There are new instructions on 486+ CPUs that are not supported on the 386. Instructions like cmpxchg8, for example. Some of these can be worked around (cmpxchg8 is used for data moving, and you can "fake it" for the locking involved with more computationally expensive instructions), but some of them cannot, and either way would require extensive work in the lowest level functions of the kernel to match the differences in the design.
That's why most new packages you see are i486; they use instructions Intel added to the ISA when they released the 486.
They've been out in Canadian markets since, oh, last week. If you want to spend 200$ CDN for the same thing you probably already have, just head over the border to an EB, FutureShop, or Toys'R'Us and get one.
"NES was definitely better than the SMS and Atari."
The Sega Master System had a larger colour palette and could deal with larger, brighter sprites. The reason it was not so hot was because of the limited controller design and the lack of games for the system.
What country did you come from? Mine was Canada! Canadian prices for a Canadian childhood. Or did you just assume I was in the US? Several countries use "dollars" for currency, including Australia (which has even more outrageous sounding prices!).
"Second, we are talking about VIDEO GAMES. CALM DOWN, no need to be such a dick about freaking games!"
I'm just speaking out because there's a very strong "something-for-nothing" attitude that a lot of/.ers have. There is no such thing as a free lunch; you don't have to be an economics major to understand this, so why can't we?
Plus, everything you suggest has happened, in one form or another, for the past decade. Just not to the extent that you seem to want.
"Now, I recall the 'bare-bones' NES and SNES, but as I remember it those came out after the initial launch of the system... maybe I am wrong, but that would at least give you something to get all angry about again."
They did. However, as you'll notice, the majority of system sales did not occur until after these price cuts and slashes to make sure that the retailers could pump out the maximum volume of systems. The attachment rate (aka the # of games each system owner buys, on average) is something you can't always maximize easily; the solution to that is to get more systems out the door so there are more systems for the games to attach to. That's why this proved to be a succesful strategy for Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s (as well as for other makers, like Sega and notably Sony).
"Also, the bundles we get now with a system are coming what, 2 or 3 years after the console launch? Why bother at that point? There's enough used and bargain bin games that users can make their own bundles."
Not true. Microsoft can throw in 2 games for a price that's like buying one game used. Nintendo can take a game that's made back its development costs and throw it in the box with a demo of its sequel. All of this is only possibly because the cost of the system hardware has been reduced. At each price point, there is a very specific hardware lifecycle attached. Intial launching at 300$ US means it costs about 450$ CDN for a system. That's expensive. All the launch titles are expensive, too; only early adopters will be wanting to buy a system for half a grand, and then dropping a further 80-90$ a piece on games. But if they wait a couple of years, they can walk away with a system that includes a game or two for 150$ less (as happened with the holiday bundles in fall 2002). This is a great bullet point on the box, and helps get the "wait-and-see" people off the sidelines and buying systems they can attach new games to.
"The appeal to bundling a game with a system AT LAUNCH is that it FEELS free... of course we are paying for it, usually to the tune of $200-300."
Yes, but that's 100% covering cost. If you wanted to include a game with it, you'd have to make it even more expensive. Sony wisely chose to include a demo disc with the launch of the PlayStation console to keep it at the (at the time, incredible for the technology involved) price of 399$ US, rather than having a pack in. Sega tried to sue them for getting it to that low level. Until you get some early adopters out there providing you with better advertising (as in, "try out the Playstation I bought, buddy!"), and helping you to clear out inventories of systems so that economies of scale on the production can kick in (which allows vendors to actually have margin on the units; Sony milked this with the PS2 until Microsoft and Nintendo came along) and allow for better technologies, etc.
"Ok, my compleely made up figure is that 85% of people think of gaming as a social activity, and hence must want an extra controller to play with friends. Moving on..."
As any engineer would tell you, it's easier to add than subtract. The number of single-player people outnumbers the number of multi-player people out there; so the multi-player people can add. In addition, why pay 40$ more for a console with extra controller, when you can get a MadCatz extra controller for 20$?
"Ok, demo's, what I suggested be bundled with systems, would be a nice thing to throw in
When you were buying a NES Power Pack or a SNES box, you were getting a lot, yes.
