An accurate artice, to say the least. I've attempted my share of speed runs and time attacks, and eventually resigned to the fact that there are people who have much more time and patience than i do to get things perfect (for more evidence of that, check the sonic 3 speedrun on bisqwit's site). but i definately enjoy watching the runs myself. there's still something to be said about watching someone smoke bionic commando in 15 minutes or utterly destroy mega man 2.
a point of note -- when the article talks about morimoto, he's the one who did a crazy smb3 run. the article makes it seem like what he did was completely wrong and unethical. on the contrary, the video is a time attack. the levels in question are automatic side scrolling levels, where the speed cannot be changed and the time is consistent whether its me playing it or him. instead of making the video extremely boring and unpleasant to watch in those 2 minutes (by hiding in a corner and getting pushed along or something) he jumps and accumulates a ton of lives during a time that would otherwise be paint-dry boring. i think it was well done.
the link to bisqwit's site (mentioned in the article, iirc. read it yesterday.) is http://bisqwit.iki.fi. definately go there if you want to relive some nostalgia done perfectly:]
(advance apologies for the formatting. doing this through lynx).
I personally have never gotten rid of any console I've had, from the Atari to the Virtual Boy (bleh) to my PS2. I tend to have tons of fun replaying the old games.
However, my friends aren't as packrat-ish as I am. Instead of using ebay or funcoland/gamestop, they use Craigslist. It eliminates the middleman and let's you put your stuff out there at a better price.
funcoland offers $70 for that ps2? ask for $80 on craigslist. you'll probably get it.
$300 isn't all of too bad for a console, especially considering the hardware present. Looking back, the NES came out at $199 initially, as did the SNES, and N64. The N64 didn't even include any games, just a solitary controller. The $60 price tag for games is what N64 games cost as well. I'm viewing it as a slightly more expensive initial investment. That, and only that.
He's right. The computer isn't dead for gaming, and in my opinion, will never be overshadowed by consoles. I've pretty much stopped enjoying console games, excluding the GTA's, n64's goldeneye and smash brothers, and my old SNES and nintendo games. Nothing else new on console is worth playing.
But on the computer I've had tons of games that were tons of fun. starting back with civilization and progressing up through warcraft II, duke nukem, doom, quake, AOE, and then halflife & cs(!)
what makes most PC games so much better than the console games is the amount of personal interactivity with people. I can talk to the people i'm playing with in counter-strike. I can't do that with a console (excluding some horrid voicecom). And it's so much easier to use the mouse / keyboard combination for gaming than a controller (no matter how i try, i can't aim in halo worth a shit with an xbox controller)
but, as of late, i've gone totally retro and dusted off the NES and the atari for some old school fun times:]
I was just using this with my brother. On his pentium III 600, 256 mb ram comp, and windows 2000, google hybrid killed his virtual memory and pretty much borked his computer into a hard restart.
There's a mandatory course at my university in regards to technical writing. All engineers have to take it. It's much better than the standard 'college writing' class (think boring lit times 10). in fact, students can only take this course in their third year or later (NU is a 5 year school).
At that point, the student should have gone on a co-op, so the student should have some knowledge and insight into having something techinical to write about.
The courses are taught by professors who have experience in the workplace environment (not professors who came straight from academia).
all in all, the setup is wonderful for making a writing class useful and moderately enjoyable.
1989. I was four. My father brought home a new tandy running deskmate. The tandy had this moderately functional drawing program that seems like a really antiquated version of mspaint. So, after using the program for a while, my father tells me to get off the computer and find my older brother so he can use it. in my typical four year old sense, i just start calling for him from where i was at the computer. unbeknownst to me, my father was recording me on the tandy with a microphone. boy, did i get a kick out of hearing myself on the computer.
i still have that wav file. and i still listen to it now, 16 years later.
and i still have that tandy. it went through a ton, and still works. my brother used to do his finances on taxes on it all the way up through his 2nd year in college(~2000). after that, i pretty much turned it into a dedicated machine for playing civilization, since it would run on the tandy wonderfully.
