Assuming a good schedular, thats true. Big assumption though, from my experience: windows 9x - bad linux 2.2 - bad windows nt - decent but not great. freebsd 4.x - big improvement over 2.2, about par with patched 2.4 if not a little subpar. linxu 2.4 - better, good once patched linux 2.6 - best
These are by no means scientific results, just my personal experience. best = low priority tasks have zero effect, bad = low priority tasks have no difference. Again, purely personal experience, not scientific. if someone wants to donate some hardware I've got the time for more scientific results.
"On the other hand, search engines scrape the web to get their information for their benefit. The more I think about it, the more this system doesn't make much sense." I've thought about that a lot, and it really is hypocrasy. Even google is guilty of it, Set your user-agent ot LWP (a common perl module for pulling websites) and/search starts returning a 403 forbidden error.
Freeform text parsing is much more cpu intensive, and just because I have a 1.5ghz sitting in my desktop doesnt mean I want to idle at 100% cpu util. I'm sick of the people that say things like "Who cares if WinAmp3 is cpu intensive, my machine is powerful enough". Sure it is now, but try playing an mp3 when extracting a large rar. quicker execution is almost always the most important factor, the only exception is ease of development, but freform text parsing is much more messy than that to.
Don't even get me started on the mess that would be timezones (that unix epoch sidesteps entirely)
After writing this I realised I might of misinterpreted you -- are you suggesting freeform text, or just standardizing on a certan text format? (for example, 01/02/03 10:50:32 CST)
Because not everyone uses the same format? 16283723 might not be human readable, but it atleast means something. "Jan 17 1987" is just arbitrary text that can't easily be manipulated or sorted.
"how about you name a console game that you think would have made a better PC game IF it had some things that the console version could not possibly provide. "
How about ANY first person shooters? Console versions can't provide any form of reliable controls. With PC games, you have (and need) per-pixel accuracy, with console games, you have a pad that can go in one general direction, and a stick that has the range of about an inch (compare to a gamers mousepad, which is often about the size of a laptop if not larger. froogle or google image search for dkt megamat, or supermat which people often cut to fit on their desk)
As for the second half of your post, Obviously the console games. There are still graphical enhancements being released for quake1. Lets compare that to a game that was released at a similar time(1996) oh, say, Tekken 2 for the Playstation 1. With quake, you can download a new client with new lighting added, more visual enhancements than you can name, texturepacks, and everything else needed to make it look like a modern game. With tekken2 you can do nothing at all, aside from boot up your outdated game at look at a load screen that might as well display some porn because its going to be up there long enough to squeeze one off.
" WHY THE *FUCK* WASN'T THE STEAM VERSION IN THE BOX!?! My friend tells me the only thing I needed out of my nice box was the serial number for Half Life. I know the game has been out for a while but if the content for the game has changed that much why are they selling it?"
It has actually, ever since.. a week after CS went retail theres been a zip file you have to download containing all the stuff thats not on the cd (jos.wad, two maps, updated titles.txt, and some others). The problem with how it is now is people are still buying off the shelf. When you're able to just double click "Condition Zero", verify builing, and have the game downloaded and playing in ~45mins then it will be much more convienient.
For HalfLife2, Doom3, and other new games. Also to make Max Payne2 look better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm using a GeForce2Mx400 64MB pci, but if I had the money I'd update. (Personally, its more for having a constant FPS in counterstrike, as I play matches where I need to be able to stand in 3+ smoke grenades and still be able to aim.)
"The potential for abuse by police officers is high. It's already bad enough that some police officers go around hassling and abusing people just because they don't like their face. Bad cops can stop cars/drivers they suddenly, arbitrarily decided to hate. "
Why stop them, when with a minor tweak you can force them to do 120mph in a schoolzone? Allowing police to control speed of cars is just allowing them to force us to commit crimes.
Thieves? Hardly. Now, add enough funding, some timers, a FUCKLOAD of power and the right power to the signal.. Think how bad 9/11 hit everyone. Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop (or 100mph, which might be evn more fun.)
Then after that happens, we'll have another wave of PATRIOT acts, 'terrorism and privacy are bad' FUD, and any rights they left us with taken and replaced by more things like this to be exploited.
Degree means everything. Do you have windows? Oh, so you wouldn't mind me installing cameras in your house, to save me the time and effort of looking in through your windows.
