I got my gamecube early in the morning on the day it came out (amidst a large group of parents buying them for their children). I snagged a copy of Luigi's Mansion (Rogue Leader was sold out by the time I got to the front of the line). Within a week I'd beaten it twice. It's an awesome game, but after some practice it's really easy. My first try got my a C ranking. Second try I got all the Boos, both secret rooms, a buttload of cash and an A. And that was in the "Hidden Mansion", which didn't seem to be any different from the normal mansion.
Anyways, I've rented Rogue Leader and I love it. It's one of those great games where you can just putz around in the 3d world if you want to. Great graphics, great gameplay. I will definately be purchasing this for myself for xmas... but my next purchase is Super Smash Bros. Melee. I completely rocked all of my friends at Super Smash Bros. for N64. Got all of the secret characters except for luigi... I could never finish that one level with Yoshi where you have to drop off a cliff, shoot an egg, hover in the air and shoot another egg. I will be getting the sequel tomorrow morning and an extra control stick so I can train my girlfriend to kick our friends' butts with me.
I just returned Grand Theft Auto 3 to blockbuster. I had to wait quite some time before they actually had a copy in. Thankfully there was one in when I went to return Crazy Taxi for PS2. That game sucked hard. It was great in the arcade, but it's just not any fun for the console. If they added a new mode or maybe had different cities or something it'd be ok. The copy I rented locked up a few times also. I hope that was due to scratches and not the game itself.
So back to Grand Theft Auto 3. There is no better game in my opinion. I love it. I've been playing GTA since 1996/1997. I was first introduced to it by some coworkers at my first job - tech support at a local isp. That game, along with Quake (and a T1) and Carmageddon made for wonderful stress relief. I've got the GTA 1 + London 1968 discs for PSX, and I just got GTA2 for PSX for $10 at Best Buy. GTA 3 is the s#%t, plain and simple. You can just roam around the city, steal taxis, and other misc. cars, get into trouble, mess with the cops, do jobs for the mafia, etc. The interface is an incredible improvement over the old top-down view, which actually remains in this version also. GTA3 is definately going to be my favorite xmas present this year.
Defend your trademark privately as best you can. Don't get the whole world involved in your squabbling because all that you are doing is tarnishing the reputations of both firms. --
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
Yeah, way to go folks. Let's show the corporations of the world just how the open source community, and companies involved in it, work. Let's show them just how childish and immature we can be, and how infighting can stop us from getting real work done.
As if the open source community didn't already have enough FUD to defend itself against...
I've been following this closely since I first heard about the boards from a nice IBM fellow at the first or second LWCE in San Jose. At that time they were waiting for a chip company, I think Via, to finish the Northbridge chip for the board. I caught up with the same IBM fellow at LWCE in San Jose last August and discovered that the Northbridge chip had been cancelled by the company that was designing it and that, since they had no Northbridge chip, the ref. board was delayed. From what I know, IBM is now working on a Northbridge chip for the board themselves, and as soon as that is done, there should be cheap PPC boards galore.
Keep tabs on openppc.org. --
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
I have been researching and trying out various Problem Report Management Systems lately at work in order to determine which one we should use. (Keystone would be nice if it were Free Software)
I've not yet fully documented my search and my findings, but I have to say that Double Choco Latte is definately our first choice. Were we using it simply for software development, I would have spent the seemingly considerable amount of time it takes to setup GNATS 4.0, although that is still in development, the release date of which is apparently RSN.
If your needs didn't require web based access, PRePS would be an acceptable choice as well. Heck, if they had a web frontend I'd consider it.
But I have to endorse DCL in this case. We've exchanged some emails with the lead developer, he's a great guy and they've got an incredible system. It may need a little work, considering it isn't yet fully stable/functional though. DCL is a work order system, and is general enough to fit to any trouble ticket/help desk/PRMS task you may need.
That was my original goal, yes, but it was not my only goal. There are many projects which I am, or was, working on that I would have liked to have made a part of Stampede, but because of my problems with the management of the organization, they will not get done. At least, not in relation to Stampede. That is what I personally regret.
I understand your belief that Stampede would have flourished had there been a larger user base, however, based on my experiences, that would not have mattered. I'm sorry I cannot elaborate on this, I do not wish to discuss personal matters in a public forum.
