I was going to mention this myself. It is indeed exactly 3 shots to the head that will drop a standard zombie. I know for a fact as I enjoyed getting perfect headshot kills on the zombies with the pistol (good for saving higher caliber weapons for times of need). I even recall one of the pre-release interviews talking about how well the per-pixel hit detection code was working, to the point where the testers were complaining about how hard it was to hit anything.
IMO, the entire article followed this trend: a mix of misinformation and heavily slanted personal opinion. Didn't like Doom 3? Fine. Leave it for those of us that loved the game (and the expansion) and have it installed long after other big name games have been played, beaten and uninstalled. The article title itself was both misleading and fabricated entirely from one man's personal opinion.
For people who use MS products as a regular part of their work, this is very useful. I can come here and skim the thread to see if people are having specific problems with a patch, or just check to see if there are any reasons why I should wait on applying them. This kind of community is what makes Slashdot useful.
If you don't use MS products, just skip the article.
I was never a RedHat "customer" per se, as I never used their commercial distos, but I used to use RH 8 and 9 for several workstations/servers for personal use. When the Fedora stuff started up it forced my hand to try Slackware (I had been meaning to, just never got around to it before that). Having used Slackware for a while now on a number of machines, I have no reason to go back at all.
I'm sure RH is still doing good things, but I'll take the simplicity and flexibility Slackware gives me any day.
Perhaps you don't understand the point behind nmap, but that is exactly why it was created. The idea was to provide a general purpose tool that gave intelligent admins the ability to scan and "attack" their own network with the exact same tools and techniques used by attackers. Nmap provides a centralized tool for all of these techniques that does not involve combing warez sites looking for each individual tool.
Out of all the options that you listed above, the only one I haven't personally used is the decoy scanning as I don't have a use for it. Combinations of the other settings are very useful for checking the setup of both network monitoring tools as well as verifying configurations very quickly across multiple servers or desktop systems. In addition, I have found nmap to be very useful in tracking down certain virus infections. When I know that a virus opens a specific port on a compromised box, I can do a network wide scan and quickly return all hosts that are potentially compromised (as we are talking student computers at a college, we are not directly responsible for the machines themselves).
True, nmap does put this same power in the hands of potentially malicious users, but given that they would have these same tools whether or not nmap existed, I much prefer being able to access them easily myself.
...that this movie will be disliked. Why? Well, it's possible that the movie itelf will suck, but I personally doubt it. Instead, I think it comes from a perspective shift between playing a game and essentially watching a movie about playing a game.
I think I am one of the only people on the planet who likes the original Mortal Kombat movie. Granted, the movie itself is not mind-blowing or original; but instead it accurately captures the mood and feel of the original games. Combine that with some interesting action, and you have a movie that I enjoy watching from time to time partly because of all the memories it brings back.
However, partly why I enjoy MK so much is that it didn't try to be anything different than the game. It kept the same characters, same mechanics, even the same settings for many of the fights. Watching the movie feels like watching someone play a live-action version of the game. From what I've seen of this D3 movie, they are stuck in a hard spot. One one hand, they could add a whole story and disrupt the movie/game tie which would cause everyone who played the game to dislike the movie. On the other hand, they could essentially do a live action version of portions of the game, which would cause everyone who hadn't played the game to feel let down by the movie. From what I've seen, this difficulty in setting the correct perspective is why so many gaming movies seem to fail.
However, I love the game Doom 3, so here's to hoping the movie is just as good...
I'm sure there may have been some predecessors, but SoF2 was one of the first mainstream FPS games to include random map generation right out of the box for both SP and MP. Now granted, these maps are heightmap generated terrain maps with random buildings scattered about, but they are still surprisingly fun. The other cool thing is that each map is generated off of a seed, so if you find a cool random map that works well you can note the seed and then utilize that exact same map in the future. Of course, you can also just have the game generate a completely different map each time as well.
There are even some servers such as Hexapalooza Jumbo CTF that run all random maps all the time. CTF being one of the most enjoyable game types to play on these random maps, it works very well. There are some downsides to the setup, primarily because the maps can get a little repetitive after a while, but it still is a good example of how random map generation can be integrated into a game style for which random map generation rarely works.
I think you're overlooking differing points of view with these statements. First of all, computers are not a "hobby" of mine. I have always looked at them as being different than model railroading and stamp collecting because of the great rewards provided by being proficient at them. I work with computers for a living, and enjoy continuing to use them in my personal life as well.