Steam really is a great idea, and I hope it takes off. Some friends and I joked about how great it would be if you could just buy a cdkey for a game online, so that we could then download the game(from our own means..heh.) and play without the annoyences that come with buying a game the old fashioned way (the classic Diablo2 Disk Juggle(tm), scratched disks, all that stuff).
With steam, you'd be able to do that, but with them providing the download.
Sure it has its drawbacks (I can still pop in a quake1 cd and install it and play it, but I doubt the same will be true for HL1 in another 5 years), but overall its a good idea.
I think its sad that they made such a great game. If all of these mods were based on a game that is owned by someone who believes in openness and freedom (like John Carmack of IDSoft) we'd be better off. We wouldn't have to worry about FUD being spread by calling anticheat enabled servers 'secure' vs 'insecure', we wouldn't have to worry about getting false banned for 5 years due to a software bug. we'd be able to play in the operating system of our choice, and benefit from community enhanced engines.
Best example: Quake1. check out fuhquake.net and see what they've done with quake source. Far more things than I can list, but some good ones: ability to jump to arbitrary times in demo playback (no more sitting through an hour of demo to get to the frags you want), ability to load HalfLife maps and wads/textures/sounds (yes, that means playing de_dust in the counterstrike-esque TF mod, TFstrike. I'll send a movie of it if someone asks.), much better graphics, ability to save jpeg screenshots, much much more.
So kids are going to have to wear GPS watches in the same way criminals have to wear those radio ankle-bracelets? And the world would be a better, safer place? Keep dreaming.
Better and Safer for pedophiles. Who monitors these watches? How hard is it to buy them off, or easier yet: get a job there?
Freelancer is actually pretty fun, and I think it runs in Wine or atleast WineX (its been so long since I last tried). Gameplay is rather repetitive, but its fun to just fire up and go do some missions to kill time. Its mostly just fly to docking station, accept mission, complete mission (kill someone usually, and kill other people on the way. feel free to collect any small parts they drop), get reward. use reward to buy a better ship, more parts, or random items you can sell to another docking station for more money (dopewars style)
"Besides the fact that those things are somewhat expensive, the details the non-geek would have to become familiar with the get the gift right (heck, to figure out where to purchase such things) are a daunting barrier. "
Thats why amazon wishlists are a great idea, although having to shop at amazon limits it. It would be really nice if someone would setup a wishlist system where you could add price, description, and a link to buy. Maybe even hack this on to froogle (which already indexes all items from online shopping stores)
I owned a n64 long before laying my hands on a playstation. The main thing I noticed when my sister got a playstation for her birthday a year or so after my n64 was the HUGE load time. Some games have load time so bad that its not even worth the wait. Cartridges really were better IMO back when games were that small.
Read his book (you can find a.doc of it if you search hard enough.. pirating a hacker book, oh the irony). You'll change your mind. People never really understood that he isn't much of a hacker, but he DOES know his social engineering. His being caught was a direct result of pissing off the wrong person (shimumora). Mitnick was praised for having to go through all of this (maximum security prison for most of his term), and generally still being a cool guy after he got out. Maybe his list of accompishments sint as huge as others, but he def. has the mindset. Hell, I'm sure in a few years when the statute of limitations runs out his accomplishments list will grow by a lot -- Think that list of PBX question/responses he uses to testify against ATT(?)
I signed up for 2mbit/356kbit AOL/TW RoadRunner for about $50/mo. A few months ago, they upped it to 3mbit/356kbit for about $50/mo. They have ~5gbit in austin.rr.com alone, for the record.
"When it comes right down to it, they all were ambient and lacking melodic recurrence to draw me into the piece"
Thats generally what most video games are going for. Of course we all know the super mario bros theme by heart, but for a shooter game the ambience is there to fill the silence (except when needed for suspence), without being so distracting you can't get in the game. Imagine trying to shoot a nazi while some annoying teen is singing. Now kill that same nazi while you have a faint ambient song going in the background. Of course there are exceptions (see any grand theft auto-like game or a game like tony hawk). Really depends on the game I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for XML(and XML-like implentations), I just completely misinterpreted what the original poster said, my mistake.
