Free software won't keep you from Xbox Live, Microsoft will. They will kick you off Microsoft live if they detect mods of any type. Non free software is like that, oops. Go buy a Play Station instead of a M$ gimped, 700MHz PeeeCeeee if you really want to play games. Sony does a better job at Linux too, Go figure.
I detect something of a double standard here. Sony are also not enamoured of people modifying their consoles, and like to sue people who get involved with such things. Microsoft makes a passable excuse that they ban all unsigned code on their network to prevent cheaters. Convenient excuse? Perhaps. They have a reasonable point, IMHO.
I'm not sure you've ever tried to use the Software mod for XBox, because the example you've quoted from my post is not due to Microsoft intervention, but due to bugs ( well, misfeatures ) in the Linux installation system, where they had to hijack a menu item in Microsofts official 'dashboard' to put the "Install Linux" button on. It is free software stopping you from accessing the XBox live configuration pane, not Microsoft.
And as for the PS2, I go where the games I want to play are. I wanted to play Shenmue II, Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio Future and other franchises from my beloved Sega Dreamcast. So here I am.
My unwanted advice to you is that you'd be a lot more persuasive if you were a little less vehemenent.
Now you are a real troll. Obviously an Xbox that both runs M$'s games AND free software is more felxible than an Xbox that only plays M$ games.
Except they don't. You either do the software mod, and fool around with finding the appropriate cables, a copy of Mechassault, etc etc, put the modifications together, and then you can't access the XBox live settings pane anymore ( oops! ).
Or, you modchip the console, and unless you buy a fancy-pants switching one, you can't use access the XBox live service anymore ( oops! ).
Either way, there is some degradation of function from the original design of the console. ( Oh yes, and god help you if it requires servicing... ) Maybe it is more flexible. It certainly isn't more useful. [*]
My XBox is an excellent gaming machine. My P4 is an excellent Linux machine. For a community that has long chanted about using 'the right tool for the job', Linux is starting to look suspiciously like a hammer, and anything with a floating point unit and mmu, a nail.
[*] - Of course, that's no reason not to do it, if that's what floats your boat. I don't agree with grandparent posts sentiments.
How about taking the intent of those doing the killing into account?
Dead is dead, gone forever, and irretrievable by no amount of 'intent'. You might be interested in checking out the commentary on the Khartoum bombing given by Noam Chomsky in the March 31st "New Yorker".
I by no means agree with everything he said, but it's food for thought.
Hah, build times? Debug? Fix? I'm going to prognosticate a maximum plausible size for my program, use quantum effects to superpose all possible combinations of instructions in that space, and then collapse the states until only the program I wanted is still there! [1]
Lets be frank - you and I both know there's nothing else to do in Nyngan. The guy is facing court in Dubbo too. I remember last time I was in Dubbo. *shudder*
YLFI
P.S. Surprised that the digital camera has penetrated to that part of the country.
I also think people are taking the corefiles one too seriously, although I agree that it's a stupid bug. First, finding an OSX with a corefile dumping enabled is incredibly rare. Then you need to cause a root owned process to fail with core and have a symlink waiting to catch the resulting file.
Eh.
However, this wouldn't have happened if Apple hadn't had the cutesy idea stowing the cores in/cores instead of just leaving the bodies where they fall. Bad vendor, no biscuit.
So is it unfortunate? Yeah. Should Apple backfix for the 10.0/1/2 series? Yeah. Is it the end of the world if they don't? No, not really.
One thing I don't understand is why the/cores directory can't be reset to not be world writable. This was not mentioned in the advisory, and was not mentioned in the list of possible fixes. Am I missing something? ( Don't have an OSX machine here to test with atm. )
don't know enough to make it look better than the classic black on white, with blue links, and Times New Roman (or equivalent) of HOWTOs everywhere...
That's the way it is supposed to be. If you want it in Verdana, you set it that way in your browser. If you are vision impaired and need large fonts with high contrast, you should set it that way.
Visual presentation of HTML should be left up the end user. Presuming they're even utilising your markup in a visual sense, and not via an accessibility browser. HTML was supposed to be accessible, it was never designed to be the pretty-printer we've shoehorned it into being in the last years since the explosion of non-academic web usage.
Rant aside, I do understand your point, and realistically, people want their pages to be beautiful. But just because people are making their webpages simple and in the default 'flavours' doesn't mean that they don't understand HTML. Exactly the opposite in many cases.
