Most modern Bittorrent clients have NAT transversal. (At least the ones I've used - Bitcomet, uTorrent, Azureus, and KTorrent - all worked fine behind a NAT), so I don't think that any sort of move like this on the part of the ISPs would really slow down P2P. Rapidshare and similar free upload sites would be pretty pissed at them if they did this, though (they limit downloads to X/hour based on IP addresses).
Yes, it can play DVDs without any extra codecs. I've yet to see a DVD VLC couldn't play (of course, I've only played a couple of hundred different DVDs in it).
I'm not convinced VLC is actually illegal. I'd like someone to show proof that bundling a proprietary codec in your open source software is actually a violation of the TOS for that codec. I think if it were illegal, Quicktime, RealMedia, or one of the proprietary video player makers would have sued them already.
YES! But they could do it even better than the iTunes store. Imagine something like the IMDB: you search for the type of software you're looking for using keywords or tags, you see user ratings and read user reviews. You decide you like said software, and click a link at the top of the screen that says install now, and the thing takes care of dependencies, patches, everything.
You could even merge Synaptic with the new universal package manager: just give users check boxes, as in Display: [] Free Open Source Software, [] Commercial Software (requires UbuntuShop account), and [] Free Proprietary Software.
Seriously, combining user reviews and tags to sort software into Synaptic would be a huge improvement.
I agree with you about the benefits of a technical school education for the masses, but you seem to have missed the point of this wonderful opportunity for people to learn.
This move isn't targeted at the 50% "below average" types, it's for the enthusiast: the people who have an interest in this stuff but no means to actually learn it on their own.
I can see something like this, combined with the OLPC, really hitting it big in third world countries. There are "above average" people there who are forced into a technical careers due to political reasons.
No question do we need an educational system reform in America, but this isn't trying to be that. Besides, in some European countries they give you a test in 8th grade to determine the track you will take throughout high school and college - this fucks over the guy who was a slacker in 8th grade but decided to pull his stuff together later. Is that the sort of system you want? Is there any perfect education system we can adopt? Sorry, but I must disagree that we should "temper our response". This is simply wonderful news.
Still, your post(s) really made me think, and that's probably the single greatest thing I can say about a Slashdot comment.
FEAR's AI was simply a trick - really great motion capture disguising an AI which really just had 3 options: charge, take cover, or scripted flank.
There were also a few other scripted moments, like throw grenade, jump out of truck, or knock over bookcase for cover. If you played the game on hard, you could really tell that the only difference was that it did more damage. Same animations, in the same places; I could often blindfire grenades around corners simply by remembering where enemies were last time I played.
Still, even with a "trick" AI, FEAR is one of my favorite FPS games. It gave the illusion of intelligence, and that's really all you can ask of a game's AI.
What about OpenTTD? It's not 100% Open Source (graphics must be copied from the original game, now abandonware), but it's probably the most fun I've ever had in a Sim/sandbox game.
Most of the games listed are entertaining, but not really worth spending more than a few minutes on (If someone could put new models around Nexuiz, and throw in a good singleplayer campaign, vehicles, a few more weapons and gameplay modes for multiplayer, we'd be talking about a great game, but as it is Nexuiz is little more than a tech demo.)
Since EA likes to blacklist "pirate" MAC's and IP's, I really wouldn't register with them at all.
(This coming from someone who was blacklisted after hosting a LAN party. Presumably someone had a pirated game on their computer or something, but I took the fall for it.)
Oh, really? I think we should teach the controversy. A couple of days ago in my evolution class we learned about creationism - it was probably the single most interesting class ever.
We got to look at and talk about the Wedge Document (see also Wikipedia's writeup). This stuff is amazing. Their political and social motives are like something beyond the 9/11 conspiracy theorists wildest wet dreams.
So let me ask the creationists here: Do you really want any of this stuff to come up in a science class? Really?
You will not be able to find such an article, as one which can conclusive show speciation will effectively end this whole debate.
