If you read the CNN article, it mentions that they were the only "live" experiment to be recovered -- i.e. an experiment involving living organisms. I don't think that they were alive when they hit the ground -- the articles mentioned that they were sprayed with formaldehyde in space.
What I've found frustrating is the lack of adventure games available for Linux
Really? I've found that adventure game support for Linux is actually quite good relative to other genres.
There's an entire commercial seven-episode line in the LadyStar series.
Hopkins FBI was, I believe, the first commercial SDL-using game available for Linux.
Want to play older adventure games in Linux? ScummVM can run older Lucasarts adventure games. AGIL lets you play old AGI Sierra games, and FreeSCI old SCI Sierra games. TADS can run on Linux to let you play TADS-based text adventure games (it *is* true that there isn't an HTML-enabled runtime for Linux, but that hasn't turned to be much of a big deal), and Frotz lets you play text-based Z-Machine games on Linux. Both of these have massive libraries of games, some of which are very good (I dearly love Tower of Babel for TADS). There are runtimes for numerous other, less widely-used systems listed on ifarchive.
Finally, I realize it's not a fantastic solution, but adventure games that use DirectX are more likely to work with WINE than the latest 3d shooter because they tend to use fewer features. Riven, for instance, works this way.
But I wonder if the Linux gaming market isn't somewhat different than the Windows gaming market. Many of the people who run Linux are older professionals. We're often not runnng the latest and greatest equipment. Perhaps one explanation for the lackluster sales of Linux games is that they're targeting the wrong population.
I agree -- the best selling games for Linux have been Civilization, SimCity 3, Kohan...the games without high end system requirements on 3d cards or CPU. They tend to be less twitch games.
I wish adventure game developers would return to the VM-based approach that Sierra and Lucasarts used to great success. The portability and ease of debugging is well worth it.
I mean, you *can* do a lot with new technology, and yes, we tend to view old games with a rosy tint of nostalgia. However, I *liked* 2d side-scrolling or top-scrolling shooters. Those just plain aren't being made any more. 3d hardware can do wonders for 2d games -- take a look at Chromium B.S.U. Imagine something similar for an X-Box or similar...
Every two or three years, there's a particularly popular yet unexpected game which becomes massively cloned. Counterstrike (realisticish military gaming), Ultima Online/Simms (MMORPG), Myst (adventure games), Doom (3d mow-em-down games). The followup surge oversaturates the market. There's no *possible* way that the market can support the number of games going into it, competition becomes brutal, and lots of publishers get burned. Consequently, it's really hard to get publishers to immediately spend more money on similar games.
It would be much better if publishers stopped trying to follow new genres as much. It's fairly rare that hit titles come out that are simply same-genre games as another popular game, and *very* frequent that there's massive amounts of same-genre games coming out.
Right now, we're coming off of a realistic modern wargame FPS kick. I wonder what it'll be next...
I think you've got it dead on. There isn't a whole lot you can add to an above view/side scrolling shooter with modern technology (as a matter of fact, trying to do one in 3d can just complicate things). It's still fun to play 1943 or R-Type. Without the technological advantage, it's hard to beat the best of the best.
Earbuds aren't exactly what you use if you're trying to get good audio quality, and not what I use at my computer.
OTOH, if what you're going to do with your downloaded tracks is listen to them on your iPod with earbuds, then it's obviously a good test, and the quality may be fine.
My music server is a Linux box, though; I cannot use it to play DRM-encumbered music, because Apple has not chosen to make Linux software available for their protection scheme.
AAC isn't a DRM system -- it's just a fairly modern music encoding. Mplayer groks it. Use FAAC with it as per the mplayer codecs docs.
Frankly, I wish people would stop getting upset about folks not using mp3 (aside from those who spent a ton of money on those little low fidelity hardware players -- and even those folks knew that MP3 would be obsolete at some point). MP3 isn't bad, but neither is it up to snuff with AAC and ogg.
As for those who want losslessly compressed music...hell, we can't even convince people to give up lossy JPEG in favor of PNG and lossless JPEG. Music files are much larger -- it'll be years after lossy JPEG goes away that we move away from lossy sound compression.