One of my future goals is to set up a PC based solution for basic idea mentioned in this article. When I do, will use a PC based solution for several reasons. First, I consider it to be more flexible than the current mainstream offerings (although I'm always willing to keep my eye on them). Secondly, I thoroughly enjoy the process of setting up and configuring the system. Finally, when I complete the project, I will enjoy using it far more because it is something that I created myself and tuned to my exact specifications.
If computers really are just a hobby to you, then no, $6 a month is nothing at all. For me it would have nothing to do with the monthly cost but the satisfaction of creation. Yes, it also takes more time, but I'm sure you also choose to make time for things that you enjoy doing. Just because I select a route that involves more work but provides me with a great deal of personal enjoyment out of creating and using hardly means that "something isn't working correctly" with my life.
I've read a few books from this same author and he does have some good points. I don't agree with everything personally, but reading carefully I found quite a bit of information about perspectives that I wouldn't have thought of.
In my experience however, there is a crucial step that is missing. In most of the places where I have worked the "webmaster" is more the artsy type and is not interested in the technical side of the design at all. Where I'm working now, if I showed this article to our primary web designer, he would basically ignore it and continue doing things the same old way because he isn't interested in what he considers to be the technical aspects of web design (OT, once he even told me "I don't care about all that HTML stuff"). I'm sure this is different in large organizations where there are teams of people dedicated to the maintenance of the web site, but in smaller organizations where there are only one or two web designers it is important that the web designer understands *why* he must care about this information (and I'm not talking about nebulous mentions of "you'll save this much $"). Most of the designers I've worked with are not interested in perusing articles/books of what they consider to be "technical" information in an effort to improve the usability and effectivess of the web site they are maintaining.
That is why this seems like only half the story. IMO, it would be very useful to have a good preface on why it is so important to apply these techniques, and only then begin to explain exactly what these techniques are and how to implement them. This would make this kind of information useful to both the artsy, visual web designer and the more code oriented, professional webmaster.
I feel the need to add to this discussion, as the opening post is both misleading and untrue. I have not played CS for some time, but I currently run/admin an SoF2 server which is very similar exceot that the engine is two generations newer. From my experience with both games, they are very similar in the issue of cheating.
As an admin, I run into all kinds of cheating. Wallhacks, ballhacks, and aimbots are some of the worst and most widely known, although there are a number of other types that exist. However, just looking at these three most prevalent types, none of them rely on any kind of bug in the game to operate. The majority of cheats operate by writing hooks into the OpenGL data that allows them to obtain additional information about the game and then display that to the screen. That is how wallhacks are able to show players that would normally be occluded and ballhacks are able to display balls (or any kind of symbol) over all player's head no matter where they are in the level.
These specific types of cheats are just hooks, however. They do not rely on any kind of bug/issue/hole in the game as they are utilizing information that is contained within the OpenGL subsystem on the client machine. In SoF2 there are a couple of exploits that are based on bugs in the game, but these are widely known and fall into a "gray area" as they do not *really* give a player an advantage, but might in some particular instances. From an admin standpoint, there are tools (namely PunkBuster) that allow for easy observation of these types of exploits, and these same tools are available for pretty much all mainstream online FPS games.
The solution to cheating goes far beyond merely insulting the developers and claiming that all the responsibility is on them to fix these nebulous "bugs" in their software. This is an extremely difficult problem to surmount in every facet of the issue. While I may not completely agree with Valve's approach to the issue, I applaud them for actually standing up and taking some sort of action. IMO, cheating is one of the largest deterrents to online gaming today.
Here's a tip that you may find useful--create a bookmark for google and enter the following information:
Location: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&num=50&hl=en& ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=& lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi =&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=imag es Keyword: gg
You can use anything for the keyword, but in this example, you can simply type "gg " and it automatically searches Google for the given search text. It's even fewer keys than having to press the down arrow.
This is an older link that explains it more, I can't find the Firefox specific link right now: http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/ bookma rks/
Assuming this is implemented well, I could see this being a very useful tool for new linux users. It seems like the hardest time I have convincing people to at least give Linux a try is when they want to know where to go when they need help. It is often a little difficult to describe to them how they need to search Google, picking through endless messageboard postings and offtopic comments, and find what they need, especially when they aren't even sure what they were looking for in the first place.
