For those that don't know, this is "The original wastelands game." In a lot of ways, there are many "modern" games that could learn from the gameplay and user interface design. It was an excellent combination of nethack-style map navigation, narration, and turn-based combat. The funny thing is, one could say the same thing about the Fallout games, which are of course also "wastelands" games and have content as good as their interfaces and gameplay.
After playing OOII for a while, you really start to make mental images of the critters you meet and their surroundings. The narration is that good. Doom et al. could take a few pointers from the weapons. What sounds more intimidating: lighting gun, rocket launcher, and BFG, or Xendrix, Tevix-Bahn, and Raxhaven? Just imagining what these things might look like from their names and descriptions of their use in combat added a lot to the game. Especially when you splattered some skinless freak all over the desert with one of them.
One of the coolest combat features was that you could choose to base your combat accuracy on your ability to decimate the space bar on your keyboard at exactly the instant that a rapidly-moving line of dots went a random distance (a bit like timing your swing power in golf games). If you had a local ANSI terminal the thing was accurate even at 1200bps.
This is likely a result of a discussion between Apple and Intel on the use of the ARM architecture (Intel's "XScale" which, come to think of it, fit's Apple's product naming of Xthis and Xthat:-) in either a next-generation iPod or for some other portable computing device that has been circulating in the rumor mill recently. It could also be for some other as-yet-unknown Apple product or prototype using one of a bazillion different technologies Intel develops, such as network processors.
The odds of Apple switching Macintosh processor architectures given their membership and investment in the PowerPC platform are extremely low.
If the Council gets more power, then they will be able to disband the Senate, which would bring about the fall of the Republic. Their Clone army would hunt down independant Coders throughout Europe, who, though they have the power of the Source, cannot escape the reaches of the evil Council. But if there was one Coder in all of Europe that could be hidden away for the continent's darkest day, he could be trained in the ways of the Source without the Council's knowledge and become more powerful than the Council ever imagined...
Motorola will definately continue to be a chip supplier for Apple for a long time. IF Apple uses IBM's chips, it will only be in PowerMac G4s, and possibly the iMac and eMac eventually, but not for quite a while. IBM has stated that they will not have a low-power version of the 970 ready for at least a year, and I think we'll see G3 iBooks around for quite some time, at least as long as Apple wants to keep them in the $1000 entry-level price range and keep them cool enough to not burn people like the G4 powerbooks do.
They are obligated to make you sign up before you can use it because the law here requires them to get you to agree to their AUP before you start using the network.
iSync by the end of the month
on
Apple Releases iCal
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I was at the keynote. Steve said that a beta of iSync would be out by the end of the month, and that they were looking for a release sometime around the end of the year.
What I want is the version of iTunes that knows about Rendezvous and adds everybody in the room's shared playlists to your iTunes playlists and can stream them on demand. They demoed that today, along with a bunch of other cool stuff. Steve also threw in a good measure of Windows bashing.
Re:Could we talk about actual small-footprint PCs?
on
Small Footprint PCs?
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· Score: 1
The current best fast machine with lots of expandability and a not-outrageous price seems to the be the Shuttle SS40. It's a pretty sexy and silent little box, with firewire to boot. pricewatch suggests this barebones box will run you about $US 350. According to Storage Review, the Seagate Cuda IV is the quietest drive on the market, but the Western Digital JB series are only a bit louder, and their 8mb buffer makes them hella fast. Throw in the fastest Duron or Athlon XP you can get your hands on and some CAS2 DDR, and off you go.
Or you can just go to Smalldog and get the fastest Powerbook G4 you can afford, which serves as a pretty darn good desktop replacement, especially the new one with a 17" LCD attached via the DVI connector (-:.
Given the fact that you want no video, it seems you need servers on the cheap. If you're actually buying thousands (or really more than ten or so) of machines, I suggest you go with an integrator like XRam or Fnord. They'll build whatever you want for you, configure everything EXACTLY the same, test everything, install & do a basic config (i.e. network config and root password) for any OS you want, and install your machines on site. I'm sure the'll give you a nice quantity discount if you buy in the numbers you're talking about.
Don't even THINK about deploying that quantity of machines without racking them in a proper datacenter type environment (cooling, ample redundant AC power feeds, generator, decent physical security, etc.); FORGET about normal PC cases on Ikea shelves in your basement/office. Whatever cash you would save doing it the ghetto way is absolutely not worth the headache of blowing breakers, having your ambient temp at 35-40C and grilling PC parts if your cheap-o electro-cool chiller dies or spills its bin of water all over the place, your local power company decides you're not important, etc.
That being said, here are a few links for what I'd build if I had to do it myself on the cheap (try googlegear.com for good qty. 1 prices on this stuff:
Elite K7S5AL mobo (integrated lan) 1.2 GHz AMD Duron with a really good fan (i.e. Tai-Sol or similar overclocker freak fan) at least 512M of brand-name CAS2 ECC DDR SDRAM Western Digital JB series hard drive (WD800JB or WD1200JB) Netgear FA311 NIC
The cheapest 2u rack case on the net seems to be the Electroseller IPC-2025 at $118 without power supply and fans. It takes nomal ATX size CDRom, floppy, power supply, fans, etc. pricewatch is your friend (-:.
