Eggrobin's WIP mod "Principia" implements N-body mechanics. It's pretty interesting, but also underlines why 2-body patched conics are a fine compromise for a game.
721MB?
"If you install games to your systemdrive, it may be necessary
to run this game with admin privileges instead."
Be honest, what else has been packaged with that torrent? Because that's larger than the genuine zip file, and I've been running KSP from drive C: since forever.
eBay sellers can see buyers' postcodes.
In fact for pretty much anything that ships physical goods, you kinda need to know the buyer's postcode. How else would you post it to them?
Granted, possibly not up to the same standard as a triple-SLI graphics set-up costing thousands, but some of these games are looking pretty damned sweet these days.
I'm hoping CCP turn around and make an Android client for EVE at some point. Now that would be awesome, and quite possibly doable.
That or you'll create someone who is so disaffected with society that they will end their own life approximately three months after coming out, in a way that involves a hail of bullets and a packed shopping mall.
Some people break under pressure. Other people, well, they snap. You going to take the chance on which one Hammond is?
This is without going into the particularly virulent sadism you seem to exhibit. Some people, just want to see some poor sod burn, eh?
Well to be fair, it's not like the billion-and-one Linux distros make that obvious either.
So the executable goes in/usr/bin, or is that/bin? Or is that/usr/local/bin?
Then some other files might go in/var somewhere. Possibly in its own folder, possibly somewhere under/var/spool or some other subdirectory of a subdirectory. Don't forget the various.../lib directories hanging about!
About the only surefire thing is that config files will go in/etc somewhere, but "/etc somewhere" is about as much help as saying that your settings are "in the registry somewhere".
I'm an Ubuntu user. I have a dislike for Microsoft and their practices that borders on pathological, however programs do not install into a simple location in *nix systems nor likely any other fully-featured operating system built in the last 10 years. Debian's Aptitude helps a lot, but that assumes you used apt to install the program in the first place. Don't forget to apt-build or whatever your favourite flavour of Linux uses, or you'll have a hell of a time uninstalling that load of gunk you just compiled.
Also dammit, Ubuntu and Firefox, I told you you're in the UK. Stop underlining "flavour" and trying to tell me it's a typo!
The big guys would buy some relatively cheap shack, bung a couple of PCs in there for EPOS and use it as a warehouse-cum-shop, a bit like a single Argos store but smaller.
Meanwhile your smaller setups who can't afford a "brick and mortar" presence are screwed.
Nice one, EU!
Given the weight of even a LiPo battery of the capacity required to push a car any appreciable distance, your smack junkie would have collapsed and be writhing around in withdrawal 50 yards away, slumped over probably a hundredweight of lithium polymer power source. Make it lead/acid or NiMH instead and you're talking serious weight.
Would be easier just to steal the entire car with a pickup truck and sell for scrap. Or just nick the tyres and leave it on bricks.
I guess anything can happen when you drink durin the daytime.
Joe Public trying to use any operating system other than Windows.
Joe Public does run other OS's(syntax?) that's why there are so many Linux forums and mailing lists. It works quite well.
I said Joe Public, not Gary Geek. I'm talking about the sort of person who thinks the box whirring away under the desk is "the hard drive" and the monitor is "the computer".
The only example I can think of, of a person using Linux who doesn't have a degree in technical bullshit, is a friend of mine who I carefully constructed and tailored a Linux virtual machine for, so his kids could use an MSN client that wouldn't virus-bomb everything like last time they had access to the PC. He still doesn't quite understand what this magical Virtualbox thing is, nor exactly what Mandriva is, but he does know he's had the thing for months now with his kids doing their worst, and his (Windows host) machine hasn't fallen over yet. It still took a geek like myself to set everything up and hide it behind a nice neat desktop icon though, and you still can't just go to a shop, buy a copy of Spore/Crysis/whatever, and expect it to run on anything other than Windows, which was kind of my point with regards vendor lock-in and Microsoft's monopoly versus Google's popularity.
supporting libraries capable of running the vast majority of all commercial software out there.
Does commercial really mean superior? I have seen many instances where Open Source or GPL is superior to commercial. Many users like myself would rather run something that works than something that is 'commercial'.
In some cases yes, commercial applications are superior (oh god I'm about to get mod-bombed for that). Particularly in computer games, which to be honest is what you want Linux to run a lot of if you want to stand a hope in hell of breaking the Microsoft monopoly. So far we have, uhm.. the Doom/Quake series, Unreal Tournament, EVE Online, and... well.. that's it. Fine games indeed, but not exactly a wide-ranging collection.
