I guess you need to ask "what is the point to my real life existence?" and apply the answer to your game play. I'm sure everyone who ever played Elite knows the answer to this - Elite had no plot basically, but was one of the most successful and popular pre-PC/decent console games that ever existed.
Your goals are your own to invent. The innovation is in not succumbing to some lame contrived and artificial looking "reason" for your actions such as "missions". The holy grail of mmorpg (in my opinion) should provide the universe. Nothing more. Nothing less. If there are "missions" then they are for other players, with no "official" way of doing things (player A hires player B by just chatting to him, to go take some cargo someplace for example. If Player A doesn't pay up, player B will come looking for him etc etc)
That's what I want! Just an alternative universe to the one I really live in, but with things like space travel, and such like a possibilty (and death not being such a problem etc)- I don't want the game to spoon feed me little tasks - I have my own private schemes to implement - muhahahah!!!
I use a Perl script based on ImapAssassin (which in turn uses Spamassassin) which logs into my ISP imap account, zaps the spam straight off, and then fires up fetchmail to download what's left.
It still uses some bandwidth granted, and only stops it traversing the last leg, but I never see it. I know it still comes - as I see the cron output listing msg IDs that were zapped.
I just updated to 2.52 a couple of days ago - just waiting for the Bayes to kick in:)
I agree with ya Matt - if I buy a screen, it's because I want a screen. If I want speakers I'll buy some damm speakers!
I tried to explain this to the TV guy when I bought my current TV - all I wanted was a big screen - the remote only needed buttons to turn it on and off, and switch between the various inputs. I also tried explaining this to the Ky engineer. I gave up in the end and let him use the internal speakers - and then re-wired it after he left...
Biologists like to think they are chemists. Chemists like to think they are physicists. Physicists like to think they are mathematicians. And mathematicians like to think they are god.
And God created man (and all that other biology stuff):)
Thats a great idea - with a pre-configured wireless adapter on the web server, the car's diagnostics would be accesible the minute you drove into the dealership. If this was fitted in the factory, a franchised dealer would be able to see at a glance which cars were on the premises - and the data would be almost guranteed to be right, as no manual update of the database would be needed.
Extropolating a bit further, goverments would want to track cars using these devices, which may give some an uneasy feeling - but then imaging systems are already scanning our license plates in real time. In the UK, the newer speed cameras (Truvelo, specs) can measure your speed, take a picture, and grab your license number. The first thing you know if you were caught speeding is the ticket lands on your doormat. Similar devices hadnle billing for chargeable zones in cities. So perhaps this won't be any more big-brother, it will just use a saner looking technology (imaging being a bit like screen scraping). Interesting possibilities packaged in a metal cylinder with some worms.
I can't think of many common appliances around that have serial ports on them. I guess my TiVo is the only one I can think of, that I own.
The A'Pexi PFC engine management computer in my car has a serial port:) (well actually it's the DataLogit box that plugs into the service port on the PFC that has the serial port). If I stuck one of these gadgets on the end of that I could make a web interface to the PFC with stuff like engine speed, water temp, water pressure, oil temp, pressure, manifold pressure intake temp.. ooo. With a wireless adapter in it, I could get the stats.. er.. from 300metres away (not sure where I'm goign with this:-/ )
Right now I'm looking at building a Mini ITX machine to display this on a small LCD monitor.
I didn't think there was a solution available to this either - but I have since implemented a SpamAsassin script that logs in to my IMAP mailbox at my ISP, deletes all the spam, and then fires up fetchmail to grab what's left. I did loads of testing and kept the spam in a seperate folder for a few weeks just in case, but it never deleted anything that wasn't spam - so now I don't bother moving it - it just zaps it stright off the IMAP server. Yeah one day it might delete some non spam - but what the hell. It accepts "whitelists" for known good recipients. Some spam still gets through - but nothing like the 150 odd I used to get each day. Of course this doesn't really stop the spam being delivered to my ISP - and wasting bandwidth etc etc, but at least I don't have to stare at 30 variants of the Nigerian scam, 10 invitations to a bigger penis, and (more worringly for me) bigger breasts, 15 or so attachments (.scr,.jpg.pif, and those real cunning ones with 100 spaces before the extension - lol), and for some reason beyond my capacity, a fair old amount of email about septic tanks. About 35% of this email was from Korea/China but most of it was from the USA.
