He moves mythodically though the hallways, bouncing grenades off the walls an onto the hapless souls that dared to fire a rocket at him. He deftly completes a rocket jump, does a 180 spin, and unloads a rail slug into the LPB below, sending a fine red spray across the divide below. Grabbing the Quad, he procedes down the hallway - The familiar BFG10K whine is heard. Instinctively he switches to his railgun and peels off the imputent wrench before the payload can be unleashed. Showering the open cavern with rockets, he angles for the flag, grappling for the dark ceiling. Just before a pair of rockets hit him, the grapple catches hold, whisking him to safety. The flag now glows an deep red, taunting him: "You'll never get me!" it cries. Determined, he fires his last rocket at the flag defender, and the tell-tale sound of a quad-damage about to run out echos through the cavern. "Now's your chance!" He grapples for the flag, and in a crescendo of chaingun and rocket launchers firing in tandum, he grabs the flag, and pogo-sticks backwards, grabbing the med pack, and saving his curvy ass.
Several hours later, the geek quietly logs out and stands up. It is now 11:30 at night, and he has work tomorrow. It is dark... the only illumination coming from the LEDs of his four computers and 19" inch monitor. He steps back, crashing into a tower of spent mountain dew containers. He thinks to himself "Ah, the real world... I was wondering where that went", and winces as he removes the remains of a microwave pizza from his foot and trots across the room. He sinks into his bed, pulls the covers up over his head, and dreams of his job - "How much I would like to have Quad Damage to deal with customers...".. his last parting thought before he drifts off into a world of carnage and C code.
I can just hear it now... chomp chomp... chomp.... oh crap! *frantic chomping* My only question is.... how would you do a ctrl-alt-del? You only have one tongue.........
Two points I'd like to make - the input device for this is not the most optimal design. If you're going to put an eyepiece on, you should use eye tracking technology for the mouse cursor like they have in some new camcorders now. Combining this with the 3-button input device they have, you can free up one button to dedicate to keyboard input. How? You can either use a morse-code system (ick!) or you could use something ala the palm pilot. Use the thumb button as a toggle to bring up a visual keyboard, and "click" away by looking at the letter and clicking what you want. The 2nd mouse button in this mode could be backspace.
Anyway, eyestrain is obviously an issue here, so making the material semi-transparent with a variable "depth" would be uber-cool, as it would allow for (limited) 3d visualization as well as other interesting features. It would also aleviate the eyestrain problem.
Forget the slashdot effect - look at all those stampeding lawyers rushing to the site. His mail box is gonna be so full of cease and desist orders that mail is gonna start bouncing all over the place. =)
I know Napster will try suing them, since they claim a patent on this kind of stuff. Personally I think it's another "obvious" application of technology.. but eh, IANABSL (I am not a blood- sucking lawyer)
I have no problem with geek profiling. Infact, I didn't exactly hide the fact that I knew alot about computers or had information at my fingertips from everything to the correct dress a girl should wear at prom to how to build C5 from bleach. That's the power of information, and I was willing to share the entire gammit of it with my classmates. Naturally the so-called "normal" people were attracted to the latter. Guess who was the violent kid though?
You see, this has nothing to do with profiling. It has nothing to do with geeks, per se. It has to do with keeping the status quo - and that is that the "normal" kids - jocks, preps, and hip dudes can do no wrong. If they do, they're "just kids" afterall, and "boys will be boys". But when somebody who isn't defined as "normal" by the community is targetted, they'll take any excuse to get rid of him, isolate him, or otherwise punish him for not subscribing to the social formula They have laid out.
Katz, you're close here - but you didn't hit the mark. There's a much bigger issue here, and one that cuts to the very core of the definition of what a society is. This is the politics of being different. It's hard, it's tough, and it's unfair. I could tell you volumes about my experiences in high school - it was basically a prequel to your hellmouth series. Bombs, scared kids, an outraged community, and a kid on the run. I had ATF agents *in my house*. It wasn't fun.
Believe me when I say this: This has nothing to do with geeks. Anyone who is different is a target in this (and most every) society. It is the biggest fight you'll ever be in - the fight to remain yourself.
The only thing of interest in this whole article was that girl in the third picture down on the right. =)
More seriously, was this really slashdot material? If we wanted to talk about every sunken company that didn't make the cut, we'd be posting 50x stories a day for the next 2 years about the "coulda been" companies. For whatever reason, marketing, bad product, microsoft, will of god, however it happened - their product didn't make it.