The only comment that I can make related to your views on marketing is that it never really was given any thought by the management. Again, to delve any further into that matter would involve personal matters that I do not wish to make public.
And I do not know how much clearer I can make it that we were not intending to "defeat RedHat", or any other distribution for that matter. We found projects we liked to work on, and we worked on them when we could. We have had fun doing this and learned a lot. It was never about selling product, making money, etc. It was just something we liked to do in our spare time.
Although I love working on/with Free Software in my spare time, I wouldn't mind working on it fulltime, in fact that'd be great. However, there is no way that I would ever want to be working on a distribution fulltime without a serious, proven infrastructure designed for that purpose in place.
While this is an interesting point I must make it clear that Stampede was never meant to compete with RedHat and the likes. We never really made any attempts at outward marketing. It was just a project we worked on for fun. We did what we pleased to do with it, and we tried to make it work for other users as well when they had problems.
Heck, the only reason I ever even got involved was because I wanted to figure out exactly how Linux and Free Software works, and I did.
For the record, the fact that we had an internal dispute related to the management of the project should have NOTHING to do with the overall credibility of Linux and or Free (or Open Source) Software. This was simply a dispute over the way the Stampede Linux project was being managed, no more, no less. There were no other factors involved in our decision to leave the project. Period.
While there may be many developers out there who are feeling sore because they are not receiving vast quantities of money for their work, and others are, I must make it very clear that this has nothing to do with why we left Stampede.
From what I've read the existence of an IA32 version is simply a cross-compiled set of the source. I do not think that this even boots yet. Anyways, the only machines that it seems to work on are the OldWorld G3's and NewWorld G3 and G4 systems from Apple. Not as if it matters, when I tried to download it I got an internal server error.
I was reading through this issue for another article in it, but I was at the airport and well, waiting for a plane so I read the whole thing. There is a very informative article in it about all kinds of Laser Corrective Surgery. It has a nice chart on the top of page 63 which lists the aspects of the different forms of the surgery: INTACS, Intraocular Lenses, and Custon LASIK. Tells what each type of surgery fixes, advantages and disadvantages.
I downloaded that thing over a year ago and I've used it quite a few times to access the internet when my computer has been in a state of OS limbo. It's useful, but this is not news. -- Gabe Ricard
Well, I'm definately no expert on GUI programming using Qt or GTK+, but I have an idea you may have heard, and may like.
You could write the program in such a way that it uses libgmodule's modules (from glib) and call your own custom written generic functions to create the windows you need, which will use widget toolkit specific functions from a number of modules. I.E. you could have a module for GTK, and one for Qt, and one for Lesstif or whatnot. You just have the program load a module based on a command line option, or a default, and then it will, say based on a variable's contents, extract the correct symbols for the widget specific functions from the modules.
If you're confused, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this.
I must admit that I got suckered into it like a lot of other people. They did an extremely good job promoting the movie as being the real documentary work of the three students who disappeared. The show that aired on SciFi channel helped tremendously to create a spooky atmosphere around the film. They did a great job with it, though there were a few points that made me think twice. I loved the whole storyline and the historic references, though a lot of the historic appearances linked with the Blair Witch were all pretty much ridiculous and easily explained. There were a lot of things which just didn't make sense. The fact that Mike kicked the map into the creek, well... no one, even in that situation, and that scared, would ever do that. That was just dumb. Anotehr thing... Why the hell did they run out of the tent when something was outside hitting it from all sides? What if it had been right in front of the door ready to kill them? Also... when they were walking south... and somehow went in a complete circle, even though they were looking at the compass, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY LOOK UP AT THE SUN?!?! I walked away from it the first time (without having read the credits all the way to the point where it mentions the entire thing is a work of fiction) and I thought the kids were just plain stupid. I also thought that Josh was the one who hit them in the basement of that house. That reminds me.... Just how did a three story, modern house, get built in the middle of the friggin woods without ANY roads or pathways leading to it? Houses don't just appear in the middle of nowhere. Also... the basement of that house looked a good 75-100 years older than the rest of the house. The kids' handprints and the writing on the walls was interesting... but what was the deal with that? There were no kids there. That wasn't Rustin Parr's house because they said that the people in the town burned his house down. *shrug* Another thing about Rustin Parr, the witch supposedly told him to kill those kids, yes, but it wasn't the witch who told him to have one kid face the corner while he killed the other one. So why was Mike facing the corner when Heather got hit? And just how did Mike get back up after being knocked out like that? Knowing that this was a fictional movie now, I really have to say that those three kids were portraying a bunch of mildly retarded film crew members. They did a good job making the movie, they tricked me once, but they did still make some mistakes. No one is ever going to be able to pull something like this off again.