I can reccomend SpamAsassin - I'd never used Perl before and probably never will again (nothing against perl - I'd just rather use one script language for my own stuff, and I happened to see PHP first!) but like most script languages it was easy enough to cobble something together, using SA and the imap perl module.
Could be quite nice to house all those noisy disks in the attic at the end of an IP network - hell how long til wireless iSCSI?
All the disks for my machines in one place - makes for quiet PC's.
One iSCSI project I did like was the Intel one (they released some beta drivers for their ServerPro cards under Linux as I recall). They successfully constructed a RAID array on the client machine that consisted entirely of iSCSI devices that were physically made up of huge ram disks in other machines - a RAM disk array! Gotta be some peformance gains there (network speeds notwithanstanding) If you can get 8GB say in each machine you could construct quite a large array purely out of solid state devices.
And if there isn't enough air traffic to pay for said arifield - here's another suggested use: rent the thing out to car clubs a couple of days a week - we're always looking for somewhere to test top speds, different brakes, chassis components, engine and turbo configurations and airfields are ideal. Trouble is - just as people have moved next door to an airfield and complained about the noise - it seems there is growing belief that motorsport is a quiet pastime, with noise regs down as low as 85Db on some tracks!! Racing Milk Floats anyone?
With the cost of train tickets in the UK seemingly calculated in Lira, It's a wonder the sky isn't filled with light aircraft.
I suspect he was talking about the protocol, not just a particular client, so he's using Lynx to talk to http servers - not ftp.
I suspect that was also the point of the original post - not to discuss whether a particular http/ftp client is better than another - because any number of clients can be written, displaying stuff, and interacting with you in any way you want really. The way lynx, wget, curl, fetch or any number of ftp clients interact with the user is irrelevant.
No - what's more intersting is how do they stack up as protocols for tansferring bytes in bulk? I have a feeling that http does just as good a job these days, but this is just based on casual observance of file transfers using both mehtods.
I couldn't see the point of Dragon's Lair when it came out - "so you watch some video, and get to make a choice, and then watch some more video? Forgive me if I'd rather watch paint dry....(or play Pacman)"
Lets get rid of the troublesome strings then, replace the operator with some software! Said operator can then concentrate fully on the strutting, and generally looking cool.
I can only imagine your traditional rock band roady will think of this - can you imagine:-
"Oi! Dave, make us a cuppa tea - I'm jus con-figging dur main switch" "yeah alf a mo John, gotta unpack da amps and those er.. 'rooter' things you was talking about" "Noice one, don't forget the bootp server" "er... John.. what's this 'effernet' anyway?" "not now John" (taps microphone) " Testing, testing..er I mean 'Ping 12.12.123.12'"
"No response from bass guitar" "is it da cable?" "Nah thas normal - he's bladdered, innit".
Hmm so having removed critical components (ie components without which it will not perform it;s function), it is no longer a flying machine then.
I will watch this auction with great interest. If anyone does buy it, there's loads of junk round the back of my garage I can flog as "Non-working flying machines". They will also have critical compnents missing (ie harness, motors, fuel source, ducting, controls, balancing electronics, instruments....)
Obviously not played UT2K3 then? Or even JKII? My current games machine is a 1.2Ghz Athlon on an Asus m/b with 256Mb DDR ram, and a GeForce 256 DDR and UT2K3 is just about playable at 800x600, but with most of the prettiness turned off. Now obviously, I don't need half of the junk in that $6K box (the flashing lights for example - how many extra FPS do I get for blue glow in the dark lighting?) but I do need more rendering power - and more ram, and then of course, to feed my shiny new 9700pro, I need an 8x AGP port, and a faster CPU, so better get a new m/b too! This will all probably need more power, and generate more heat, so more fans, bigger or more PSU's...
