Here's an interesting article about someone who is using a game to provide players with an approximation of what it is like to be schizophrenic, as an educational tool for people who interact with those who suffer from the condition (family members and caretakers):
http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/09/in_the_m in ds_ey.html
My video card started failing this week in my gnu/linux workstation so I went to the local computer store and bought a new one. While there were several ATI cards available, they were NOT an option in my mind, because ATI's drivers are too buggy to be worth my trouble.
I settled on a FX5200 becuase it was fanless and would be fast enough for what I needed.
The closed source nVidia drivers compiled and installed without a hitch, but I'm not a novice when it comes to compiling a new kernel. The installation would have been impossible for many people I know.
One problem I've noticed using cygwin as a development environment with a bunch of Windoze programmers is that cygwin is more particular bout the permissions on the files than the Windoze double-click. That is, cygwin needs the executable bit set, where Windoze doesn't care. This can be frustrating when you have scripts calling other scripts and the permissions are wrong somewhere deep in the heirarchy.
While this might not affect you if you are setting up the directories yourself, it might bite you if your customer uses the mouse to copy new scripts into the directories from a non-cygwin environment.
I had suggested the operation to my wife but she was too afraid of the risks. Her mother had gone blind and eventually died at a relatively young age... not because of laser surgery, but I mention it here because it was a factor in my wife's private fears.
Then one day she was talking to one of her friends who had undergone laser surgery. He was thrilled with the results and claimed that he "walked out of the clinic with better eyesight than he had ever had with glasses or contacts" -- a rather unbelievable story detail but his raving reviews convinced her to try it out.
She had one eye done at a time, to reduce the credit card bill and also to ensure that if the first eye didn't go well then at least she would have one working eye!
It went great so a few months later she had the other eye done and has not regretted it. Now she notices a little bit of extra hazziness on bright lights at night, and is still a bit hooked on eye drops after about two years (but then, she used a lot of eye drop stuff when she had contacts).
I know about five or six people who have had the proceedure done and they all had positive results.
Finally, if you are having it done in the SF Bay Area, my wife would strongly recommend the UCSF eye center. That is where she had the second eye done and she found them MUCH more professional than the private eye doctor (trained at UCSF) that did her first eye.
CompUSA used to sell an external modem that would do the dialing for you and provide ethernet on your side (2 ethernet port hub built in that provided DHCP). You would just have to set up ethernet on your linux machine (easy, compared to setting up stupid winmodem crap) and then configure it via its internal web page.
I can't remember the name, but it cost about $50 - $65 a year ago.
The best thing about it was that it ran embedded linux on the inside, and was hackable. I couldn't find the article where I first heard about it, but I'll look a little harder and will post it if I find it.
This has been an interesting thread in a "pie in the sky" sorta way. I truely belive that a P2P distributed virtual world would be very cool. But if you amputate the computational load of all that authentication checking you've GREATLY simplified the problem of simulating a virtual world.
I'm afraid that the technology of today (bandwidth and CPU power) are just not up to snuff for so much key passing and authentication checking. 10 years down the road sure... but 10 years of advances in computer/network technology will also make it that much easier/cheaper to centralize the simulation at the servers and let the clients flex their muscles on the rendering.
What's going to happen is that the "metaverse" will probably be distributed across many "nodes", but each node will effectively be very large (think square miles rather than single buildings). It will be so cheap to simulate more virtual space than the population of the earth can fill, that you won't NEED a bunch of scrappy nodes tied together with untrusted shoestrings. A much smaller number of trusted entities will be able to run the show by consolidating the work. And most everyone will be happy about it.
In other words, the "neat idea" you've been trippin' out on scales as the surface area of the network topology, not necessarily the volume. You can reduce your authentication overhead by keeping the chunks large and the interconnects few.
The stucture of the distributed servers you are envisioning will be much more like today's electronically connected national banks. When it comes to real business you don't mint your money, or accept your neighbors minted money because it is easier for the both of you to use the government's money. Likewise, when it comes to real virtual business you won't mint your virtual reality, nor accept your neighbor's virtual reality, you'll use a "node's" virtual reality.