Naturally, speciation as we know it takes at least (maybe about) hundreds or thousands of years, so you're not likely to ever see such a study in your lifetime.
However, if you talk to the evolutionary biology department of your local university the professors there should be able to give you a detailed explanation of how change in gene frequency over time creates differences in phenotype (I'm assuming you don't reject this, there's a million sources for it - maybe one of Grant's studies would be most convincing), and how sufficient differences in phenotype can prevent individuals of the same species from reproducing-that's about as close as you can come to showing speciation.
Additionally compounding the problem is that the term "species" is piss-poorly defined, basically as just "we know it when we see it", allowing a whole lot of wiggle-room for creationists.
Ubuntu is about reaching the unwashed masses, and they want to use Firefox. It's not like one EULA is going to make any difference; even if every application, when you launched it, displayed a EULA would really be that bad.
It's what's said in the EULA that matters, and as many others have pointed out, Mozilla's EULA is mostly about protecting their trademark.
My point is, if you want idealism, use Debian.
Ubuntu is supposed to "just work" (and it does a good job of that), but honestly, I wouldn't object to them bundling proprietary drivers with the distribution (as in ATI, Nvidia, $wireless). I bet 99% of users just install that stuff anyway, and it would save a big pain in the ass if it was automatically installed.
Do the Kubuntu people really believe that anyone doesn't just run out and install Firefox first thing? No one actually uses Konqueror, and they should just save bandwidth and give the majority what they want (do not confuse majority with the zealots which are currently voting on Ubuntu's poll).
It's pretty easy, but someone should change it so that when Ubuntu says "SMB and NFS servers are not installed. Please install them before configuring file sharing" there is a button you can click on to install them (rather than opening Add/Remove Programs, searching SMB, realizing that SMB only shows GUIs, not the core SMB engine (wtf?), searching Samba, and installing it.
This process would not exactly be easy for the home user.
P.S. I'm using KDE, not sure if it's easier on Gnome. All that really needs to happen is add a yes no dialog button that installs the Samba core. I would do it myself if I knew how to code.
OK, they didn't single out individual neurons, they just examined a single neuron from a cluster. Here's the abstract (bold mine):
The emergence of memory, a trace of things past, into human consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of the human mind. Whereas the neuronal basis of recognition memory can be probed experimentally in human and nonhuman primates, the study of free recall requires that the mind declare the occurrence of a recalled memory (an event intrinsic to the organism and invisible to an observer). Here, we report the activity of single neurons in the human hippocampus and surrounding areas when subjects first view television episodes consisting of audiovisual sequences and again later when they freely recall these episodes. A subset of these neurons exhibited selective firing, which often persisted throughout and following specific episodes for as long as 12 seconds. Verbal reports of memories of these specific episodes at the time of free recall were preceded by selective reactivation of the same hippocampal and entorhinal cortex neurons. We suggest that this reactivation is an internally generated neuronal correlate of the subjective experience of spontaneous emergence of human recollection. 10.1126/science.1164685
It's a little subjective (unclear abstract) and the New York Times journalist takes it and runs with it. Way to go again, NYT.
The practical utility may be highly questionable, but if you know the course taken by those few water molecules, you can start to paint a picture of what the water going over the dam, and by extension the dam itself, looks like.
No one knows any details for certain (IIRC the game isn't even in development yet, just announced), but it will almost certainly be in the new WoD, as White Wolf is (to my understanding) no longer publishing material for old WoD. Have a look for yourself: facts and rumors.
Go to TPB, download Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, and play it. Beat the game. It gets better and better with every mission. Seriously, try it.
Now tell me if that wasn't the best RPG experience you've ever had. I went into Bloodlines expecting the cheesiest, lamest excuse for a vampire game ever (I'm not a fan of White Wolf or vampires in general), but it is now far in a way my favorite game ever. The plot, the masquerade, the characters are all simply flawless. Theres very little in the game you could call goth or emo. It's mature, dark, funny, nihilistic, terrifying are all words I would use to describe it. Most of it could easily be adapted into an MMO.