Thanks. =) I really despise/. posting NYT stories - I can't access them because I'm behind a firewall and NYT never lets me in. Well, basically they're saying that the universe is defined on a 3d plane. Okay, well... I don't have the background to disagree with them, so I won't. --
minor correction - I should have hit preview first...(sigh)... people still thought the world was flat when columbus discovered america... my appologies to the history buffs... --
Gee, so if we eventually build a inter-planetary space ship, we'd better be on the lookout not to fall off the end of the universe... *snicker*
The concept of a "flat earth" was discredited shortly after the Roman empire fell. Besides, wouldn't this completely invalidate the big bang theory? I mean, if something explodes, it does so spherically(sp?) - not like a flat disk. Perhaps I'm missing something here... that just seems to stupid to have come from any sane scientist.
No. I ran a BBS (Eye of the Storm) in western wisconsin right before the internet hit paydirt. Fun little thing, I put alot of time into that. It didn't die from negligence or disuse, but rather from parental problems. But that's beside the point. BBSing itself is dead, but not the idea. I'm shocked and appalled by the impersonal nature of the web - many corporations are running "one-way" websites - no feedback allowed. Behind all the glamor and glitz there are real people back there, and I'd like to talk to them. But webservers weren't designed for two-way communication: they were designed for "I post,you view." It works as designed - just not the way I envisioned the "information age" to come about.
So I got to talking with some of my friends about this, and they too miss that "community" feeling that BBSing had. I think it's alot like why people don't vote - they don't think it'll make a difference. Statistically, it doesn't. But when you have 10 of your friends at a private party, isn't it alot more fun than a hundred people who you "kinda" know at a party? I'll tell you what's more fun - the 10 person party. The reason is that what you say makes a difference, and everybody can listen to everybody else.
I don't believe the web is going to give many people that community feeling they're looking for.. atleast not the conventional way of using it. But I am doing research and such on developing a kind of "online" bbs - not the cheezy kind, but a real bbs that is modern, uses the technology, and stretches the limits. It's a daunting task. Slashdot is one way of doing it, but even that is still largely "I post, you view". I don't have any answers, but I do know there's a need - I want to fill that need, if only for myself.
Please Note: W2K is not suitable for use in nuclear reactors, life support systems, or other mission-critical applications. Manufacturer hereby disclaims any responsibility from meltdown, end of world situation, or the re-emergence of disco. --
fortunately, and alittle bit more seriously - all the ideas I post I remember. So if you try to patent any of *my* ideas, you're libel to be smacked around with a clue-by-four. --
I liked the geek toys section - most of it was good, but I gotta wonder how an NFL console game got on the list.:)
You know what would make me happy? Being able to play dvds on my linux box.. which was what decss and livid were for. If I were more of a programmer, that would be my project right now - the RIAA can kiss my curvy behind - I want DVD for linux!
--
Re:RH 6.1 - NS Home Page IS Set To Redhat.com!
on
redhat.com Redone
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· Score: 1
Well, that's not a bug, it's a feature!:)
Seriously, I too ran into this "feature", but it only took me a few minutes to locate the offending shortcut and modify it accordingly. I'm used to it - nobody sells a distribution "ready to be customized"... they sell it as "this is the standard, and you'd better like it!" Foo. I'm switching to debian soon.
The EU has just been trying to flex it's political muscles. Let them embargo the P3. While they're at it, let's embargo the whole 'net, since I can track each and every packet, connection, and bit of data that hits my router.
This is a publicity stunt. The fact that it is being done by a collection of governments doesn't negate that fact. They're testing the waters.. they are playing "paper tiger" politics. Let them.
I'm not concerned one tiny little bit about the gyrations that congress or any other legislative body / group goes through. It does not concern me. If tomorrow they made it illegal to program with intent to create software for non-microsoft products, I would blatently ignore them, even if they made the punishment 40 years in jail.
Virtually everybody who's half-way intelligent in this country (that would be no more than about 20% of the population) has given up on the concept of freedom, justice, and the american way. Freedom died back in the 60's (Anybody remember that little skirmish in Chicago at the democratic convention?), justice has been dead since the 30's (Martin Luther King, the O-J trial, Monica Lewinsky, a plethora of political prisoners... the list goes on).. and the american way is a long infomercial these days.