The high-surface-area P2P virtual reality networks of the future will be curious novelties for the adventurous rather than the bulk of the metaverse core.
I'm so glad the question was asked, and that so many people answered. I've been thinking about playing with microcontrollers again but didn't want to stoop so low as to have to use Windoze as the developmemt environment.
I've got a friend who has an idea for a little gadget and was thinking about helping with the construction. He's less interested in learning uC magic than just getting the thing working so I bought an Xport 2.0 card which turns a regular Nintendo GameBoy into a little robotics development kit for the project. It should arrive in a few days.
Sigh... I'll probably have to use his Windoze machine for programming the card, but at least I can use gnu/linux for the actual editing. And overall it's going to be a fun project.
Now I'm off to check out AVRfreaks.org -- thanks everyone.
Re:suck it up and get a motorcycle.
on
Alternatives to Cars?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Motorcycles do not necessarily produce 20 times the pollution of a gas guzzling SUV. Bikes sold in California have more stringent exhaust requirements than the other 49. Also, most new BMW motorcycles have catalytic converters installed.
I've got a 550cc Kawasaki that gets 57 miles to the gallon. I use it to commute into San Francisco and since I count as a "carpool" I don't have to pay the bridge tolls when I cross during commute hours.
When I get to work I NEVER have trouble finding free parking.
Insurance is $50 a year (part of a multiple motorcycle package between my wife and I).
When traffic comes to a stand still I often can lane-split my way out of it.
I estimate that I save more $ than the value of my motorcycle every year by using it to commute.
I strongly recommend motorcycles as an alternative mode of transportation, however good gear is a must. Leather jacket, pants, gloves, and boots will help you keep warm and will protect your skin if you go down.
Rumor has it that Second Life will run on a 450 MHz computer as long as you've got an nVidia GF3 Ti or better, however you will have to scale back draw distance and some other rendering optins. At least 512 MB RAM will help you out A LOT.
I'm recovering from tendonitis in my fingers rather than my wrists.
I was using two Happy Hacking keyboards at almost right angles to each other, which made me have to twist to use one of them (my main machine of choice, as it turned out), and I would happly pound away at the keys with habitual excessive force. Then one day: tap, tappity, tap, tap, OUCH!
First, I collapsed my two keyboards and monitor s to one with a KVM. Then I started looking for an ergonomic keyboard.
For me it was very much the amount of force necessary to press the keys so I looked for a keyboard with a light touch. I finally settled on a FingerWorks Touch-Stream Stealth which is a really odd keyboard with no real buttons... instead you just tap the painted-on spots on a flat plastic pad. It also functions as a mouse, and uses gestures for SHIFT, ALT, and a whole host of other special functions (it even has emacs mode specific functions).
My hands can definitely last longer on the Touch-Stream, and they are slowly returning to normal (looks like it will be at least 8 months to full recovery if ever (it has been 4 months already)). Every once in a while I get on a regular keyboard and notice that my fingers don't fare nearly as well (but I can type noticably faster).
So its advantages are:
(1) easy on the hands (I doubt there is a keyboard with a softer touch)
(2) easy on the wrists (comes with ergonomic platform with nice soft hand rests, and is very adjustible)
(3) mouse without lifting your hands from the keyboard
(4) the gestures are customizable (but I haven't played with that yet)
The cons for Touch-Stream (in my experience) are:
(1) takes at least 2 weeks of use to approach your old level of productivity (the first few days are very frustrating). Its almost as bad as realearning.
(2) after 4 months you still only be at about 80% as fast as on a regular keyboard
(3) its not very good for fine mousework (since it is USB I can run a second mouse and keyboard on the side should I need them)
(4) it has a "game mode" but IMO is not a viable game keyboard
gamingopenmarket.com opened recently in December. They are still small and not moving much EQ money or items, however they allow you to transfer wealth between games. Ready to cash out of the old treadmill and move to a new game?
