You missed one point: PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION.
Let me explain. Games serve only one purpose - to give as much fun as possible. We all agree that playing through the same game content multiple times is boring (not fun). Please notice that there are two possible solution to this:
1. When player dies - move back in time few seconds just before the death. (in some games that's an obsessive saving-loading sequence, which makes playing unfun, in Prince of Persia this is automatic).
2. When player dies - make sure that the game content (in new game) is totally different.
Solution 1. is the simplest one, so no wonder that everyone does it, but also it makes gam unattractive to play again, after it is finished (even without dying).
Solution 2 makes game always attractive to play, because even after it's finished, a new play will be totally different. Placed in different time, with different randomly generated quests and different.. everything. It's crazy difficult to make such a game.
Currently only roguelikes provide Solution 2. The "text" game interface makes it possible to do so, because it simplifies a lot level generation, removes a LOT of 3D graphics work, etc. It's a LOT because to have 3D graphics one would have to draw thousands of 3D tiles, and write extremely difficult level generation algorithms. And this is the sole reason why roguelikes have such a great following among those who tasted it. You live once, but each life is different. My pick is adom, and I tell you - no other game can give me the same fun and excitement because I live just once. Adrenaline gets high when I'm in tight situation and could die. It makes the experience a lot more real, and I like it.
I'm using opera too:) I have 3 opera windows open with roughly 30 tabs total. And it fares quite good. But it doesn't have the features which made me to use galeon, so I'm not going to switch.
BTW: switch? Switch? I'm using all those three browsers (galeon 150 - 200 tabs, 290MB of RAM; opera 30 tabs, 160 MB of RAM; firefox 8 tabs, 160 MB of RAM) for different kind of stuff. It's just another way to organize things on my desktop. Sometimes I fire up dillo, seamonkey, konqueror or epiphany if I need even more "browsing categories":) (and I tell you that epiphany is the worst browser;)
Well it's just a matter of browsing habits. I tend to keep good stuff forever until I finally am in the mood to go through it (and read/hack/implement/apprecieate/whatever) then bookmark it and close. So they usually wait few months. If I bookmarked it immediately and closed I'd never remember to go back to it, because I have just so many goddamn bookmarks. Although really very well organized I think:) Bookmarks are to remember old useful stuff. Non-closed tabs are to remember new useful stuff.
And of course those 11 windows are very well spatially organized across virtual viewports on my desktop (I prefer viewports to workspaces, because they are 2D spatial). With each viewport having its name depenging on the general topic it is for. But only 7 of my 40 viewports actually have galeon windows on them. Other are full of xterms, gvims and other junk (40 viewports? crazy? I prefer viewports to minimizing windows. In fact I never minimize any window). Uptime measured in months is a way to go:) I never reached a year, yet, due to kernel upgrades. Of course galeon restores whole session very nicely after restart or crash (previous version of flashplayer was causing crashes, but it's fine now;).
Small correction - with 150 tabs (in 11 windows) galeon 2.0.6 uses 290MB of RAM, while firefox 3.0.3 with 8 tabs uses 160MB of RAM. Though, galeon is still the winner here:)
are you serious? I have right now 11 galeon windows with about 15 tabs in each.
Of course I'm using bookmarks, galeon has a nice feature "bookmark all tabs in a window into subfolder...". And I'm using galeon more than firefox or opera, just because it's damn so good at handling hundreds of tabs open. And still uses less memory than firefox 3.0.3 with only 15 tabs open.
Problem boils down to fact that programming is in fact a very advanced calculus. And writing a program is 'deriving' it. As in reaching a correct formula with a proof that it's correct. That's how software should be written anyways. And functional programming will only make it *simpler*, not harder.
Yet still galeon is my favorite browser. I have like 200 tabs in it, while in opera I have just about 30 tabs and in firefox just one window with 8 tabs...
You might want to see 15 slides concerning Copernicus. There are even screenshots of software used for DNA recognition!
