Before you all go freaking out, let me suggest something.
Build Linux From Scratch. Then try adding some common desktops. KDE is quite easy to add to LFS. Gnome is an absolute bear to add.
At one point, I had a printout of all the deps for Gnome. It was a huge spiderweb of tangles that had to be decoded and followed exactly to get Gnome to build.
Just to be a tool, I'm gonna offer an opposing viewpoint from the others here.
First off, don't ask audiophile questions on/. unless you want to be told that a bit is a bit and how it gets from point A to point B doesn't matter.
Second, look at your audio rack. How much did you spend there? For my $250 Pioneer and $20 VCR, the cables don't matter. What's the point.
But if you spend thousands on components, why skimp on a $10 cable vice a $50 one? The price difference is negligable. It's like complaining about a WinXP license on a $20k server. Just buy big and never worry.
Now, some annecdotal evidince. I recently replaced all the cables from my $250 receiver to my $300 surround speakers. The stock cable was 20 guage aluminum. The new stuff is 12 guage copper. My system now sounds better.
One poster advised you to "just turn up the volume". That's no good when you start driving the internal components to near their peak output. Turning it up just causes more noise.
As for the interconnects, I've used everything from RCA solder-type connectors on 26 guage wire to monster cable with no real difference.
But, if you spend thousands anyway, why skimp on Radio Shack cables?
No, what they should do is implement an explicit deny rule. If the customer requests the block, everything except CNN.com and LDS.org should be blocked.
If the customer complains, then allow all html but block any images.
Well, knowing Utah (and mormons in general), I think people could be bullied into requesting the block. If someone you know from church works at an ISP, you'll feel awkward about being the "only" guy there not asking for the block.
If you ever try for a job in the church, they ask the congregation if anyone has a reason for this person not to be given the job. Mr. ISP guy will raise his hand and say Mr. perv hasn't blocked porn from his connection.
Peer pressure is an ugly thing. Especially when it's being applied by adults. Even moreso when it's being applied in a place where religious zealots control everything from the basic public services up to and probably including your job.
Personally, I don't know why a non-mormon would be there to begin with. And how we ever allowed these fuckers to join the Union just boggles the mind.
Listen, tool, if a render character in a game is standing over the rendered corpse of another character and you see rendered poop on the ground (that occoured as a direct result of the former of the two characters) that constitutes pooping in the game.
Obviously you've never used bash. If you had ever seen "real" command completion, you'd know that the terrible hack that is "just push the [tab] key 500 times" is absolute bullshit.
Under bash, it'll list all the possible option vice tabbing through each one.
They'll be lucky if that's all that happens to them. Like the grandparent said; this is why we have copyright law.
They knew they were gonna get sued from the beginning. You cannot just take someone's idea and drop it verbatum onto the internet and expect to survive.
If they were making money off it, they will face punative damages.
All they needed to do was to name their project something else and tweak the board and the rules slightly. Word of mouth would have still given them a good customer base.
K-Atlantik, FreeCiv, and BZFlag are excellent examples of this.
No, they copied verbatum and then used a well-known name to drive their site. They'll be lucky if all they have to do is declare bankruptcy and turn over all assets to Hasbro.
Not really. The problem is that many people don't have access to the "admin" account. You can't really install apps (you can "install" them to your desktop and hope an admin doesn't get notified), and can't change any settings. Lots of admins have draconian disk quota policies.
Firefox can be unzipped to a folder. Another folder can act as the profile. You need.bat file to tell it to start and use that profile vice creating one under "Documents and Settings/$user/whatever/". After that, removing disk-caching and boosting the memory cache helps out. Add a shortcut to the desktop of the client pointing to the.bat file on the thumb drive and you are set.
VLC 0.8.1 works great from a thumb drive and plays just about anything you throw at it. When my coworkers curse the admin for not having $codec, they come see me.
WinRAR works perfectly once "installed" to a thumb drive. All you need to do on the client is choose "Open With..." and browse to find winrar.exe on the thumbdrive.
I also have cygwin on my thumbdrive to show off the power of command-line completion to my peers. Plus it always comes in handy for various tasks.
