I think you're right, but the fact is that one can simply remove the key checking stage entirely from a closed-source product too. It just takes knowledge of the assembly code for whatever CPU you're using, rather than a knowledge of a higher level language (most likely C or C++). So it's a bit harder, but it's obviously entirely possible - just witness all the cracked commercial software that's floating about. And "a bit harder" means nothing once one person has put the effort in to crack the software.
True story: Someone at a company I used to work for did this a lot. He'd add comments like 'puts("fucked up");' in sections of code that shouldn't have been reached at a certain time, for example. All well and good, until a tape of the software was cut and sent to a customer, complete with extra debugging... Customer ran the software, to be greeted with an endlessly scrolling screen of "fucked up".
I doubt very highly that GBA emulation works well at all on the GP32. GBA emus are just barely playable on an 800mhz P3. Eventually it'd get better, but even the best emulator is never the same as the real thing.
There's one big difference you've neglected to mention: both the GBA and GP32 are using ARM processors, so theoretically, the GP32 could run GBA code natively. Not sure how feasible it would be in practice, but a GBA "emulator" may be more along the lines of WINE, where the API's are emulated, not the entire CPU.
Re:A short history of how the U.S. got into this m
on
4l-j4z333ra 0wn3d
·
· Score: 1
the world would be one big USA and thats way better than what it is now.
It's cliched I know but: then you Americans wonder why the rest of the world hates you. Who the hell are you to say the USA has the right to dominate the rest of the planet? You'd preserve your way of life much more effectively if you spent less time pissing the rest of the world off.
I don't hate Americans as a people (I know and like quite a few US individuals), but the neo-conservative faction in control right now - Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle etc. - deserve nothing but contempt. They'll destroy the world in their cynical attempt to dominate it.
Right. You don't see those applications using the Xv extension because, in general, they don't need it. The applications which use the extension, like mplayer, make good use of it to accelerate high-bandwidth video operation.
Which evidence is that? Not one of the media sources I've checked, both pro- and anti-war biased can categorically state that the missile were SCUDs. Iraq does have missiles other than SCUDs which were not banned by an UN treaties, you know.
They may have been SCUDs, which certainly strengthens arguments against Saddam, but at this time, there is no proof one way or the other. Not unless you're aware of something right now that only military intelligence on the field in Kuwait/Iraq could possibly know. So, feel like sharing your "widely available evidence"?
What the previous poster was trying to say was "For those of you who don't believe that Saddam is any threat to us, you can't deny that he is tyrant and a threat to his *own people*. Stop being so selfish and start giving a rat's ass about the rest of the world.
Slightly dangerous argument, that. If this war is being fought on moral grounds (i.e. removing a government with a serious record of human rights abuses), the logical conclusion means invading Zimbabwe, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel, among other countries.
Not sure why that got modded as Funny, I'm guessing it was a serious question... not sure if there are any recordings, but there are a few sites where you can connect and watch games in progress (or just connect and play a game yourself).
I don't completely disagree with you - a prettier face wouldn't make Nethack worse, as long as it's just an option. But let's face it, as an open-source project, it would just fork if a new interface suddenly become the only choice (which isn't likely to happen any time soon anyway). Thing is, there are plenty of people (like me) who prefer the plain ol' character interface and turn-based strategies. Attempts have been made to pretty it up (like Falcon's Eye), but there has been limited demand for that.
Would a completely new interface be a mass-market success? I doubt it very much, not without also making fundamental changes to the gameplay, by which I mean ripping most of it out - the game just doesn't fit with the instant-gratification culture of today's gaming market. I'm really not sure how you could fit the complexity and flexibility of Nethack's actions with the easy-to-use interface of (say) Dungeon Siege.
When will this game be brought a decade forward in multimedia quality?
When someone feels like doing it.
Personally, I like the game for its playability, not any so-called "multimedia quality". Hell, I still play in ASCII mode (albeit with colour). I'm not a luddite, though - I've played Eye of the Beholder, Diablo, Dungeon Siege etc., and found them reasonably enjoyable for a while, but Nethack is the one that keeps me coming back. 15 years since I first played it (back in the 1.0 days) and it's still fun.
If Nethack is as good as I've heard, it could turn out to be a killer game.
It already is a killer game... lord knows it's killed me enough times:-) But seriously, it's a game developed by a group of people for fun, without the expectation of profit, and it has an intensely loyal following. If you don't like it, don't play it, or do something by contributing to it. But standing at the sidelines and bitching isn't going to do you, or anyone else, any good.
You really don't have the slightest bloody clue what you're talking about.
Northern Ireland is not a province at war these days. Nor has it ever been - there have been serious terrorist problems on the part of both Republican and Loyalist organisations (and no thanks to the support shown by US elements for IRA terrorists), but right now violence is at a low. Unfortunately, it's being supplanted by infighting & organised crime, but it's not now and never has been open warfare. Go and read some bloody history books, ignoramus.
As for "get the hell out of Ireland", talk about a gross oversimplification. Do you honestly believe for one moment that that would solve any problems, bearing in mind that around one million Northern Irish people don't actually want to be part of the Republic?
