I just love doing non-game related things in the game world (usually when I need a break from the game proper).
For example, going through Deus Ex and stealing all the plants from all the offices in the Unatco building and putting them in my own office (looks like a greenhouse!). Or opening all the taps in the washing room. Or playing with the basket ball.
Or alternatively, playing with the Warthog in Halo. The idea being that you find an inaccessible spot and then try to get your Warthog into it. I swear, they could make an entire game out of that alone: just gives us difficult jumps, small ledges, narrow gaps, and obstacles, and let nature do the rest...
A couple of years ago all of the Infocom games were re-released as "The Lost Treasures of Infocom", parts 1 and 2. It gives you just about every text adventure Infocom ever made, except Leather Goddesses of Phobos, on just two CD's. I have since then played a couple of the games and hope one day to be able to play all of them;-)
I'd like to be able to play Half Life 2, but if they insist on selling it without physical media (that I can install and play without needing an internet connection) I am quite sure I'll be able to survive without it. Or better still, I'll wait for the inevitable hack to show up.
As much as it is Valve's prerogative to sell software with a limited lifetime and useability, is it also my prerogative not to buy it. It is entirely up to them, then...
I have for a long time feared something like this might happen in the end. IBM is not necessarily our friend. Any solution in which they (and nobody else) is allowed to use Linux might be considered advantageous by short-sighted executives.
Then again, they could in fact be men of vision that appreciate that all of their OS-development is done for free by various people around the world...
Looking at the bright side, if he wants to see it tested in court so badly he may very well get his chance. In fact, if he tries hard enough he might just be able to squeeze in before SCO...
They might be looking for an algorithm that establishes just how random the "random bits" of a file are. For example, you would expect the least significant bits in a jpeg to be more or less random - any degree of organisation there could be a hidden text or something else.
I would expect such an argument to have specific knowledge of various file formats, since randomness in a jpeg is not quite the same as randomness in for example a.EXE file.
I would further expect that my approach would be soundly defeated by first encrypting the information to be hidden, since encrypted data looks a lot more random than normal data anyway.
Personally I doubt it can be done. You might be able to defeat specific steganographic algorithms, but the general case cannot be solved. It would be a bit like having a universal decryption algorithm...
Linux got in the way of M$ World Domination(tm). Google also got in the way of M$WD. Strange, that SCO seems to prefer targets that are enemies of Microsoft?
I mean, it will not be a real dos emu if you cannot type "win" to boot into at least Windows 3.11. And who knows, doing that might even be useful to some people.
Screw Gradius too, I want a new Penguin Adventure! It would make a great translation, especially considering the original was already in full (but limited;-) ) 3D.
Come to think of it, thematically speaking this should really be a Linux game...
Re:"If they like him, I don't trust him"...
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
What makes you think this isn't going on right now?
These teams are not really "cottage industry". They are not some guys playing at being game developers, they are (usually fairly large) professional teams with years of experience in the industry.
If you withdraw, does that mean you get a refund? If so, this is a great way for geeks everywhere to completely swamp the patent system with useless software patents, while at the same time slowly but surely protecting O.S. in a protective layer of "withdrawn" patents. All without costing a cent.
Get ready to patent everything from pointers to linked lists to schedulers to drawing algorithms... (and before you mention there is prior art, that's not stopping anyone else now is it?)
Sometimes you need to do something once every three months. Clicking in a gui would get the job done in maybe half a minute, while reading up on the required command line actions would take half an hour. So in this case you need a gui.
At other times you need to do the same repetitive task thousands of times, over dozens of machines, every single day. You'd better be able to automate that, so you need a command line option here.
So, here is my rather remarkable suggestion: programs should, as a rule, cater to BOTH. Have both the gui and the commandline option available at all times. When you need it, use whatever is best for you, mixing options any way you like. Because gui and commandline are not at all mutually exclusive, no matter what many uninformed people will tell you.
A plane that has the effective flight characteristics of the space shuttle will also suffer from some of its safety issues. The thing that happened to Columbia (minor damage leading to disintegration of vehicle) could just as easily happen to any of these super-high speed planes.
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For example, going through Deus Ex and stealing all the plants from all the offices in the Unatco building and putting them in my own office (looks like a greenhouse!). Or opening all the taps in the washing room. Or playing with the basket ball.
Or alternatively, playing with the Warthog in Halo. The idea being that you find an inaccessible spot and then try to get your Warthog into it. I swear, they could make an entire game out of that alone: just gives us difficult jumps, small ledges, narrow gaps, and obstacles, and let nature do the rest...
A couple of years ago all of the Infocom games were re-released as "The Lost Treasures of Infocom", parts 1 and 2. It gives you just about every text adventure Infocom ever made, except Leather Goddesses of Phobos, on just two CD's. I have since then played a couple of the games and hope one day to be able to play all of them ;-)
As much as it is Valve's prerogative to sell software with a limited lifetime and useability, is it also my prerogative not to buy it. It is entirely up to them, then...
Then again, they could in fact be men of vision that appreciate that all of their OS-development is done for free by various people around the world...
Could you expand a bit on that?
Clearly the concept of "humor" is lost on some people...
I guess the people at Microsoft just didn't want fries with their XBox...
Nah, it is water alright. Unfortunately it is the water that leaked out of Beagle 2 after it crashed... ;-)
Looking at the bright side, if he wants to see it tested in court so badly he may very well get his chance. In fact, if he tries hard enough he might just be able to squeeze in before SCO...
Just out of curiosity, is it possible to jump the gun too late?
I would expect such an argument to have specific knowledge of various file formats, since randomness in a jpeg is not quite the same as randomness in for example a .EXE file.
I would further expect that my approach would be soundly defeated by first encrypting the information to be hidden, since encrypted data looks a lot more random than normal data anyway.
Personally I doubt it can be done. You might be able to defeat specific steganographic algorithms, but the general case cannot be solved. It would be a bit like having a universal decryption algorithm...
Linux got in the way of M$ World Domination(tm). Google also got in the way of M$WD. Strange, that SCO seems to prefer targets that are enemies of Microsoft?
I mean, it will not be a real dos emu if you cannot type "win" to boot into at least Windows 3.11. And who knows, doing that might even be useful to some people.
How do you suppose NASA ever decided on the correct reentry angle for spacecraft? That's right...
Come to think of it, thematically speaking this should really be a Linux game...
What makes you think this isn't going on right now?
These teams are not really "cottage industry". They are not some guys playing at being game developers, they are (usually fairly large) professional teams with years of experience in the industry.
Get ready to patent everything from pointers to linked lists to schedulers to drawing algorithms... (and before you mention there is prior art, that's not stopping anyone else now is it?)
Bha-dum-ching! ;-)
The one downside I can think of is that it offers your customers an incentive to drive you out of business...
"Better operating systems" is just part of it. Freedom is the other bit. I don't see M$ adopting that any time soon...
At other times you need to do the same repetitive task thousands of times, over dozens of machines, every single day. You'd better be able to automate that, so you need a command line option here.
So, here is my rather remarkable suggestion: programs should, as a rule, cater to BOTH. Have both the gui and the commandline option available at all times. When you need it, use whatever is best for you, mixing options any way you like. Because gui and commandline are not at all mutually exclusive, no matter what many uninformed people will tell you.
A plane that has the effective flight characteristics of the space shuttle will also suffer from some of its safety issues. The thing that happened to Columbia (minor damage leading to disintegration of vehicle) could just as easily happen to any of these super-high speed planes.
So does your frog use Linux?
...he said in a posting on slashdot.