( As an aside, I try to provide pages with a very simple visual style and then provide a few different CSS or XSLT sheets as appropriate that can be used to render the content with.
I've noticed that some browsers now allow the user to apply a stylesheet of their choice to either all pages ( Safari ) or to the current page ( Mozilla ). This is a fantastic idea that deserves wider exposure. The missing piece is now to allow users to save a stylesheet matched to a given URL when they wish to view that page again. Of course, by the time I write this, Mozilla may well have this feature.
If you'd like to support users of these features, add classes to your html elements, even if you don't plan to use CSS yourself. Thanks.:-) )
There is a short account of a similar situation provided in Carl Sagans Contact. Apparently the more densely shielded part of the ISS is the 'aft end of the Zvezda module'.
I seem to recall somebody mentioning using Hyrogen enriched plastics for this kind of shield as well, but I have no idea if this actually works.
The only good thing about Realplayer is that you could use it to play Sci-Fi.coms Seeing Ear Theater, and that it supported esd as an output format.
Because of the joy of Esound, you could then use esdmon to snag the stream as waveform data and then encode it to a more cromulent media format. Of course, then along came stuff like Vsound, now sadly discontinued.
You come back when Shenmue II is released for PC, and then we'll talk. I have a P4, a G4 and an XBox on my desk ( the xbox feeds the TV in on the P4.. ). Each one has its place, each one has its use. I think the best bit about the Xbox is that its has a near zero setup time, is conducive to playing short sessions, and eliminates the need for a Windows PC in the above machine set.
I agree about your point wrt the fountain drying up, however.
I'm a big SC2 fan as well. You might be happy to know that the ( relatively ) recently open source version of Star Control 2 is based on the 3DO code branch.
Apple stores in Australia do ( at least NextByte ones. ) I took in my student/alumni card many moons ago, and all I do when I show up is give my name for them to look up and they strike 10%. This applies to hardware and software. Even stuff like UT2K3.;-)
I also seem to recall there were instructions for making these included in the venerable "Jolly Rogers Cookbook". This would have been way back in the Amiga 500 / Win 3.11 days.
Stuff like this hasn't been helping the occasional proposal for 'skeleton keys' to alarm systems / electronic building locks for police, EMT's and fire crews.
Of course "don't get involved in an intellectual property lawsuit with IBM" is right up there with "don't get involved in a land war in Asia" for things not to do.
For those playing along at home, "Remember to close your <i> tag." was number three.
However, seller still needs to shuck out $200 for the gift certificates in the first place, right? So they only really clear $60 a month.
That's drifting dangerously into "not worth my time" area - they need to drive the bulk up. Fortunately, mass listing and purchasing iTunes certs via cc probably scales pretty well.
Bloody hell, my Powerbook order was approved today. Now, I'm not saying 'causality' here, but it seems everytime I order something from the store, they update something else.:-P
Imagine if you were watching World News Tonight and the wall behind Peter Jennings melted to reveal a UFO landing and a dozen aliens with ray-guns vaporizing stuff.
However, I doubt that is the method NASA would use to make their official press release. People have become so culturally acclimitised to the idea of extraterrestrial life ( thank you Spielberg, Carter, Schrieber.. ) that after a carefully couched announcement from the government, I don't think you'd see a sociological impact of the scale predicted by the conservative think tanks of the 1980s.
The problem were that these tanks were modelling their first contact scenarios on colonial contact with indigenous habitants here on earth. A crashed UFO followed by no further contact would be more like a dead conquistador washing up on the shores of Mexico. And the government could even spin it to give humans a feeling of superiority ( i.e. 'They may have discovered space travel, but they seem to have arrived here by accident. Also, they don't have beanie babies or ice tea.' )
I think it would work out pretty well. I'd like to live in a universe with other intelligent life, so I hope we see something like this in my lifetime. I think the odds are infinitessimally remote though.
Except for the fact that a box of crackers is unlikely to be picked up by a metal detector wand.
If you want to test something important, you should do it with real test data. If you want to prove conclusively that your dog is going to chase rabbits, you need to use your dog and some rabbits, not a dog shaped bale of hay and some slippers with cotton balls on the heel.
Furthermore, until we know that a human is nothing more than it's physical brain and body, human life should be treated with more value than that.
I likewise have these awesome computer printouts here. Until we know that they're nothing more than paper and ink, I think they should be treated with more value than that.
