 1.8GB utorrent or whatever you like. No MTX involved. 2) Incremental patches for people that already installed. Once again a simple patching. I think he will make a program to do the patching to get everyone up to version 21 and then we can all take a breather and figure out how to proceed. 3) Sorry about this. We didn't expect this many people (we thought may a few thousand people tops, not the numbers we are getting). 4) Probably will put the fire under the asses of the powers that be to make an MW5. Obviously there is an interest :)
5) Sorry for any inconveniece. We do this on our own time and dime.
Nonsense.
We are going with a flat installer. The MTX thing was a total disaster. We should have this ready for downlaod via bittorrent in a few days. This will be a complete install up to version 21 (which has numerous issues fixed). Hopefully this will get everyone the game installed, and playing. Will also give us some breathing room to get this MTX thing redesigned to do what it needs to do. We never expect this many people.
Actually this is free, as in beer. We're targeting this weekend for the free release patch. In meantime go to http://www.mektek.net/ download MTX and get the .0017 and .0018 patch.
When betas are done going over .0019 update (which removes the CD requirement), you'll already be 90% of the way there.
And, yes, we will continue to move this old game back into the 31st century where it belongs. Did someone say MMO? :O
All you young bucks, let me tell you somethig. Back in the good ol' days when I was a programmer, we didn't have all these fancy "windows" and "icons". All we had were 1's and 0's. And sometimes we didn't have any 1's. Once I wrote a database using only 0's. And we liked it.
And tubgirl. Tubgirl is baadf00d.
10^15 = 1000 * 10^12, a thousand terrabytes?
Or a million Gigabytes? Seems awefully "small".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte
A zetta byte is 10^21, not 10^15. This is a trillion gigabytes, or a billion terrabytes... or...
Umm, check again....
What will my mutual funds be worth then?
Lessee, assuming a 1% rate of return (assuming a GWB economic growth curve), 1.1^443002008 = Invalid input for function.
Sweet!
Or it could already be on it's way...
Or not.
~Aim For The Head~
Can I Pose A Question, How Do You Kill What Is Dead
I Just Shoot From The Hip, And I Aim For The Head
He Used To Be Your Friend, That Was Another Life
With A Single Bullet, We're Going To Blow His Mind
With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This
If You Kill The Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Functions
Nail Up All The Windows, They've Come To Settle A Score
Make Sure No Chamber Is Bare, They're Right Outside The Door
This Is A Test Of Your Stength, And Your Will To Survive
If You Give Up Now, They're Going To Eat You Alive
With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This
If You Kill The Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Functions
Listen To Me, Listen To Me, Listen To Me, Save Yourself
There Is No More, There Is No More, There Is No More, Room In Hell
I Will Help You, I Will Help You, I Will Help You, Understand
Come With Me Now, Come With Me Now, Come With Me Now, Take My Hand
We Can Make It, We Can Make It, We Can Make It, Through This
With A Loaded Gun
And A Steady Hand
We Just Might Live Through This
If You Kill The Brain
Then You Kill The Ghoul
And It's Motor Functions
Is This The End Of The World, Or Just The Start Of The Fight
You Better Heed My Warning, And Watch Out For Their Bite
They Have A Taste For Your Flesh, And For Your Blood They Will Crave
They're Coming For Us Now, From Beyond The Grave
That's why you have to Aim For The Head!
"First you kill the brain, then you kill the Ghhooulll."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1d4YOWWbS0
-Creature Feature
And finally, Chapter 28 to end the story:
... Everything ..." offered Phouchg weakly.
... The Earth."
...
Chapter 28
It was a long time before anyone spoke.
Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.
"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.
"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly. "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled Loonquawl.
"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"
A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.
"Well, you know, it's just Everything
"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
"Oh terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away a tiny tear.
"Look, alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can you just please tell us the Question?"
"The Ultimate Question?"
"Yes!"
"Of Life, the Universe, and Everything?"
"Yes!"
Deep Thought pondered this for a moment.
"Tricky," he said.
"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl.
Deep Thought pondered this for another long moment.
Finally: "No," he said firmly.
Both men collapsed on to their chairs in despair.
"But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.
They both looked up sharply.
"Who?" "Tell us!"
Suddenly Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl as he found himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console, but it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had made the recording he assumed.
"I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. "A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate - and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called
Phouchg gaped at Deep Thought.
"What a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the length of his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashed from nowhere. The Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling
Slartibartfast was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires.
"End of the tape," he explained.
OK, the end of the skit from Hitchhiker's Guide:
..."
... The Time of Waiting is over!"
Chapter 26
"Yes, very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the salient points of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things."
"That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man. "If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half completed I'm afraid - we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and
"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."
"No," said Slartibartfast, "it won't be," and he turned the aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.
Chapter 27
Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library. The old man frowned as they stepped in.
"Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode blew in one of the life-support computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who's going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?"
He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.
"It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments. "Here," he said, "hold these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur.
The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him.
He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath him was a pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the eye could see were white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but somewhat the worse for wear - many were cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was shining, a fresh breeze danced lightly through the trees, and the odd sensation that all the buildings were quietly humming was probably caused by the fact that the square and all the streets around it were thronged with cheerful excited people. Somewhere a band was playing, brightly coloured flags were fluttering in the breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the air.
Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone's attention.
A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy.
"O people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out. "Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known
Wild cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf whistles sailed through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like centipedes rolled over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air.
"Seven and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader. "The Day of the Answer!"
Hurrahs burst from the ecstatic crowd.
"Never again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work? For today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to all these nagging little problem
From "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
Chapter 25
There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan- dimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all.
And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.
It was the size of a small city.
Its main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square.
On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks.
Their names were Lunkwill and Fook.
For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel.
The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep.
It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into existence?" Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise.
"Your task, O Computer
"No, wait a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried. "We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not making do with second best. Deep Thought," he addressed the computer, "are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?"
"I described myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought, "and such I am."
Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat.
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus - mention it not."
"And are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?"
"A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Lunkwill leaned forward again.
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the G
Sending 4 bits to encode a 4 bit number. Brilliant!
Let me guess, it would send 32 bits to guess a 32 bit number as well!
Here you go watch the video: http://www.december212012.com/articles/mayan/index.shtml
Also you can buy tee-shirts and dongles.
My Timex will still keep on ticking.
Reply In Western Capitalism, commerce controls you!
Nice try
It should be "In Western Capitalism, commerce controls the government."
hello
doctor
name
continue
yesterday
tomorrow
... It's full of stars!!!
Also, good perspective. If this thing is anywhere near the size of the Hindenberg, SIGN ME UP.
http://www.ciderpresspottery.com/ZLA/greatzeps/german/Hindenburg.html
The R101 doesn't get nearly the historical attention of the Hindenberg, but it was just as bad:
http://www.currell.net/models/r101.htm
(Spelling errr, I apolgize...)
And, Led Zeppelin was born!!!!
As long as it isn't using fucking HYDROGEN, Sign Me Up!!! R101, Hindengerg -> http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=309
In Soviet Amerika, Jessica Alba dream of sex with YOU!