This should net you a pretty sweet 2u rackable server for about $500. I envy not the man that has to assemble more than about 10 of these things by himself. Maybe those chainmail gloves that people that shuck clams for a living use would help.
If you want to do something with the data on these machines, you'll probably want to stick a pair (yes, a pair) of big ethernet switches in front of them. I suggest Foundry or Extreme. You can buy these "certified used" from BizInt.
Check out Final Scratch. It uses your normal analog turntables, interfaced into a "black box" that jacks into a PC running BeOS (soon it will support embedded linux). The system comes with proprietary records that the box (they call it the ScratchAmp) "listens to" and manipulates digital audio (WAV, MP3, AIFF) files on your PC.
The point is that you can scratch and mix digital audio files as though they were vynil on your turntable. It rocks.
Try VRRPd if you just want failover between boxes, but a better solution is to dynamically load-balance over the two interfaces using a routing protocol.
I bought a trunkfull of SparcStation LXs off these guys a while back for $35 each. Not too much intel hardware, but a ton of networking and workstation stuff. Gov't and corp surplus mostly. http://www.recycle.net/computer/
There's also a computer junkyard in Geln Burnie, MD on Sundays, but it's been too long since I've been there to remember the details. Another surplus buyer/seller is in a white warehouse in Fredericksburg, VA, in front of the fairgrounds. For new stuff, there's always Market Pro. These guys always haggle!
fast.no has had one for a long time
on
images.google.com
·
· Score: 1
Dude, if you need server redundancy, get yourself a foundry serveriron. They're cheap. www.foundrynet.com. They will pretty much handle load balancing and failover between your servers.
Fast Search and Transfer ASA has had a WAP search engine up for quite some time at http://wap.fast.no/ and it's very fast; they use pattern matching hardware.
IBM's documentation mentions that this drive is ATA-100 compatible. Is anyone aware of any controller hardware that supports this standard, if indeed it is yet a standard? I have heard rumors of VIA's KX133 chipset for the Athlon supporting it, but nothing official on VIA's website.
Slashdot Mirror
Operation. Overkill. ][.
Before Civ
Before Doom
Looong before WoW
This was our crack:
http://www.operationoverkill.com/
For those that don't know, this is "The original wastelands game." In a lot of ways, there are many "modern" games that could learn from the gameplay and user interface design. It was an excellent combination of nethack-style map navigation, narration, and turn-based combat. The funny thing is, one could say the same thing about the Fallout games, which are of course also "wastelands" games and have content as good as their interfaces and gameplay.
After playing OOII for a while, you really start to make mental images of the critters you meet and their surroundings. The narration is that good. Doom et al. could take a few pointers from the weapons. What sounds more intimidating: lighting gun, rocket launcher, and BFG, or Xendrix, Tevix-Bahn, and Raxhaven? Just imagining what these things might look like from their names and descriptions of their use in combat added a lot to the game. Especially when you splattered some skinless freak all over the desert with one of them.
One of the coolest combat features was that you could choose to base your combat accuracy on your ability to decimate the space bar on your keyboard at exactly the instant that a rapidly-moving line of dots went a random distance (a bit like timing your swing power in golf games). If you had a local ANSI terminal the thing was accurate even at 1200bps.
Anyway, enough reminiscing, go check it out.
-Blake
What does the lameness of signing posts with usernames have to do with being gay?
Is this sort of legislation fundamentally different from the way the Chinese government views the Internet?
-Blake
We've been doing this with FireWire on the Mac for the better part of a decade...
-Blake
Hmmm, you mention "OS/X" I thought Apple and IBM were parting ways, not co-marketing an OS...
This is likely a result of a discussion between Apple and Intel on the use of the ARM architecture (Intel's "XScale" which, come to think of it, fit's Apple's product naming of Xthis and Xthat :-) in either a next-generation iPod or for some other portable computing device that has been circulating in the rumor mill recently. It could also be for some other as-yet-unknown Apple product or prototype using one of a bazillion different technologies Intel develops, such as network processors.
The odds of Apple switching Macintosh processor architectures given their membership and investment in the PowerPC platform are extremely low.
If the Council gets more power, then they will be able to disband the Senate, which would bring about the fall of the Republic. Their Clone army would hunt down independant Coders throughout Europe, who, though they have the power of the Source, cannot escape the reaches of the evil Council. But if there was one Coder in all of Europe that could be hidden away for the continent's darkest day, he could be trained in the ways of the Source without the Council's knowledge and become more powerful than the Council ever imagined...
Motorola will definately continue to be a chip supplier for Apple for a long time. IF Apple uses IBM's chips, it will only be in PowerMac G4s, and possibly the iMac and eMac eventually, but not for quite a while. IBM has stated that they will not have a low-power version of the 970 ready for at least a year, and I think we'll see G3 iBooks around for quite some time, at least as long as Apple wants to keep them in the $1000 entry-level price range and keep them cool enough to not burn people like the G4 powerbooks do.
They are obligated to make you sign up before you can use it because the law here requires them to get you to agree to their AUP before you start using the network.