However, they also had NES packs without the extra controller and game. Did you notice how those were cheaper? I did.
In the olden days (1992), a NES system was about 40$ to make, 60$ at the wholesale level, and 80$ at the retailer level. They sold for 100$. If you had the extra game and controller, you'd spend about 150$. They passed the cost on to the consumer, rather than taking away from their profit margin just like any business would.
How much does a PS2 cost to make? They sell for 200$ CDN, but the cost to make is not 100$. It's closer to 170$. If you want a package that has an extra controller and a game, you just buy them separately. This has the added benefit of giving you, the end user, the choice over what controller and game combinations you get. Most of the time, people play single player games, for example. This means a lot of people (70% or so) don't want an extra controller.
About the only thing I can think that would be beneficial to include with a system would be a memory card, because (like a power cord, AV cord, controller, and the system itself), it's the only thing that's 100% needed for gaming enjoyment. However, as we see regular capacity increases (well, not from Sony; Nintendo has gone up from 59 block, to 251 block cards, to 1019 block cards), and because there are 3rd party cards (well, not much on the Sony side), you see that this could again be a place where consumers exercise their right to choose.
"After 6-8 months or so they should include a complete free game,"
Hmm, well, you obviously haven't seen the Microsoft Xbox holidy bundles. They include "complete, free*" games (*: It still costs more than a base system, because companies past costs on to the consumer, duh!) with them to try and drive sales of people who wouldn't mind getting a system with some games, as long as the system + games together is cheaper than the system + buying games separately. Microsoft's not the only one to do this; Nintendo has had things like the Mario Sunshine bundle (which also included a memory card 59), the current Metroid Prime bundle (Players' Choice million sold), and the Zelda collector pack (which had emulated classics in it). Nintendo didn't charge extra for its bundles (Mario Sunshine bundle excluded) and had them out for the holidays as well.
So it looks like, to me, that the reason companies don't always include FREE (which aren't free because you pay anyways) junk is because most people don't want it, which is reflected in the fact that, while the companies will put out holiday bundles to hopefully snap up extra Q4 system sales, they still have the regular bare-bones configuration available alongside it.
Hmm, so wouldn't that make your whole "+5, Insightful" into a "+2, Redundant" because you obviously never researched any of what you talk about, you just yammered along about how you want free stuff, and hit post? Halo's still expensive because it still sells. Microsoft knows this as much as you know this. I don't think you'll see a price drop on it until November the 9th; perhaps not even then. And don't think that feature's unique to Microsoft; Super Smash Bros Melee is still 49$ CDN, despite being Players' Choice.
And I quote (posted 9th of March, 2002): "The case, which pitted Tecmo against Japanese software company Westside, involved a tool included in one of Westside's CDs that let users hack up their DOA2 save games to alter the characters' clothing."
The PC gaming market is a joke for one major reason: the CD-ROM binder you get with every game purchase. Why should I slog through 3 discs for Doom 3, or 6 for Unreal Tournement 2k4?
If you look at the numbers, 78% of people use DVD-ROM drives in their PCs. I'd like to use my DVD-ROM drive (which I've had for 3 years) as something other than a way to watch DVD movies on my PC. Yet, with the expection of a handful of special releases (Sims 2 DVD, Unreal DVD), most stuff for the PC still comes on a butload of CDROMs, even though the people most likely to buy the damned things are already onto stuff that's been cheap and available for years.
You know what I like about my Xbox? No multi-disc games! I hope Half-Life 2 comes on DVD-ROM only. It could be the next big change, much like how Quake 3 was 3D Accelerator only.
This assumes that a civilization that is old enough to have made time travel and live until the Universe is cold is not old enough to have either 1) discovered another solution (such as transfering to a parallel dimension, if such things exist) or 2) matured enough to accept the inevitable (which is that time is an arrow, and that destroying the past would negate the future).
I think it's more along the lines of the fact that any timeline which results in past-time-travel (instead of future-time-travel) ends up having itself destroyed by the effects of people going back and altering the circumstances of the time machine.