Yeah, it may, in some cases, be wrong to use taxpayer money for something like this. But that's not the only way to look at it.
We pay our government, through taxes, to do their job. Their job is to govern our contry, and so far they've done a fair job at it. Sure there are problems, but when was the last time you were arrested for speaking your mind? When was the last time all of your posessions were confiscated by the government just because they felt like it? The majority of Americans live in decent housing, have jobs, and are not starving to death in the streets, and you would complain about this? I know this is a bit exaggerated in part, but I only hope you get my point. We've got it pretty good here.
Our government does their job, and we should be very thankful for it. We should also be thankful that they not only help us by governing, but that they would be willing to take a part of their funding and put it towards open source projects. They don't HAVE to do that, and you don't HAVE to live in this country if you don't want to. We all have free will, exercise it how you want.
Personally I don't think that this is such a bad idea at all. Within the last year and a half the Open Source movement has come a long way. There is growing public recognition. We're changing the way things are done out there. Within a few years, who knows? It has every potential to reshape our entire way of thinking.
So what would you rather our government do with the money that we would give to them anyways? Would you rather that they build a few more bombs, guns, etc. Or maybe you'd rather they line their own pockets with it? I'd like to see this money being put towards good use, and if it means me paying a few dollars more per year, I'm all for it.
If someone feels that a project they work on, is important enough to the general population, of the country, world, internet, or what have you... OR if they feel that their project could generate funds that could be used to fund other projects, then why not give them a chance and see if they can do it? It's becoming quite obvious that Open Source software is growing beyond the bounds of free time work for computer enthusiasts. If someone believes they can use this money to help out in some way, then give them the benefit of the doubt and let them try. To quote a Red Hot Chili Peppers song: "...but the Bunghole Surfers said, 'It was better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do.'"
Slashdot Mirror
You one ah them thar scientolomagists?
Go to http://www.greenspun.com, http://photo.net, and http://www.arsdigita.com. Philip will teach you the way...
In case you don't wander across it, read Philip's book about web design.
Also, some other related reading would be Nielsen Norman Group, Nielson's own site www.useit.com, and their friend tog.
Make it work first, make it pretty last. User interface is key.
I got my gamecube early in the morning on the day it came out (amidst a large group of parents buying them for their children). I snagged a copy of Luigi's Mansion (Rogue Leader was sold out by the time I got to the front of the line). Within a week I'd beaten it twice. It's an awesome game, but after some practice it's really easy. My first try got my a C ranking. Second try I got all the Boos, both secret rooms, a buttload of cash and an A. And that was in the "Hidden Mansion", which didn't seem to be any different from the normal mansion.
Anyways, I've rented Rogue Leader and I love it. It's one of those great games where you can just putz around in the 3d world if you want to. Great graphics, great gameplay. I will definately be purchasing this for myself for xmas... but my next purchase is Super Smash Bros. Melee. I completely rocked all of my friends at Super Smash Bros. for N64. Got all of the secret characters except for luigi... I could never finish that one level with Yoshi where you have to drop off a cliff, shoot an egg, hover in the air and shoot another egg. I will be getting the sequel tomorrow morning and an extra control stick so I can train my girlfriend to kick our friends' butts with me.
I just returned Grand Theft Auto 3 to blockbuster. I had to wait quite some time before they actually had a copy in. Thankfully there was one in when I went to return Crazy Taxi for PS2. That game sucked hard. It was great in the arcade, but it's just not any fun for the console. If they added a new mode or maybe had different cities or something it'd be ok. The copy I rented locked up a few times also. I hope that was due to scratches and not the game itself.
So back to Grand Theft Auto 3. There is no better game in my opinion. I love it. I've been playing GTA since 1996/1997. I was first introduced to it by some coworkers at my first job - tech support at a local isp. That game, along with Quake (and a T1) and Carmageddon made for wonderful stress relief. I've got the GTA 1 + London 1968 discs for PSX, and I just got GTA2 for PSX for $10 at Best Buy. GTA 3 is the s#%t, plain and simple. You can just roam around the city, steal taxis, and other misc. cars, get into trouble, mess with the cops, do jobs for the mafia, etc. The interface is an incredible improvement over the old top-down view, which actually remains in this version also. GTA3 is definately going to be my favorite xmas present this year.
