"A special feature that will certainly appeal to gamers and enthusiasts is that the new release from Mandriva has support for the Xbox console, empowering users to bridge the divide between gaming and other computer activities."
Could they possibly be talking about kaid? Anyone? Anyone??
In A.D. 2101 War was beginning.
on
Nintendo A Capella
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· Score: 2, Funny
Slap me if I'm ignorant, but what exactly are the major pitfalls to declaring Ubuntu an official Debian fork?
The Ubuntu community could seperate itself from the Debian-based apt-get network, possibly rename it, and manage their own Ubuntu-exclusive repository, just as Yellowdog did with yum.
That way, Debian folks are happy, Ubuntu folks are happy, we have one less problem in the world and one more distro.
The thing is, you can't just go up to a school counselor and suggest starting a new class, despite its curriculum.
American public schools do not have the power to create new classes for their students. To do this, one would need to propose this course to the ISD's school board, whereupon they do a cost-benefit analysis, review the available materials, and take input from the other sub-organizations such as the PTA.
A proposal such as this doesn't require just convincing a teacher, principal, or counselor... you have to convice an army of soccer moms, computer illiterate middle-aged men, and one or two zealous black mothers who will do anything in their power to try to put other races below their own.
"I am a high school student. I know for a fack that not many kids are interested in hacking, ratio wise."
Ahem...
As a high-school student myself, I can safely say that where I go to school about one in every two males have some intrinsic fascination with the hacking scene.
At school I have a good reputation as computer-guy on campus: I'm friends with every technology department teacher, I'm the school webmaster, I skipped the first year of Computer Science and am now in college-level AP Computer Science 2, I participate in Computer Science state-wide competitions and seldom come home without a trophy, I've written various programs for the school to make the life of some administrator easier...
I know this may seem a little arrogant, but people treat me with immense respect. I've had freshmen come up to me during lunch and bombard me with questions like "so how long have you been using computers?" and "how big is your botnet?"
Kids today totally eat up the whole hacker scene. Fight the man! Rebel! Cause damage! It's what kids love to do.:)
As a well-trainer xbox hacker, Gentoo Linux PC user, GentooX (Gentoo on Xbox) user, and Java developer, I believe I can speak with some merit here...:)
"the big problem with legal xbox development is that you can't get it to run on the xbox without modding it."
Actually, there are many "soft-mod" exploits in games such as MechAssault and 007: Agent Under Fire which allow you to boot unsigned code and ultimately flash your TSOP and EEPROM with a third party BIOS.
Running GentooX for only interpreted code is really not worth it since an Xbox only has 64MB of RAM and a 733mhz Intel processor out of the box. A GentooX system would not only have to maintain the overhead of the interpreted language's runtime application, but also the WindowManager, its widget set, and any system services running such as apache, proftpd, smbd, webmin, and the system logging mechanism.
Also, if you launch an Xbox distro from your dashboard, the linux kernel will need to use a virtual loopback device to mount the root partition. Because this is a loopback and not a physical extended partition, this also will cause a performance hit.
If it were up to me to port a JRE to the Xbox, I'd probably write a menu launcher with a Xromwell backend that would execute a.Jar by booting a very minimalistic linux system with only the kernel, X server, alsa, network daemons, and JVM in memory.
In two years, with Xbox support starting falling off, the Xbox homebrew scene will have had two years (from now) to have developed and refined their software.
Since I'm pressed for time, I'll keep the list of interesting advancements brief:
XBox Media Center, already one of the most popular SF.net projects, will be by far the sweetest media suite for any platform.
Someone may port the Blackdown Java VM to the Xbox, allowing for any presently developed Java program to be ran on the exotic Xbox.
The OpenXDK may be just as functional as its official counterpart, allowing for LEGAL xbox homebrew development.
Add about a few dozen more fun homebrew games to the current selection.
Granted, these are all ifs and maybes, but Xbox hacking will be here to stay, with or without Microsoft's support.
In today's society on an airplane, even if had to smoke four packs a day, I certainly wouldn't want to pull out a lighter during a flight, much less use it.