Forget it. The law is no longer for the common man. Follow your own moral compass, and let the politicians and the "moral majority" (an oxymoron if you ask me) follow their own path. It's like trying to plan your diet - one week it's "ok" to eat eggs, the next week it isn't.
Dammit ID, don't do this to us again... when Quake2 was released the network code was so bad it was unplayable on anything less than a T1, and there were all kinds of bugs in the rendering (artifacts being left around), and let's not get into the you-can-shoot-me-but-i-can't-die class of bugs.
Comeon guys, take a hint from these cool guys and wait until it really is ready to be shipped. We're willing to wait for a bug free product. The question is - are you willing to live with another poor release?
And what did you expect? Corel is a corporation. They make business decisions aimed at maximizing productivity. They are probably saying "WINE is a good *long term* investment, but we need something now, so let's get this deployed, and come back to WINE alittle later".
I'm alittle suprised - this really isn't "news" - it's just idle speculation. It shouldn't have been posted to/. unless one of the WINE developers came here and said Corel was backing off, not being as active on the lists, etc. All that posting this is gonna do is put corel in an (undeserved) bad light. Come on guys - let's do alittle backgrounding first before we post stuff like this. Maybe slashdot needs an opinion / rumor section, 'cuz alot of people are going to hype up the significance of this.
I'm not an econ expert, but if they slid from $700 million on their last buyout to under $100 million this time around, wouldn't that indicate their market value has fallen sharply?
Perhaps Cray computers are not as valuable now that we have beowulf & other clustering technology which can give you the same amount of raw processing (with alittle extra latency) as the big iron?
Slashdot Mirror
Several hours later, the geek quietly logs out and stands up. It is now 11:30 at night, and he has work tomorrow. It is dark... the only illumination coming from the LEDs of his four computers and 19" inch monitor. He steps back, crashing into a tower of spent mountain dew containers. He thinks to himself "Ah, the real world... I was wondering where that went", and winces as he removes the remains of a microwave pizza from his foot and trots across the room. He sinks into his bed, pulls the covers up over his head, and dreams of his job - "How much I would like to have Quad Damage to deal with customers..." .. his last parting thought before he drifts off into a world of carnage and C code.
So much for UNIX fragmenting, eh?
I can just hear it now... chomp chomp... chomp.... oh crap! *frantic chomping* My only question is.... how would you do a ctrl-alt-del? You only have one tongue.........
Anyway, eyestrain is obviously an issue here, so making the material semi-transparent with a variable "depth" would be uber-cool, as it would allow for (limited) 3d visualization as well as other interesting features. It would also aleviate the eyestrain problem.
I know Napster will try suing them, since they claim a patent on this kind of stuff. Personally I think it's another "obvious" application of technology.. but eh, IANABSL (I am not a blood- sucking lawyer)
You see, this has nothing to do with profiling. It has nothing to do with geeks, per se. It has to do with keeping the status quo - and that is that the "normal" kids - jocks, preps, and hip dudes can do no wrong. If they do, they're "just kids" afterall, and "boys will be boys". But when somebody who isn't defined as "normal" by the community is targetted, they'll take any excuse to get rid of him, isolate him, or otherwise punish him for not subscribing to the social formula They have laid out.
Katz, you're close here - but you didn't hit the mark. There's a much bigger issue here, and one that cuts to the very core of the definition of what a society is. This is the politics of being different. It's hard, it's tough, and it's unfair. I could tell you volumes about my experiences in high school - it was basically a prequel to your hellmouth series. Bombs, scared kids, an outraged community, and a kid on the run. I had ATF agents *in my house*. It wasn't fun.
Believe me when I say this: This has nothing to do with geeks. Anyone who is different is a target in this (and most every) society. It is the biggest fight you'll ever be in - the fight to remain yourself.
Wrong one - girl in the bottom pick. Had netscape scrolled down when I said that. =)
More seriously, was this really slashdot material? If we wanted to talk about every sunken company that didn't make the cut, we'd be posting 50x stories a day for the next 2 years about the "coulda been" companies. For whatever reason, marketing, bad product, microsoft, will of god, however it happened - their product didn't make it.
The unspoken part of this is... if light rays repel each other, as you suggest, how can one jump to the conclusion that the universe isn't curved??
--
Thanks. =) I really despise /. posting NYT stories - I can't access them because I'm behind a firewall and NYT never lets me in. Well, basically they're saying that the universe is defined on a 3d plane. Okay, well... I don't have the background to disagree with them, so I won't.
--
Did I say that the data was wrong?