Defend your trademark privately as best you can. Don't get the whole world involved in your squabbling because all that you are doing is tarnishing the reputations of both firms.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
Yeah, way to go folks. Let's show the corporations of the world just how the open source community, and companies involved in it, work. Let's show them just how childish and immature we can be, and how infighting can stop us from getting real work done.
As if the open source community didn't already have enough FUD to defend itself against...
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
I've been following this closely since I first heard about the boards from a nice IBM fellow at the first or second LWCE in San Jose. At that time they were waiting for a chip company, I think Via, to finish the Northbridge chip for the board. I caught up with the same IBM fellow at LWCE in San Jose last August and discovered that the Northbridge chip had been cancelled by the company that was designing it and that, since they had no Northbridge chip, the ref. board was delayed. From what I know, IBM is now working on a Northbridge chip for the board themselves, and as soon as that is done, there should be cheap PPC boards galore. Keep tabs on openppc.org.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
I have been researching and trying out various Problem Report Management Systems lately at work in order to determine which one we should use. (Keystone would be nice if it were Free Software)
I've not yet fully documented my search and my findings, but I have to say that Double Choco Latte is definately our first choice. Were we using it simply for software development, I would have spent the seemingly considerable amount of time it takes to setup GNATS 4.0, although that is still in development, the release date of which is apparently RSN.
If your needs didn't require web based access, PRePS would be an acceptable choice as well. Heck, if they had a web frontend I'd consider it.
But I have to endorse DCL in this case. We've exchanged some emails with the lead developer, he's a great guy and they've got an incredible system. It may need a little work, considering it isn't yet fully stable/functional though. DCL is a work order system, and is general enough to fit to any trouble ticket/help desk/PRMS task you may need.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
That was my original goal, yes, but it was not my only goal. There are many projects which I am, or was, working on that I would have liked to have made a part of Stampede, but because of my problems with the management of the organization, they will not get done. At least, not in relation to Stampede. That is what I personally regret.
I understand your belief that Stampede would have flourished had there been a larger user base, however, based on my experiences, that would not have mattered. I'm sorry I cannot elaborate on this, I do not wish to discuss personal matters in a public forum.
The only comment that I can make related to your views on marketing is that it never really was given any thought by the management. Again, to delve any further into that matter would involve personal matters that I do not wish to make public.
And I do not know how much clearer I can make it that we were not intending to "defeat RedHat", or any other distribution for that matter. We found projects we liked to work on, and we worked on them when we could. We have had fun doing this and learned a lot. It was never about selling product, making money, etc. It was just something we liked to do in our spare time.
Although I love working on/with Free Software in my spare time, I wouldn't mind working on it fulltime, in fact that'd be great. However, there is no way that I would ever want to be working on a distribution fulltime without a serious, proven infrastructure designed for that purpose in place.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
While this is an interesting point I must make it clear that Stampede was never meant to compete with RedHat and the likes. We never really made any attempts at outward marketing. It was just a project we worked on for fun. We did what we pleased to do with it, and we tried to make it work for other users as well when they had problems.
Heck, the only reason I ever even got involved was because I wanted to figure out exactly how Linux and Free Software works, and I did.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
For the record, the fact that we had an internal dispute related to the management of the project should have NOTHING to do with the overall credibility of Linux and or Free (or Open Source) Software. This was simply a dispute over the way the Stampede Linux project was being managed, no more, no less. There were no other factors involved in our decision to leave the project. Period.
While there may be many developers out there who are feeling sore because they are not receiving vast quantities of money for their work, and others are, I must make it very clear that this has nothing to do with why we left Stampede.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
From what I've read the existence of an IA32 version is simply a cross-compiled set of the source. I do not think that this even boots yet. Anyways, the only machines that it seems to work on are the OldWorld G3's and NewWorld G3 and G4 systems from Apple. Not as if it matters, when I tried to download it I got an internal server error.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
I hope you find what you're looking for.
--
Gabriel Ricard
Linux Fanatic
I downloaded that thing over a year ago and I've used it quite a few times to access the internet when my computer has been in a state of OS limbo. It's useful, but this is not news.