I keep several documents on there too. A current copy of my resume, a list of sites and passwords, some random pr0n, helpful regedits, PHP books in.pdf, basic drivers for my NICs, and pics of my kids.
BTW, banish the thought that pics of my kids and pr0n might be one and the same...they aren't.
We also keep USB keys in the safe with server passwords and configs, router passwords and configs, VPN clients, Sniffer Pro, and anything else the NOC guys ask for. They can literally take the key to any site and turn any laptop into a network config workstation.
It's amazing some of the random shit we find on there when they sign them back in.
Anyway, having tons of apps run from removable media is highly desired in my environment. The ammount of work some guys put into hacking these things to get $fav_app working from them is mind-numbing. To have someone else come up with a "certified" list could save tons of time.
When's the last time the resolution on your TV changed?
For years, the PC monitor has had a resolution that cards couldn't max. That's starting to change.
Especially with LCDs that top at 1280.
But even with HDTV, the current consoles do just fine. A next-gen console has to offer something truly remarkable.
Look at a PS game and then a PS2 game. Compare GT2 to GT4. But the differences between GT3 and GT4 are almost unnoticable.
So, what will the PS3 offer? More CPUs to dedicate taskings between AI, graphics, and physics? Maybe another for sound? Then you add complexity to the developers's job. The games will become very expensive with the testing required to debug locking issues.
Things I'd like to see:
HDTV support.
Better surround-sound.
Better data caching to reduce load times.
Support for a PC monitor.
Headphone jack built in.
Wireless controller standard built in.
Standardised MP3 support for in-game audio.
There are tons of other things they could add. But will they? Or will the PS3 be a PS2 with marginally better graphics?
I remember tons of congressional hearings to get the music industry to regulate itself.
In my home town, a retailer was arrested for selling "Luke Skywalker" CDs.
Today, it's much better. The industry stamps labels on it's merchendise and the retailers can choose to carry it or not.
People can shoose to buy it, but they have to meet age requirements. Parents who buy it (hopefully) see the warnings.
The games industry is in chaos now. There are reccomendations, but no enforcement. Even the reccomendations are fucked.
As I was typing this, I saw a commercial for "Fight Night", an EA boxing title. The commercial shows close-ups of boxers bashing the shit out of each other. Rated "T for Teen". WTF guys? You'd let a 13yo play a game where the point is to violently bash the shit out of someone?
Retailers should be able to carry whatever they want. However, it the package is marked "T for Teen", they shouldn't sell it to a 12yo. If it's "M", they shouldn't sell it to anyone under 18.
And no, if you are American and you love liberty, you shouldn't shop WalMart. WalMart forces their suppliers to offshore to China so they can reduce costs. They encourage wage reductions and overlook atrocious working conditions. WalMart means fewer American jobs, higher trade deficits, and less liberty for overseas workers.
Search for the WalMart/Rubbermaid story if you are interested.
I agree completely. Kids should be shielded from violence as much as possible. Especially violence like professional football. It's basicly two hours of 22 guys getting paid extreme ammounts of money to kick the shit out of each other.
Then these kids go play football and try the same tackles and say the same trash talk.
Fighting games speak for themselves.
Racing games generally do not emphasize violence to win. There may be some "rubbing" in racing, but most of the races you see on TV are clean. As long as the game does not try to make racing seem kine 200mph bumpercars, it should be fine.
Look, it's simple. Most games avalible SHOULD be unavalible to minors.
The "Bubblegum" crew on CounterStrike (mostly on the Tokyo servers) will spraypaint their balls (an actual, hi-rez, digital picture of each player's manberries) on your corpse. I've seen these guys actually sacrifice themselves to jump across a level and spray balls on me.
Another crew has a pic of poop in a urinal (WTF people) as their spray.
Movies and music are (somewhat) regulated. And it should be so. Basicly, nothing Il does will prevent you from playing a game you want. Wal-Mart may not carry it anymore, but you shouldn't shop there anyway. You can still buy Doom3 at EB or online with no problem.
This will prevent 13yo boys from giggling each other to death while playing Vampire: Bloodlines.