By the way, what has 1914 got to do with anything? Or do you mean the Easter Rising of 1916, or perhaps the War of Independence of 1919-1922?
Quantum cryptography has the potential to solve problem (2) - it allows (what appears to be) truly secure key distribution by exploiting the quantum properties of photons. It's gone beyond the theoretical stage, and quantum channels have even been established through air (as opposed to a fibre-optic link).
Problem (1) is really hard to do well. And, no, a cheap soundcard is not the answer:)
But the outcome of such a war, if it does come to pass, is not in doubt.
That the US military can beat the Iraqi military is not really in doubt (although that article was an interesting read).
That the US can successfully occupy and/or rebuild Iraq while maintaining the goodwill of the rest of the Middle East is entirely another matter. The ultimate outcome of such a war is very much in doubt, but a large increase in terrorist activity following the polarisation of opinion across the Arab world is one plausible outcome. Further bloodshed is almost certain if the US attempts to commandeer any of Iraq's oil production.
You'd only be able to lift one batch of cargo at at time. Yes, you could pipeline many of them, but they'd still all have to start at one point on the earth, and all go to a single destination.
So? Ultimately, we could have dozens of space elevators and an entire network of colonised asteroids surrounding the Earth. But an initial space elevator will be a loss leader.
How would one lift these cargo loads, anyways?
You're ignoring one very important point: cargo goes up, cargo comes down. The net energy requirements are tiny compared with launching cargo into space. Balancing rising and descending loads also addresses your lateral acceleration problem.
The construction cost for a space elevator would be enormous, I don't think anyone disputes that. It's also slightly out of reach of current technology, but may be feasible in the next 50-100 years. However, a working space elevator would mean that the enormous energy expenditure we currently make to get vehicles into orbit would cease to be an issue.
Something else to think about: why are automobiles so much more popular than trains?
Automobiles (I assume you're talking about trucks) are less useful than trains when it comes to transporting bulk cargo. They're also less efficient in terms of energy used per weight transported.
Who the hell has their SQL server in the public side of their firewall?
They probably don't. What's more likely is that one or more employees took their laptops home and hooked them up to their own Internet connection without any personal firewalling active. If those laptops happened to be running SQL Server, they become carriers. All it takes then is for them to be plugged back into Microsoft's LAN, and game over.
Probably by using Konstruct. I don't think anyone's got any binary RPM's for it yet.
It'll take quite a while (fetches and builds everything from source), but it is just a single make command to build everything, so you can set it off and walk away.
Got a build running now, will let you know how well it goes. Halfway through kdebase, been running for a couple of hours on a 1GHz machine.
Re:Guys... Guys... Take it easy...
on
The 1991 "X-Box"
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're right, but the fact is that one can simply remove the key checking stage entirely from a closed-source product too. It just takes knowledge of the assembly code for whatever CPU you're using, rather than a knowledge of a higher level language (most likely C or C++). So it's a bit harder, but it's obviously entirely possible - just witness all the cracked commercial software that's floating about. And "a bit harder" means nothing once one person has put the effort in to crack the software.
No, they actually took him out and shot him, and mailed his head to the customer in an attempt to placate them.
:-)
Yeah, OK, I meant his employment was terminated
True story: Someone at a company I used to work for did this a lot. He'd add comments like 'puts("fucked up");' in sections of code that shouldn't have been reached at a certain time, for example. All well and good, until a tape of the software was cut and sent to a customer, complete with extra debugging... Customer ran the software, to be greeted with an endlessly scrolling screen of "fucked up".
Said employee was terminated shortly afterwards.
There's one big difference you've neglected to mention: both the GBA and GP32 are using ARM processors, so theoretically, the GP32 could run GBA code natively. Not sure how feasible it would be in practice, but a GBA "emulator" may be more along the lines of WINE, where the API's are emulated, not the entire CPU.
It's cliched I know but: then you Americans wonder why the rest of the world hates you. Who the hell are you to say the USA has the right to dominate the rest of the planet? You'd preserve your way of life much more effectively if you spent less time pissing the rest of the world off.
I don't hate Americans as a people (I know and like quite a few US individuals), but the neo-conservative faction in control right now - Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle etc. - deserve nothing but contempt. They'll destroy the world in their cynical attempt to dominate it.
Right. You don't see those applications using the Xv extension because, in general, they don't need it. The applications which use the extension, like mplayer, make good use of it to accelerate high-bandwidth video operation.
So what's the problem?
What's a "normal mode" when it's at home? Stop making terms up.
The Xv extension is a part of X, just as much as DirectX et al. are a part of Windows.
Which evidence is that? Not one of the media sources I've checked, both pro- and anti-war biased can categorically state that the missile were SCUDs. Iraq does have missiles other than SCUDs which were not banned by an UN treaties, you know.
They may have been SCUDs, which certainly strengthens arguments against Saddam, but at this time, there is no proof one way or the other. Not unless you're aware of something right now that only military intelligence on the field in Kuwait/Iraq could possibly know. So, feel like sharing your "widely available evidence"?
