In the original Daytona racing game (for the Sega Saturn), I don't remember exactly what you had to do, but you could acquire a new car which was actually a horse.
It was pretty fast, and it could run on the grass just as fast as on the road (pefect for cutting corners:)).
When selecting the horse, you could choose manual or automatic transmission, just like any other car. I thought it was hilarious.
I concur. Haskell is a very formal language that helps emphasize good programming habits that I've found useful later, when programming in C++.
However, it's quite unforgiving. If you make small compilation mistakes, the error messages you get with the current compilers/interpreters can be hard to decypher. And small mistakes are very common because if the nature of the type system used. Similarly, there are some runtime bugs that can be quite insidios to track down due to the functional nature of the language.
Recently, the team that develops the most popular Haskell compiler completed a survey that has lots of interesting info about strengths and shortcomings.
"You do not actually own that physical Cue-Cat scanner, you have a license to use that device in the manner we have declared"
Actually, if I understand the mess correctly (and someone correct me if/where I'm wrong), there's not a problem with owning any "physical" anythings. The problem is with the "logical" contents of those "physical" things. I'm talking about the movie bits. That's copyrighted content, and as such, when you buy (or rent) the "physical" thing, you're also buying a licence to use the content. That license is set by the copyright holder, and it can set any amounts of restrictions, like that it can only be used in licensed viewers, or only in private viewings, or in a region of the world... heck... if they really wanted, they could say that you _have_ to view it on your feet (as opposed to sitting down) if that's their wish.
There's, of course, the matter of enforceability but, morally (or rather, ethically), the conditions set forth by the copyright holder must be met.
Personally, I'm against any and all forms of copy protection as a dangerous and awkward method of enforcing licenses, especially because it helps entice people to break those licenses like it happened with this DVD issue, but that's completely besides the point.
"make telefonica pay a large amount of money or punish it other way"
Problem is, in order to do that, they'd need more authority, more leverage than they currently do.
I understand that banning is the only leverage they can use. The hopes are that TDE will react to get the ban lifted, rather than lose customers who want to be able to send email outside.
Of course, knowing their history, I don't know that they will. They might be a private company now, but they steel feel like the monopoly they used to be, no matter where the political control is.
As a Spaniard living abroad, I care deeply about this. I do exchange plenty of legit email with Spain, you see, so this will affect me personally.
Contrary to what many people seem to think here, the announcement doesn't say thay'll block the whole country. That measure would be draconian, along the line of nuking a city to quench a major disturbance.
Instead, they say (correctly) that they are blocking the offending IDE, which "is the govt run ISP of Spain" so it can be expected that this ISP provider is a major provider, and many people will be affected. I believe that. Telefonica was, until a few years ago, _the one and only_ telephone communications provider of Spain. It is BIG.
This is unfortunate, but _if_ this provider really is such a non-cooperative major source of spam and hack attacks, then I can't blame them for blocking it, much as it pains me.
I didn't manage to have much fun with it. I guess it lacks proper balancing. But technically, it is an impressive piece of work, so cheers.
Another remake of X-COM very worthy of mention is X-Force (warning: it's all in German).
In case it slipped below someone's radar, there was another turn-based tactical game called Incubation a few years back. It also had balancing problems (the difficulty of the missions was quite uneven all throughout) which is a shame for a commercial game, but it was brilliant and very enjoyable otherwise. And it did without the whole strategical part of the game, which to me is a plus. Maybe someone will do another remake of that some day.
I've been using a Fujitsu MHT2040AT 40GB drive in a Hotdrive 2.5 enclosure (supports USB 2.0 and 1394, but I have only used the USB part, because Firewire seems to require an external power supply) and I'm more than happy with it.
I've used it for over a month now, mostly on WinXP, with multi-GB files, and it has worked pretty well so far. Of course, I've been careful with stopping it before unplugging. The only quirk seems to be that sometimes, when plugging it in, Windows Explorer doesn't quite understand what it is. I mean... you can use it without a problem, but sometimes it appears as a blank entry in the Explorer.
But it's nice and small and the carrying folder is a nice touch. Makes it look like a PDA. Now, if only they had included in the folder a compartment for the USB cable...:)
Besides, while aerobraking you have to pass much closer to the planet (you have to enter the atmosphere so that it reduces your velocity). Therefore, it's easier to hit the planet in an aerobraking maneouvre.
Other considerations: Cassini's Earth flyby was set to happen at a very high velocity. This can mean many things, but I'm unsure of their likelihood or relative importance:
- High velocity means that it's harder to steer the probe around, both to bring it closer to Earth and to steer it away in case of a problem. - Also, high velocity means that the probe, if it hits the atmosphere, could bounce out back into space. - Or it could bounce back into some unstable orbit, so the final crash wouldn't be quite as bad as a direct impact. Remember: the Earth is a very big thing.
I suppose we're talking about the same Duke Nukem (for those uninformed around here, there are several, and the 3D game was not the first).
I remember playing it under DOS. Tripping on the Start menu key would not witch out of the game, of course, but it would do a lot of other useful things simultaneously:
- Switch on the map.
- Turn the player around 180.
- If available, switch on the hologram.
- If available, consume one health pack.
Great when you're happily deathmatching. Since then, I always remove the three stupid keys from every keyboard.