And it should be that way.
People need to understand that parents cannot possible watch their kids 100% of the time. It just isn't feasable. The best we can do is to teach them well and hope they make the right choices when we aren't around.
Unfortunately, not every parent teaches their kid properly (whatever that is) and peer-pressure is very strong.
Remove cigiratte laws and kids will smoke.
Remove CD warning labels and kids will listen to fiddicent singing about shooting 2pack and fucking his mom.
Remove MPAA ratings and kids will end up watching violent movies.
Why not limit the avalibility of HL2 to prevent 13yo boys from fragging each other?
I know most people say that watching something or doing it virtually will not cause it to happen in real life. I tend to agree.
Most kids will never shoot an AWP into a crowd. But how many of them will call women "bitches" and "hos"? Kids may never do battle with the legions of hell, but how many will think of shooting a gun as "cool"?
A good quote (badly paraphrased) is: Thoughts lead to actions. Actions lead to habits. Habits build your character.
This law should prevent kids from playing violent games in the same way that it prevents them from seeing a violent movie. It won't be 100% effective, but it'll help when the parents can't be there. And this law will never prevent you from buying violent games, cigirattes, girls gone wild, or anything else that adults generally enjoy.
Most of your FPS titles on the PC will be Doom3 or HL2 engine revamps.
Basicly, I see very little *new* code to justify the cost hike.
On top of all that, putting a game on a shelf is SO 2004! Steam is the future; get onboard or get left behind.
No more CDs, copy protection, printed materials, etc means lower distribution costs. Add bittorrent to the mix and your costs bottom out.
On a side note, we had a LAN party last weekend. Even though Steam is suposed to be torrent-based, a fresh install of HL2 was gonna take like 6 hours to complete. This was at a 30+ person party with everyone running Steam. Valve needs to reassess their protocol system and figure out how to make LAN-2-LAN downloads more effective.
I dunno. What if the GoogleOS actually supported searching at the kernel level. Imagine a server that would index itself and then upload the results to Google.
The thing is this: I'm not ever using TT in a buisness; I'm using KDE. If I install Debian and apt-get KDE, I shouldn't owe anyone anything. Debian is free and KDE is free.
Same for RedHat and Suse. They don't program anything using TT libs. They just package KDE with their distro. They also offer support for KDE.
At this point, TT still does not make a dime from anyone.
If China rolls out a $2 billion contract with Suse, TT does not make a dime. And shouldn't. Suse does not use their library to make anything.
OTOH, if I program a FTP client and want to charge people money for it, I have to pay TT. I have clearly used their lib to create a commercial product.
But what if I program a closed-source FTP client and give it away. Then let's say I charge for customer service. I haven't made any money with TTs lib. Or have I?
Let's say I want to charge $5/download but I state that I'm not charging for the program itself, but just for the bandwidth.
Or what if I make a service contract a manditory purchace along with the download via the EULA?
In the above cases, people are making money as a result of the TT lib. But they are not making money off of the TT lib.
Looks like somebody has been paying attention to Sveasoft.
They did exactly this. Once they realised that it's impossible to take GPLed code and close it, they went back and modified the GPL code to just be a launching point for a bunch of closed-source modules.
Each one avalible for $20.
A lot of people are extremely pissed about that. Read up on it sometime.
Slashdot Mirror
Before you all go freaking out, let me suggest something.
Build Linux From Scratch. Then try adding some common desktops. KDE is quite easy to add to LFS. Gnome is an absolute bear to add.
At one point, I had a printout of all the deps for Gnome. It was a huge spiderweb of tangles that had to be decoded and followed exactly to get Gnome to build.
Anyway, Gnome is lots of work.
Just to be a tool, I'm gonna offer an opposing viewpoint from the others here.
/. unless you want to be told that a bit is a bit and how it gets from point A to point B doesn't matter.
First off, don't ask audiophile questions on
Second, look at your audio rack. How much did you spend there? For my $250 Pioneer and $20 VCR, the cables don't matter. What's the point.