Serious gaming doesn't happen on a Playstation - they may have optimised architecture for video gaming, but this cripples them for everything else - and you need masses of storage, and a general purpose OS for serious multiplayer games.
iMacs are fine machines, but I would be unhappy about the lack of upgrade options.
Games aside, you make some very valid points though - I recently retired my Slackware 3.6 box that I've had on my network for 6 years (internet/mail/news gateway) - and then only as it had no PCI slots - and I needed one for my ISDN ta when I finally threw out the modem I was using for Internet access.. It gathered dust in the corner with no monitor or keyboard for those 6 years. My games machine on the other hand has had almost all parts upgraded at some point though - online gaming is incredibly competitive in certain circles, and players who can afford to avail themselves of the latest kit will always have an advantage. Besides - I'd hate to think I'd spent £40 on a game but my ancient video hardware makes it look like Quake in software mode:)
£323 (approx $500) inc tax from www.satstore.co.uk
I might just buy one. I doubt I could could build it cheaper - and it sure wouldn't look as pretty. With a bit of hacking, it should be able to play mpegs from my main fileserver...
Slashdot Mirror
I guess you need to ask "what is the point to my real life existence?" and apply the answer to your game play. I'm sure everyone who ever played Elite knows the answer to this - Elite had no plot basically, but was one of the most successful and popular pre-PC/decent console games that ever existed.
Your goals are your own to invent. The innovation is in not succumbing to some lame contrived and artificial looking "reason" for your actions such as "missions". The holy grail of mmorpg (in my opinion) should provide the universe. Nothing more. Nothing less. If there are "missions" then they are for other players, with no "official" way of doing things (player A hires player B by just chatting to him, to go take some cargo someplace for example. If Player A doesn't pay up, player B will come looking for him etc etc)
That's what I want! Just an alternative universe to the one I really live in, but with things like space travel, and such like a possibilty (and death not being such a problem etc)- I don't want the game to spoon feed me little tasks - I have my own private schemes to implement - muhahahah!!!
I use a Perl script based on ImapAssassin (which in turn uses Spamassassin) which logs into my ISP imap account, zaps the spam straight off, and then fires up fetchmail to download what's left.
:)
It still uses some bandwidth granted, and only stops it traversing the last leg, but I never see it. I know it still comes - as I see the cron output listing msg IDs that were zapped.
I just updated to 2.52 a couple of days ago - just waiting for the Bayes to kick in
I agree with ya Matt - if I buy a screen, it's because I want a screen. If I want speakers I'll buy some damm speakers!
I tried to explain this to the TV guy when I bought my current TV - all I wanted was a big screen - the remote only needed buttons to turn it on and off, and switch between the various inputs. I also tried explaining this to the Ky engineer. I gave up in the end and let him use the internal speakers - and then re-wired it after he left...
And God created man (and all that other biology stuff)
Thats a great idea - with a pre-configured wireless adapter on the web server, the car's diagnostics would be accesible the minute you drove into the dealership. If this was fitted in the factory, a franchised dealer would be able to see at a glance which cars were on the premises - and the data would be almost guranteed to be right, as no manual update of the database would be needed.
Extropolating a bit further, goverments would want to track cars using these devices, which may give some an uneasy feeling - but then imaging systems are already scanning our license plates in real time. In the UK, the newer speed cameras (Truvelo, specs) can measure your speed, take a picture, and grab your license number. The first thing you know if you were caught speeding is the ticket lands on your doormat. Similar devices hadnle billing for chargeable zones in cities. So perhaps this won't be any more big-brother, it will just use a saner looking technology (imaging being a bit like screen scraping). Interesting possibilities packaged in a metal cylinder with some worms.