Out of curiosity, I had a look at the scan codes generated by those keys: every press would send a whole stream of them to the PC. I dunno how many. 10 or more. No wonder the poor game got so confused.
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This is _exactly_ like the shield systems used by warships in the game Independence War.
In the original Daytona racing game (for the Sega Saturn), I don't remember exactly what you had to do, but you could acquire a new car which was actually a horse.
:)).
It was pretty fast, and it could run on the grass just as fast as on the road (pefect for cutting corners
When selecting the horse, you could choose manual or automatic transmission, just like any other car. I thought it was hilarious.
However, it's quite unforgiving. If you make small compilation mistakes, the error messages you get with the current compilers/interpreters can be hard to decypher. And small mistakes are very common because if the nature of the type system used. Similarly, there are some runtime bugs that can be quite insidios to track down due to the functional nature of the language.
Recently, the team that develops the most popular Haskell compiler completed a survey that has lots of interesting info about strengths and shortcomings.
It's only meant for the console, but maybe there's some way to get it for a HTPC.
"You do not actually own that physical Cue-Cat scanner, you have a license to use that device in the manner we have declared"
Actually, if I understand the mess correctly (and someone correct me if/where I'm wrong), there's not a problem with owning any "physical" anythings. The problem is with the "logical" contents of those "physical" things. I'm talking about the movie bits. That's copyrighted content, and as such, when you buy (or rent) the "physical" thing, you're also buying a licence to use the content. That license is set by the copyright holder, and it can set any amounts of restrictions, like that it can only be used in licensed viewers, or only in private viewings, or in a region of the world... heck... if they really wanted, they could say that you _have_ to view it on your feet (as opposed to sitting down) if that's their wish.
There's, of course, the matter of enforceability but, morally (or rather, ethically), the conditions set forth by the copyright holder must be met.
Personally, I'm against any and all forms of copy protection as a dangerous and awkward method of enforcing licenses, especially because it helps entice people to break those licenses like it happened with this DVD issue, but that's completely besides the point.
Problem is, in order to do that, they'd need more authority, more leverage than they currently do.
I understand that banning is the only leverage they can use. The hopes are that TDE will react to get the ban lifted, rather than lose customers who want to be able to send email outside.
Of course, knowing their history, I don't know that they will. They might be a private company now, but they steel feel like the monopoly they used to be, no matter where the political control is.
Contrary to what many people seem to think here, the announcement doesn't say thay'll block the whole country. That measure would be draconian, along the line of nuking a city to quench a major disturbance.
Instead, they say (correctly) that they are blocking the offending IDE, which "is the govt run ISP of Spain" so it can be expected that this ISP provider is a major provider, and many people will be affected. I believe that. Telefonica was, until a few years ago, _the one and only_ telephone communications provider of Spain. It is BIG.
This is unfortunate, but _if_ this provider really is such a non-cooperative major source of spam and hack attacks, then I can't blame them for blocking it, much as it pains me.
Another remake of X-COM very worthy of mention is X-Force (warning: it's all in German).
In case it slipped below someone's radar, there was another turn-based tactical game called Incubation a few years back. It also had balancing problems (the difficulty of the missions was quite uneven all throughout) which is a shame for a commercial game, but it was brilliant and very enjoyable otherwise. And it did without the whole strategical part of the game, which to me is a plus. Maybe someone will do another remake of that some day.
I've been using a Fujitsu MHT2040AT 40GB drive in a Hotdrive 2.5 enclosure (supports USB 2.0 and 1394, but I have only used the USB part, because Firewire seems to require an external power supply) and I'm more than happy with it.
:)
I've used it for over a month now, mostly on WinXP, with multi-GB files, and it has worked pretty well so far. Of course, I've been careful with stopping it before unplugging. The only quirk seems to be that sometimes, when plugging it in, Windows Explorer doesn't quite understand what it is. I mean... you can use it without a problem, but sometimes it appears as a blank entry in the Explorer.
But it's nice and small and the carrying folder is a nice touch. Makes it look like a PDA. Now, if only they had included in the folder a compartment for the USB cable...
Besides, while aerobraking you have to pass much closer to the planet (you have to enter the atmosphere so that it reduces your velocity). Therefore, it's easier to hit the planet in an aerobraking maneouvre.
Other considerations: Cassini's Earth flyby was set to happen at a very high velocity. This can mean many things, but I'm unsure of their likelihood or relative importance:
- High velocity means that it's harder to steer the probe around, both to bring it closer to Earth and to steer it away in case of a problem.
- Also, high velocity means that the probe, if it hits the atmosphere, could bounce out back into space.
- Or it could bounce back into some unstable orbit, so the final crash wouldn't be quite as bad as a direct impact. Remember: the Earth is a very big thing.
I suppose we're talking about the same Duke Nukem (for those uninformed around here, there are several, and the 3D game was not the first). I remember playing it under DOS. Tripping on the Start menu key would not witch out of the game, of course, but it would do a lot of other useful things simultaneously: - Switch on the map. - Turn the player around 180. - If available, switch on the hologram. - If available, consume one health pack. Great when you're happily deathmatching. Since then, I always remove the three stupid keys from every keyboard. Out of curiosity, I had a look at the scan codes generated by those keys: every press would send a whole stream of them to the PC. I dunno how many. 10 or more. No wonder the poor game got so confused.