I would like to point out that NT 4.0 and Win95/98 ran great on "old" PCs anywhere from a DX4/100 to a Pentium 166 or Pentium 200 (non-MMX with smaller caches). Since you can buy a Palm Pilot with a 400Mhz XScale processor, it wouldn't seme unwise to leverage the already stable core of Windows and its stable support for mime types (hacked as it is around file-name extensions) rather than develop a brand new OS.
It's akin to using X11 on the Zaurus. Would you argue that is bloat, and that they should write a whole new framebuffer interface, etc? No.
Because strings will do things like: uncompress ASCII text from tarballs, recognize unicode font files, work with XML document formats to ignore markup and focus on content, search within images for strings, etc, etc.
The person is asking about a true file contents indexing scheme, where you have a database of file name, meta type, and keywords culled from inside the document -- something that'd work with PDF, JPG w/ EXIF, pictures of text, OpenOffice files, XML files, HTML files, etc!
Do you honestly believe that humans are totally creatures of base instinct, with no mental controls at all? I don't think that's true in the slightest. Yes, there are definite factors that can influence human behaviour, but at no point does the upper-most level of the human mind have a lack of control.
We're socialized to see revenge as a good thing. When was the last time you saw media that showed someone getting revenge, which was portayed as justified, and then the revenge turned out to be a thing that caused more troubles? Hardly ever. Most of the time, people commiting revenge are shown as vigilante heroes.
People use base human instincts as justification for a lot of things. The nazis used it as justification for killing jews, homosexuals, and other "deviants" that didn't fit the mold of the kind of society they wanted to live in. Argueing for stupid ideas like, " Going against basic instincts can eventually cause insanity or at least mental instability." is the same stuff that backs up vicitimization of rape victims. "He couldn't control himself, he needed an outlet for his sexual tensions -- she was asking for it by dressing that way."
Abhorent is the moderation I'd like to apply to your post and to this story.
" Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Released. Oh wait, it's 2.6.8.1 On August 16th, 2004 with 6 comments Gleng writes "The latest Linux Kernel, 2.6.8 has been released. The changelog is here. Don't download that though! A follow up to patch it to version 2.6.8.1... Linux > Operating Systems, Linux, IT
Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Released On August 14th, 2004 with 203 comments J ROC writes "According to The Linux Kernel Archives kernel 2.6.8 is now out. It includes some fixes from 2.6.7. Happy upgrading." You may want to read this... Linux > Upgrades, Linux, IT "
If you'd read the comments in the original 2.6.8 release story (rather than this dupe), you'd see they mentioned the NFS fix -- several times in +5 comments.
Harry Potter's got to be the most obvious one, overlooked by EA in their lust for shitty game design.
Seriously, with the books and movies being so good, why would you want to rehash the action again in a game? Wouldn't it be more fun to make your own character's story in the HP universe? I'd love to see a virtual hogwarts, filled with thousands of other subscribers who are enjoying making their own way in the magical world. They could have their own groups and alliances, explore different sections of the grounds (perhaps using something like instancing so that more people can go in the same areas without choking them;)), learn magical powers, etc. Carving one's own story is always more interesting than rehashing an oft-retold one.
Whenever a book comes out, EA wouldn't have to wai for the movie to come out, too. They could just add the characters and areas as a small expansion. There's plenty of source material already, and I know a lot of people (such as people who also frequent HOL) would love to be involved in that kind of fun game.
I hope someone ballsy enough to do this gets the licence at some point. It's so great an idea for an MMO:)
"A proper modern game audio engine should include a set of, say, states. Once I change states (from, say, STATE_NORMAL to STATE_FIGHTING), the audio engine waits until the first transition point in the audio and then kicks into the STATE_FIGHTING audio). There should be the ability to add a transition sequence of music associated with the transition between those two states at this point in music. So I'd store a bunch of regular tracks like STATE_FIGHTING, and STATE_NORMAL, a bunch of short transition tracks (STATE_FIGHTING 1:03.5 to STATE_NORMAL 1:07.3, for instance)."
This sounds a lot like ActiveMusic in DirectX. Go play "Munch's Oddysee" on Xbox for a good example. As you get more involved, the music changes.
What I ultimately hated about it was how repeititve it all ways. Every transition became predictable, boring. It wore out the life of the music, because it was always the same base theme, and all the other transforms were the same, too.