This is in a polish newspaper, but there's not too much too translate just click "Nastepny" which means "Next" too view all the slides. An interesting view nontheless.
Few years ago the OLPC was my wet dream, but it took soo long for it, to be available for buy, that it's plain crazy. The Eee and ASUS stuff appeared. But they are all plain junk - very heavy, and very short battery life. OLPC at least is rechargeable...
But, oh well, fortunately now there is Pandora, I have ordered one and got to wait until december to receive it. I think that Pandora is revolutionary to Portable / Personal Micro Computers as Sinclair ZX Spectrum was at its own time. I may be wrong, but there's something in it. So it might be true. Time will tell.
Redundant Array of I...Intercommunicating D....Devices of Virtual Machines.
It is obvious that the next step is to set up several servers with Virtual Machines on them. Run the same VM in parallel on one or more of them. And if one of the servers goes down - the end user will not notice this, because his virtual machine was be mirrored on all those other servers. Just like hotswap in RAID HDDs we will have this capability with Virtual Machines. It's just a matter of time.
And if someone is stupid enough to try to patent this - he can't because it's blatantly obvious, and I doubt that I am the first person the present this idea.
I was wondering with my friend someday if it's possible with regex to select a pattern which occurs twice or more times repeatedly in single line but is separated by undefined characters. For example I want to select only lines in which the same pattern "[FB][ot]o" occurs exactly two times (in example below . is any character, for clarity):
...Foo... - is not selected ...Foo...Bto... - is not selected ...Bto...Bto... - is selected
a normal/[FB][ot]o.*[FB][ot]o/ would select the second and third case. But I only want the third case. The first occurrence would define my pattern, and second occurrence must exactly match it. Magic stuff like this is not working:/\([FB][ot]o\).*\1/ although that seems to be the closest description of what we wanted.
Well, I'm just glad that my current bank provides free insurance up to 50k EUR (while maximum I had on my account is 10 times less than that;). This insurance works in a very nice way - I can come at a maximum a week later and tell them that some transaction was bogus (means that I discovered that some money disappeared from my account without my authorization). And they will revert that transaction if it's below 50k EUR. I don't know how it works - never tried. Probably I will need to prove it somehow, otherwise I could be buying stuff all around and revert those transactions all time.
But that's in fact my temporary bank account, and for my primary bank account I will never allow to have an online-capable credit card. It's just too easy to get id stolen. Buying stuff online is very useful, but (unfortunately) for safety it requires a separate bank account (in my case with VISA) which has less money and is easier to control.
huh? HDDs don't last forever, you can't argue with that.
What "modern file systems" are you talking about? Bundling rollback inside a filesystem is one of the stupidest things that could be done to fs. How many inodes would that eat up after a year, especially since some temporary files change hundreds times per day? Version control software and/or backups are designed for this purpose - and are filesystem agnostic (work with whatever fs suits your needs).
Personally I like the idea of such a virus, it could become another nail to the coffin of some certain woefully insecure OS.
yes, we do use (suse) linux to operate synchrotron shutters, engines and other experimental devices. Sorry I don't want to explain more, because I'm reading slashdot backlog of news that accumulated from two weeks. And I want to do it quickly. I don't work with insect samples but with snow samples in the synchrotron.
I just tried it. It took long to download the first one, but tell me - are all those movies so short? Or is that because I just started it, and it needs more time to download/generate? Currently I have two movies here, and they are only 5 seconds each. It's difficult to watch them being that short, before I start appreciating the movie - it ends.
Summary: they are using "Virtual" screen option, available since years in X11. Throw in two touchpads (one for mouse, second for scrolling on virtual desktop) and totally DESTROY the keyboard layout.
Two touchpads are nice. I don't mind the lack of per-key response when typing, probably could get used to it. But the keyboard layout? C'mon, that will be the next PCjr of "dual-touchpads". PCjr inveneted pc101 keyboard layout, see?, so I bet that they just invented "two touchpads" thingy.
If this is ever gonna work, it will be touchpads overlaid on a classical keyboard, and the border frame between them will be just to fit between the keys.