A centralized resource that is helpful and friendly could be very useful for those who are intimidated by learning a new OS.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to mention this myself. It is indeed exactly 3 shots to the head that will drop a standard zombie. I know for a fact as I enjoyed getting perfect headshot kills on the zombies with the pistol (good for saving higher caliber weapons for times of need). I even recall one of the pre-release interviews talking about how well the per-pixel hit detection code was working, to the point where the testers were complaining about how hard it was to hit anything.
IMO, the entire article followed this trend: a mix of misinformation and heavily slanted personal opinion. Didn't like Doom 3? Fine. Leave it for those of us that loved the game (and the expansion) and have it installed long after other big name games have been played, beaten and uninstalled. The article title itself was both misleading and fabricated entirely from one man's personal opinion.
Oh I see what you were saying. I agree with you completely about starting OS flamewars, I guess that was just not how I took the article.
For people who use MS products as a regular part of their work, this is very useful. I can come here and skim the thread to see if people are having specific problems with a patch, or just check to see if there are any reasons why I should wait on applying them. This kind of community is what makes Slashdot useful.
If you don't use MS products, just skip the article.
I was never a RedHat "customer" per se, as I never used their commercial distos, but I used to use RH 8 and 9 for several workstations/servers for personal use. When the Fedora stuff started up it forced my hand to try Slackware (I had been meaning to, just never got around to it before that). Having used Slackware for a while now on a number of machines, I have no reason to go back at all.
I'm sure RH is still doing good things, but I'll take the simplicity and flexibility Slackware gives me any day.
Perhaps you don't understand the point behind nmap, but that is exactly why it was created. The idea was to provide a general purpose tool that gave intelligent admins the ability to scan and "attack" their own network with the exact same tools and techniques used by attackers. Nmap provides a centralized tool for all of these techniques that does not involve combing warez sites looking for each individual tool.
Out of all the options that you listed above, the only one I haven't personally used is the decoy scanning as I don't have a use for it. Combinations of the other settings are very useful for checking the setup of both network monitoring tools as well as verifying configurations very quickly across multiple servers or desktop systems. In addition, I have found nmap to be very useful in tracking down certain virus infections. When I know that a virus opens a specific port on a compromised box, I can do a network wide scan and quickly return all hosts that are potentially compromised (as we are talking student computers at a college, we are not directly responsible for the machines themselves).
True, nmap does put this same power in the hands of potentially malicious users, but given that they would have these same tools whether or not nmap existed, I much prefer being able to access them easily myself.
...that this movie will be disliked. Why? Well, it's possible that the movie itelf will suck, but I personally doubt it. Instead, I think it comes from a perspective shift between playing a game and essentially watching a movie about playing a game.
I think I am one of the only people on the planet who likes the original Mortal Kombat movie. Granted, the movie itself is not mind-blowing or original; but instead it accurately captures the mood and feel of the original games. Combine that with some interesting action, and you have a movie that I enjoy watching from time to time partly because of all the memories it brings back.
However, partly why I enjoy MK so much is that it didn't try to be anything different than the game. It kept the same characters, same mechanics, even the same settings for many of the fights. Watching the movie feels like watching someone play a live-action version of the game. From what I've seen of this D3 movie, they are stuck in a hard spot. One one hand, they could add a whole story and disrupt the movie/game tie which would cause everyone who played the game to dislike the movie. On the other hand, they could essentially do a live action version of portions of the game, which would cause everyone who hadn't played the game to feel let down by the movie. From what I've seen, this difficulty in setting the correct perspective is why so many gaming movies seem to fail.
However, I love the game Doom 3, so here's to hoping the movie is just as good...
I'm sure there may have been some predecessors, but SoF2 was one of the first mainstream FPS games to include random map generation right out of the box for both SP and MP. Now granted, these maps are heightmap generated terrain maps with random buildings scattered about, but they are still surprisingly fun. The other cool thing is that each map is generated off of a seed, so if you find a cool random map that works well you can note the seed and then utilize that exact same map in the future. Of course, you can also just have the game generate a completely different map each time as well.
There are even some servers such as Hexapalooza Jumbo CTF that run all random maps all the time. CTF being one of the most enjoyable game types to play on these random maps, it works very well. There are some downsides to the setup, primarily because the maps can get a little repetitive after a while, but it still is a good example of how random map generation can be integrated into a game style for which random map generation rarely works.
I think you're overlooking differing points of view with these statements. First of all, computers are not a "hobby" of mine. I have always looked at them as being different than model railroading and stamp collecting because of the great rewards provided by being proficient at them. I work with computers for a living, and enjoy continuing to use them in my personal life as well.
