It's for Windows only, but attaches itself to any SOCKS 4 or SOCKS 5 compatible IRC client.
The client opens up a socks server on the local machine. This means, in theory, that if you want a Linux client connected, you have to have the Linux client go through the Purenoise socks server on the network.. (never tried it).
Anyway, give it a try, and give feedback if you wish.
Ok. First of all: Duke nukem was merely a reference.
Secondly, How do you propose that a Game company create a game like Diablo 2? Diablo 2 is a 2d based game that is heavily based on Tiles (jpegs/bmps or any similar format), Animations, and Cinematics. The tiles are only created for one resolution (640 x 480) as no other resolutions are supported. The videos use Bink technology which is likely Mpeg-4 based. (Note: The videos are contained in the Collectors edition on a DVD, which gives you an idea to their length and quality). The files are stored in Blizzard proprietart MoPaQ format, which provides custom tuned compression, aside from other features (encryption, etc). This obviously means the files aren't wasting space on your hard drive 'in the open' and are rather expanded as needed.
Back to the topic at hand, my point is that perhaps my mother won't use 80 gigs, nor even 8, but enough people will find applications for 8 or 80 gigs to warrant companies to put out new and more technologies. There will be no shortage of applications lining up to make use of the extra space, and also no shortage of users willing to use or find those applications.
I remember when a 1 gig drive was considered to be massive, and i never imagined what could fill up that much space. Now, 1 gig is peanuts and makes for a better ornament than go in an end-users PC. The same is true today, one may not see what can fill 80 gigs, but it will happen. Wait 2 years, you'll see.
I have to disagree with you, in the sense that "only people running servers with vast amount of data need larger drives". ALMOST EVERYONE needs larger drives, and the proof is obvious.
For example, a REGULAR install of Diablo 2 takes up 700 megs. a FULL install (which many will do) takes up 1.1 gigs. This is echoed amongst many of the VERY popular games, where they can often take up 1 gig of space on your HDD.
This means i can only store 6 similar games on my 8.4 gig drive not counting other applications. Funny, that amount of space would store hundreds of copies of Duke Nukem 3d (1996)
IMHO i think the attention to storage should be drawn elsewhere: for example 1.44 meg floppies? So almost useless we can do without.(boot disks are the only use for it in my world, as documents can be stored on a network). CDROMS? 640 megs isn't cutting it anymore.
In 1990 the average hard drive consisted of 28 floppy disks (i had a 40 meg drive!). Today, the average drive (14 gigs) stores 21 CDROMs.
80 gigs is 120 CDROM's (approx). That's a lot of backup CD's.
Clearly, one needs a easy, cheap method to back this data up.
Bring on the big drives. I'll be getting one once they hit 200 USD. By then maybe those solid-state 50gb-1kgb devices will be on the horizon..
it's no suprise SOME GOVERNMENT in North America decided to start enforcing laws.
Personally, I agree with the laws. If some parent wants to buy their kid a game, they will know what it could be about without knowing anyhting about games or the gaming industry (which is true with most parents).
If a kid wants a game, it's up to the parent to decide wether they should get it or not.
Now, on the topic of government intervention, again it's no suprise BC got to it first. (that being restrictions). In light of the recent amount of school voilence (columbine, Taylor AB CA (5 days after columbine or something), and others) BC has been relatively unscavanged (to my knowledge..). It seems relevant that one province or government entity sees video game violence as a serious threat to children's views of violence and takes action. Let's just hope it leads to proper adaptation of properly enforced ratign systems, where you could get carded just like buyying Liquor, or Cigarettes.
As extreme as it (the potential restructions) may be, Little children do not need to be playing Solder of Fortune with that much voilence.
I live in Canada. I get 80 Channels on my Cable TV. No CSPAN. I get Canadian goverment TV (CPAC)
The CRTC (canadian radio and television comission) which is a regulatory body (very strong presence) probably will not allow that to be shown in canada (unless of course it goes over airwaves, meaning i'd have to be near the USA border of which i'm not).