You pick several 3d models, like people, chairs or flowers. Name all their parts, like "chair leg", "human head" etc. The CAPTCHA is generated by placing a several 3D models randomly rotated on a scene and rendering them with easily readable letters "A", "B" placed on the named parts. The captcha questions are: "what is the letter on human head", "what is the letter on chair leg", etc..
People can answer pretty easily. The 3D models are always randomly placed and rotated on a scene, so bots have a problem.
you should go and try adom (see sig.) it's *much* better than Diablo II. Only disadvantage is totally crappy "graphics". I had spent once 4 months (like holidays + school start) playing this game almost nonstop. Great waste of time, I totally regret that, I can't wait until I'll have some time again... I don't even start this game if I know that if I lose next two weeks of my life I will be in BIG trouble in RL. I discovered this game in 1999 and after 8 years of playing (with gaming-breaks sometimes as big as to 2 years) I've beaten this game only 2 times! Darn difficult. Oh, and no save-scumming. You can restore a save only if the game crashed (happens on average once per 6 months). Every other death is a *death*. That rule gives immense adrenaline kick during fight, becuause you are growing an emotional connection with your character as it gets exp and good items, and suddenly a death gives a feel that something was *really* lost. When I fight and my character reached about level 20 I always feel adrenaline. You cannot have this kind of adrenaline if you are always restoring from savegame after your death...
Slashdot Mirror
You missed one point: PROCEDURAL CONTENT GENERATION.
Let me explain. Games serve only one purpose - to give as much fun as possible. We all agree that playing through the same game content multiple times is boring (not fun). Please notice that there are two possible solution to this:
1. When player dies - move back in time few seconds just before the death. (in some games that's an obsessive saving-loading sequence, which makes playing unfun, in Prince of Persia this is automatic).
2. When player dies - make sure that the game content (in new game) is totally different.
Solution 1. is the simplest one, so no wonder that everyone does it, but also it makes gam unattractive to play again, after it is finished (even without dying).
Solution 2 makes game always attractive to play, because even after it's finished, a new play will be totally different. Placed in different time, with different randomly generated quests and different.. everything. It's crazy difficult to make such a game.
Currently only roguelikes provide Solution 2. The "text" game interface makes it possible to do so, because it simplifies a lot level generation, removes a LOT of 3D graphics work, etc. It's a LOT because to have 3D graphics one would have to draw thousands of 3D tiles, and write extremely difficult level generation algorithms. And this is the sole reason why roguelikes have such a great following among those who tasted it. You live once, but each life is different. My pick is adom, and I tell you - no other game can give me the same fun and excitement because I live just once. Adrenaline gets high when I'm in tight situation and could die. It makes the experience a lot more real, and I like it.
Have a look here - it's a long read about that topic, but if you made such a long documentary addressing Solution 1, the perhaps reading through 6 pages about Solution 2 will be interesting for you: http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-of-level-designer-procedural.html
(wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation )
Now the fate of 64bit future is being determined...
aaaah, can't breathe... This is so funny, you made my day today, thanks.
And it was a hard day, I was looking at /. just before going to sleep, after 22h of nonstop work :/ Good night.
I'm using opera too :) I have 3 opera windows open with roughly 30 tabs total. And it fares quite good. But it doesn't have the features which made me to use galeon, so I'm not going to switch.
BTW: switch? Switch? I'm using all those three browsers (galeon 150 - 200 tabs, 290MB of RAM; opera 30 tabs, 160 MB of RAM; firefox 8 tabs, 160 MB of RAM) for different kind of stuff. It's just another way to organize things on my desktop. Sometimes I fire up dillo, seamonkey, konqueror or epiphany if I need even more "browsing categories" :) (and I tell you that epiphany is the worst browser ;)
Well it's just a matter of browsing habits. I tend to keep good stuff forever until I finally am in the mood to go through it (and read/hack/implement/apprecieate/whatever) then bookmark it and close. So they usually wait few months. If I bookmarked it immediately and closed I'd never remember to go back to it, because I have just so many goddamn bookmarks. Although really very well organized I think :) Bookmarks are to remember old useful stuff. Non-closed tabs are to remember new useful stuff.