--
minor correction - I should have hit preview first...(sigh)... people still thought the world was flat when columbus discovered america... my appologies to the history buffs...
--
The concept of a "flat earth" was discredited shortly after the Roman empire fell. Besides, wouldn't this completely invalidate the big bang theory? I mean, if something explodes, it does so spherically(sp?) - not like a flat disk. Perhaps I'm missing something here... that just seems to stupid to have come from any sane scientist.
--
So I got to talking with some of my friends about this, and they too miss that "community" feeling that BBSing had. I think it's alot like why people don't vote - they don't think it'll make a difference. Statistically, it doesn't. But when you have 10 of your friends at a private party, isn't it alot more fun than a hundred people who you "kinda" know at a party? I'll tell you what's more fun - the 10 person party. The reason is that what you say makes a difference, and everybody can listen to everybody else.
I don't believe the web is going to give many people that community feeling they're looking for.. atleast not the conventional way of using it. But I am doing research and such on developing a kind of "online" bbs - not the cheezy kind, but a real bbs that is modern, uses the technology, and stretches the limits. It's a daunting task. Slashdot is one way of doing it, but even that is still largely "I post, you view". I don't have any answers, but I do know there's a need - I want to fill that need, if only for myself.
--
Please Note: W2K is not suitable for use in nuclear reactors, life support systems, or other mission-critical applications. Manufacturer hereby disclaims any responsibility from meltdown, end of world situation, or the re-emergence of disco.
--
fortunately, and alittle bit more seriously - all the ideas I post I remember. So if you try to patent any of *my* ideas, you're libel to be smacked around with a clue-by-four.
--
You know what would make me happy? Being able to play dvds on my linux box.. which was what decss and livid were for. If I were more of a programmer, that would be my project right now - the RIAA can kiss my curvy behind - I want DVD for linux!
--
Seriously, I too ran into this "feature", but it only took me a few minutes to locate the offending shortcut and modify it accordingly. I'm used to it - nobody sells a distribution "ready to be customized"... they sell it as "this is the standard, and you'd better like it!" Foo. I'm switching to debian soon.
--
*groan* Yes, stupid people are out there. Many of them work for a living. Suprise - you bumped into one. Now just pick yourself up, and carry on.
--
Yes... but a collection of governments imposing their collective will on the internet isn't bad, only individual governments?!
--
This is a publicity stunt. The fact that it is being done by a collection of governments doesn't negate that fact. They're testing the waters.. they are playing "paper tiger" politics. Let them.
--
I'm not concerned one tiny little bit about the gyrations that congress or any other legislative body / group goes through. It does not concern me. If tomorrow they made it illegal to program with intent to create software for non-microsoft products, I would blatently ignore them, even if they made the punishment 40 years in jail.
Virtually everybody who's half-way intelligent in this country (that would be no more than about 20% of the population) has given up on the concept of freedom, justice, and the american way. Freedom died back in the 60's (Anybody remember that little skirmish in Chicago at the democratic convention?), justice has been dead since the 30's (Martin Luther King, the O-J trial, Monica Lewinsky, a plethora of political prisoners... the list goes on).. and the american way is a long infomercial these days.
Forget it. The law is no longer for the common man. Follow your own moral compass, and let the politicians and the "moral majority" (an oxymoron if you ask me) follow their own path. It's like trying to plan your diet - one week it's "ok" to eat eggs, the next week it isn't.
--
*cursing* *mumbling*
Dammit ID, don't do this to us again... when Quake2 was released the network code was so bad it was unplayable on anything less than a T1, and there were all kinds of bugs in the rendering (artifacts being left around), and let's not get into the you-can-shoot-me-but-i-can't-die class of bugs.
Comeon guys, take a hint from these cool guys and wait until it really is ready to be shipped. We're willing to wait for a bug free product. The question is - are you willing to live with another poor release?
--
I'm alittle suprised - this really isn't "news" - it's just idle speculation. It shouldn't have been posted to /. unless one of the WINE developers came here and said Corel was backing off, not being as active on the lists, etc. All that posting this is gonna do is put corel in an (undeserved) bad light. Come on guys - let's do alittle backgrounding first before we post stuff like this. Maybe slashdot needs an opinion / rumor section, 'cuz alot of people are going to hype up the significance of this.
--
Perhaps Cray computers are not as valuable now that we have beowulf & other clustering technology which can give you the same amount of raw processing (with alittle extra latency) as the big iron?
--