I also work in High Tech. I'm employed for the summer, and work as a student otherwise =)
But i've got experiences working with Startups. And let me tell you, for our generation of technical geeks, many of us are working LONG hours. Why would we work these long hours, only to stress ourselves?
First, is money. We make lots of money and pay for school, or debts (from school, etc). Secondly, with some, long hours could translate into great rewards. We see the rewards many others are reaping from the windfalls seen at other companies and hope to get the same thing.
The last major factor i would attest to is Knowledge. We strive to learn to give us better leverage in the market place when we are done. Or, if you are already in the marketplace (done school) you are working hard to move up the ladder.
Many people in high tech worked long hours in school and see it natural to carry on the same work habits when they are done.
Now, on the other side of the coin, is the impact of technology on the non-technical people. Take one's parents for example.
Being the tech guy in the family, I introduced many many people to technology and it's wonders.
Now, my parents surf the net, book travel info online, do online banking, communicate via email, and do a host of other things that otherwise take more of their time (driving to the travel agency, making appointments, research travel, etc)
The last thing i'd comment about is the fact that even though we save time here and there, we alwasy find ways to use that saved time. Some use it to surf more, some work more, some people might actually relax more. I'm sure it consists of a myriad of different activities and would be hard to pinpoint to a small handful of activities.
How much will it cost to implement this technology? WILL it be worth it?
Will rambus find a way to sue IBM and force them to pay royalties thus driving the price of this new technology past a cost effective point? (i know it's not likely, but shit rambus is trying to fuck everyone over right now)
If my previous statement is false (and I hope it is) this COULD be good if rambus-ram stays at a high price level. It could leverege existing technologies against rambus and give the consumer a tool to fight corporate greed. (But intel seems to be forcing this down our throat)
It will be interesting to see what develops. Until then, i'm buying more ram for my machine(s) now before SDRAM becomes 'rambus-forced-expensive'
Anyone who goes through the process to get 'hard logging' done will take this into account.
You may only log messages from/var/log/secure for example, or only log CERTAIN messages from/var/log/messages, etc.
Further, if one has a VERY SECURE machine running, and logs certain pieces of information and wants to have %100 (or near to it) assurance something will be left behind, hard logs could be an excellent choice.
Then again, at that point if you need a super secure machine you have lots of money and a dot matrix might not be worth the time =)
The point is, it can be done, and it can be used for interesting purposes.
And as for traceroutes, would you be looking to make sure you aren't hopping like 5 extra times inside their network?
The ping times could be a simple mistake or , maybe i'm missing something. I'm interested in details you have mentioned, so any greater details woudl be nice to know.
Surely most if not all palms have no portable, pocket, means to store mp3's
Unless some Microdrive, or Sandisk flashcard adapters exist..
Then you need a means of soudn output.. would the aforementioned device (article this thread is based on) function as such?
Basically, could you take a palm, and use BOTH this midi thing, some external storage (sandisk, or IBM microdrive, etc)..
Interesting questions, eh?
If current models don't do it, do future models have capabilities (more than one expansion port, for example would be required(
Re:Does this mean the end of the BIOS as we know i
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
·
· Score: 1
That's exactly what i'm asking..
We really should be throwing away most of the BIOS and filling it with useful things.
It seems the only reason it exists is so i can throw in my old DOS boot floppies and it'll function properly.
I don't care for that anymore. I have enough legacy machines that could run DOS if i so choose.. let's get on with it and evolve! =)
Does this mean the end of the BIOS as we know it?
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
·
· Score: 1
All the X-86 specific DOS routines, of which only allow compatability with my old, CGA/EGA dos-based games, could finally be wiped from the bios?
I would bet that emulation would end up playing a large role in these now 'rare' compatability issues..
Re:Stress testers (many of them) are misjudging
on
Diablo 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
No. That is completely misguided.
The purpose of the stress test is to hammer the servers with waves of people.