Bidding starts at USD$10,000,000, no cancelations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
Slashdot Mirror
I detect something of a double standard here. Sony are also not enamoured of people modifying their consoles, and like to sue people who get involved with such things. Microsoft makes a passable excuse that they ban all unsigned code on their network to prevent cheaters. Convenient excuse? Perhaps. They have a reasonable point, IMHO.
I'm not sure you've ever tried to use the Software mod for XBox, because the example you've quoted from my post is not due to Microsoft intervention, but due to bugs ( well, misfeatures ) in the Linux installation system, where they had to hijack a menu item in Microsofts official 'dashboard' to put the "Install Linux" button on. It is free software stopping you from accessing the XBox live configuration pane, not Microsoft.
And as for the PS2, I go where the games I want to play are. I wanted to play Shenmue II, Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio Future and other franchises from my beloved Sega Dreamcast. So here I am.
My unwanted advice to you is that you'd be a lot more persuasive if you were a little less vehemenent.
YLFIExcept they don't. You either do the software mod, and fool around with finding the appropriate cables, a copy of Mechassault, etc etc, put the modifications together, and then you can't access the XBox live settings pane anymore ( oops! ).
Or, you modchip the console, and unless you buy a fancy-pants switching one, you can't use access the XBox live service anymore ( oops! ).
Either way, there is some degradation of function from the original design of the console. ( Oh yes, and god help you if it requires servicing... ) Maybe it is more flexible. It certainly isn't more useful. [*]
My XBox is an excellent gaming machine. My P4 is an excellent Linux machine. For a community that has long chanted about using 'the right tool for the job', Linux is starting to look suspiciously like a hammer, and anything with a floating point unit and mmu, a nail.
[*] - Of course, that's no reason not to do it, if that's what floats your boat. I don't agree with grandparent posts sentiments.
YLFIDead is dead, gone forever, and irretrievable by no amount of 'intent'. You might be interested in checking out the commentary on the Khartoum bombing given by Noam Chomsky in the March 31st "New Yorker".
I by no means agree with everything he said, but it's food for thought.
YLFISpeaking from personal experience, it is hard to type while running on a treadmill.
YLFIWhere is the "+1 My Hero" moderation when you need it? :-(
YLFIHah, build times? Debug? Fix? I'm going to prognosticate a maximum plausible size for my program, use quantum effects to superpose all possible combinations of instructions in that space, and then collapse the states until only the program I wanted is still there! [1]
[1] This is left as an exercise to the reader.
YLFILets be frank - you and I both know there's nothing else to do in Nyngan. The guy is facing court in Dubbo too. I remember last time I was in Dubbo. *shudder*
YLFIP.S. Surprised that the digital camera has penetrated to that part of the country.
I also think people are taking the corefiles one too seriously, although I agree that it's a stupid bug. First, finding an OSX with a corefile dumping enabled is incredibly rare. Then you need to cause a root owned process to fail with core and have a symlink waiting to catch the resulting file.
Eh.
However, this wouldn't have happened if Apple hadn't had the cutesy idea stowing the cores in /cores instead of just leaving the bodies where they fall. Bad vendor, no biscuit.
So is it unfortunate? Yeah. Should Apple backfix for the 10.0/1/2 series? Yeah. Is it the end of the world if they don't? No, not really.
One thing I don't understand is why the /cores directory can't be reset to not be world writable. This was not mentioned in the advisory, and was not mentioned in the list of possible fixes. Am I missing something? ( Don't have an OSX machine here to test with atm. )
YLFIThat's the way it is supposed to be. If you want it in Verdana, you set it that way in your browser. If you are vision impaired and need large fonts with high contrast, you should set it that way.
Visual presentation of HTML should be left up the end user. Presuming they're even utilising your markup in a visual sense, and not via an accessibility browser. HTML was supposed to be accessible, it was never designed to be the pretty-printer we've shoehorned it into being in the last years since the explosion of non-academic web usage.
Rant aside, I do understand your point, and realistically, people want their pages to be beautiful. But just because people are making their webpages simple and in the default 'flavours' doesn't mean that they don't understand HTML. Exactly the opposite in many cases.
( As an aside, I try to provide pages with a very simple visual style and then provide a few different CSS or XSLT sheets as appropriate that can be used to render the content with.