Assuming a good schedular, thats true. Big assumption though, from my experience:
windows 9x - bad
linux 2.2 - bad
windows nt - decent but not great.
freebsd 4.x - big improvement over 2.2, about par with patched 2.4 if not a little subpar.
linxu 2.4 - better, good once patched
linux 2.6 - best
These are by no means scientific results, just my personal experience. best = low priority tasks have zero effect, bad = low priority tasks have no difference.
Again, purely personal experience, not scientific. if someone wants to donate some hardware I've got the time for more scientific results.
"On the other hand, search engines scrape the web to get their information for their benefit. The more I think about it, the more this system doesn't make much sense." /search starts returning a 403 forbidden error.
I've thought about that a lot, and it really is hypocrasy. Even google is guilty of it, Set your user-agent ot LWP (a common perl module for pulling websites) and
Freeform text parsing is much more cpu intensive, and just because I have a 1.5ghz sitting in my desktop doesnt mean I want to idle at 100% cpu util. I'm sick of the people that say things like "Who cares if WinAmp3 is cpu intensive, my machine is powerful enough". Sure it is now, but try playing an mp3 when extracting a large rar. quicker execution is almost always the most important factor, the only exception is ease of development, but freform text parsing is much more messy than that to.
Don't even get me started on the mess that would be timezones (that unix epoch sidesteps entirely)
After writing this I realised I might of misinterpreted you -- are you suggesting freeform text, or just standardizing on a certan text format? (for example, 01/02/03 10:50:32 CST)
Because not everyone uses the same format? 16283723 might not be human readable, but it atleast means something. "Jan 17 1987" is just arbitrary text that can't easily be manipulated or sorted.
I never understood why they didn't include caffiene in dayquil. Nyquil to go to sleep, Dayquil to wake up.
"how about you name a console game that you think would have made a better PC game IF it had some things that the console version could not possibly provide. "
How about ANY first person shooters? Console versions can't provide any form of reliable controls. With PC games, you have (and need) per-pixel accuracy, with console games, you have a pad that can go in one general direction, and a stick that has the range of about an inch (compare to a gamers mousepad, which is often about the size of a laptop if not larger. froogle or google image search for dkt megamat, or supermat which people often cut to fit on their desk)
As for the second half of your post, Obviously the console games. There are still graphical enhancements being released for quake1. Lets compare that to a game that was released at a similar time(1996) oh, say, Tekken 2 for the Playstation 1. With quake, you can download a new client with new lighting added, more visual enhancements than you can name, texturepacks, and everything else needed to make it look like a modern game. With tekken2 you can do nothing at all, aside from boot up your outdated game at look at a load screen that might as well display some porn because its going to be up there long enough to squeeze one off.
"
WHY THE *FUCK* WASN'T THE STEAM VERSION IN THE BOX!?! My friend tells me the only thing I needed out of my nice box was the serial number for Half Life. I know the game has been out for a while but if the content for the game has changed that much why are they selling it?"
It has actually, ever since.. a week after CS went retail theres been a zip file you have to download containing all the stuff thats not on the cd (jos.wad, two maps, updated titles.txt, and some others).
The problem with how it is now is people are still buying off the shelf. When you're able to just double click "Condition Zero", verify builing, and have the game downloaded and playing in ~45mins then it will be much more convienient.
For HalfLife2, Doom3, and other new games. Also to make Max Payne2 look better.
Don't get me wrong, I'm using a GeForce2Mx400 64MB pci, but if I had the money I'd update. (Personally, its more for having a constant FPS in counterstrike, as I play matches where I need to be able to stand in 3+ smoke grenades and still be able to aim.)
"The potential for abuse by police officers is high. It's already bad enough that some police officers go around hassling and abusing people just because they don't like their face. Bad cops can stop cars/drivers they suddenly, arbitrarily decided to hate. "
Why stop them, when with a minor tweak you can force them to do 120mph in a schoolzone? Allowing police to control speed of cars is just allowing them to force us to commit crimes.
Thieves? Hardly. Now, add enough funding, some timers, a FUCKLOAD of power and the right power to the signal.. Think how bad 9/11 hit everyone. Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop (or 100mph, which might be evn more fun.)
Then after that happens, we'll have another wave of PATRIOT acts, 'terrorism and privacy are bad' FUD, and any rights they left us with taken and replaced by more things like this to be exploited.
Degree means everything. Do you have windows? Oh, so you wouldn't mind me installing cameras in your house, to save me the time and effort of looking in through your windows.