But if you spend thousands on components, why skimp on a $10 cable vice a $50 one? The price difference is negligable. It's like complaining about a WinXP license on a $20k server. Just buy big and never worry.
Now, some annecdotal evidince. I recently replaced all the cables from my $250 receiver to my $300 surround speakers. The stock cable was 20 guage aluminum. The new stuff is 12 guage copper. My system now sounds better.
One poster advised you to "just turn up the volume". That's no good when you start driving the internal components to near their peak output. Turning it up just causes more noise.
As for the interconnects, I've used everything from RCA solder-type connectors on 26 guage wire to monster cable with no real difference.
But, if you spend thousands anyway, why skimp on Radio Shack cables?
No, what they should do is implement an explicit deny rule. If the customer requests the block, everything except CNN.com and LDS.org should be blocked.
If the customer complains, then allow all html but block any images.
Well, knowing Utah (and mormons in general), I think people could be bullied into requesting the block. If someone you know from church works at an ISP, you'll feel awkward about being the "only" guy there not asking for the block.
If you ever try for a job in the church, they ask the congregation if anyone has a reason for this person not to be given the job. Mr. ISP guy will raise his hand and say Mr. perv hasn't blocked porn from his connection.
Peer pressure is an ugly thing. Especially when it's being applied by adults. Even moreso when it's being applied in a place where religious zealots control everything from the basic public services up to and probably including your job.
Personally, I don't know why a non-mormon would be there to begin with. And how we ever allowed these fuckers to join the Union just boggles the mind.
>>I wonder if telecomuting is an option (I need saltwater proximity).
Let me think... Where in Utah can one find salt water... Hhmm...
Yeppers, I guess you'll just have to live on the coast.
Listen, tool, if a render character in a game is standing over the rendered corpse of another character and you see rendered poop on the ground (that occoured as a direct result of the former of the two characters) that constitutes pooping in the game.
Obviously you've never used bash. If you had ever seen "real" command completion, you'd know that the terrible hack that is "just push the [tab] key 500 times" is absolute bullshit.
Under bash, it'll list all the possible option vice tabbing through each one.
They'll be lucky if that's all that happens to them. Like the grandparent said; this is why we have copyright law.
They knew they were gonna get sued from the beginning. You cannot just take someone's idea and drop it verbatum onto the internet and expect to survive.
If they were making money off it, they will face punative damages.
All they needed to do was to name their project something else and tweak the board and the rules slightly. Word of mouth would have still given them a good customer base.
K-Atlantik, FreeCiv, and BZFlag are excellent examples of this.
No, they copied verbatum and then used a well-known name to drive their site. They'll be lucky if all they have to do is declare bankruptcy and turn over all assets to Hasbro.
It does by default in WinXP. However, it'll fill in the complete line for the first thing that matches.
cd:\win[tab]
It will cd into c:\windows before c:\winxp. If you can remember the command you want starts with a 'k', WinXP can't help you; bash can.
Not really. The problem is that many people don't have access to the "admin" account. You can't really install apps (you can "install" them to your desktop and hope an admin doesn't get notified), and can't change any settings. Lots of admins have draconian disk quota policies.
.bat file to tell it to start and use that profile vice creating one under "Documents and Settings/$user/whatever/". After that, removing disk-caching and boosting the memory cache helps out. Add a shortcut to the desktop of the client pointing to the .bat file on the thumb drive and you are set.
.pdf, basic drivers for my NICs, and pics of my kids.
Firefox can be unzipped to a folder. Another folder can act as the profile. You need
VLC 0.8.1 works great from a thumb drive and plays just about anything you throw at it. When my coworkers curse the admin for not having $codec, they come see me.
WinRAR works perfectly once "installed" to a thumb drive. All you need to do on the client is choose "Open With..." and browse to find winrar.exe on the thumbdrive.
I also have cygwin on my thumbdrive to show off the power of command-line completion to my peers. Plus it always comes in handy for various tasks.
I keep several documents on there too. A current copy of my resume, a list of sites and passwords, some random pr0n, helpful regedits, PHP books in
BTW, banish the thought that pics of my kids and pr0n might be one and the same...they aren't.