One of my future goals is to set up a PC based solution for basic idea mentioned in this article. When I do, will use a PC based solution for several reasons. First, I consider it to be more flexible than the current mainstream offerings (although I'm always willing to keep my eye on them). Secondly, I thoroughly enjoy the process of setting up and configuring the system. Finally, when I complete the project, I will enjoy using it far more because it is something that I created myself and tuned to my exact specifications.
If computers really are just a hobby to you, then no, $6 a month is nothing at all. For me it would have nothing to do with the monthly cost but the satisfaction of creation. Yes, it also takes more time, but I'm sure you also choose to make time for things that you enjoy doing. Just because I select a route that involves more work but provides me with a great deal of personal enjoyment out of creating and using hardly means that "something isn't working correctly" with my life.
I've read a few books from this same author and he does have some good points. I don't agree with everything personally, but reading carefully I found quite a bit of information about perspectives that I wouldn't have thought of.
In my experience however, there is a crucial step that is missing. In most of the places where I have worked the "webmaster" is more the artsy type and is not interested in the technical side of the design at all. Where I'm working now, if I showed this article to our primary web designer, he would basically ignore it and continue doing things the same old way because he isn't interested in what he considers to be the technical aspects of web design (OT, once he even told me "I don't care about all that HTML stuff"). I'm sure this is different in large organizations where there are teams of people dedicated to the maintenance of the web site, but in smaller organizations where there are only one or two web designers it is important that the web designer understands *why* he must care about this information (and I'm not talking about nebulous mentions of "you'll save this much $"). Most of the designers I've worked with are not interested in perusing articles/books of what they consider to be "technical" information in an effort to improve the usability and effectivess of the web site they are maintaining.
That is why this seems like only half the story. IMO, it would be very useful to have a good preface on why it is so important to apply these techniques, and only then begin to explain exactly what these techniques are and how to implement them. This would make this kind of information useful to both the artsy, visual web designer and the more code oriented, professional webmaster.
I feel the need to add to this discussion, as the opening post is both misleading and untrue. I have not played CS for some time, but I currently run/admin an SoF2 server which is very similar exceot that the engine is two generations newer. From my experience with both games, they are very similar in the issue of cheating.
As an admin, I run into all kinds of cheating. Wallhacks, ballhacks, and aimbots are some of the worst and most widely known, although there are a number of other types that exist. However, just looking at these three most prevalent types, none of them rely on any kind of bug in the game to operate. The majority of cheats operate by writing hooks into the OpenGL data that allows them to obtain additional information about the game and then display that to the screen. That is how wallhacks are able to show players that would normally be occluded and ballhacks are able to display balls (or any kind of symbol) over all player's head no matter where they are in the level.
These specific types of cheats are just hooks, however. They do not rely on any kind of bug/issue/hole in the game as they are utilizing information that is contained within the OpenGL subsystem on the client machine. In SoF2 there are a couple of exploits that are based on bugs in the game, but these are widely known and fall into a "gray area" as they do not *really* give a player an advantage, but might in some particular instances. From an admin standpoint, there are tools (namely PunkBuster) that allow for easy observation of these types of exploits, and these same tools are available for pretty much all mainstream online FPS games.
The solution to cheating goes far beyond merely insulting the developers and claiming that all the responsibility is on them to fix these nebulous "bugs" in their software. This is an extremely difficult problem to surmount in every facet of the issue. While I may not completely agree with Valve's approach to the issue, I applaud them for actually standing up and taking some sort of action. IMO, cheating is one of the largest deterrents to online gaming today.
Here's a tip that you may find useful--create a bookmark for google and enter the following information:
& ie=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=& lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi =&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=imag es
/ bookma rks/
Location: http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%s&num=50&hl=en
Keyword: gg
You can use anything for the keyword, but in this example, you can simply type "gg " and it automatically searches Google for the given search text. It's even fewer keys than having to press the down arrow.
This is an older link that explains it more, I can't find the Firefox specific link right now:
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002
Assuming this is implemented well, I could see this being a very useful tool for new linux users. It seems like the hardest time I have convincing people to at least give Linux a try is when they want to know where to go when they need help. It is often a little difficult to describe to them how they need to search Google, picking through endless messageboard postings and offtopic comments, and find what they need, especially when they aren't even sure what they were looking for in the first place. A centralized resource that is helpful and friendly could be very useful for those who are intimidated by learning a new OS.