Steam really is a great idea, and I hope it takes off. Some friends and I joked about how great it would be if you could just buy a cdkey for a game online, so that we could then download the game(from our own means..heh.) and play without the annoyences that come with buying a game the old fashioned way (the classic Diablo2 Disk Juggle(tm), scratched disks, all that stuff).
With steam, you'd be able to do that, but with them providing the download.
Sure it has its drawbacks (I can still pop in a quake1 cd and install it and play it, but I doubt the same will be true for HL1 in another 5 years), but overall its a good idea.
I think its sad that they made such a great game. If all of these mods were based on a game that is owned by someone who believes in openness and freedom (like John Carmack of IDSoft) we'd be better off. We wouldn't have to worry about FUD being spread by calling anticheat enabled servers 'secure' vs 'insecure', we wouldn't have to worry about getting false banned for 5 years due to a software bug. we'd be able to play in the operating system of our choice, and benefit from community enhanced engines.
Best example: Quake1.
check out fuhquake.net and see what they've done with quake source. Far more things than I can list, but some good ones: ability to jump to arbitrary times in demo playback (no more sitting through an hour of demo to get to the frags you want), ability to load HalfLife maps and wads/textures/sounds (yes, that means playing de_dust in the counterstrike-esque TF mod, TFstrike. I'll send a movie of it if someone asks.), much better graphics, ability to save jpeg screenshots, much much more.
So kids are going to have to wear GPS watches in the same way criminals have to wear those radio ankle-bracelets? And the world would be a better, safer place? Keep dreaming.
Better and Safer for pedophiles. Who monitors these watches? How hard is it to buy them off, or easier yet: get a job there?
Freelancer is actually pretty fun, and I think it runs in Wine or atleast WineX (its been so long since I last tried).
Gameplay is rather repetitive, but its fun to just fire up and go do some missions to kill time. Its mostly just fly to docking station, accept mission, complete mission (kill someone usually, and kill other people on the way. feel free to collect any small parts they drop), get reward. use reward to buy a better ship, more parts, or random items you can sell to another docking station for more money (dopewars style)
"Besides the fact that those things are somewhat expensive, the details the non-geek would have to become familiar with the get the gift right (heck, to figure out where to purchase such things) are a daunting barrier. "
Thats why amazon wishlists are a great idea, although having to shop at amazon limits it. It would be really nice if someone would setup a wishlist system where you could add price, description, and a link to buy. Maybe even hack this on to froogle (which already indexes all items from online shopping stores)
MOD SELF UP +1, TIS THE SEASON
" There are some boobs on the mainpage"
direct link for those of us who only care about the boobieses
I owned a n64 long before laying my hands on a playstation. The main thing I noticed when my sister got a playstation for her birthday a year or so after my n64 was the HUGE load time. Some games have load time so bad that its not even worth the wait. Cartridges really were better IMO back when games were that small.
Read his book (you can find a .doc of it if you search hard enough.. pirating a hacker book, oh the irony). You'll change your mind. People never really understood that he isn't much of a hacker, but he DOES know his social engineering. His being caught was a direct result of pissing off the wrong person (shimumora). Mitnick was praised for having to go through all of this (maximum security prison for most of his term), and generally still being a cool guy after he got out. Maybe his list of accompishments sint as huge as others, but he def. has the mindset. Hell, I'm sure in a few years when the statute of limitations runs out his accomplishments list will grow by a lot -- Think that list of PBX question/responses he uses to testify against ATT(?)
I laughed, I cried, I served time.
I signed up for 2mbit/356kbit AOL/TW RoadRunner for about $50/mo. A few months ago, they upped it to 3mbit/356kbit for about $50/mo. They have ~5gbit in austin.rr.com alone, for the record.
"I keep a journal, because well if I kept a diary that would make me a homo!" I forgot which comedian said that, but your post made me think of it.
"When it comes right down to it, they all were ambient and lacking melodic recurrence to draw me into the piece"
Thats generally what most video games are going for. Of course we all know the super mario bros theme by heart, but for a shooter game the ambience is there to fill the silence (except when needed for suspence), without being so distracting you can't get in the game. Imagine trying to shoot a nazi while some annoying teen is singing. Now kill that same nazi while you have a faint ambient song going in the background. Of course there are exceptions (see any grand theft auto-like game or a game like tony hawk). Really depends on the game I suppose.