We also keep USB keys in the safe with server passwords and configs, router passwords and configs, VPN clients, Sniffer Pro, and anything else the NOC guys ask for. They can literally take the key to any site and turn any laptop into a network config workstation.
It's amazing some of the random shit we find on there when they sign them back in.
Anyway, having tons of apps run from removable media is highly desired in my environment. The ammount of work some guys put into hacking these things to get $fav_app working from them is mind-numbing. To have someone else come up with a "certified" list could save tons of time.
When's the last time the resolution on your TV changed?
For years, the PC monitor has had a resolution that cards couldn't max. That's starting to change.
Especially with LCDs that top at 1280.
But even with HDTV, the current consoles do just fine. A next-gen console has to offer something truly remarkable.
Look at a PS game and then a PS2 game. Compare GT2 to GT4. But the differences between GT3 and GT4 are almost unnoticable.
So, what will the PS3 offer? More CPUs to dedicate taskings between AI, graphics, and physics? Maybe another for sound? Then you add complexity to the developers's job. The games will become very expensive with the testing required to debug locking issues.
Things I'd like to see:
HDTV support.
Better surround-sound.
Better data caching to reduce load times.
Support for a PC monitor.
Headphone jack built in.
Wireless controller standard built in.
Standardised MP3 support for in-game audio.
There are tons of other things they could add. But will they? Or will the PS3 be a PS2 with marginally better graphics?
I remember tons of congressional hearings to get the music industry to regulate itself.
In my home town, a retailer was arrested for selling "Luke Skywalker" CDs.
Today, it's much better. The industry stamps labels on it's merchendise and the retailers can choose to carry it or not.
People can shoose to buy it, but they have to meet age requirements. Parents who buy it (hopefully) see the warnings.
The games industry is in chaos now. There are reccomendations, but no enforcement. Even the reccomendations are fucked.
As I was typing this, I saw a commercial for "Fight Night", an EA boxing title. The commercial shows close-ups of boxers bashing the shit out of each other. Rated "T for Teen". WTF guys? You'd let a 13yo play a game where the point is to violently bash the shit out of someone?
Maybe lawmakers should step in.
Parents cannot watch their kids 100% of the time.
Retailers should be able to carry whatever they want. However, it the package is marked "T for Teen", they shouldn't sell it to a 12yo. If it's "M", they shouldn't sell it to anyone under 18.
And no, if you are American and you love liberty, you shouldn't shop WalMart. WalMart forces their suppliers to offshore to China so they can reduce costs. They encourage wage reductions and overlook atrocious working conditions. WalMart means fewer American jobs, higher trade deficits, and less liberty for overseas workers.
Search for the WalMart/Rubbermaid story if you are interested.
The ratings are clear, but retailers do not honor them. I've seen stores that wouldn't sell Marilon Manson CDs but carried Doom3. WTF, people?
If the market would push for good internal controls, then lawmakers would keep out.
I agree completely. Kids should be shielded from violence as much as possible. Especially violence like professional football. It's basicly two hours of 22 guys getting paid extreme ammounts of money to kick the shit out of each other.
Then these kids go play football and try the same tackles and say the same trash talk.
Fighting games speak for themselves.
Racing games generally do not emphasize violence to win. There may be some "rubbing" in racing, but most of the races you see on TV are clean. As long as the game does not try to make racing seem kine 200mph bumpercars, it should be fine.
Look, it's simple. Most games avalible SHOULD be unavalible to minors.
The problem here is that the complainers want Wal-Mart to carry the games. Why? Because that's where mom and dad shop.
This is an issue of tail wagging. The only people who will be bothered by this are the ones who shouldn't be playing these games to begin with.
The "Bubblegum" crew on CounterStrike (mostly on the Tokyo servers) will spraypaint their balls (an actual, hi-rez, digital picture of each player's manberries) on your corpse. I've seen these guys actually sacrifice themselves to jump across a level and spray balls on me.
Another crew has a pic of poop in a urinal (WTF people) as their spray.
So, yes, people do deficate on each other.