Completely dead on. I listen to the FF6 soundtrack at work (even now, I'm listening to it) and I continuously have my coworkers commenting on how beautiful the music is. Wonder if they'd say the same if they knew it was from a 16-bit videogame:]
As far as some other amazing gaming soundtracks go:
Mega Man games on the NES had some awesome music. Especially Mega Man 2 and 3. If you want to here some really nice tracks, find Project X's remixes of those two. Amazing work. Earthbound / Mother 2 -- Amazing music from an amazing game. Had all starts of style -- swing, jazz, love, r&b, melodies Donkey Kong Country / DKC2 -- phenominal music. Amazingly done by Dave West & crew. The tunes made you feel like you were in the jungle (or water, or cave, etc). And Each had a different style, and the track names made it cool (Simian Segue, Krool's Kakophony (sic), dk island swing) If you like the DKC music, look up 'kong in concert'. I think its on overclocked.
( sorry for the quality of the post, using lynx at work doesnt make things all to easy:] )
i'm apologizing for the quality of this post in advance, as i'm using lynx through an ssh at work
to answer some of your questions: i'm not using a hardware firewall. at my apartment, i run through a standard linux-powered NAT, but i also commonly use random wireless hotspots and unsecured wireless points (ethernet in my college buildings, my friends apartments, etc)
if you have no anti-virus software installed, how can you say with any authority (or confidence, for that matter) that your system isn't completely compromised, and you're simply unaware of it?
simple. it's not running in my tasklist. nor is functionality lost. I know what's in my registry to start normally, and I can check to see if something additional is there. my homepage doesnt automatically set and change itself. there are no random items in my systray. i don't get random pop-ups when not using the computer.
it's easy to find and spot {mal,spy}ware. I've spent the past few years making a good $25+ an hour removing spyware from people's pc's, and you get quite accustomed to finding and destroying things easily. none of this exists on my computer.
additionally, I went to my parent's house this past fourth of july weekend. I hooked my laptop into their windows network, which I had set up for them in the past. At some point since I moved out, my dad decided to reformat the computers and has left them at basically vanilla installs -- no updates. the machines were crawling with blaster, sasser, and tons of other crap. i hooked my laptop to the network and was able to use it without infection.
worst thing that happened? having to clean 3 computers and set them to autoupdate / install while i should have been at the beach:[
I've got multiple boxes at my place, and while most of them are Linux / BSD, I keep windows on a laptop. I've brought this laptop (running win2k pro) to different wireless hotspots, different ethernet lan hookups, and even into my friends apartments and hopped on their lan, with insecure machines.
My laptop does not have an antivirus, spyware remover, or firewall. However, I've never had a problem. Probably because I update windows every time I use the computer and I disabled all but the imperative system services. And I've never had a virus, spyware, or any other sort of issue. Then again, I use firefox w/ flashblock & adblock and the like.
Is this the case for other slashdotters? Or am I the luckiest person this side of the Atlantic?
I work as an undergrad on a co-op for a major office in my university. I do a ton of research work and programming and work in a very competetive, research driven environment.
The pay isn't the best (I had received offers for more money), but the people I work with and the opportunities I've received are outstanding.
Expect to work closely with a professor, a post-doctorate, grad students, undergrads, and all sorts of folks... and forge good relationships with all of them. that reference from the professor, or the good word from the post-doc when he starts working for IBM (or another random large company) can go a long way.
Look into cheaper (or even free) tuition. I know that the guy next to me gets free tuition in exchange for his work week, so he stocks up on night classes, and has gotten his masters and is working on a PhD.
The work environment is going to be very casual -- as long as you get the job done. I am assigned 40 hours per week (on my word -- no timecard), and I can work whatever hours i want. I've worked nights, weekends, whatever, to fit my schedule best. Eventually I settled into a 7-3 shift (I like mornings) and it was embraced by all my coworkers, who took it to mean that I was very hard working:]
Make good friends with the office accountant (or secretary, if there is none). Get her/him gifts and engage in conversations. Basically make them a buddy, because you need to make sure your paychecks come through, as well as your reimbursements and travel costs.
My 6 month co-op term is up, but I'm going to be staying on and working for another project. The office got a new project, and was interviewing undergrads for it. They didn't like any of the candidates, so they grabbed me and interviewed me, and asked how I'd like to work for them some more. I accepted and now have another term of work with them, doing some really amazing research work. In fact, we're competing for a very large government check, and if they choose our design and buy our IP, I reap a dividend check, as an undergrad (and my chunk will be large enough to pay my tuition and buy me a house afterwards). So I've got some pretty good inspiration.