And the intended message is that they are authoritarian, which does not have to refer to a state government:
$ dict authoritarian 1 definition found
From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
authoritarian
adj 1: characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having
absolute sovereignty; "an authoritarian regime";
"autocratic government"; "despotic rulers"; "a
dictatorial rule that lasted for the duration of the
war"; "a tyrannical government" [syn: {autocratic}, {dictatorial},
{despotic}, {tyrannical}] 2: likened to a dictator in severity [syn: {dictatorial}]
3: expecting unquestioning obedience; "he was imperious and
dictatorial"; "the timid child of authoritarian parents";
"insufferably overbearing behavior toward the waiter"
[syn: {dictatorial}, {overbearing}]
n : behaves like a tyrant [syn: {dictator}]
PA is complaining that AG is being extremely severe regarding the slightest potential infraction of their trademarks.
The downside for Apple is that I will be hesitant to buy another product from them. For much less than the $3500 I shelled out, I could have gotten a small Linux laptop that would function to meet my needs.
Yup. Growing feeling among folks trying Apple's products...
Western ideas had been growing in Japan since way, way before World War II. The Emperor had been losing relevance compared to more modern Japanese politicians by the end of WWII. I'm not certain that the US was necessary, though I'll grant that it may have sped things up a bit.
But that's still a poor batting average for the US...
We have a free market, with only a few restrictions, today.
I agree that some things, like antitrust laws, are necessary. The reason antitrust is important, though, is because the Real World differs from naive free market models in that it doesn't have an infinite number of companies, which allows monopolies to form.
I'm not sure that anti-discrimination laws are necessary, though. They don't seem to address a particular flaw in our current model.
People, unless checked by the group will only do what helps themselves.
Sure...but if the company does what helps itself, and the company tends to check employees that are doing things not in the company's interest, your requirements are fulfilled.
it's nice to hear someone with your point of view not sound like a complete prick.
BitTorrent support isn't really what you're looking for -- the bug is talking about IMG targets.
I agree that generic BitTorrent support in Mozilla would be great. The problem is that it's really not all that useful for most *images*, which are perhaps up to 100KB. BitTorrent needs larger files to chew on to help much.
BitTorrent would be great for downloading game demos, isos, etc.
the length when even if the client exits right after finishing the file, the torrent will survive and sustain itself. I believe it is at around 1GB, but I don't have the figures handy. Mabye the guy who did the calculations will chime in sometime
There is no such length. Length, usage patterns, and network connection speed are all fundamental factors.
This brings another problem with BitTorrent - it doesn't work well unless clients are connected for a while after they finish the file.
It works *better* if this is the case, but it's not really a problem.
If someone is downloading from the original source, and another person begins, then the first immediately becomes another source.
BitTorrent isn't designed to make the original source unnecessary...it's designed to simply reduce load on the original source. Which it does quite well. The original source tends to send out around the bandwidth of a single upload at any one time.
Many of those are incoming (NAT people won't work as well), and many are outgoing.
As a result, they'll get slower transfers. This is simply a problem with NAT -- NATted users are using a broken network, and have problems with many, many protocols. FTP is included in mozilla, and NAT is even worse with FTP.
This large amount of sockets tends to make some of the cheaper commodity cards break.
Sockets have nothing whatsoever to do with the NIC. They exist at a higher level, and will not cause the card to break.
You're running an SQL server, gimp, gtkradiant, quake3 and a lot of windows...aside from VS.NET, at this point, wouldn't it be *easier* to use Linux?:-)
So the target market for Strawberry Shortcake is little girls...so they complain? That's ridiculous. The target audience for Penny Arcade is the relevant issue here, since those are the people who will actually see the comic.
The argument I've seen so far (which I'm not sure is true) is that for the parody exemption to trademark usage to apply, the material in question needs to be the subject of the parody, not just included in material that happens to be a parody.
In Spaceballs, Pizza Hut was the object of the parody.
*shrug* no idea whether the argument is legitimate, though.
2. PA's response to this pufferfish threat was to do something that really could get them in trouble.
No. Criticizing someone's (especially on political and legal views) view with a parody is quite kosher.
The first cartoon is probably just fine. The second definitely is. American Greetings really didn't win any wars by sending a C&D letter.
I'd say it's a pretty effective way of dealing with the problem. PA is legally in the correct. PA's strength is their readership, and they've neatly leveraged that.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the CNN article, it mentions that they were the only "live" experiment to be recovered -- i.e. an experiment involving living organisms. I don't think that they were alive when they hit the ground -- the articles mentioned that they were sprayed with formaldehyde in space.
What I've found frustrating is the lack of adventure games available for Linux
Really? I've found that adventure game support for Linux is actually quite good relative to other genres.
There's an entire commercial seven-episode line in the LadyStar series.
Hopkins FBI was, I believe, the first commercial SDL-using game available for Linux.