MegaMan is good. I wish more games were like it. It melded cool music with cool action, and it kept them linked themeatically instead of using tricks of technology.
Bluetooth is incorrectly implemented.
on
Ready, Aim, HACK!
·
· Score: 1
This problem seems like one that could be fixed in software. Turning BT on and off as required is a great intermediate solution, but a lot of cellphone and PDA people have implemented their software such that turing it on and off requires walking through several menus. It's a chore for something that should be as simple as 2-3 button presses.
The people who whine to not buy BT cellphones and devices are, of course, as retarded as the companies who did not implement a secure standard;)
They do not resolve dependancies, they are built using a specific tree of dependancies. They do not work across RPM based distributions without significant work. They do not work unless all of the OS has been installed via RPM. It's a broken design.
There is something that's supposed to work like InstallShield -- autopackage. I haven't looked at it in detail, but it's very promising. It needs to be stable and distributed widely, though. That's not happened yet, but if it did, I think we'd see a greater move to Linux on the desktop. After all, once you have a system and can add and remove parts of it easily, you can really use the system:)
"If you aren't a paid up Microsoft stormtrooper, please do try to some research before making such blatantly erroneous statements."
If they were tools which were more widesrpead, there wouldn't be a problem. We need a solution which is distribution agnostic and available to all, not just Mandrake or SuSE users. The proper setup would allow install on any OS, and provider their own uninstall wrappers. No need for distribution specific support!
Autopackage has been suggested to me, and it looks cool. It's just that it's not 1) stable and 2) wide spread.
Saying that it's the users' fault they all don't use SuSE or Mandrake is like saying it's the users' fault that Microsoft products are insecure. Fix the product, and you notice the problems disapear.
Unfortunately, it doesn't do much good until it's used by a lot of groups. It needs to be stabilized and then it needs to be used. Maybe we can get Sourceforge people to use it as the official packaging system?:)
Until there is a real method of packaging and installing/removing software for Linux, the operating system will never move past where Windows was circa version 3.1. RPM has dependancy issues, and apt-get is something past most people. Don't even mention compile from source for your grandma! With Windows, you just download a binary installer and run it as either the admin or not. If it's admin, it'll install it system-wide; if not, it'll install per user. If'll bring any extra libraries in needs for its private use.
No current Linux technology immitates this. There is no way I can currently download a self-executing shellscript wrapper or otherwise binary program that will install either system-wide or to ~/bin/$appname, with care taken to provide its own libraries, and giving me an easy link so I can remove the application folder, the installed support libraries, and any config files separately.
Linux has made great strides in getting the system installed, and the various distributions have creative solutions for getting the more crufty parts like X11 (which freedesktop.org is, thankfully, revamping to be much more accepting and dynamic of modern hardware), and in terms of user-application glue (remember how OS/2 Warp would remember which applications were open and all their states when you rebooted?) in ways that surpass Windows, the actual application management is still a horrible hack, largely based on designs from the mid to late 90s which don't really work in practice.
"The focus inside the industry really isn't on ports, it never has been. Ports, by rule of thumb, sell very poorly. Are you going to buy Doom 3 for Xbox and PC? Given the choice of one or the other, which would you choose? So would I."
Yea, me too. After not having to deal with Windows or any random other problems when I played SW: KOTOR on there, I'm really looking forward to not having to buy any fancy new video cards for playing Doom 3. Plus I get to enjoy co-op play with my friend via XBL, so I'm getting the total Doom experience. I'm glad you've realized that console gaming, especially when the game is treated as well as Doom 3 on the Xbox has been by vicarious visions, is less hassle, more fun:)
As you can clearly see from this image that's been on PlanetGamecube since this morning, it's a power button! Why do mods reward people who can't be bothered to look at the zoomed version of pictures? It's not hard!
What is hard is to RTFA and actually make an insightful comment, or draw attention to something not covered by the subject material. The parent post does not do this!
Slashdot Mirror
There are new instructions on 486+ CPUs that are not supported on the 386. Instructions like cmpxchg8, for example. Some of these can be worked around (cmpxchg8 is used for data moving, and you can "fake it" for the locking involved with more computationally expensive instructions), but some of them cannot, and either way would require extensive work in the lowest level functions of the kernel to match the differences in the design.