--
Gabe Ricard
Well, I'm definately no expert on GUI programming using Qt or GTK+, but I have an idea you may have heard, and may like.
You could write the program in such a way that it uses libgmodule's modules (from glib) and call your own custom written generic functions to create the windows you need, which will use widget toolkit specific functions from a number of modules. I.E. you could have a module for GTK, and one for Qt, and one for Lesstif or whatnot. You just have the program load a module based on a command line option, or a default, and then it will, say based on a variable's contents, extract the correct symbols for the widget specific functions from the modules.
If you're confused, I'm sorry, but I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this.
--
Gabe Ricard
I must admit that I got suckered into it like a lot of other people. They did an extremely good job promoting the movie as being the real documentary work of the three students who disappeared. The show that aired on SciFi channel helped tremendously to create a spooky atmosphere around the film. They did a great job with it, though there were a few points that made me think twice.
I loved the whole storyline and the historic references, though a lot of the historic appearances linked with the Blair Witch were all pretty much ridiculous and easily explained.
There were a lot of things which just didn't make sense. The fact that Mike kicked the map into the creek, well... no one, even in that situation, and that scared, would ever do that. That was just dumb. Anotehr thing... Why the hell did they run out of the tent when something was outside hitting it from all sides? What if it had been right in front of the door ready to kill them? Also... when they were walking south... and somehow went in a complete circle, even though they were looking at the compass, WHY THE HELL DIDN'T THEY LOOK UP AT THE SUN?!?! I walked away from it the first time (without having read the credits all the way to the point where it mentions the entire thing is a work of fiction) and I thought the kids were just plain stupid. I also thought that Josh was the one who hit them in the basement of that house.
That reminds me.... Just how did a three story, modern house, get built in the middle of the friggin woods without ANY roads or pathways leading to it? Houses don't just appear in the middle of nowhere. Also... the basement of that house looked a good 75-100 years older than the rest of the house. The kids' handprints and the writing on the walls was interesting... but what was the deal with that? There were no kids there. That wasn't Rustin Parr's house because they said that the people in the town burned his house down.
*shrug*
Another thing about Rustin Parr, the witch supposedly told him to kill those kids, yes, but it wasn't the witch who told him to have one kid face the corner while he killed the other one. So why was Mike facing the corner when Heather got hit? And just how did Mike get back up after being knocked out like that?
Knowing that this was a fictional movie now, I really have to say that those three kids were portraying a bunch of mildly retarded film crew members. They did a good job making the movie, they tricked me once, but they did still make some mistakes. No one is ever going to be able to pull something like this off again.
--
Gabe Ricard
We pay our government, through taxes, to do their job. Their job is to govern our contry, and so far they've done a fair job at it. Sure there are problems, but when was the last time you were arrested for speaking your mind? When was the last time all of your posessions were confiscated by the government just because they felt like it? The majority of Americans live in decent housing, have jobs, and are not starving to death in the streets, and you would complain about this? I know this is a bit exaggerated in part, but I only hope you get my point. We've got it pretty good here.
Our government does their job, and we should be very thankful for it. We should also be thankful that they not only help us by governing, but that they would be willing to take a part of their funding and put it towards open source projects. They don't HAVE to do that, and you don't HAVE to live in this country if you don't want to. We all have free will, exercise it how you want.
Personally I don't think that this is such a bad idea at all. Within the last year and a half the Open Source movement has come a long way. There is growing public recognition. We're changing the way things are done out there. Within a few years, who knows? It has every potential to reshape our entire way of thinking.
So what would you rather our government do with the money that we would give to them anyways? Would you rather that they build a few more bombs, guns, etc. Or maybe you'd rather they line their own pockets with it? I'd like to see this money being put towards good use, and if it means me paying a few dollars more per year, I'm all for it.
If someone feels that a project they work on, is important enough to the general population, of the country, world, internet, or what have you... OR if they feel that their project could generate funds that could be used to fund other projects, then why not give them a chance and see if they can do it? It's becoming quite obvious that Open Source software is growing beyond the bounds of free time work for computer enthusiasts. If someone believes they can use this money to help out in some way, then give them the benefit of the doubt and let them try. To quote a Red Hot Chili Peppers song: "...but the Bunghole Surfers said, 'It was better to regret something you did, than something you didn't do.'"
--
Gabe Ricard