Side note: it's too bad all the other White Wolf branded stuff I checked out after VTMB sucked.
Side note 2: the public ignored VTMB on release because it came out on the same day as HL2, and because it was full of bugs. The same is not true today. Also, they are adapting the WoD into an MMO, which may or may not be good. It's certainly worth checking into.
No, the oil is not being pulled out of the ground as fast as possible. Countries that produce oil deliberately limit the amount the extract to limit supply; if we used less, they'd extract less.
(Can you blame them? If I had oil, I'd sell it at the highest profit, too.)
Hit the nail on the head with that post. Bioshock came across (to me) as a simplified version of SS2. If you wanted a real spiritual successor to SS2, try Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Once you've fought the werewolf (almost final boss), nothing in computer games will ever scare you again.
Bioshock had an incredibly cool opening movie, but if choosing whether or not to kill someone makes a game "art", RPGs were art more than a decade ago.
So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.
Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.
What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.
I think that Starcraft was supposed to be more serious, in keeping with the gritty, cold, harsh future it tried to portray. It's a little hard to tell with 2D graphics, though, as so much of the shading and detailed rendering took place in your imagination.
OK, I just fired up Diablo 2...it's been almost three days since I played it last, and it hasn't changed much.
The big difference I see between D2 and the D3 gameplay video is cartoon models and realistic shadows. Make the shadows darker and soften the edges of them in Diablo 3, and you'll have solved one problem. (I know real world shadows are sharp, but I prefer the look of soft shadows, especially on low-polygon game models). The cartoon models could prove to be a bit more of a challenge. Most of the models in game look straight out of WoW (Look at the "Thousand Pounder" 10 minutes into the gameplay preview). The bosses are the big problem here, but really the whole game needs a re-work. Even with the graphics problems, I'm sure it will be fantastic, just not as good as Diablo 2.
Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.
For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.
I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.
Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.
Will you people stop with the misconceptions? Tinfoil hats protect you from CIA/Alien mind control.
The thing that protects [me, anyway] from physical harm at the hands of violent fanatics is the four solid walls, concrete floor, and hardwood ceiling of my mother's basement.
Slashdot Mirror
Most modern Bittorrent clients have NAT transversal. (At least the ones I've used - Bitcomet, uTorrent, Azureus, and KTorrent - all worked fine behind a NAT), so I don't think that any sort of move like this on the part of the ISPs would really slow down P2P.
Rapidshare and similar free upload sites would be pretty pissed at them if they did this, though (they limit downloads to X/hour based on IP addresses).
Yes, it can play DVDs without any extra codecs. I've yet to see a DVD VLC couldn't play (of course, I've only played a couple of hundred different DVDs in it).
I'm not convinced VLC is actually illegal. I'd like someone to show proof that bundling a proprietary codec in your open source software is actually a violation of the TOS for that codec. I think if it were illegal, Quicktime, RealMedia, or one of the proprietary video player makers would have sued them already.
YES! But they could do it even better than the iTunes store. Imagine something like the IMDB: you search for the type of software you're looking for using keywords or tags, you see user ratings and read user reviews. You decide you like said software, and click a link at the top of the screen that says install now, and the thing takes care of dependencies, patches, everything.
You could even merge Synaptic with the new universal package manager: just give users check boxes, as in Display: [] Free Open Source Software, [] Commercial Software (requires UbuntuShop account), and [] Free Proprietary Software.
Seriously, combining user reviews and tags to sort software into Synaptic would be a huge improvement.
That's rhetorical, right?
I agree with you about the benefits of a technical school education for the masses, but you seem to have missed the point of this wonderful opportunity for people to learn.
This move isn't targeted at the 50% "below average" types, it's for the enthusiast: the people who have an interest in this stuff but no means to actually learn it on their own.
I can see something like this, combined with the OLPC, really hitting it big in third world countries. There are "above average" people there who are forced into a technical careers due to political reasons.