To sum it up:
1) make friends with everyone 2) follow up on paperwork, especially with the accountant 3) don't bs anyone -> there are people in the office who know much more than you and, most likely, can call out your BS by pointing to a white paper that says the exact opposite of what youre saying 4) deadlines are going to come. ask for help from your coworkers if you need it. finish early. 5) find a way to get cheap/free tuition. school is expensive. take nightclasses and cheat the system.
As far as interaction with the environment, Duke Nukem 3D completely changed the way I thought about fps. Unlike Doom, you could jump, duck, fly (jetpack), and interact with the environment other than going into elevators and opening doors. And the multiplayer fun was amazing and brilliant.
From being able to demolish buildins, starting moving projectors, blowing halls, and giving strippers money to see those horribly drawn boobies, it paved the way for the FPS series' to come (Quake & Half Life).
When I was younger, I used to purchase a ton of cd's. It was what I spelt my allowance on -- my choice.
But as I got older, I started to realize what a waste it was to spend $18-$20 on an album from which I would only listen to one or two songs.
So When Napster came out, I found out about it early (one of the first thousand users) and was able to ride the bandwagon on it, collecting songs that I would listen to and none of the ones that I wouldn't. I still bought CD's that were worth the price tag (the ones where every song on the album were decent and not just a crappy filler song).
Then I mostly stopped listening to new music. I've gotten a lot more comfortable listening to new, independent bands and buying their albums. Because it means more to me to give an independent band $15 for which I know $15 is going directly to the band. The quality of the music is also higher.
I've bought more CD's in the past year than I've bought since I was 12. And I feel good knowing that the money I spend is going to the artists, and not some shitty company.
Slashdot Mirror
An accurate artice, to say the least. I've attempted my share of speed runs and time attacks, and eventually resigned to the fact that there are people who have much more time and patience than i do to get things perfect (for more evidence of that, check the sonic 3 speedrun on bisqwit's site). but i definately enjoy watching the runs myself. there's still something to be said about watching someone smoke bionic commando in 15 minutes or utterly destroy mega man 2.
:]
a point of note -- when the article talks about morimoto, he's the one who did a crazy smb3 run. the article makes it seem like what he did was completely wrong and unethical. on the contrary, the video is a time attack. the levels in question are automatic side scrolling levels, where the speed cannot be changed and the time is consistent whether its me playing it or him. instead of making the video extremely boring and unpleasant to watch in those 2 minutes (by hiding in a corner and getting pushed along or something) he jumps and accumulates a ton of lives during a time that would otherwise be paint-dry boring. i think it was well done.
the link to bisqwit's site (mentioned in the article, iirc. read it yesterday.) is http://bisqwit.iki.fi. definately go there if you want to relive some nostalgia done perfectly
(advance apologies for the formatting. doing this through lynx).
I personally have never gotten rid of any console I've had, from the Atari to the Virtual Boy (bleh) to my PS2. I tend to have tons of fun replaying the old games.
However, my friends aren't as packrat-ish as I am. Instead of using ebay or funcoland/gamestop, they use Craigslist. It eliminates the middleman and let's you put your stuff out there at a better price.
funcoland offers $70 for that ps2? ask for $80 on craigslist. you'll probably get it.
Astronauts traveling to Mars would be exposed to so much radiation that 10% would die of cancer.
For once I'm glad I have a tinfoil hat!
(cue rimshot)
$300 isn't all of too bad for a console, especially considering the hardware present. Looking back, the NES came out at $199 initially, as did the SNES, and N64. The N64 didn't even include any games, just a solitary controller. The $60 price tag for games is what N64 games cost as well.
I'm viewing it as a slightly more expensive initial investment. That, and only that.
and no, I'm not planning on buying one.
Had 5 mod points this morning. Used them all.
I'm betting that there will be tons of flames and a lot of funny jokes posted here shortly...
tbh i didnt think it was troll or rude or anything, but a well made point. if it wasnt my post id be using my mod points to raise it up :[
He's right. The computer isn't dead for gaming, and in my opinion, will never be overshadowed by consoles. I've pretty much stopped enjoying console games, excluding the GTA's, n64's goldeneye and smash brothers, and my old SNES and nintendo games. Nothing else new on console is worth playing.