Linux itself seems to work quite well through mutual self-interest and the terms of the GPL. There's a lot of companies out there who all know they need an OS to run things on, so work together to make Linux better, even if they may produce competing software, or even not particularly like each other. It proves that a FOSS operating system suite, effectively proof against monopolising behaviour, is not only possible but works extremely well.
The problem is, there's just not enough commercial backing. Not enough inertia. Everyone uses Windows, so developers make things for Windows. Developers make things for Windows, so everyone uses Windows. Wash, rinse, repeat and multiply by the fact that one company controls what you see on the desktop when you bring that machine home from the shop and power it up. What non-geek has even heard of ICQ these days? But everyone knows what MSN Messenger is.
So getting back to the original point, hopefully you can see how it would be very hard to pin a "monopoly" label on Google (exactly how do they lock you out from Lycos or Yahoo? Or even Live Search or whatever MS calls it these days?), whereas it's extremely easy to pin that label on Microsoft.
That's precisely what I meant. You can make your own search engine and Google can't do jack about it. It'll be as usable as any search engine should be (presuming you code it well), and your users wouldn't have the rest of their Internet experience affected by their choice of search engine.
Now in a similar sense, Microsoft (oops, let the name slip there) don't own a patent on the operating system (though I'm sure they wished they did). However, just imagine Joe Public trying to use any operating system other than Windows. You might as well ask them to learn Welsh. As such, Microsoft perpetuate a monopoly because nobody else is allowed to make an operating system or supporting libraries capable of running the vast majority of all commercial software out there. Even if they did reverse-engineer Windows successfully, it'd last a short while and then you-know-who changes a few things and makes the competing product incompatible and obsolete overnight. All the while harping on about "interoperability" like a particularly demented parrot who knows the words but wouldn't have a clue what they mean.
That's the difference between a monopoly, and a service or product that 99.9% of people just happen to choose.
Google are virtually omnipresent because they are just that good. Nothing and nobody is stopping you or anyone else from trying to compete with them, as seemingly impossible a task as that may be. They don't own a patent on the search engine.
Unlike a certain large OS vendor whose business model revolves around finding new ways to lock customers in, turn open standards into proprietary, patented and licensed rip-offs, and threatening others with lawsuits whenever it feels the need. 235 patents, wasn't it?
Well, Wifi is something of a problem case for Linux at the moment. As is (or maybe was) the case with high-end gaming graphics cards, the manufacturers are loath to give out any kind of specs for someone to write a driver with. At least with graphics cards you can usually download a proprietary binary driver from somewhere (assuming it works with the current kernel), but there seems to be precious little support for Linux when it comes to wifi cards.
A lot of other things do work very well, though. Some things such as Bluetooth work even better under Linux than Windows. And, if you're really desperate to get some crappy old hardware from the year dot working, you'll probably find there's something in the kernel source tree that covers it, if you can/want to roll your own.
For most cheap PCs sold these days, that probably won't be the case though. Most come with some on-board Intel graphics card and realtek or national semiconducters NIC, both of which will work as soon as you insert the Live CD. OpenOffice is usable enough for a business. It gets the job done, and it's cheap (ie: free). Desktop environments like KDE are making it very easy for someone from a Windows background to use Linux. Live CDs themselves make it very easy to check whether a particular distribution will work "out of the box" on any particular hardware combination, without touching the contents of your hard disk drive.
I've said before that Linux distros aren't quite ready "for the desktop", meaning they're not quite ready to sit in the living room of someone who's most complex involvement with computers involves 12 buttons and two thumbsticks. However for a business that just wants one or more workstations with an office suite sufficient for writing letters and spreadsheets, accessing the Internet/Intranet and maintaining a database, Linux is perfect. It's easy enough to use (I never thought I'd hear myself say that). A lot of businesses that don't want to worry about computers breaking get some kind of support contract anyway, and the hardware is cheap as chips. That's without going into its more advanced capabilities as a server OS, or some of the UI tweaking and effects you can get out of things like Compiz (things that, coincidentally, work just fine on cheap on-board Intel graphics cards).
As I understand it (and at least in my own jurisdiction), if the door is unlocked, then someone who enters cannot be charged with breaking and entering. Now, if they trash your stuff they can be charged with criminal damage, and if they don't leave when told then that's clearly trespassing. However, someone who walks in, looks about and walks out again may well end up not getting charged with a thing.