Movies and music are (somewhat) regulated. And it should be so. Basicly, nothing Il does will prevent you from playing a game you want. Wal-Mart may not carry it anymore, but you shouldn't shop there anyway. You can still buy Doom3 at EB or online with no problem.
This will prevent 13yo boys from giggling each other to death while playing Vampire: Bloodlines.
And it should be that way.
People need to understand that parents cannot possible watch their kids 100% of the time. It just isn't feasable. The best we can do is to teach them well and hope they make the right choices when we aren't around.
Unfortunately, not every parent teaches their kid properly (whatever that is) and peer-pressure is very strong.
Remove cigiratte laws and kids will smoke.
Remove CD warning labels and kids will listen to fiddicent singing about shooting 2pack and fucking his mom.
Remove MPAA ratings and kids will end up watching violent movies.
Why not limit the avalibility of HL2 to prevent 13yo boys from fragging each other?
I know most people say that watching something or doing it virtually will not cause it to happen in real life. I tend to agree.
Most kids will never shoot an AWP into a crowd. But how many of them will call women "bitches" and "hos"? Kids may never do battle with the legions of hell, but how many will think of shooting a gun as "cool"?
A good quote (badly paraphrased) is: Thoughts lead to actions. Actions lead to habits. Habits build your character.
This law should prevent kids from playing violent games in the same way that it prevents them from seeing a violent movie. It won't be 100% effective, but it'll help when the parents can't be there. And this law will never prevent you from buying violent games, cigirattes, girls gone wild, or anything else that adults generally enjoy.
And you have the "privelage" of having to look for the CD whenever you want to play.
Steam had a bad launch, but they'll learn and get better.
I'm sorry. I was looking for abuse.
That's complete bullshit.
Madden 05 is Madden 04 with updated names.
Same for just about any other EA sports title.
Most of your FPS titles on the PC will be Doom3 or HL2 engine revamps.
Basicly, I see very little *new* code to justify the cost hike.
On top of all that, putting a game on a shelf is SO 2004! Steam is the future; get onboard or get left behind.
No more CDs, copy protection, printed materials, etc means lower distribution costs. Add bittorrent to the mix and your costs bottom out.
On a side note, we had a LAN party last weekend. Even though Steam is suposed to be torrent-based, a fresh install of HL2 was gonna take like 6 hours to complete. This was at a 30+ person party with everyone running Steam. Valve needs to reassess their protocol system and figure out how to make LAN-2-LAN downloads more effective.
I dunno. What if the GoogleOS actually supported searching at the kernel level. Imagine a server that would index itself and then upload the results to Google.
It isn't so much about weight as size. I can move a 50lb dumbell fairly easily; a 50lb computer case no so much.
My SFF has tons of crap in it. It weighs as much as my Lian-Li mid-tower case. But If I haul the tower to a LAN party, I really appretiate the SFF.
The thing is this: I'm not ever using TT in a buisness; I'm using KDE. If I install Debian and apt-get KDE, I shouldn't owe anyone anything. Debian is free and KDE is free.
Same for RedHat and Suse. They don't program anything using TT libs. They just package KDE with their distro. They also offer support for KDE.
At this point, TT still does not make a dime from anyone.
If China rolls out a $2 billion contract with Suse, TT does not make a dime. And shouldn't. Suse does not use their library to make anything.
OTOH, if I program a FTP client and want to charge people money for it, I have to pay TT. I have clearly used their lib to create a commercial product.
But what if I program a closed-source FTP client and give it away. Then let's say I charge for customer service. I haven't made any money with TTs lib. Or have I?
Let's say I want to charge $5/download but I state that I'm not charging for the program itself, but just for the bandwidth.
Or what if I make a service contract a manditory purchace along with the download via the EULA?
In the above cases, people are making money as a result of the TT lib. But they are not making money off of the TT lib.
So, it's not so clear.
Looks like somebody has been paying attention to Sveasoft.
They did exactly this. Once they realised that it's impossible to take GPLed code and close it, they went back and modified the GPL code to just be a launching point for a bunch of closed-source modules.
Each one avalible for $20.
A lot of people are extremely pissed about that. Read up on it sometime.