I've noticed that some browsers now allow the user to apply a stylesheet of their choice to either all pages ( Safari ) or to the current page ( Mozilla ). This is a fantastic idea that deserves wider exposure. The missing piece is now to allow users to save a stylesheet matched to a given URL when they wish to view that page again. Of course, by the time I write this, Mozilla may well have this feature.
If you'd like to support users of these features, add classes to your html elements, even if you don't plan to use CSS yourself. Thanks. :-) )
There is a short account of a similar situation provided in Carl Sagans Contact. Apparently the more densely shielded part of the ISS is the 'aft end of the Zvezda module'.
I seem to recall somebody mentioning using Hyrogen enriched plastics for this kind of shield as well, but I have no idea if this actually works.
YLFIThe only good thing about Realplayer is that you could use it to play Sci-Fi.coms Seeing Ear Theater, and that it supported esd as an output format.
Because of the joy of Esound, you could then use esdmon to snag the stream as waveform data and then encode it to a more cromulent media format. Of course, then along came stuff like Vsound, now sadly discontinued.
YLFIYou come back when Shenmue II is released for PC, and then we'll talk. I have a P4, a G4 and an XBox on my desk ( the xbox feeds the TV in on the P4.. ). Each one has its place, each one has its use. I think the best bit about the Xbox is that its has a near zero setup time, is conducive to playing short sessions, and eliminates the need for a Windows PC in the above machine set.
I agree about your point wrt the fountain drying up, however.
YLFII'm a big SC2 fan as well. You might be happy to know that the ( relatively ) recently open source version of Star Control 2 is based on the 3DO code branch.
YLFIApple stores in Australia do ( at least NextByte ones. ) I took in my student/alumni card many moons ago, and all I do when I show up is give my name for them to look up and they strike 10%. This applies to hardware and software. Even stuff like UT2K3. ;-)
YLFIWas this supposed to be 'Triple Treat'? Or should I be concerned that three motherboards are going to kick in my door and start looting my posessions?
YLFII also seem to recall there were instructions for making these included in the venerable "Jolly Rogers Cookbook". This would have been way back in the Amiga 500 / Win 3.11 days.
Stuff like this hasn't been helping the occasional proposal for 'skeleton keys' to alarm systems / electronic building locks for police, EMT's and fire crews.
YLFIFor those playing along at home, "Remember to close your <i> tag." was number three.
YLFICome out with your hands up, Archangeli!
( Just kidding! )
However, seller still needs to shuck out $200 for the gift certificates in the first place, right? So they only really clear $60 a month.
That's drifting dangerously into "not worth my time" area - they need to drive the bulk up. Fortunately, mass listing and purchasing iTunes certs via cc probably scales pretty well.
YLFIBloody hell, my Powerbook order was approved today. Now, I'm not saying 'causality' here, but it seems everytime I order something from the store, they update something else. :-P
YLFIHowever, I doubt that is the method NASA would use to make their official press release. People have become so culturally acclimitised to the idea of extraterrestrial life ( thank you Spielberg, Carter, Schrieber.. ) that after a carefully couched announcement from the government, I don't think you'd see a sociological impact of the scale predicted by the conservative think tanks of the 1980s.
The problem were that these tanks were modelling their first contact scenarios on colonial contact with indigenous habitants here on earth. A crashed UFO followed by no further contact would be more like a dead conquistador washing up on the shores of Mexico. And the government could even spin it to give humans a feeling of superiority ( i.e. 'They may have discovered space travel, but they seem to have arrived here by accident. Also, they don't have beanie babies or ice tea.' )
I think it would work out pretty well. I'd like to live in a universe with other intelligent life, so I hope we see something like this in my lifetime. I think the odds are infinitessimally remote though.
YLFISo, does this robot also transform into a jet fighter?
YLFIExcept for the fact that a box of crackers is unlikely to be picked up by a metal detector wand.
If you want to test something important, you should do it with real test data. If you want to prove conclusively that your dog is going to chase rabbits, you need to use your dog and some rabbits, not a dog shaped bale of hay and some slippers with cotton balls on the heel.
YLFIIt is not our job to design workable e-voting ( which is a waste of time imho ) systems. It is Diebolds job. I get paid to do something different.
All we'd like is for Diebold to actually do their job properly. I don't see that as an unreasonable request.
YLFII likewise have these awesome computer printouts here. Until we know that they're nothing more than paper and ink, I think they should be treated with more value than that.
Bidding starts at USD$10,000,000, no cancelations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.
YLFI