Want to play older adventure games in Linux? ScummVM can run older Lucasarts adventure games. AGIL lets you play old AGI Sierra games, and FreeSCI old SCI Sierra games. TADS can run on Linux to let you play TADS-based text adventure games (it *is* true that there isn't an HTML-enabled runtime for Linux, but that hasn't turned to be much of a big deal), and Frotz lets you play text-based Z-Machine games on Linux. Both of these have massive libraries of games, some of which are very good (I dearly love Tower of Babel for TADS). There are runtimes for numerous other, less widely-used systems listed on ifarchive.
Finally, I realize it's not a fantastic solution, but adventure games that use DirectX are more likely to work with WINE than the latest 3d shooter because they tend to use fewer features. Riven, for instance, works this way.
But I wonder if the Linux gaming market isn't somewhat different than the Windows gaming market. Many of the people who run Linux are older professionals. We're often not runnng the latest and greatest equipment. Perhaps one explanation for the lackluster sales of Linux games is that they're targeting the wrong population.
I agree -- the best selling games for Linux have been Civilization, SimCity 3, Kohan...the games without high end system requirements on 3d cards or CPU. They tend to be less twitch games.
I wish adventure game developers would return to the VM-based approach that Sierra and Lucasarts used to great success. The portability and ease of debugging is well worth it.
Why no unevolved games, though?
I mean, you *can* do a lot with new technology, and yes, we tend to view old games with a rosy tint of nostalgia. However, I *liked* 2d side-scrolling or top-scrolling shooters. Those just plain aren't being made any more. 3d hardware can do wonders for 2d games -- take a look at Chromium B.S.U. Imagine something similar for an X-Box or similar...
I think this has happened with most genres.
Every two or three years, there's a particularly popular yet unexpected game which becomes massively cloned. Counterstrike (realisticish military gaming), Ultima Online/Simms (MMORPG), Myst (adventure games), Doom (3d mow-em-down games). The followup surge oversaturates the market. There's no *possible* way that the market can support the number of games going into it, competition becomes brutal, and lots of publishers get burned. Consequently, it's really hard to get publishers to immediately spend more money on similar games.
It would be much better if publishers stopped trying to follow new genres as much. It's fairly rare that hit titles come out that are simply same-genre games as another popular game, and *very* frequent that there's massive amounts of same-genre games coming out.
Right now, we're coming off of a realistic modern wargame FPS kick. I wonder what it'll be next...
I think you've got it dead on. There isn't a whole lot you can add to an above view/side scrolling shooter with modern technology (as a matter of fact, trying to do one in 3d can just complicate things). It's still fun to play 1943 or R-Type. Without the technological advantage, it's hard to beat the best of the best.
Earbuds aren't exactly what you use if you're trying to get good audio quality, and not what I use at my computer.
OTOH, if what you're going to do with your downloaded tracks is listen to them on your iPod with earbuds, then it's obviously a good test, and the quality may be fine.
I doubt it, since it costs them the download bandwidth.
OTOH, if you buy a CD in meatspace and break it, you're similarly out of luck.
My music server is a Linux box, though; I cannot use it to play DRM-encumbered music, because Apple has not chosen to make Linux software available for their protection scheme.
AAC isn't a DRM system -- it's just a fairly modern music encoding. Mplayer groks it. Use FAAC with it as per the mplayer codecs docs.
Frankly, I wish people would stop getting upset about folks not using mp3 (aside from those who spent a ton of money on those little low fidelity hardware players -- and even those folks knew that MP3 would be obsolete at some point). MP3 isn't bad, but neither is it up to snuff with AAC and ogg.
As for those who want losslessly compressed music...hell, we can't even convince people to give up lossy JPEG in favor of PNG and lossless JPEG. Music files are much larger -- it'll be years after lossy JPEG goes away that we move away from lossy sound compression.
And the intended message is that they are authoritarian, which does not have to refer to a state government:
$ dict authoritarian
1 definition found
From WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
authoritarian
adj 1: characteristic of an absolute ruler or absolute rule; having
absolute sovereignty; "an authoritarian regime";
"autocratic government"; "despotic rulers"; "a
dictatorial rule that lasted for the duration of the
war"; "a tyrannical government" [syn: {autocratic}, {dictatorial},
{despotic}, {tyrannical}]
2: likened to a dictator in severity [syn: {dictatorial}]
3: expecting unquestioning obedience; "he was imperious and
dictatorial"; "the timid child of authoritarian parents";
"insufferably overbearing behavior toward the waiter"
[syn: {dictatorial}, {overbearing}]
n : behaves like a tyrant [syn: {dictator}]
PA is complaining that AG is being extremely severe regarding the slightest potential infraction of their trademarks.