Blizzard just sent out the Third wave of emails, and with their latest revision (very stable) of the server, and given the current number of people playing, it will give them an excellent idea of how to scale up their servers.
After the stress test is done, they will know how to handle the current loads, and adding more servers to anticipate more loads will not be a problem.
1.5 million people preordered the game thus far. This means they will have to scale their servers about 10-20 times (20 would be a good bet) in order to handle that many people.
Basically, go to your local EB, Babbages/Software etc, Compusa, whatever, and put down 10 dollar deposit on the game, or pay for it in full (either way won't make a difference)
By doing this, you are GUARANTEED to get a copy from the central warehouse, and have it be reserved for you.
If you do mailorder, you essentially are in a large queue of orders, and first come first served is the rule!
Your local game-store can handle everyone that preorders, and you'll have your copy the very morning the game ships.
I preordered at EB and paid 10 dollars down. ANyone can do this. Just make sure you do it before it ships from warehouse (it ships and takes 1 day to reach the shop, in most cases)
Conclusion: I'm waking up the day it ships, calling in sick, going to EB at 10 AM, and will be playing by 10:30AM =). If you preorder at your store, you'll be doing the same thing.
Oh wow. SLashdot: I'll pay to rent a room, chair, few square feet of space, anything that gets me but 2 hops to battle.net! =)
No reasonable offer of rent will be refused!
=)
Stress testers (many of them) are misjudging
on
Diablo 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 5
Yes, the servers went down often. Yes, it may be laggy at times, but what exactly is a stress test?
It's made to stress, even CRASH the servers. With the stress test, Blizzard makes sure it handles a proper load, and this is accomplished through coding and modification of their servers. They WILL take it down in order to do this. People think this will happen in the final version of the game, and believe me, IT WILL NOT happen as often, if at all!
I was a CLOSED beta tester and it wasn't down as much as the stress test! In fact, the closed beta test was awesome! Tons and tons of gameplay (much more expansive than the stress test) and only on about 1/3'rd the game!
IMHO Diablo 2 will be one of the most polished games to ever reach shelves! Don't believe disgruntled stress testers, they just don't interpret what 'stress test' really means!
BTW: for the curious: it seems Blizzard is using SunOS (Solaris?) for their servers. Go Unix..
DOWNTIME AND LAG are a REQUIREMENT for STRESS TESTING.
Did you play lately? NO LAG and NO DOWNTIME.
They have the servers running in almost tip-top shape!
Perhaps your running with 32 megs of ram (not enough for net play). Even 64 megs of ram (in d3d mode) is not enough, and you will experience lag from your hard drive (disk swapping).
I know of such a method that would be 'a sufficient different way of mirroring things', and it could be consiered to be "pre upload directories".
These directories are goverened by a set of mirror administrators. THey can upload to these directories, on all the mirrors, and at once, once all mirrors are complete, send a command to the FTP site to upload all files, LOCALLY, such that they appear within about 30 seconds (or less).
(30 seconds to transfer 600 megs)
Thus, people don't know about the pending release of a new distribution, or software program, until it hits the sites.
THe daemon, glftpd has the ability to do such a command. Go to http://glftpd.deepwell.com/ then, afterwards, check out the following add-on: http://glftpd.deepwell.com/pre-dator.tar.gz
Someone could use this source code and implement it into some other open-source daemon.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get encrypted IRC, but only for Windows based IRC clients.
You can download Purenoise from http://www.purenoise.com/ It's also free.
It's for Windows only, but attaches itself to any SOCKS 4 or SOCKS 5 compatible IRC client.
The client opens up a socks server on the local machine. This means, in theory, that if you want a Linux client connected, you have to have the Linux client go through the Purenoise socks server on the network.. (never tried it).
Anyway, give it a try, and give feedback if you wish.
Ok. First of all: Duke nukem was merely a reference.