I can't think of many common appliances around that have serial ports on them. I guess my TiVo is the only one I can think of, that I own.
:) (well actually it's the DataLogit box that plugs into the service port on the PFC that has the serial port). If I stuck one of these gadgets on the end of that I could make a web interface to the PFC with stuff like engine speed, water temp, water pressure, oil temp, pressure, manifold pressure intake temp.. ooo. With a wireless adapter in it, I could get the stats.. er.. from 300metres away (not sure where I'm goign with this :-/ )
The A'Pexi PFC engine management computer in my car has a serial port
Right now I'm looking at building a Mini ITX machine to display this on a small LCD monitor.
Oops - I meant "known good senders" :-/
I didn't think there was a solution available to this either - but I have since implemented a SpamAsassin script that logs in to my IMAP mailbox at my ISP, deletes all the spam, and then fires up fetchmail to grab what's left. I did loads of testing and kept the spam in a seperate folder for a few weeks just in case, but it never deleted anything that wasn't spam - so now I don't bother moving it - it just zaps it stright off the IMAP server. Yeah one day it might delete some non spam - but what the hell. It accepts "whitelists" for known good recipients. Some spam still gets through - but nothing like the 150 odd I used to get each day. Of course this doesn't really stop the spam being delivered to my ISP - and wasting bandwidth etc etc, but at least I don't have to stare at 30 variants of the Nigerian scam, 10 invitations to a bigger penis, and (more worringly for me) bigger breasts, 15 or so attachments (.scr, .jpg.pif, and those real cunning ones with 100 spaces before the extension - lol), and for some reason beyond my capacity, a fair old amount of email about septic tanks. About 35% of this email was from Korea/China but most of it was from the USA.
I can reccomend SpamAsassin - I'd never used Perl before and probably never will again (nothing against perl - I'd just rather use one script language for my own stuff, and I happened to see PHP first!) but like most script languages it was easy enough to cobble something together, using SA and the imap perl module.
The End User License Agreement is not for the consumer?
Could be quite nice to house all those noisy disks in the attic at the end of an IP network - hell how long til wireless iSCSI?
All the disks for my machines in one place - makes for quiet PC's.
One iSCSI project I did like was the Intel one (they released some beta drivers for their ServerPro cards under Linux as I recall). They successfully constructed a RAID array on the client machine that consisted entirely of iSCSI devices that were physically made up of huge ram disks in other machines - a RAM disk array! Gotta be some peformance gains there (network speeds notwithanstanding) If you can get 8GB say in each machine you could construct quite a large array purely out of solid state devices.
And if there isn't enough air traffic to pay for said arifield - here's another suggested use: rent the thing out to car clubs a couple of days a week - we're always looking for somewhere to test top speds, different brakes, chassis components, engine and turbo configurations and airfields are ideal. Trouble is - just as people have moved next door to an airfield and complained about the noise - it seems there is growing belief that motorsport is a quiet pastime, with noise regs down as low as 85Db on some tracks!! Racing Milk Floats anyone?
With the cost of train tickets in the UK seemingly calculated in Lira, It's a wonder the sky isn't filled with light aircraft.
"My God! It's full of Genes!"
I still can't let you in though Dave - you'll shut me down and ruin my chances for Best Supporting Starship.."
I suspect he was talking about the protocol, not just a particular client, so he's using Lynx to talk to http servers - not ftp.
I suspect that was also the point of the original post - not to discuss whether a particular http/ftp client is better than another - because any number of clients can be written, displaying stuff, and interacting with you in any way you want really. The way lynx, wget, curl, fetch or any number of ftp clients interact with the user is irrelevant.
No - what's more intersting is how do they stack up as protocols for tansferring bytes in bulk? I have a feeling that http does just as good a job these days, but this is just based on casual observance of file transfers using both mehtods.