No question do we need an educational system reform in America, but this isn't trying to be that. Besides, in some European countries they give you a test in 8th grade to determine the track you will take throughout high school and college - this fucks over the guy who was a slacker in 8th grade but decided to pull his stuff together later. Is that the sort of system you want? Is there any perfect education system we can adopt? Sorry, but I must disagree that we should "temper our response". This is simply wonderful news.
Still, your post(s) really made me think, and that's probably the single greatest thing I can say about a Slashdot comment.
FEAR's AI was simply a trick - really great motion capture disguising an AI which really just had 3 options: charge, take cover, or scripted flank.
There were also a few other scripted moments, like throw grenade, jump out of truck, or knock over bookcase for cover. If you played the game on hard, you could really tell that the only difference was that it did more damage. Same animations, in the same places; I could often blindfire grenades around corners simply by remembering where enemies were last time I played.
Still, even with a "trick" AI, FEAR is one of my favorite FPS games. It gave the illusion of intelligence, and that's really all you can ask of a game's AI.
Jeez, I guess you haven't looked through my post history lately.
Damn it. I laughed at a goatse post. I think this might make me a bad person.
Either that or it's still too early in the morning.
What about OpenTTD? It's not 100% Open Source (graphics must be copied from the original game, now abandonware), but it's probably the most fun I've ever had in a Sim/sandbox game.
Most of the games listed are entertaining, but not really worth spending more than a few minutes on (If someone could put new models around Nexuiz, and throw in a good singleplayer campaign, vehicles, a few more weapons and gameplay modes for multiplayer, we'd be talking about a great game, but as it is Nexuiz is little more than a tech demo.)
Since EA likes to blacklist "pirate" MAC's and IP's, I really wouldn't register with them at all.
(This coming from someone who was blacklisted after hosting a LAN party. Presumably someone had a pirated game on their computer or something, but I took the fall for it.)
Oh, really? I think we should teach the controversy. A couple of days ago in my evolution class we learned about creationism - it was probably the single most interesting class ever.
We got to look at and talk about the Wedge Document (see also Wikipedia's writeup). This stuff is amazing. Their political and social motives are like something beyond the 9/11 conspiracy theorists wildest wet dreams.
So let me ask the creationists here: Do you really want any of this stuff to come up in a science class? Really?
You will not be able to find such an article, as one which can conclusive show speciation will effectively end this whole debate.
Naturally, speciation as we know it takes at least (maybe about) hundreds or thousands of years, so you're not likely to ever see such a study in your lifetime.
However, if you talk to the evolutionary biology department of your local university the professors there should be able to give you a detailed explanation of how change in gene frequency over time creates differences in phenotype (I'm assuming you don't reject this, there's a million sources for it - maybe one of Grant's studies would be most convincing), and how sufficient differences in phenotype can prevent individuals of the same species from reproducing-that's about as close as you can come to showing speciation.
Additionally compounding the problem is that the term "species" is piss-poorly defined, basically as just "we know it when we see it", allowing a whole lot of wiggle-room for creationists.
Finally someone talking sense.
Ubuntu is about reaching the unwashed masses, and they want to use Firefox. It's not like one EULA is going to make any difference; even if every application, when you launched it, displayed a EULA would really be that bad.
It's what's said in the EULA that matters, and as many others have pointed out, Mozilla's EULA is mostly about protecting their trademark.
My point is, if you want idealism, use Debian.
Ubuntu is supposed to "just work" (and it does a good job of that), but honestly, I wouldn't object to them bundling proprietary drivers with the distribution (as in ATI, Nvidia, $wireless). I bet 99% of users just install that stuff anyway, and it would save a big pain in the ass if it was automatically installed.
Do the Kubuntu people really believe that anyone doesn't just run out and install Firefox first thing? No one actually uses Konqueror, and they should just save bandwidth and give the majority what they want (do not confuse majority with the zealots which are currently voting on Ubuntu's poll).
Wow, that really turned into a rant, sorry.
I just tried it on my newish Ubuntu laptop.