So let's play with that analogy, then. The door is open, I'm not breaking anything to enter your network, and not only that but your DHCP-shaped butler is giving me a TV remote control that I can use to my heart's content. Would that be about right?
It's not hard to encrypt a router. If you buy the right equipment (I believe some Linksys and Buffalo routers do this), then setting up a secure connection is as easy as "press button on router, press button on device." There is no excuse for not doing this, unless you want people to have access to your network. You might as well stick up a notice on the front of your house saying "come on in and enjoy yourselves", which with a public (notice that word?) router that hands out IP addresses like toffee, you effectively are doing.
If you're running hacked software, don't be surprised if an update breaks it. That the shop won't help you fix it doesn't surprise me either. Apple may have marketed themselves as the "cool" option, but if you ever want a taste of what having a Macintosh in every home could be like, look no further than this.
And people call Microsoft the Borg...
PS: I'm aware the Apple Mac is a fine machine. I'm aware it works in various ways that Windows doesn't. I'm aware people are very happy with their iMacs and get very defensive about them. However I'm also aware that the amount of lock-in that Apple have on the Mac makes Microsoft look like the Last Bastion of Freedom in comparison.
"...doesn't mean it is OK to walk right in and check out what's in the fridge (unless of course it is your home)."
Oh gawd, here come the crappy analogies. A router is not a house, a computer is not a car, and if you leave your wifi unsecured that is not mine or anybody else's problem (except maybe your ISP, who may have something to say about it). Secure it or expect it to be used. It's not rocket science!
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Eggrobin's WIP mod "Principia" implements N-body mechanics. It's pretty interesting, but also underlines why 2-body patched conics are a fine compromise for a game.
Forum thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogra...
For the latest build, lurk around #principia on Espernet and ask Egg when he's awake.
721MB?
"If you install games to your systemdrive, it may be necessary to run this game with admin privileges instead."
Be honest, what else has been packaged with that torrent? Because that's larger than the genuine zip file, and I've been running KSP from drive C: since forever.
eBay sellers can see buyers' postcodes. In fact for pretty much anything that ships physical goods, you kinda need to know the buyer's postcode. How else would you post it to them?
Evidently you are. Some people can't handle the truth it seems, and begging for someone to be anally raped is sadism. Ergo, you are a sadist.
How many Tegra 3 games have you played lately?
Granted, possibly not up to the same standard as a triple-SLI graphics set-up costing thousands, but some of these games are looking pretty damned sweet these days.
I'm hoping CCP turn around and make an Android client for EVE at some point. Now that would be awesome, and quite possibly doable.
That or you'll create someone who is so disaffected with society that they will end their own life approximately three months after coming out, in a way that involves a hail of bullets and a packed shopping mall.
Some people break under pressure. Other people, well, they snap. You going to take the chance on which one Hammond is?
This is without going into the particularly virulent sadism you seem to exhibit. Some people, just want to see some poor sod burn, eh?
New idea: An OS based around RedCode. Oh go on, you know you want to.
Sir, you owe me a new keyboard. I wish I had mod points to spare!
BASIC lets you.
Ruby is designed to.
It also makes more damned sense.
Well to be fair, it's not like the billion-and-one Linux distros make that obvious either.
/usr/bin, or is that /bin? Or is that /usr/local/bin?
/var somewhere. Possibly in its own folder, possibly somewhere under /var/spool or some other subdirectory of a subdirectory. Don't forget the various .../lib directories hanging about!
/etc somewhere, but "/etc somewhere" is about as much help as saying that your settings are "in the registry somewhere".
So the executable goes in
Then some other files might go in
About the only surefire thing is that config files will go in
I'm an Ubuntu user. I have a dislike for Microsoft and their practices that borders on pathological, however programs do not install into a simple location in *nix systems nor likely any other fully-featured operating system built in the last 10 years. Debian's Aptitude helps a lot, but that assumes you used apt to install the program in the first place. Don't forget to apt-build or whatever your favourite flavour of Linux uses, or you'll have a hell of a time uninstalling that load of gunk you just compiled.
Also dammit, Ubuntu and Firefox, I told you you're in the UK. Stop underlining "flavour" and trying to tell me it's a typo!
The big guys would buy some relatively cheap shack, bung a couple of PCs in there for EPOS and use it as a warehouse-cum-shop, a bit like a single Argos store but smaller. Meanwhile your smaller setups who can't afford a "brick and mortar" presence are screwed. Nice one, EU!