Their market pages are formatted to look like regular stock price histograms, complete with tranaction volume. The busiest market (hence
the one with the most interesting plots) is for Second Life (secondlife.com).
They once passed a chunk of aerogel around in one of my graduate physics classes. One of the interesting visual effects of the stuff is that, since it is mostly air, it has the same index of refraction as air and does not bend the light like a piece of glass or plastic or any other transparent solid object that you are familiar with. It is a ghostly object in your hand.
There are lots of good boardgames available from Cheapass Games: http://www.cheapass.com.
I usually buy 4 or 5 games from them around christmas time as stocking stuffers.
Girls and video games.... there are whole books on the subject. _From_Barbie_to_Mortal_Kombat_ is one that I've read, and it raises several interesting issues.
For example one of the debatable reasons (among many) that video games tend to be designed for boys is that its easier to design a game that boys like than games that appeal to girls. That is, some of the games that girls would like to play are hard to build; it's easier to make a spaceship shoot at the invading alien hoard than it is to make Barbie navigate cliques in high-school.
Also, there are games emerging that currently appeal to many women and indicate a trend in technology and online entertainment. Check out:
Slashdot Mirror
These guys sell a little kit for turning a GBA into an embedded prototyping platform:
/. about 6 months ago.
http://www.charmedlabs.com/
They were mentioned on
They ported their tools to linux and also sell a bluetooth module.
http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/09/in_the_min ds_ey.html
Here's an interesting article about someone who is using a game to provide players with an approximation of what it is like to be schizophrenic, as an educational tool for people who interact with those who suffer from the condition (family members and caretakers):
m in ds_ey.html
http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/09/in_the_
The one where you "own your own real estate" is called Second Life.
http://www.secondlife.com
They just updated to version 1.5.
My video card started failing this week in my gnu/linux workstation so I went to the local computer store and bought a new one. While there were several ATI cards available, they were NOT an option in my mind, because ATI's drivers are too buggy to be worth my trouble.
I settled on a FX5200 becuase it was fanless and would be fast enough for what I needed.
The closed source nVidia drivers compiled and installed without a hitch, but I'm not a novice when it comes to compiling a new kernel. The installation would have been impossible for many people I know.
One problem I've noticed using cygwin as a development environment with a bunch of Windoze programmers is that cygwin is more particular bout the permissions on the files than the Windoze double-click. That is, cygwin needs the executable bit set, where Windoze doesn't care. This can be frustrating when you have scripts calling other scripts and the permissions are wrong somewhere deep in the heirarchy.
While this might not affect you if you are setting up the directories yourself, it might bite you if your customer uses the mouse to copy new scripts into the directories from a non-cygwin environment.
I had suggested the operation to my wife but she was too afraid of the risks. Her mother had gone blind and eventually died at a relatively young age... not because of laser surgery, but I mention it here because it was a factor in my wife's private fears.
Then one day she was talking to one of her friends who had undergone laser surgery. He was thrilled with the results and claimed that he "walked out of the clinic with better eyesight than he had ever had with glasses or contacts" -- a rather unbelievable story detail but his raving reviews convinced her to try it out.
She had one eye done at a time, to reduce the credit card bill and also to ensure that if the first eye didn't go well then at least she would have one working eye!
It went great so a few months later she had the other eye done and has not regretted it. Now she notices a little bit of extra hazziness on bright lights at night, and is still a bit hooked on eye drops after about two years (but then, she used a lot of eye drop stuff when she had contacts).
I know about five or six people who have had the proceedure done and they all had positive results.
Finally, if you are having it done in the SF Bay Area, my wife would strongly recommend the UCSF eye center. That is where she had the second eye done and she found them MUCH more professional than the private eye doctor (trained at UCSF) that did her first eye.
Good luck.
If only IE were included in the debian/stable distribution so I could have the pleasure of uninstalling it.