I was at the keynote. Steve said that a beta of iSync would be out by the end of the month, and that they were looking for a release sometime around the end of the year.
What I want is the version of iTunes that knows about Rendezvous and adds everybody in the room's shared playlists to your iTunes playlists and can stream them on demand. They demoed that today, along with a bunch of other cool stuff. Steve also threw in a good measure of Windows bashing.
The current best fast machine with lots of expandability and a not-outrageous price seems to the be the Shuttle SS40. It's a pretty sexy and silent little box, with firewire to boot. pricewatch suggests this barebones box will run you about $US 350. According to Storage Review, the Seagate Cuda IV is the quietest drive on the market, but the Western Digital JB series are only a bit louder, and their 8mb buffer makes them hella fast. Throw in the fastest Duron or Athlon XP you can get your hands on and some CAS2 DDR, and off you go.
Or you can just go to Smalldog and get the fastest Powerbook G4 you can afford, which serves as a pretty darn good desktop replacement, especially the new one with a 17" LCD attached via the DVI connector (-:.
Given the fact that you want no video, it seems you need servers on the cheap. If you're actually buying thousands (or really more than ten or so) of machines, I suggest you go with an integrator like XRam or Fnord. They'll build whatever you want for you, configure everything EXACTLY the same, test everything, install & do a basic config (i.e. network config and root password) for any OS you want, and install your machines on site. I'm sure the'll give you a nice quantity discount if you buy in the numbers you're talking about.
Don't even THINK about deploying that quantity of machines without racking them in a proper datacenter type environment (cooling, ample redundant AC power feeds, generator, decent physical security, etc.); FORGET about normal PC cases on Ikea shelves in your basement/office. Whatever cash you would save doing it the ghetto way is absolutely not worth the headache of blowing breakers, having your ambient temp at 35-40C and grilling PC parts if your cheap-o electro-cool chiller dies or spills its bin of water all over the place, your local power company decides you're not important, etc.
That being said, here are a few links for what I'd build if I had to do it myself on the cheap (try googlegear.com for good qty. 1 prices on this stuff:
Elite K7S5AL mobo (integrated lan)
1.2 GHz AMD Duron with a really good fan (i.e. Tai-Sol or similar overclocker freak fan)
at least 512M of brand-name CAS2 ECC DDR SDRAM
Western Digital JB series hard drive (WD800JB or WD1200JB)
Netgear FA311 NIC
The cheapest 2u rack case on the net seems to be the Electroseller IPC-2025 at $118 without power supply and fans. It takes nomal ATX size CDRom, floppy, power supply, fans, etc. pricewatch is your friend (-:.
This should net you a pretty sweet 2u rackable server for about $500. I envy not the man that has to assemble more than about 10 of these things by himself. Maybe those chainmail gloves that people that shuck clams for a living use would help.
If you want to do something with the data on these machines, you'll probably want to stick a pair (yes, a pair) of big ethernet switches in front of them. I suggest Foundry or Extreme. You can buy these "certified used" from BizInt.
"Imagine a beow..." (-:
Check out Final Scratch. It uses your normal analog turntables, interfaced into a "black box" that jacks into a PC running BeOS (soon it will support embedded linux). The system comes with proprietary records that the box (they call it the ScratchAmp) "listens to" and manipulates digital audio (WAV, MP3, AIFF) files on your PC.
The point is that you can scratch and mix digital audio files as though they were vynil on your turntable. It rocks.
Try VRRPd if you just want failover between boxes, but a better solution is to dynamically load-balance over the two interfaces using a routing protocol.
two short Ikea cabinets and a full size commercial door works for me. Even painted the door white to match the Ikea :-)
BPAI: Computer surplus buyers in Baltimore.
I bought a trunkfull of SparcStation LXs off these guys a while back for $35 each. Not too much intel hardware, but a ton of networking and workstation stuff. Gov't and corp surplus mostly. http://www.recycle.net/computer/
There's also a computer junkyard in Geln Burnie, MD on Sundays, but it's been too long since I've been there to remember the details. Another surplus buyer/seller is in a white warehouse in Fredericksburg, VA, in front of the fairgrounds. For new stuff, there's always Market Pro. These guys always haggle!
There's been one available for a long time at multimedia.alltheweb.com, brought to you by the fine folks at Fast Search and Transfer ASA.
for those of you that don't keep up: aftery2k.
Nitrozac is a babe.
check out https://mailencrypt.com/
OpenBSD runs
it as user 'named' by default...
boom. The atmosphere has a lot more in it than just plain O2.
Dude, if you need server redundancy, get yourself a foundry serveriron. They're cheap. www.foundrynet.com. They will pretty much handle load balancing and failover between your servers.
Fast Search and Transfer ASA has had a WAP search engine up for quite some time at http://wap.fast.no/ and it's very fast; they use pattern matching hardware.
IBM's documentation mentions that this drive is ATA-100 compatible. Is anyone aware of any controller hardware that supports this standard, if indeed it is yet a standard? I have heard rumors of VIA's KX133 chipset for the Athlon supporting it, but nothing official on VIA's website.