Hybrid LSD?
Damn, and there's me paying way over the odds for bits of impregnated blotting paper. WHERE DO I BUY THESE BATTERIES?
Given the weight of even a LiPo battery of the capacity required to push a car any appreciable distance, your smack junkie would have collapsed and be writhing around in withdrawal 50 yards away, slumped over probably a hundredweight of lithium polymer power source. Make it lead/acid or NiMH instead and you're talking serious weight. Would be easier just to steal the entire car with a pickup truck and sell for scrap. Or just nick the tyres and leave it on bricks.
For being someone else in this thread to spot the difference between popularity and monopoly.
Ta muchly.
I guess anything can happen when you drink durin the daytime.
Joe Public trying to use any operating system other than Windows.
Joe Public does run other OS's(syntax?) that's why there are so many Linux forums and mailing lists. It works quite well.
I said Joe Public, not Gary Geek. I'm talking about the sort of person who thinks the box whirring away under the desk is "the hard drive" and the monitor is "the computer".
The only example I can think of, of a person using Linux who doesn't have a degree in technical bullshit, is a friend of mine who I carefully constructed and tailored a Linux virtual machine for, so his kids could use an MSN client that wouldn't virus-bomb everything like last time they had access to the PC. He still doesn't quite understand what this magical Virtualbox thing is, nor exactly what Mandriva is, but he does know he's had the thing for months now with his kids doing their worst, and his (Windows host) machine hasn't fallen over yet. It still took a geek like myself to set everything up and hide it behind a nice neat desktop icon though, and you still can't just go to a shop, buy a copy of Spore/Crysis/whatever, and expect it to run on anything other than Windows, which was kind of my point with regards vendor lock-in and Microsoft's monopoly versus Google's popularity.
supporting libraries capable of running the vast majority of all commercial software out there.
Does commercial really mean superior? I have seen many instances where Open Source or GPL is superior to commercial. Many users like myself would rather run something that works than something that is 'commercial'.
In some cases yes, commercial applications are superior (oh god I'm about to get mod-bombed for that). Particularly in computer games, which to be honest is what you want Linux to run a lot of if you want to stand a hope in hell of breaking the Microsoft monopoly. So far we have, uhm.. the Doom/Quake series, Unreal Tournament, EVE Online, and... well.. that's it. Fine games indeed, but not exactly a wide-ranging collection. Linux itself seems to work quite well through mutual self-interest and the terms of the GPL. There's a lot of companies out there who all know they need an OS to run things on, so work together to make Linux better, even if they may produce competing software, or even not particularly like each other. It proves that a FOSS operating system suite, effectively proof against monopolising behaviour, is not only possible but works extremely well.
The problem is, there's just not enough commercial backing. Not enough inertia. Everyone uses Windows, so developers make things for Windows. Developers make things for Windows, so everyone uses Windows. Wash, rinse, repeat and multiply by the fact that one company controls what you see on the desktop when you bring that machine home from the shop and power it up. What non-geek has even heard of ICQ these days? But everyone knows what MSN Messenger is.
So getting back to the original point, hopefully you can see how it would be very hard to pin a "monopoly" label on Google (exactly how do they lock you out from Lycos or Yahoo? Or even Live Search or whatever MS calls it these days?), whereas it's extremely easy to pin that label on Microsoft.
That's precisely what I meant. You can make your own search engine and Google can't do jack about it. It'll be as usable as any search engine should be (presuming you code it well), and your users wouldn't have the rest of their Internet experience affected by their choice of search engine.
Now in a similar sense, Microsoft (oops, let the name slip there) don't own a patent on the operating system (though I'm sure they wished they did). However, just imagine Joe Public trying to use any operating system other than Windows. You might as well ask them to learn Welsh. As such, Microsoft perpetuate a monopoly because nobody else is allowed to make an operating system or supporting libraries capable of running the vast majority of all commercial software out there. Even if they did reverse-engineer Windows successfully, it'd last a short while and then you-know-who changes a few things and makes the competing product incompatible and obsolete overnight. All the while harping on about "interoperability" like a particularly demented parrot who knows the words but wouldn't have a clue what they mean.
That's the difference between a monopoly, and a service or product that 99.9% of people just happen to choose.