Secondly, How do you propose that a Game company create a game like Diablo 2? Diablo 2 is a 2d based game that is heavily based on Tiles (jpegs/bmps or any similar format), Animations, and Cinematics. The tiles are only created for one resolution (640 x 480) as no other resolutions are supported. The videos use Bink technology which is likely Mpeg-4 based. (Note: The videos are contained in the Collectors edition on a DVD, which gives you an idea to their length and quality).
The files are stored in Blizzard proprietart MoPaQ format, which provides custom tuned compression, aside from other features (encryption, etc). This obviously means the files aren't wasting space on your hard drive 'in the open' and are rather expanded as needed.
Back to the topic at hand, my point is that perhaps my mother won't use 80 gigs, nor even 8, but enough people will find applications for 8 or 80 gigs to warrant companies to put out new and more technologies. There will be no shortage of applications lining up to make use of the extra space, and also no shortage of users willing to use or find those applications.
I remember when a 1 gig drive was considered to be massive, and i never imagined what could fill up that much space. Now, 1 gig is peanuts and makes for a better ornament than go in an end-users PC. The same is true today, one may not see what can fill 80 gigs, but it will happen. Wait 2 years, you'll see.
I have to disagree with you, in the sense that "only people running servers with vast amount of data need larger drives". ALMOST EVERYONE needs larger drives, and the proof is obvious.
For example, a REGULAR install of Diablo 2 takes up 700 megs. a FULL install (which many will do) takes up 1.1 gigs. This is echoed amongst many of the VERY popular games, where they can often take up 1 gig of space on your HDD.
This means i can only store 6 similar games on my 8.4 gig drive not counting other applications.
Funny, that amount of space would store hundreds of copies of Duke Nukem 3d (1996)
IMHO i think the attention to storage should be drawn elsewhere: for example 1.44 meg floppies? So almost useless we can do without.(boot disks are the only use for it in my world, as documents can be stored on a network). CDROMS? 640 megs isn't cutting it anymore.
In 1990 the average hard drive consisted of 28 floppy disks (i had a 40 meg drive!).
Today, the average drive (14 gigs) stores 21 CDROMs.
80 gigs is 120 CDROM's (approx). That's a lot of backup CD's.
Clearly, one needs a easy, cheap method to back this data up.
Bring on the big drives. I'll be getting one once they hit 200 USD. By then maybe those solid-state 50gb-1kgb devices will be on the horizon..
it's no suprise SOME GOVERNMENT in North America decided to start enforcing laws.
Personally, I agree with the laws. If some parent wants to buy their kid a game, they will know what it could be about without knowing anyhting about games or the gaming industry (which is true with most parents).
If a kid wants a game, it's up to the parent to decide wether they should get it or not.
Now, on the topic of government intervention, again it's no suprise BC got to it first. (that being restrictions). In light of the recent amount of school voilence (columbine, Taylor AB CA (5 days after columbine or something), and others) BC has been relatively unscavanged (to my knowledge..). It seems relevant that one province or government entity sees video game violence as a serious threat to children's views of violence and takes action. Let's just hope it leads to proper adaptation of properly enforced ratign systems, where you could get carded just like buyying Liquor, or Cigarettes.
As extreme as it (the potential restructions) may be, Little children do not need to be playing Solder of Fortune with that much voilence.
No.. i don't have access.
I live in Canada. I get 80 Channels on my Cable TV. No CSPAN. I get Canadian goverment TV (CPAC)
The CRTC (canadian radio and television comission) which is a regulatory body (very strong presence) probably will not allow that to be shown in canada (unless of course it goes over airwaves, meaning i'd have to be near the USA border of which i'm not).
The internet is thus a useful tool..
=)
Foreigners (like me, i'm Canadian) don't have access to CSPAN. Hence if they do have online streaming , i'd like to know where to get it.
Post links if you have them, to cspan.com or the proceedings (audio or video) themselves.
thanks.
I also work in High Tech. I'm employed for the summer, and work as a student otherwise =)
But i've got experiences working with Startups. And let me tell you, for our generation of technical geeks, many of us are working LONG hours. Why would we work these long hours, only to stress ourselves?