He was the first president of the United States of America, serving from 1779-1781).
(yeah, Washington came before, but the USA wasn't known as such then - it was the Continental Congress)
He said "invade the south", not "invade from the south". Southern Iraq shares a border with Iran, there's no need to go through Saudi Arabia at all.
Slightly dangerous argument, that. If this war is being fought on moral grounds (i.e. removing a government with a serious record of human rights abuses), the logical conclusion means invading Zimbabwe, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel, among other countries.
Try this site.
Try this index.
I don't completely disagree with you - a prettier face wouldn't make Nethack worse, as long as it's just an option. But let's face it, as an open-source project, it would just fork if a new interface suddenly become the only choice (which isn't likely to happen any time soon anyway). Thing is, there are plenty of people (like me) who prefer the plain ol' character interface and turn-based strategies. Attempts have been made to pretty it up (like Falcon's Eye), but there has been limited demand for that.
Would a completely new interface be a mass-market success? I doubt it very much, not without also making fundamental changes to the gameplay, by which I mean ripping most of it out - the game just doesn't fit with the instant-gratification culture of today's gaming market. I'm really not sure how you could fit the complexity and flexibility of Nethack's actions with the easy-to-use interface of (say) Dungeon Siege.
Er, Nethack is a dumbed version of Diablo?
Troll.
When someone feels like doing it.
Personally, I like the game for its playability, not any so-called "multimedia quality". Hell, I still play in ASCII mode (albeit with colour). I'm not a luddite, though - I've played Eye of the Beholder, Diablo, Dungeon Siege etc., and found them reasonably enjoyable for a while, but Nethack is the one that keeps me coming back. 15 years since I first played it (back in the 1.0 days) and it's still fun.
If Nethack is as good as I've heard, it could turn out to be a killer game.
It already is a killer game... lord knows it's killed me enough times :-) But seriously, it's a game developed by a group of people for fun, without the expectation of profit, and it has an intensely loyal following. If you don't like it, don't play it, or do something by contributing to it. But standing at the sidelines and bitching isn't going to do you, or anyone else, any good.
You use Cygwin and OpenSSH, of course.
You really don't have the slightest bloody clue what you're talking about.
Northern Ireland is not a province at war these days. Nor has it ever been - there have been serious terrorist problems on the part of both Republican and Loyalist organisations (and no thanks to the support shown by US elements for IRA terrorists), but right now violence is at a low. Unfortunately, it's being supplanted by infighting & organised crime, but it's not now and never has been open warfare. Go and read some bloody history books, ignoramus.
As for "get the hell out of Ireland", talk about a gross oversimplification. Do you honestly believe for one moment that that would solve any problems, bearing in mind that around one million Northern Irish people don't actually want to be part of the Republic?
By the way, what has 1914 got to do with anything? Or do you mean the Easter Rising of 1916, or perhaps the War of Independence of 1919-1922?
Q: How many Prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: No.
Quantum cryptography has the potential to solve problem (2) - it allows (what appears to be) truly secure key distribution by exploiting the quantum properties of photons. It's gone beyond the theoretical stage, and quantum channels have even been established through air (as opposed to a fibre-optic link).
:)
Problem (1) is really hard to do well. And, no, a cheap soundcard is not the answer
That the US military can beat the Iraqi military is not really in doubt (although that article was an interesting read).
That the US can successfully occupy and/or rebuild Iraq while maintaining the goodwill of the rest of the Middle East is entirely another matter. The ultimate outcome of such a war is very much in doubt, but a large increase in terrorist activity following the polarisation of opinion across the Arab world is one plausible outcome. Further bloodshed is almost certain if the US attempts to commandeer any of Iraq's oil production.
So? Ultimately, we could have dozens of space elevators and an entire network of colonised asteroids surrounding the Earth. But an initial space elevator will be a loss leader.
How would one lift these cargo loads, anyways?
You're ignoring one very important point: cargo goes up, cargo comes down. The net energy requirements are tiny compared with launching cargo into space. Balancing rising and descending loads also addresses your lateral acceleration problem.
The construction cost for a space elevator would be enormous, I don't think anyone disputes that. It's also slightly out of reach of current technology, but may be feasible in the next 50-100 years. However, a working space elevator would mean that the enormous energy expenditure we currently make to get vehicles into orbit would cease to be an issue.
Something else to think about: why are automobiles so much more popular than trains?
Automobiles (I assume you're talking about trucks) are less useful than trains when it comes to transporting bulk cargo. They're also less efficient in terms of energy used per weight transported.
They probably don't. What's more likely is that one or more employees took their laptops home and hooked them up to their own Internet connection without any personal firewalling active. If those laptops happened to be running SQL Server, they become carriers. All it takes then is for them to be plugged back into Microsoft's LAN, and game over.
It'll take quite a while (fetches and builds everything from source), but it is just a single make command to build everything, so you can set it off and walk away.
Got a build running now, will let you know how well it goes. Halfway through kdebase, been running for a couple of hours on a 1GHz machine.
While Slashdot editors were born yesterday...