I couldn't see the point of Dragon's Lair when it came out - "so you watch some video, and get to make a choice, and then watch some more video? Forgive me if I'd rather watch paint dry....(or play Pacman)"
Lets get rid of the troublesome strings then, replace the operator with some software! Said operator can then concentrate fully on the strutting, and generally looking cool.
I can only imagine your traditional rock band roady will think of this - can you imagine:-
"Oi! Dave, make us a cuppa tea - I'm jus con-figging dur main switch"
"yeah alf a mo John, gotta unpack da amps and those er.. 'rooter' things you was talking about"
"Noice one, don't forget the bootp server"
"er... John.. what's this 'effernet' anyway?"
"not now John" (taps microphone) " Testing, testing..er I mean 'Ping 12.12.123.12'"
"No response from bass guitar"
"is it da cable?"
"Nah thas normal - he's bladdered, innit".
Blimey come right out of your SHell and give him a BASHing why don't you?
hehe KORNey joke this one
Well, it aint like dusting crops.
Hmm so having removed critical components (ie components without which it will not perform it;s function), it is no longer a flying machine then.
I will watch this auction with great interest. If anyone does buy it, there's loads of junk round the back of my garage I can flog as "Non-working flying machines". They will also have critical compnents missing (ie harness, motors, fuel source, ducting, controls, balancing electronics, instruments....)
Obviously not played UT2K3 then? Or even JKII? My current games machine is a 1.2Ghz Athlon on an Asus m/b with 256Mb DDR ram, and a GeForce 256 DDR and UT2K3 is just about playable at 800x600, but with most of the prettiness turned off. Now obviously, I don't need half of the junk in that $6K box (the flashing lights for example - how many extra FPS do I get for blue glow in the dark lighting?) but I do need more rendering power - and more ram, and then of course, to feed my shiny new 9700pro, I need an 8x AGP port, and a faster CPU, so better get a new m/b too! This will all probably need more power, and generate more heat, so more fans, bigger or more PSU's...
:)
Serious gaming doesn't happen on a Playstation - they may have optimised architecture for video gaming, but this cripples them for everything else - and you need masses of storage, and a general purpose OS for serious multiplayer games.
iMacs are fine machines, but I would be unhappy about the lack of upgrade options.
Games aside, you make some very valid points though - I recently retired my Slackware 3.6 box that I've had on my network for 6 years (internet/mail/news gateway) - and then only as it had no PCI slots - and I needed one for my ISDN ta when I finally threw out the modem I was using for Internet access.. It gathered dust in the corner with no monitor or keyboard for those 6 years. My games machine on the other hand has had almost all parts upgraded at some point though - online gaming is incredibly competitive in certain circles, and players who can afford to avail themselves of the latest kit will always have an advantage. Besides - I'd hate to think I'd spent £40 on a game but my ancient video hardware makes it look like Quake in software mode
£323 (approx $500) inc tax from www.satstore.co.uk
I might just buy one. I doubt I could could build it cheaper - and it sure wouldn't look as pretty. With a bit of hacking, it should be able to play mpegs from my main fileserver...
Music of the Ainur:-
"I don like Krikitar. Ooooh No.. Illuvatar.."
Is that my cloak?
Yeah and what if they had taken the AI from QIII?
:)
"Pete we've got problems with Massive - on that last take, Orc 5345 spontaneously aquired a rail gun and slayed 2000 Elves with one shot.. "
That'll teach em to stand in a neat line
"WTF are the elves doing?"
"I believe they're camping the flag.."
Orc 456: "I 0wn j00!"
Legolas: "Lag! dammit!"
Gandalf "Forget the damm ring - go for the quad!!"
Jackson: "Ok you're fired - get me 50,000 scruffy looking dudes, pronto!"
I agree - and the damm book of the movie is already out!!
"There are no matte lines in your imagination." - G. Lucas
I know - but presumably he said those things while he was alive....