First, is money. We make lots of money and pay for school, or debts (from school, etc). Secondly, with some, long hours could translate into great rewards. We see the rewards many others are reaping from the windfalls seen at other companies and hope to get the same thing.
The last major factor i would attest to is Knowledge. We strive to learn to give us better leverage in the market place when we are done. Or, if you are already in the marketplace (done school) you are working hard to move up the ladder.
Many people in high tech worked long hours in school and see it natural to carry on the same work habits when they are done.
Now, on the other side of the coin, is the impact of technology on the non-technical people. Take one's parents for example.
Being the tech guy in the family, I introduced many many people to technology and it's wonders.
Now, my parents surf the net, book travel info online, do online banking, communicate via email, and do a host of other things that otherwise take more of their time (driving to the travel agency, making appointments, research travel, etc)
The last thing i'd comment about is the fact that even though we save time here and there, we alwasy find ways to use that saved time. Some use it to surf more, some work more, some people might actually relax more. I'm sure it consists of a myriad of different activities and would be hard to pinpoint to a small handful of activities.
Anyone have some indication they were scanned by this company on their home or work PC?
How much will it cost to implement this technology? WILL it be worth it?
Will rambus find a way to sue IBM and force them to pay royalties thus driving the price of this new technology past a cost effective point?
(i know it's not likely, but shit rambus is trying to fuck everyone over right now)
If my previous statement is false (and I hope it is) this COULD be good if rambus-ram stays at a high price level. It could leverege existing technologies against rambus and give the consumer a tool to fight corporate greed. (But intel seems to be forcing this down our throat)
It will be interesting to see what develops. Until then, i'm buying more ram for my machine(s) now before SDRAM becomes 'rambus-forced-expensive'
Right, but you have to take that into account.
/var/log/secure for example, or only log CERTAIN messages from /var/log/messages, etc.
Anyone who goes through the process to get 'hard logging' done will take this into account.
You may only log messages from
Further, if one has a VERY SECURE machine running, and logs certain pieces of information and wants to have %100 (or near to it) assurance something will be left behind, hard logs could be an excellent choice.
Then again, at that point if you need a super secure machine you have lots of money and a dot matrix might not be worth the time =)
The point is, it can be done, and it can be used for interesting purposes.
Such as a permanent logging facility.
/var/log/secure, /var/log/messages, or any of your other favourite logs to the line printer.
Send the outputs of
Hard logs. Good securrity. Hackers: Try erasing these puppies. Better bring a lighter!
Now, Dot Matrix printers to Music would be interesting. They could probably use a few old DEC line printers for good bass.
Later models (24 pin) would be good for higher-pitch sounds.
I suppose old 'typewriter like' printers don't count?
I've checked with two accounts, and no dice yet (canadian).
sux.
Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host.
lynx: Can't access startfile http://www.avsforum.com/
Who has a good link?
You mean low ping times, right?
And as for traceroutes, would you be looking to make sure you aren't hopping like 5 extra times inside their network?
The ping times could be a simple mistake or , maybe i'm missing something. I'm interested in details you have mentioned, so any greater details woudl be nice to know.
thanks
And how do you propose to store the mp3's ?
Surely most if not all palms have no portable, pocket, means to store mp3's
Unless some Microdrive, or Sandisk flashcard adapters exist..
Then you need a means of soudn output.. would the aforementioned device (article this thread is based on) function as such?
Basically, could you take a palm, and use BOTH this midi thing, some external storage (sandisk, or IBM microdrive, etc)..
Interesting questions, eh?
If current models don't do it, do future models have capabilities (more than one expansion port, for example would be required(
That's exactly what i'm asking..
We really should be throwing away most of the BIOS and filling it with useful things.
It seems the only reason it exists is so i can throw in my old DOS boot floppies and it'll function properly.
I don't care for that anymore. I have enough legacy machines that could run DOS if i so choose.. let's get on with it and evolve! =)
All the X-86 specific DOS routines, of which only allow compatability with my old, CGA/EGA dos-based games, could finally be wiped from the bios?