That's why most new packages you see are i486; they use instructions Intel added to the ISA when they released the 486.
They've been out in Canadian markets since, oh, last week. If you want to spend 200$ CDN for the same thing you probably already have, just head over the border to an EB, FutureShop, or Toys'R'Us and get one.
"NES was definitely better than the SMS and Atari."
The Sega Master System had a larger colour palette and could deal with larger, brighter sprites. The reason it was not so hot was because of the limited controller design and the lack of games for the system.
What country did you come from? Mine was Canada! Canadian prices for a Canadian childhood. Or did you just assume I was in the US? Several countries use "dollars" for currency, including Australia (which has even more outrageous sounding prices!).
"Second, we are talking about VIDEO GAMES. CALM DOWN, no need to be such a dick about freaking games!"
/.ers have. There is no such thing as a free lunch; you don't have to be an economics major to understand this, so why can't we?
I'm just speaking out because there's a very strong "something-for-nothing" attitude that a lot of
Plus, everything you suggest has happened, in one form or another, for the past decade. Just not to the extent that you seem to want.
"Now, I recall the 'bare-bones' NES and SNES, but as I remember it those came out after the initial launch of the system... maybe I am wrong, but that would at least give you something to get all angry about again."
They did. However, as you'll notice, the majority of system sales did not occur until after these price cuts and slashes to make sure that the retailers could pump out the maximum volume of systems. The attachment rate (aka the # of games each system owner buys, on average) is something you can't always maximize easily; the solution to that is to get more systems out the door so there are more systems for the games to attach to. That's why this proved to be a succesful strategy for Nintendo in the late 80s and early 90s (as well as for other makers, like Sega and notably Sony).
"Also, the bundles we get now with a system are coming what, 2 or 3 years after the console launch? Why bother at that point? There's enough used and bargain bin games that users can make their own bundles."
Not true. Microsoft can throw in 2 games for a price that's like buying one game used. Nintendo can take a game that's made back its development costs and throw it in the box with a demo of its sequel. All of this is only possibly because the cost of the system hardware has been reduced. At each price point, there is a very specific hardware lifecycle attached. Intial launching at 300$ US means it costs about 450$ CDN for a system. That's expensive. All the launch titles are expensive, too; only early adopters will be wanting to buy a system for half a grand, and then dropping a further 80-90$ a piece on games. But if they wait a couple of years, they can walk away with a system that includes a game or two for 150$ less (as happened with the holiday bundles in fall 2002). This is a great bullet point on the box, and helps get the "wait-and-see" people off the sidelines and buying systems they can attach new games to.
"The appeal to bundling a game with a system AT LAUNCH is that it FEELS free... of course we are paying for it, usually to the tune of $200-300."
Yes, but that's 100% covering cost. If you wanted to include a game with it, you'd have to make it even more expensive. Sony wisely chose to include a demo disc with the launch of the PlayStation console to keep it at the (at the time, incredible for the technology involved) price of 399$ US, rather than having a pack in. Sega tried to sue them for getting it to that low level. Until you get some early adopters out there providing you with better advertising (as in, "try out the Playstation I bought, buddy!"), and helping you to clear out inventories of systems so that economies of scale on the production can kick in (which allows vendors to actually have margin on the units; Sony milked this with the PS2 until Microsoft and Nintendo came along) and allow for better technologies, etc.
"Ok, my compleely made up figure is that 85% of people think of gaming as a social activity, and hence must want an extra controller to play with friends. Moving on..."
As any engineer would tell you, it's easier to add than subtract. The number of single-player people outnumbers the number of multi-player people out there; so the multi-player people can add. In addition, why pay 40$ more for a console with extra controller, when you can get a MadCatz extra controller for 20$?
"Ok, demo's, what I suggested be bundled with systems, would be a nice thing to throw in
When you were buying a NES Power Pack or a SNES box, you were getting a lot, yes.
However, they also had NES packs without the extra controller and game. Did you notice how those were cheaper? I did.