You're liable to get a stun-gun fired into your chest, spend the rest of the flight in handcuffs in the back of the plane, and face criminal charges when you land-- thanks to these guys.
Because AWT is an ancestor of Swing does not mean Swing is AWT; they both function and look very different. From a client's perspective, Swing and AWT are two very different things as each can be used without the other.
"It's not a separate GUI toolkit."
Once again, you're looking at this from a close-minded literal standpoint, not that of a programmer actually using these two GUI implementations. You're claiming they're not seperate toolkits because Swing decends from it? Sorry, that's just ridiculous.
"It's just a GUI toolkit that attempts to provide a fix for the MASSIVE holes in the AWT."
Sorry, I have no idea what "MASSIVE holes" you are referring to. Enlighten me?
"Since it runs ON TOP of the AWT, it's even slower than a native AWT application."
So you're saying when an object inherits methods and variables through extending another object, that causes a performance hit? Okay, let's create a hypothetical situation to illustrate this:
We write a class with a single, unique method in it, then, write a second class which extends the former and has a unique method of its own. Since the latter extends the former, it will have both methods. Now make it more complicated. Write 50 more classes and have each extend another in a linear fashion so that the greatest grandchild has 51 ancestors and 52 unique methods. Now write another class which doesn't extend anything, but contains the exact same methods as the greatest decendant from the example. Will the one not using inheritance be slower? No. Why? Because the compiler and JVM handle that.
Granted, the Swing application will use a few more kilobytes of memory because it's simply more complex and through its additional event processing more operations are performed, say, when someone left-clicks with their mouse, but these problems, on most machines, are undetectable to the User.
Each one of the other javax.swing.* packages in that package list have more or less the same amount of class members as the one pasted above.
STILL do not believe me? Download the JDK and compile the program below:
import javax.swing.*; class SlashdotProof { public static void main(String[] args) { JFrame me = new JFrame(); me.add(new JLabel("Is This Proof Enough?")); me.pack(); me.setVisible(true); } }
As you can see, Swing is definitely present in "stock Java."
I have a rather outdated page on my outdated website which lists some games I've grown to like you may care to check out
When did you try BZFlag? They've recently made the big milestone of version 2.0.0 and the game is better than ever.
I've never played Glest. I'm glad you mentioned it. I guess now I put some use to that ever-neglected Windows box in the other room.:)
If you dig RPGs, be sure to check out Dink Smallwood. The game is just absolutely crazy.
I'm actually a developer for the Java-based Rogue-like Tyrant. If you liked Angband and Moria, you'll almost certainly love this unless you're the old-schooler type who just can't take Rogue with graphics.:)
Fear my ability to run the game at 10% the speed of a native implementation!
I can't fucking stand this. Morons who know absolutely nothing about Java reading blogs about someone's uninformed grudge against Java, then they go and reproduce these opinions as their own.
Moron, get it right. The stereotype that Java ridiculously slow (10% of a native implementation? You're fucking crazy) is entirely false.
By slow, I assume you're talking about an abitrary program that was written using a Swing GUI with too many operations in the event handlers, thus tying up the main thread and causing pauses in the painting of the JFrame.
As a developer for Tyrant, a Java game remotely similar to the game in question, I know that our engine uses almost no Swing aside from the actual pane and tile renderings which have no event handlers other than a WindowAdapter. Tyrant renders and runs quite quickly and I'm sure this new engine, which probably uses JOGL instead of Swing, is no different.
Slashdot Mirror
"A special feature that will certainly appeal to gamers and enthusiasts is that the new release from Mandriva has support for the Xbox console, empowering users to bridge the divide between gaming and other computer activities."
Could they possibly be talking about kaid ? Anyone? Anyone??
I think I like the classic musical flash movie of "All your base are belong to us" much better...
Slap me if I'm ignorant, but what exactly are the major pitfalls to declaring Ubuntu an official Debian fork?
The Ubuntu community could seperate itself from the Debian-based apt-get network, possibly rename it, and manage their own Ubuntu-exclusive repository, just as Yellowdog did with yum.
That way, Debian folks are happy, Ubuntu folks are happy, we have one less problem in the world and one more distro.
Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit!
Everybody knows Apple doesn't exist...
Congradulations. You've proved that in an argument you resort to name calling.
I thought 40% of the UK's population doesn't believe in a higher power, though?
Where's the protest?
Actually, Christians do produce their own academic materials.
Scary...
Hahaha,
Yeah, and show me so-called "repeatable proof" that validates the creation theory.
Seriously... you people...
Just flash back over the third-party BIOS with the official MS BIOS prior to sending it in. :)
The thing is, you can't just go up to a school counselor and suggest starting a new class, despite its curriculum.
American public schools do not have the power to create new classes for their students. To do this, one would need to propose this course to the ISD's school board, whereupon they do a cost-benefit analysis, review the available materials, and take input from the other sub-organizations such as the PTA.
A proposal such as this doesn't require just convincing a teacher, principal, or counselor... you have to convice an army of soccer moms, computer illiterate middle-aged men, and one or two zealous black mothers who will do anything in their power to try to put other races below their own.
Easier said than done, sheesh.
"I am a high school student. I know for a fack that not many kids are interested in hacking, ratio wise."
:)
Ahem...
As a high-school student myself, I can safely say that where I go to school about one in every two males have some intrinsic fascination with the hacking scene.
At school I have a good reputation as computer-guy on campus: I'm friends with every technology department teacher, I'm the school webmaster, I skipped the first year of Computer Science and am now in college-level AP Computer Science 2, I participate in Computer Science state-wide competitions and seldom come home without a trophy, I've written various programs for the school to make the life of some administrator easier...
I know this may seem a little arrogant, but people treat me with immense respect. I've had freshmen come up to me during lunch and bombard me with questions like "so how long have you been using computers?" and "how big is your botnet?"
Kids today totally eat up the whole hacker scene. Fight the man! Rebel! Cause damage! It's what kids love to do.
As a well-trainer xbox hacker, Gentoo Linux PC user, GentooX (Gentoo on Xbox) user, and Java developer, I believe I can speak with some merit here... :)
.Jar by booting a very minimalistic linux system with only the kernel, X server, alsa, network daemons, and JVM in memory.
"the big problem with legal xbox development is that you can't get it to run on the xbox without modding it."
Actually, there are many "soft-mod" exploits in games such as MechAssault and 007: Agent Under Fire which allow you to boot unsigned code and ultimately flash your TSOP and EEPROM with a third party BIOS.
Running GentooX for only interpreted code is really not worth it since an Xbox only has 64MB of RAM and a 733mhz Intel processor out of the box. A GentooX system would not only have to maintain the overhead of the interpreted language's runtime application, but also the WindowManager, its widget set, and any system services running such as apache, proftpd, smbd, webmin, and the system logging mechanism.
Also, if you launch an Xbox distro from your dashboard, the linux kernel will need to use a virtual loopback device to mount the root partition. Because this is a loopback and not a physical extended partition, this also will cause a performance hit.
If it were up to me to port a JRE to the Xbox, I'd probably write a menu launcher with a Xromwell backend that would execute a
Since I'm pressed for time, I'll keep the list of interesting advancements brief:
- XBox Media Center, already one of the most popular SF.net projects, will be by far the sweetest media suite for any platform.
- Someone may port the Blackdown Java VM to the Xbox, allowing for any presently developed Java program to be ran on the exotic Xbox.
- The OpenXDK may be just as functional as its official counterpart, allowing for LEGAL xbox homebrew development.
- Add about a few dozen more fun homebrew games to the current selection.
Granted, these are all ifs and maybes, but Xbox hacking will be here to stay, with or without Microsoft's support.This was just posted on Xbox-Scene.com too: Xbox 360 rumors.
Or better yet, every orangutan's favorite programming language, Ook!.
If there's anything time has told...
... it's don't doubt Star Trek :)
Where's my universal alien translator? My holographic image projector? My ability to interface with nearly any gadget in the universe?
You can keep your silly cell phones. I want the good stuff.
In today's society on an airplane, even if had to smoke four packs a day, I certainly wouldn't want to pull out a lighter during a flight, much less use it.