And of course those 11 windows are very well spatially organized across virtual viewports on my desktop (I prefer viewports to workspaces, because they are 2D spatial). With each viewport having its name depenging on the general topic it is for. But only 7 of my 40 viewports actually have galeon windows on them. Other are full of xterms, gvims and other junk (40 viewports? crazy? I prefer viewports to minimizing windows. In fact I never minimize any window). Uptime measured in months is a way to go :) I never reached a year, yet, due to kernel upgrades. Of course galeon restores whole session very nicely after restart or crash (previous version of flashplayer was causing crashes, but it's fine now ;).
Small correction - with 150 tabs (in 11 windows) galeon 2.0.6 uses 290MB of RAM, while firefox 3.0.3 with 8 tabs uses 160MB of RAM. Though, galeon is still the winner here :)
are you serious? I have right now 11 galeon windows with about 15 tabs in each.
Of course I'm using bookmarks, galeon has a nice feature "bookmark all tabs in a window into subfolder...". And I'm using galeon more than firefox or opera, just because it's damn so good at handling hundreds of tabs open. And still uses less memory than firefox 3.0.3 with only 15 tabs open.
This reminds me about the /. article "Twenty Years of Dijkstra's Cruelty", just a few days ago.
Problem boils down to fact that programming is in fact a very advanced calculus. And writing a program is 'deriving' it. As in reaching a correct formula with a proof that it's correct. That's how software should be written anyways. And functional programming will only make it *simpler*, not harder.
Yet still galeon is my favorite browser. I have like 200 tabs in it, while in opera I have just about 30 tabs and in firefox just one window with 8 tabs...
MOD PARENT UP. yes. rrdtool is exactly what you need. There are tons of plugins for it too.
I just stopped playing ufo: enemy unknown in dosbox, to refresh slashodot.
You might want to see 15 slides concerning Copernicus. There are even screenshots of software used for DNA recognition!
This is in a polish newspaper, but there's not too much too translate just click "Nastepny" which means "Next" too view all the slides. An interesting view nontheless.
http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/109896,1,1,0,galeria_media.html
good for me that I already ordered from the first batch :-D
ah, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the website http://openpandora.org/
Few years ago the OLPC was my wet dream, but it took soo long for it, to be available for buy, that it's plain crazy. The Eee and ASUS stuff appeared. But they are all plain junk - very heavy, and very short battery life. OLPC at least is rechargeable...
But, oh well, fortunately now there is Pandora, I have ordered one and got to wait until december to receive it. I think that Pandora is revolutionary to Portable / Personal Micro Computers as Sinclair ZX Spectrum was at its own time. I may be wrong, but there's something in it. So it might be true. Time will tell.
Redundant Array of I...Intercommunicating D....Devices of Virtual Machines.
It is obvious that the next step is to set up several servers with Virtual Machines on them. Run the same VM in parallel on one or more of them. And if one of the servers goes down - the end user will not notice this, because his virtual machine was be mirrored on all those other servers. Just like hotswap in RAID HDDs we will have this capability with Virtual Machines. It's just a matter of time.
And if someone is stupid enough to try to patent this - he can't because it's blatantly obvious, and I doubt that I am the first person the present this idea.
I was wondering with my friend someday if it's possible with regex to select a pattern which occurs twice or more times repeatedly in single line but is separated by undefined characters. For example I want to select only lines in which the same pattern "[FB][ot]o" occurs exactly two times (in example below . is any character, for clarity):
...Foo... - is not selected
...Foo...Bto... - is not selected
...Bto...Bto... - is selected
a normal /[FB][ot]o.*[FB][ot]o/ would select the second and third case. But I only want the third case. The first occurrence would define my pattern, and second occurrence must exactly match it. Magic stuff like this is not working: /\([FB][ot]o\).*\1/ although that seems to be the closest description of what we wanted.