In the olden days (1992), a NES system was about 40$ to make, 60$ at the wholesale level, and 80$ at the retailer level. They sold for 100$. If you had the extra game and controller, you'd spend about 150$. They passed the cost on to the consumer, rather than taking away from their profit margin just like any business would.
How much does a PS2 cost to make? They sell for 200$ CDN, but the cost to make is not 100$. It's closer to 170$. If you want a package that has an extra controller and a game, you just buy them separately. This has the added benefit of giving you, the end user, the choice over what controller and game combinations you get. Most of the time, people play single player games, for example. This means a lot of people (70% or so) don't want an extra controller.
About the only thing I can think that would be beneficial to include with a system would be a memory card, because (like a power cord, AV cord, controller, and the system itself), it's the only thing that's 100% needed for gaming enjoyment. However, as we see regular capacity increases (well, not from Sony; Nintendo has gone up from 59 block, to 251 block cards, to 1019 block cards), and because there are 3rd party cards (well, not much on the Sony side), you see that this could again be a place where consumers exercise their right to choose.
"After 6-8 months or so they should include a complete free game,"
Hmm, well, you obviously haven't seen the Microsoft Xbox holidy bundles. They include "complete, free*" games (*: It still costs more than a base system, because companies past costs on to the consumer, duh!) with them to try and drive sales of people who wouldn't mind getting a system with some games, as long as the system + games together is cheaper than the system + buying games separately. Microsoft's not the only one to do this; Nintendo has had things like the Mario Sunshine bundle (which also included a memory card 59), the current Metroid Prime bundle (Players' Choice million sold), and the Zelda collector pack (which had emulated classics in it). Nintendo didn't charge extra for its bundles (Mario Sunshine bundle excluded) and had them out for the holidays as well.
So it looks like, to me, that the reason companies don't always include FREE (which aren't free because you pay anyways) junk is because most people don't want it, which is reflected in the fact that, while the companies will put out holiday bundles to hopefully snap up extra Q4 system sales, they still have the regular bare-bones configuration available alongside it.
Hmm, so wouldn't that make your whole "+5, Insightful" into a "+2, Redundant" because you obviously never researched any of what you talk about, you just yammered along about how you want free stuff, and hit post? Halo's still expensive because it still sells. Microsoft knows this as much as you know this. I don't think you'll see a price drop on it until November the 9th; perhaps not even then. And don't think that feature's unique to Microsoft; Super Smash Bros Melee is still 49$ CDN, despite being Players' Choice.
http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/international/games /news/26063.shtml
And I quote (posted 9th of March, 2002):
"The case, which pitted Tecmo against Japanese software company Westside, involved a tool included in one of Westside's CDs that let users hack up their DOA2 save games to alter the characters' clothing."
This was just the appeal.
Do the boys complain when their pecks don't grow bigger/smaller?
Your sexism is disgusting.
The PC gaming market is a joke for one major reason: the CD-ROM binder you get with every game purchase. Why should I slog through 3 discs for Doom 3, or 6 for Unreal Tournement 2k4?
If you look at the numbers, 78% of people use DVD-ROM drives in their PCs. I'd like to use my DVD-ROM drive (which I've had for 3 years) as something other than a way to watch DVD movies on my PC. Yet, with the expection of a handful of special releases (Sims 2 DVD, Unreal DVD), most stuff for the PC still comes on a butload of CDROMs, even though the people most likely to buy the damned things are already onto stuff that's been cheap and available for years.
You know what I like about my Xbox? No multi-disc games! I hope Half-Life 2 comes on DVD-ROM only. It could be the next big change, much like how Quake 3 was 3D Accelerator only.
This assumes that a civilization that is old enough to have made time travel and live until the Universe is cold is not old enough to have either 1) discovered another solution (such as transfering to a parallel dimension, if such things exist) or 2) matured enough to accept the inevitable (which is that time is an arrow, and that destroying the past would negate the future).
I think it's more along the lines of the fact that any timeline which results in past-time-travel (instead of future-time-travel) ends up having itself destroyed by the effects of people going back and altering the circumstances of the time machine.