It was an "Actiontec Dual-PC External Modem".
i a= 3314314
5 25 7&mode=thread&tid=106&tid=137&tid= 185
Here's a link to the gadget info:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriter
Here's a link to the slashdot article where I learned about it:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/01/024
CompUSA used to sell an external modem that would do the dialing for you and provide ethernet on your side (2 ethernet port hub built in that provided DHCP). You would just have to set up ethernet on your linux machine (easy, compared to setting up stupid winmodem crap) and then configure it via its internal web page.
I can't remember the name, but it cost about $50 - $65 a year ago.
The best thing about it was that it ran embedded linux on the inside, and was hackable. I couldn't find the article where I first heard about it, but I'll look a little harder and will post it if I find it.
apt-get install foo
Software that flows like water!
This has been an interesting thread in a "pie in the sky" sorta way. I truely belive that a P2P distributed virtual world would be very cool. But if you amputate the computational load of all that authentication checking you've GREATLY simplified the problem of simulating a virtual world.
I'm afraid that the technology of today (bandwidth and CPU power) are just not up to snuff for so much key passing and authentication checking. 10 years down the road sure... but 10 years of advances in computer/network technology will also make it that much easier/cheaper to centralize the simulation at the servers and let the clients flex their muscles on the rendering.
What's going to happen is that the "metaverse" will probably be distributed across many "nodes", but each node will effectively be very large (think square miles rather than single buildings). It will be so cheap to simulate more virtual space than the population of the earth can fill, that you won't NEED a bunch of scrappy nodes tied together with untrusted shoestrings. A much smaller number of trusted entities will be able to run the show by consolidating the work. And most everyone will be happy about it.
In other words, the "neat idea" you've been trippin' out on scales as the surface area of the network topology, not necessarily the volume. You can reduce your authentication overhead by keeping the chunks large and the interconnects few.
The stucture of the distributed servers you are envisioning will be much more like today's electronically connected national banks. When it comes to real business you don't mint your money, or accept your neighbors minted money because it is easier for the both of you to use the government's money. Likewise, when it comes to real virtual business you won't mint your virtual reality, nor accept your neighbor's virtual reality, you'll use a "node's" virtual reality.
The high-surface-area P2P virtual reality networks of the future will be curious novelties for the adventurous rather than the bulk of the metaverse core.
I'm so glad the question was asked, and that so many people answered. I've been thinking about playing with microcontrollers again but didn't want to stoop so low as to have to use Windoze as the developmemt environment.
I've got a friend who has an idea for a little gadget and was thinking about helping with the construction. He's less interested in learning uC magic than just getting the thing working so I bought an Xport 2.0 card which turns a regular Nintendo GameBoy into a little robotics development kit for the project. It should arrive in a few days.
Sigh... I'll probably have to use his Windoze machine for programming the card, but at least I can use gnu/linux for the actual editing. And overall it's going to be a fun project.
Now I'm off to check out AVRfreaks.org -- thanks everyone.
Motorcycles do not necessarily produce 20 times the pollution of a gas guzzling SUV. Bikes sold in California have more stringent exhaust requirements than the other 49. Also, most new BMW motorcycles have catalytic converters installed.
I've got a 550cc Kawasaki that gets 57 miles to the gallon. I use it to commute into San Francisco and since I count as a "carpool" I don't have to pay the bridge tolls when I cross during commute hours.
When I get to work I NEVER have trouble finding free parking.
Insurance is $50 a year (part of a multiple motorcycle package between my wife and I).
When traffic comes to a stand still I often can lane-split my way out of it.
I estimate that I save more $ than the value of my motorcycle every year by using it to commute.
I strongly recommend motorcycles as an alternative mode of transportation, however good gear is a must. Leather jacket, pants, gloves, and boots will help you keep warm and will protect your skin if you go down.
The Artists provided a nice bourne shell (hammer.sh) for hitting the targets. It downloads its list from their site and goes to town.