You're liable to get a stun-gun fired into your chest, spend the rest of the flight in handcuffs in the back of the plane, and face criminal charges when you land-- thanks to these guys.
"Swing IS THE AWT"
Because AWT is an ancestor of Swing does not mean Swing is AWT; they both function and look very different. From a client's perspective, Swing and AWT are two very different things as each can be used without the other.
"It's not a separate GUI toolkit."
Once again, you're looking at this from a close-minded literal standpoint, not that of a programmer actually using these two GUI implementations. You're claiming they're not seperate toolkits because Swing decends from it? Sorry, that's just ridiculous.
"It's just a GUI toolkit that attempts to provide a fix for the MASSIVE holes in the AWT."
Sorry, I have no idea what "MASSIVE holes" you are referring to. Enlighten me?
"Since it runs ON TOP of the AWT, it's even slower than a native AWT application."
So you're saying when an object inherits methods and variables through extending another object, that causes a performance hit? Okay, let's create a hypothetical situation to illustrate this:
We write a class with a single, unique method in it, then, write a second class which extends the former and has a unique method of its own. Since the latter extends the former, it will have both methods. Now make it more complicated. Write 50 more classes and have each extend another in a linear fashion so that the greatest grandchild has 51 ancestors and 52 unique methods. Now write another class which doesn't extend anything, but contains the exact same methods as the greatest decendant from the example. Will the one not using inheritance be slower? No. Why? Because the compiler and JVM handle that.
Granted, the Swing application will use a few more kilobytes of memory because it's simply more complex and through its additional event processing more operations are performed, say, when someone left-clicks with their mouse, but these problems, on most machines, are undetectable to the User.
Thanks for establishing that for us, but I think anyone with even a minute understanding of the Java API already knew that AWT is Swing's ancestor.
Sorry, I don't see your point...
Heh, additionally...
Or is there some other OpenGL bindings I'm not aware of?
These two aren't bundled with the JDK for obvious reasons but they're actively developed by Sun:
JOGL seems to be the de facto standard.
Or, as previously mentioned, the OpenGL bindings for Java2D in Java 1.5
last I checked, stock Java came with AWT, and that was it
Actually, no. Swing has been bundled with the JDK for as long as I can remember.
Here's a snipplet from the official Javadoc package list:
Or, if that isn't sufficient enough, here're just the classes within javax.swing above:Each one of the other javax.swing.* packages in that package list have more or less the same amount of class members as the one pasted above.
STILL do not believe me? Download the JDK and compile the program below:
As you can see, Swing is definitely present in "stock Java."
Hmm, games I would recommend?
:)
:)
:)
I have a rather outdated page on my outdated website which lists some games I've grown to like you may care to check out
When did you try BZFlag? They've recently made the big milestone of version 2.0.0 and the game is better than ever.
I've never played Glest. I'm glad you mentioned it. I guess now I put some use to that ever-neglected Windows box in the other room.
If you dig RPGs, be sure to check out Dink Smallwood. The game is just absolutely crazy.
I'm actually a developer for the Java-based Rogue-like Tyrant. If you liked Angband and Moria, you'll almost certainly love this unless you're the old-schooler type who just can't take Rogue with graphics.
By the way, I love the sig.
I can't fucking stand this. Morons who know absolutely nothing about Java reading blogs about someone's uninformed grudge against Java, then they go and reproduce these opinions as their own.
Moron, get it right. The stereotype that Java ridiculously slow (10% of a native implementation? You're fucking crazy) is entirely false.
By slow, I assume you're talking about an abitrary program that was written using a Swing GUI with too many operations in the event handlers, thus tying up the main thread and causing pauses in the painting of the JFrame.
As a developer for Tyrant, a Java game remotely similar to the game in question, I know that our engine uses almost no Swing aside from the actual pane and tile renderings which have no event handlers other than a WindowAdapter. Tyrant renders and runs quite quickly and I'm sure this new engine, which probably uses JOGL instead of Swing, is no different.
Think about this guys, we may see some really interesting projects develop here.
Free, cross-platform games built on a reliable engine-- Online to boot.
Sounds great to me. Can't wait to see where this goes.