See if you have CD audio or any other audio inputs enabled and mute them.
It took me a while to track this same problem down on my Linux desktop. Video cards generate plenty of EM interference.
The downside for Apple is that I will be hesitant to buy another product from them. For much less than the $3500 I shelled out, I could have gotten a small Linux laptop that would function to meet my needs.
Yup. Growing feeling among folks trying Apple's products...
Western ideas had been growing in Japan since way, way before World War II. The Emperor had been losing relevance compared to more modern Japanese politicians by the end of WWII. I'm not certain that the US was necessary, though I'll grant that it may have sped things up a bit.
But that's still a poor batting average for the US...
We have a free market, with only a few restrictions, today.
I agree that some things, like antitrust laws, are necessary. The reason antitrust is important, though, is because the Real World differs from naive free market models in that it doesn't have an infinite number of companies, which allows monopolies to form.
I'm not sure that anti-discrimination laws are necessary, though. They don't seem to address a particular flaw in our current model.
People, unless checked by the group will only do what helps themselves.
Sure...but if the company does what helps itself, and the company tends to check employees that are doing things not in the company's interest, your requirements are fulfilled.
it's nice to hear someone with your point of view not sound like a complete prick.
Uh, thanks. Heh.
BitTorrent support isn't really what you're looking for -- the bug is talking about IMG targets.
I agree that generic BitTorrent support in Mozilla would be great. The problem is that it's really not all that useful for most *images*, which are perhaps up to 100KB. BitTorrent needs larger files to chew on to help much.
BitTorrent would be great for downloading game demos, isos, etc.
because with their thermal crap and the defauult fan, my proc ran over 130F
AMD doesn't guarantee you the ability to overclock the processor.
the length when even if the client exits right after finishing the file, the torrent will survive and sustain itself. I believe it is at around 1GB, but I don't have the figures handy. Mabye the guy who did the calculations will chime in sometime
There is no such length. Length, usage patterns, and network connection speed are all fundamental factors.
This brings another problem with BitTorrent - it doesn't work well unless clients are connected for a while after they finish the file.
It works *better* if this is the case, but it's not really a problem.
If someone is downloading from the original source, and another person begins, then the first immediately becomes another source.
BitTorrent isn't designed to make the original source unnecessary...it's designed to simply reduce load on the original source. Which it does quite well. The original source tends to send out around the bandwidth of a single upload at any one time.
Many of those are incoming (NAT people won't work as well), and many are outgoing.
As a result, they'll get slower transfers. This is simply a problem with NAT -- NATted users are using a broken network, and have problems with many, many protocols. FTP is included in mozilla, and NAT is even worse with FTP.
This large amount of sockets tends to make some of the cheaper commodity cards break.
Sockets have nothing whatsoever to do with the NIC. They exist at a higher level, and will not cause the card to break.
Make for a good TV ad.
It's clearly not an accusation of Nazism. Nazis are used generally today to refer to overly authoritarian viewpoints.
You're running an SQL server, gimp, gtkradiant, quake3 and a lot of windows...aside from VS .NET, at this point, wouldn't it be *easier* to use Linux? :-)
We have a perfectly fine standard for years...but now we get to *pay* for the privilege of getting ahold of the standard. Sigh.
Thanks for nmap, Fyodor. Lovely program.
So the target market for Strawberry Shortcake is little girls...so they complain? That's ridiculous. The target audience for Penny Arcade is the relevant issue here, since those are the people who will actually see the comic.
The argument I've seen so far (which I'm not sure is true) is that for the parody exemption to trademark usage to apply, the material in question needs to be the subject of the parody, not just included in material that happens to be a parody.
In Spaceballs, Pizza Hut was the object of the parody.
*shrug* no idea whether the argument is legitimate, though.
Political cartoons are commercial, and there are many commercial satire companies.
Whether or not someone makes money has absolutely nothing to do with whether something can be used under the parody exemption.
2. PA's response to this pufferfish threat was to do something that really could get them in trouble.
No. Criticizing someone's (especially on political and legal views) view with a parody is quite kosher.
The first cartoon is probably just fine. The second definitely is. American Greetings really didn't win any wars by sending a C&D letter.
I'd say it's a pretty effective way of dealing with the problem. PA is legally in the correct. PA's strength is their readership, and they've neatly leveraged that.