I would like to point out that NT 4.0 and Win95/98 ran great on "old" PCs anywhere from a DX4/100 to a Pentium 166 or Pentium 200 (non-MMX with smaller caches). Since you can buy a Palm Pilot with a 400Mhz XScale processor, it wouldn't seme unwise to leverage the already stable core of Windows and its stable support for mime types (hacked as it is around file-name extensions) rather than develop a brand new OS.
It's akin to using X11 on the Zaurus. Would you argue that is bloat, and that they should write a whole new framebuffer interface, etc? No.
Because strings will do things like: uncompress ASCII text from tarballs, recognize unicode font files, work with XML document formats to ignore markup and focus on content, search within images for strings, etc, etc.
The person is asking about a true file contents indexing scheme, where you have a database of file name, meta type, and keywords culled from inside the document -- something that'd work with PDF, JPG w/ EXIF, pictures of text, OpenOffice files, XML files, HTML files, etc!
Strings does none of that.
Do you honestly believe that humans are totally creatures of base instinct, with no mental controls at all? I don't think that's true in the slightest. Yes, there are definite factors that can influence human behaviour, but at no point does the upper-most level of the human mind have a lack of control.
We're socialized to see revenge as a good thing. When was the last time you saw media that showed someone getting revenge, which was portayed as justified, and then the revenge turned out to be a thing that caused more troubles? Hardly ever. Most of the time, people commiting revenge are shown as vigilante heroes.
People use base human instincts as justification for a lot of things. The nazis used it as justification for killing jews, homosexuals, and other "deviants" that didn't fit the mold of the kind of society they wanted to live in. Argueing for stupid ideas like, " Going against basic instincts can eventually cause insanity or at least mental instability." is the same stuff that backs up vicitimization of rape victims. "He couldn't control himself, he needed an outlet for his sexual tensions -- she was asking for it by dressing that way."
Abhorent is the moderation I'd like to apply to your post and to this story.
Topic: Linux:
"
Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Released. Oh wait, it's 2.6.8.1
On August 16th, 2004 with 6 comments
Gleng writes "The latest Linux Kernel, 2.6.8 has been released. The changelog is here. Don't download that though! A follow up to patch it to version 2.6.8.1...
Linux > Operating Systems, Linux, IT
Linux Kernel 2.6.8 Released
On August 14th, 2004 with 203 comments
J ROC writes "According to The Linux Kernel Archives kernel 2.6.8 is now out. It includes some fixes from 2.6.7. Happy upgrading." You may want to read this...
Linux > Upgrades, Linux, IT "
If you'd read the comments in the original 2.6.8 release story (rather than this dupe), you'd see they mentioned the NFS fix -- several times in +5 comments.
Dupe checking? What's that?
Harry Potter's got to be the most obvious one, overlooked by EA in their lust for shitty game design.
;)), learn magical powers, etc. Carving one's own story is always more interesting than rehashing an oft-retold one.
:)
Seriously, with the books and movies being so good, why would you want to rehash the action again in a game? Wouldn't it be more fun to make your own character's story in the HP universe? I'd love to see a virtual hogwarts, filled with thousands of other subscribers who are enjoying making their own way in the magical world. They could have their own groups and alliances, explore different sections of the grounds (perhaps using something like instancing so that more people can go in the same areas without choking them
Whenever a book comes out, EA wouldn't have to wai for the movie to come out, too. They could just add the characters and areas as a small expansion. There's plenty of source material already, and I know a lot of people (such as people who also frequent HOL) would love to be involved in that kind of fun game.
I hope someone ballsy enough to do this gets the licence at some point. It's so great an idea for an MMO
"A proper modern game audio engine should include a set of, say, states. Once I change states (from, say, STATE_NORMAL to STATE_FIGHTING), the audio engine waits until the first transition point in the audio and then kicks into the STATE_FIGHTING audio). There should be the ability to add a transition sequence of music associated with the transition between those two states at this point in music. So I'd store a bunch of regular tracks like STATE_FIGHTING, and STATE_NORMAL, a bunch of short transition tracks (STATE_FIGHTING 1:03.5 to STATE_NORMAL 1:07.3, for instance)."
This sounds a lot like ActiveMusic in DirectX. Go play "Munch's Oddysee" on Xbox for a good example. As you get more involved, the music changes.