Well, I'm just glad that my current bank provides free insurance up to 50k EUR (while maximum I had on my account is 10 times less than that ;). This insurance works in a very nice way - I can come at a maximum a week later and tell them that some transaction was bogus (means that I discovered that some money disappeared from my account without my authorization). And they will revert that transaction if it's below 50k EUR. I don't know how it works - never tried. Probably I will need to prove it somehow, otherwise I could be buying stuff all around and revert those transactions all time.
But that's in fact my temporary bank account, and for my primary bank account I will never allow to have an online-capable credit card. It's just too easy to get id stolen. Buying stuff online is very useful, but (unfortunately) for safety it requires a separate bank account (in my case with VISA) which has less money and is easier to control.
huh? HDDs don't last forever, you can't argue with that.
What "modern file systems" are you talking about? Bundling rollback inside a filesystem is one of the stupidest things that could be done to fs. How many inodes would that eat up after a year, especially since some temporary files change hundreds times per day? Version control software and/or backups are designed for this purpose - and are filesystem agnostic (work with whatever fs suits your needs).
Personally I like the idea of such a virus, it could become another nail to the coffin of some certain woefully insecure OS.
but a wife and three daughters, -1 month, 2 years and 4 years old :)
yes, we do use (suse) linux to operate synchrotron shutters, engines and other experimental devices. Sorry I don't want to explain more, because I'm reading slashdot backlog of news that accumulated from two weeks. And I want to do it quickly. I don't work with insect samples but with snow samples in the synchrotron.
I just tried it. It took long to download the first one, but tell me - are all those movies so short? Or is that because I just started it, and it needs more time to download/generate? Currently I have two movies here, and they are only 5 seconds each. It's difficult to watch them being that short, before I start appreciating the movie - it ends.
Summary: they are using "Virtual" screen option, available since years in X11. Throw in two touchpads (one for mouse, second for scrolling on virtual desktop) and totally DESTROY the keyboard layout.
Two touchpads are nice. I don't mind the lack of per-key response when typing, probably could get used to it. But the keyboard layout? C'mon, that will be the next PCjr of "dual-touchpads". PCjr inveneted pc101 keyboard layout, see?, so I bet that they just invented "two touchpads" thingy.
If this is ever gonna work, it will be touchpads overlaid on a classical keyboard, and the border frame between them will be just to fit between the keys.
The 3D captcha seems to be a good solution here (that's a link from wikipedia article)
You pick several 3d models, like people, chairs or flowers. Name all their parts, like "chair leg", "human head" etc. The CAPTCHA is generated by placing a several 3D models randomly rotated on a scene and rendering them with easily readable letters "A", "B" placed on the named parts. The captcha questions are: "what is the letter on human head", "what is the letter on chair leg", etc..
People can answer pretty easily. The 3D models are always randomly placed and rotated on a scene, so bots have a problem.
go and try talisman. A nice family board game, feels almost like plying a roleplaying game, but simpler and the GM is a just a deck of random cards.
you should go and try adom (see sig.) it's *much* better than Diablo II. Only disadvantage is totally crappy "graphics". I had spent once 4 months (like holidays + school start) playing this game almost nonstop. Great waste of time, I totally regret that, I can't wait until I'll have some time again... I don't even start this game if I know that if I lose next two weeks of my life I will be in BIG trouble in RL. I discovered this game in 1999 and after 8 years of playing (with gaming-breaks sometimes as big as to 2 years) I've beaten this game only 2 times! Darn difficult. Oh, and no save-scumming. You can restore a save only if the game crashed (happens on average once per 6 months). Every other death is a *death*. That rule gives immense adrenaline kick during fight, becuause you are growing an emotional connection with your character as it gets exp and good items, and suddenly a death gives a feel that something was *really* lost. When I fight and my character reached about level 20 I always feel adrenaline. You cannot have this kind of adrenaline if you are always restoring from savegame after your death...