It's pretty easy, but someone should change it so that when Ubuntu says "SMB and NFS servers are not installed. Please install them before configuring file sharing" there is a button you can click on to install them (rather than opening Add/Remove Programs, searching SMB, realizing that SMB only shows GUIs, not the core SMB engine (wtf?), searching Samba, and installing it.
This process would not exactly be easy for the home user.
P.S. I'm using KDE, not sure if it's easier on Gnome. All that really needs to happen is add a yes no dialog button that installs the Samba core. I would do it myself if I knew how to code.
The simplest, most effective response to this is: if I'm not doing anything wrong, why the fuck are you using my tax money to spy on me?!
I've never yet met anyone who could argue against this.
OK, they didn't single out individual neurons, they just examined a single neuron from a cluster. Here's the abstract (bold mine):
It's a little subjective (unclear abstract) and the New York Times journalist takes it and runs with it. Way to go again, NYT.
The practical utility may be highly questionable, but if you know the course taken by those few water molecules, you can start to paint a picture of what the water going over the dam, and by extension the dam itself, looks like.
No one knows any details for certain (IIRC the game isn't even in development yet, just announced), but it will almost certainly be in the new WoD, as White Wolf is (to my understanding) no longer publishing material for old WoD. Have a look for yourself: facts and rumors.
Are you serious?
Go to TPB, download Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, and play it. Beat the game. It gets better and better with every mission. Seriously, try it.
Now tell me if that wasn't the best RPG experience you've ever had. I went into Bloodlines expecting the cheesiest, lamest excuse for a vampire game ever (I'm not a fan of White Wolf or vampires in general), but it is now far in a way my favorite game ever. The plot, the masquerade, the characters are all simply flawless. Theres very little in the game you could call goth or emo. It's mature, dark, funny, nihilistic, terrifying are all words I would use to describe it. Most of it could easily be adapted into an MMO.
Side note: it's too bad all the other White Wolf branded stuff I checked out after VTMB sucked.
Side note 2: the public ignored VTMB on release because it came out on the same day as HL2, and because it was full of bugs. The same is not true today. Also, they are adapting the WoD into an MMO, which may or may not be good. It's certainly worth checking into.
No, the oil is not being pulled out of the ground as fast as possible. Countries that produce oil deliberately limit the amount the extract to limit supply; if we used less, they'd extract less.
(Can you blame them? If I had oil, I'd sell it at the highest profit, too.)
Hit the nail on the head with that post. Bioshock came across (to me) as a simplified version of SS2. If you wanted a real spiritual successor to SS2, try Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Once you've fought the werewolf (almost final boss), nothing in computer games will ever scare you again.
Bioshock had an incredibly cool opening movie, but if choosing whether or not to kill someone makes a game "art", RPGs were art more than a decade ago.
Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.
What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.
I think that Starcraft was supposed to be more serious, in keeping with the gritty, cold, harsh future it tried to portray. It's a little hard to tell with 2D graphics, though, as so much of the shading and detailed rendering took place in your imagination.
OK, I just fired up Diablo 2...it's been almost three days since I played it last, and it hasn't changed much.
The big difference I see between D2 and the D3 gameplay video is cartoon models and realistic shadows. Make the shadows darker and soften the edges of them in Diablo 3, and you'll have solved one problem. (I know real world shadows are sharp, but I prefer the look of soft shadows, especially on low-polygon game models). The cartoon models could prove to be a bit more of a challenge. Most of the models in game look straight out of WoW (Look at the "Thousand Pounder" 10 minutes into the gameplay preview). The bosses are the big problem here, but really the whole game needs a re-work. Even with the graphics problems, I'm sure it will be fantastic, just not as good as Diablo 2.
Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.
For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.
I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.
Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.
Will you people stop with the misconceptions? Tinfoil hats protect you from CIA/Alien mind control.
The thing that protects [me, anyway] from physical harm at the hands of violent fanatics is the four solid walls, concrete floor, and hardwood ceiling of my mother's basement.