Its fun to watch the logs roll by. I think I'll leave it on overnight. Die 419'ers!
http://www.fingerworks.com
What I can tell you is this:
(1) it will take you at least 2 weeks to get used to this keyboard
(2) you probably will never be as efficient as this as on a regular keyboard (about 80% to 90%, depending on what you're doing)
(3) you'll want a regular mouse connected when you need fine control
(4) is has definitely helped my fingers recover (my fingers were suffering rather than my wrists)
(5) its pricey, at about $350
(6) your hands/wrists can recover, but it takes months to heal
Rumor has it that Second Life will run on a 450 MHz computer as long as you've got an nVidia GF3 Ti or better, however you will have to scale back draw distance and some other rendering optins. At least 512 MB RAM will help you out A LOT.
Below is the link to the first big thread on the SL forums about Fizik's purchase of an entire server:
& th readid=8428
http://forums.secondlife.com//showthread.php?s=
...of course!
http://secondlife.com
Well, the Mac client is currently in beta, but
it's only $9.95 for a lifetime of access.
I'm recovering from tendonitis in my fingers rather than my wrists.
I was using two Happy Hacking keyboards at almost right angles to each other, which made me have to twist to use one of them (my main machine of choice, as it turned out), and I would happly pound away at the keys with habitual excessive force. Then one day: tap, tappity, tap, tap, OUCH!
First, I collapsed my two keyboards and monitor s to one with a KVM. Then I started looking for an ergonomic keyboard.
For me it was very much the amount of force necessary to press the keys so I looked for a keyboard with a light touch. I finally settled on a FingerWorks Touch-Stream Stealth which is a really odd keyboard with no real buttons... instead you just tap the painted-on spots on a flat plastic pad. It also functions as a mouse, and uses gestures for SHIFT, ALT, and a whole host of other special functions (it even has emacs mode specific functions).
My hands can definitely last longer on the Touch-Stream, and they are slowly returning to normal (looks like it will be at least 8 months to full recovery if ever (it has been 4 months already)). Every once in a while I get on a regular keyboard and notice that my fingers don't fare nearly as well (but I can type noticably faster).
So its advantages are:
(1) easy on the hands (I doubt there is a keyboard with a softer touch)
(2) easy on the wrists (comes with ergonomic platform with nice soft hand rests, and is very adjustible)
(3) mouse without lifting your hands from the keyboard
(4) the gestures are customizable (but I haven't played with that yet)
The cons for Touch-Stream (in my experience) are:
(1) takes at least 2 weeks of use to approach your old level of productivity (the first few days are very frustrating). Its almost as bad as realearning.
(2) after 4 months you still only be at about 80% as fast as on a regular keyboard
(3) its not very good for fine mousework (since it is USB I can run a second mouse and keyboard on the side should I need them)
(4) it has a "game mode" but IMO is not a viable game keyboard
(5) at $350 it is on the expensive side
gamingopenmarket.com opened recently in December. They are still small and not moving much EQ money or items, however they allow you to transfer wealth between games. Ready to cash out of the old treadmill and move to a new game? Their market pages are formatted to look like regular stock price histograms, complete with tranaction volume. The busiest market (hence the one with the most interesting plots) is for Second Life (secondlife.com).
They once passed a chunk of aerogel around in one of my graduate physics classes. One of the interesting visual effects of the stuff is that, since it is mostly air, it has the same index of refraction as air and does not bend the light like a piece of glass or plastic or any other transparent solid object that you are familiar with. It is a ghostly object in your hand.
There are lots of good boardgames available from Cheapass Games: http://www.cheapass.com. I usually buy 4 or 5 games from them around christmas time as stocking stuffers.
For example one of the debatable reasons (among many) that video games tend to be designed for boys is that its easier to design a game that boys like than games that appeal to girls. That is, some of the games that girls would like to play are hard to build; it's easier to make a spaceship shoot at the invading alien hoard than it is to make Barbie navigate cliques in high-school.
Also, there are games emerging that currently appeal to many women and indicate a trend in technology and online entertainment. Check out:
http://secondlife.com -- creative playground
http://there.com -- 3D chat with dune-buggies