Google are virtually omnipresent because they are just that good. Nothing and nobody is stopping you or anyone else from trying to compete with them, as seemingly impossible a task as that may be. They don't own a patent on the search engine.
Unlike a certain large OS vendor whose business model revolves around finding new ways to lock customers in, turn open standards into proprietary, patented and licensed rip-offs, and threatening others with lawsuits whenever it feels the need. 235 patents, wasn't it?
"yeah spamming is bad, but the punishment should fit the crime."
Russian Spammer found buried under 300 tons of processed pork?
Well, Wifi is something of a problem case for Linux at the moment. As is (or maybe was) the case with high-end gaming graphics cards, the manufacturers are loath to give out any kind of specs for someone to write a driver with. At least with graphics cards you can usually download a proprietary binary driver from somewhere (assuming it works with the current kernel), but there seems to be precious little support for Linux when it comes to wifi cards.
A lot of other things do work very well, though. Some things such as Bluetooth work even better under Linux than Windows. And, if you're really desperate to get some crappy old hardware from the year dot working, you'll probably find there's something in the kernel source tree that covers it, if you can/want to roll your own.
For most cheap PCs sold these days, that probably won't be the case though. Most come with some on-board Intel graphics card and realtek or national semiconducters NIC, both of which will work as soon as you insert the Live CD. OpenOffice is usable enough for a business. It gets the job done, and it's cheap (ie: free). Desktop environments like KDE are making it very easy for someone from a Windows background to use Linux. Live CDs themselves make it very easy to check whether a particular distribution will work "out of the box" on any particular hardware combination, without touching the contents of your hard disk drive.
I've said before that Linux distros aren't quite ready "for the desktop", meaning they're not quite ready to sit in the living room of someone who's most complex involvement with computers involves 12 buttons and two thumbsticks. However for a business that just wants one or more workstations with an office suite sufficient for writing letters and spreadsheets, accessing the Internet/Intranet and maintaining a database, Linux is perfect. It's easy enough to use (I never thought I'd hear myself say that). A lot of businesses that don't want to worry about computers breaking get some kind of support contract anyway, and the hardware is cheap as chips. That's without going into its more advanced capabilities as a server OS, or some of the UI tweaking and effects you can get out of things like Compiz (things that, coincidentally, work just fine on cheap on-board Intel graphics cards).
As I understand it (and at least in my own jurisdiction), if the door is unlocked, then someone who enters cannot be charged with breaking and entering. Now, if they trash your stuff they can be charged with criminal damage, and if they don't leave when told then that's clearly trespassing. However, someone who walks in, looks about and walks out again may well end up not getting charged with a thing.
So let's play with that analogy, then. The door is open, I'm not breaking anything to enter your network, and not only that but your DHCP-shaped butler is giving me a TV remote control that I can use to my heart's content. Would that be about right?
It's not hard to encrypt a router. If you buy the right equipment (I believe some Linksys and Buffalo routers do this), then setting up a secure connection is as easy as "press button on router, press button on device." There is no excuse for not doing this, unless you want people to have access to your network. You might as well stick up a notice on the front of your house saying "come on in and enjoy yourselves", which with a public (notice that word?) router that hands out IP addresses like toffee, you effectively are doing.
It's still a crappy analogy, though.
You can't do that. I've patented the use of simple bold statements for the purpose of a humorous reply!
I SUE YOU!
If you're running hacked software, don't be surprised if an update breaks it. That the shop won't help you fix it doesn't surprise me either. Apple may have marketed themselves as the "cool" option, but if you ever want a taste of what having a Macintosh in every home could be like, look no further than this.
And people call Microsoft the Borg...
PS: I'm aware the Apple Mac is a fine machine. I'm aware it works in various ways that Windows doesn't. I'm aware people are very happy with their iMacs and get very defensive about them. However I'm also aware that the amount of lock-in that Apple have on the Mac makes Microsoft look like the Last Bastion of Freedom in comparison.
"I admit making it easy for guys like this isn't smart, but freedom is about choices and choices have consequences."
Like, leave your router open to the world: the world uses your router. Choice, consequence.
Bee cause spell chequers, as whee no, all ways get it write.
"...doesn't mean it is OK to walk right in and check out what's in the fridge (unless of course it is your home)."
Oh gawd, here come the crappy analogies. A router is not a house, a computer is not a car, and if you leave your wifi unsecured that is not mine or anybody else's problem (except maybe your ISP, who may have something to say about it). Secure it or expect it to be used. It's not rocket science!