I would bet that emulation would end up playing a large role in these now 'rare' compatability issues..
No. That is completely misguided.
The purpose of the stress test is to hammer the servers with waves of people.
Blizzard just sent out the Third wave of emails, and with their latest revision (very stable) of the server, and given the current number of people playing, it will give them an excellent idea of how to scale up their servers.
After the stress test is done, they will know how to handle the current loads, and adding more servers to anticipate more loads will not be a problem.
1.5 million people preordered the game thus far. This means they will have to scale their servers about 10-20 times (20 would be a good bet) in order to handle that many people.
I doubt blizzard will have a problem with that.
100,000 is a lot of people.
Sure your levelling quickly in the Stress test. I beat the stress test in 30 minutes.. it's puny.
The final game will have tons more depth to it.. and levelling won't be as easy.
If i'm not mistaking there are 99 levels.. and blizzard will be suprised of anyone gets that high.
Preorder from a GAME STORE.
Basically, go to your local EB, Babbages/Software etc, Compusa, whatever, and put down 10 dollar deposit on the game, or pay for it in full (either way won't make a difference)
By doing this, you are GUARANTEED to get a copy from the central warehouse, and have it be reserved for you.
If you do mailorder, you essentially are in a large queue of orders, and first come first served is the rule!
Your local game-store can handle everyone that preorders, and you'll have your copy the very morning the game ships.
I preordered at EB and paid 10 dollars down. ANyone can do this. Just make sure you do it before it ships from warehouse (it ships and takes 1 day to reach the shop, in most cases)
Conclusion: I'm waking up the day it ships, calling in sick, going to EB at 10 AM, and will be playing by 10:30AM =). If you preorder at your store, you'll be doing the same thing.
Oh wow. SLashdot: I'll pay to rent a room, chair, few square feet of space, anything that gets me but 2 hops to battle.net!
=)
No reasonable offer of rent will be refused!
=)
Yes, the servers went down often. Yes, it may be laggy at times, but what exactly is a stress test?
It's made to stress, even CRASH the servers. With the stress test, Blizzard makes sure it handles a proper load, and this is accomplished through coding and modification of their servers. They WILL take it down in order to do this. People think this will happen in the final version of the game, and believe me, IT WILL NOT happen as often, if at all!
I was a CLOSED beta tester and it wasn't down as much as the stress test! In fact, the closed beta test was awesome! Tons and tons of gameplay (much more expansive than the stress test) and only on about 1/3'rd the game!
IMHO Diablo 2 will be one of the most polished games to ever reach shelves! Don't believe disgruntled stress testers, they just don't interpret what 'stress test' really means!
BTW: for the curious: it seems Blizzard is using SunOS (Solaris?) for their servers. Go Unix..
Guy, it's called STRESS TEST.
DOWNTIME AND LAG are a REQUIREMENT for STRESS TESTING.
Did you play lately? NO LAG and NO DOWNTIME.
They have the servers running in almost tip-top shape!
Perhaps your running with 32 megs of ram (not enough for net play). Even 64 megs of ram (in d3d mode) is not enough, and you will experience lag from your hard drive (disk swapping).
I know of such a method that would be 'a sufficient different way of mirroring things', and it could be consiered to be "pre upload directories".
These directories are goverened by a set of mirror administrators. THey can upload to these directories, on all the mirrors, and at once, once all mirrors are complete, send a command to the FTP site to upload all files, LOCALLY, such that they appear within about 30 seconds (or less).
(30 seconds to transfer 600 megs)
Thus, people don't know about the pending release of a new distribution, or software program, until it hits the sites.
THe daemon, glftpd has the ability to do such a command. Go to http://glftpd.deepwell.com/ then, afterwards, check out the following add-on:
http://glftpd.deepwell.com/pre-dator.tar.gz
Someone could use this source code and implement it into some other open-source daemon.