What I ultimately hated about it was how repeititve it all ways. Every transition became predictable, boring. It wore out the life of the music, because it was always the same base theme, and all the other transforms were the same, too.
MegaMan is good. I wish more games were like it. It melded cool music with cool action, and it kept them linked themeatically instead of using tricks of technology.
This problem seems like one that could be fixed in software. Turning BT on and off as required is a great intermediate solution, but a lot of cellphone and PDA people have implemented their software such that turing it on and off requires walking through several menus. It's a chore for something that should be as simple as 2-3 button presses.
;)
The people who whine to not buy BT cellphones and devices are, of course, as retarded as the companies who did not implement a secure standard
That is, being distributed everywhere.
It's a great installer, it just seems that no one's using it. It needs to be used by more people for it to have an effect!
They do not resolve dependancies, they are built using a specific tree of dependancies. They do not work across RPM based distributions without significant work. They do not work unless all of the OS has been installed via RPM. It's a broken design.
There is something that's supposed to work like InstallShield -- autopackage. I haven't looked at it in detail, but it's very promising. It needs to be stable and distributed widely, though. That's not happened yet, but if it did, I think we'd see a greater move to Linux on the desktop. After all, once you have a system and can add and remove parts of it easily, you can really use the system :)
"If you aren't a paid up Microsoft stormtrooper, please do try to some research before making such blatantly erroneous statements."
If they were tools which were more widesrpead, there wouldn't be a problem. We need a solution which is distribution agnostic and available to all, not just Mandrake or SuSE users. The proper setup would allow install on any OS, and provider their own uninstall wrappers. No need for distribution specific support!
Autopackage has been suggested to me, and it looks cool. It's just that it's not 1) stable and 2) wide spread.
Saying that it's the users' fault they all don't use SuSE or Mandrake is like saying it's the users' fault that Microsoft products are insecure. Fix the product, and you notice the problems disapear.
Unfortunately, it doesn't do much good until it's used by a lot of groups. It needs to be stabilized and then it needs to be used. Maybe we can get Sourceforge people to use it as the official packaging system? :)
Until there is a real method of packaging and installing/removing software for Linux, the operating system will never move past where Windows was circa version 3.1. RPM has dependancy issues, and apt-get is something past most people. Don't even mention compile from source for your grandma! With Windows, you just download a binary installer and run it as either the admin or not. If it's admin, it'll install it system-wide; if not, it'll install per user. If'll bring any extra libraries in needs for its private use.
No current Linux technology immitates this. There is no way I can currently download a self-executing shellscript wrapper or otherwise binary program that will install either system-wide or to ~/bin/$appname, with care taken to provide its own libraries, and giving me an easy link so I can remove the application folder, the installed support libraries, and any config files separately.
Linux has made great strides in getting the system installed, and the various distributions have creative solutions for getting the more crufty parts like X11 (which freedesktop.org is, thankfully, revamping to be much more accepting and dynamic of modern hardware), and in terms of user-application glue (remember how OS/2 Warp would remember which applications were open and all their states when you rebooted?) in ways that surpass Windows, the actual application management is still a horrible hack, largely based on designs from the mid to late 90s which don't really work in practice.
"The focus inside the industry really isn't on ports, it never has been. Ports, by rule of thumb, sell very poorly. Are you going to buy Doom 3 for Xbox and PC? Given the choice of one or the other, which would you choose? So would I."
:)
Yea, me too. After not having to deal with Windows or any random other problems when I played SW: KOTOR on there, I'm really looking forward to not having to buy any fancy new video cards for playing Doom 3. Plus I get to enjoy co-op play with my friend via XBL, so I'm getting the total Doom experience. I'm glad you've realized that console gaming, especially when the game is treated as well as Doom 3 on the Xbox has been by vicarious visions, is less hassle, more fun
As you can clearly see from this image that's been on PlanetGamecube since this morning, it's a power button! Why do mods reward people who can't be bothered to look at the zoomed version of pictures? It's not hard!
What is hard is to RTFA and actually make an insightful comment, or draw attention to something not covered by the subject material. The parent post does not do this!