:]
But on the computer I've had tons of games that were tons of fun. starting back with civilization and progressing up through warcraft II, duke nukem, doom, quake, AOE, and then halflife & cs(!)
what makes most PC games so much better than the console games is the amount of personal interactivity with people. I can talk to the people i'm playing with in counter-strike. I can't do that with a console (excluding some horrid voicecom). And it's so much easier to use the mouse / keyboard combination for gaming than a controller (no matter how i try, i can't aim in halo worth a shit with an xbox controller)
but, as of late, i've gone totally retro and dusted off the NES and the atari for some old school fun times
I was just using this with my brother. On his pentium III 600, 256 mb ram comp, and windows 2000, google hybrid killed his virtual memory and pretty much borked his computer into a hard restart.
this happen to anyone else?
There's a mandatory course at my university in regards to technical writing. All engineers have to take it. It's much better than the standard 'college writing' class (think boring lit times 10). in fact, students can only take this course in their third year or later (NU is a 5 year school).
At that point, the student should have gone on a co-op, so the student should have some knowledge and insight into having something techinical to write about.
The courses are taught by professors who have experience in the workplace environment (not professors who came straight from academia).
all in all, the setup is wonderful for making a writing class useful and moderately enjoyable.
--mike
1989. I was four. My father brought home a new tandy running deskmate. The tandy had this moderately functional drawing program that seems like a really antiquated version of mspaint. So, after using the program for a while, my father tells me to get off the computer and find my older brother so he can use it. in my typical four year old sense, i just start calling for him from where i was at the computer. unbeknownst to me, my father was recording me on the tandy with a microphone. boy, did i get a kick out of hearing myself on the computer.
:]
i still have that wav file. and i still listen to it now, 16 years later.
and i still have that tandy. it went through a ton, and still works. my brother used to do his finances on taxes on it all the way up through his 2nd year in college(~2000). after that, i pretty much turned it into a dedicated machine for playing civilization, since it would run on the tandy wonderfully.
maybe i'll go dust it off this afternoon
Completely dead on. I listen to the FF6 soundtrack at work (even now, I'm listening to it) and I continuously have my coworkers commenting on how beautiful the music is. Wonder if they'd say the same if they knew it was from a 16-bit videogame :]
:] )
As far as some other amazing gaming soundtracks go:
Mega Man games on the NES had some awesome music. Especially Mega Man 2 and 3. If you want to here some really nice tracks, find Project X's remixes of those two. Amazing work.
Earthbound / Mother 2 -- Amazing music from an amazing game. Had all starts of style -- swing, jazz, love, r&b, melodies
Donkey Kong Country / DKC2 -- phenominal music. Amazingly done by Dave West & crew. The tunes made you feel like you were in the jungle (or water, or cave, etc). And Each had a different style, and the track names made it cool (Simian Segue, Krool's Kakophony (sic), dk island swing) If you like the DKC music, look up 'kong in concert'. I think its on overclocked.
( sorry for the quality of the post, using lynx at work doesnt make things all to easy
what do you mean, african or european?
i'm apologizing for the quality of this post in advance, as i'm using lynx through an ssh at work
:[
to answer some of your questions:
i'm not using a hardware firewall. at my apartment, i run through a standard linux-powered NAT, but i also commonly use random wireless hotspots and unsecured wireless points (ethernet in my college buildings, my friends apartments, etc)
if you have no anti-virus software installed, how can you say with any authority (or confidence, for that matter) that your system isn't completely compromised, and you're simply unaware of it?
simple. it's not running in my tasklist. nor is functionality lost. I know what's in my registry to start normally, and I can check to see if something additional is there. my homepage doesnt automatically set and change itself. there are no random items in my systray. i don't get random pop-ups when not using the computer.
it's easy to find and spot {mal,spy}ware. I've spent the past few years making a good $25+ an hour removing spyware from people's pc's, and you get quite accustomed to finding and destroying things easily. none of this exists on my computer.
additionally, I went to my parent's house this past fourth of july weekend. I hooked my laptop into their windows network, which I had set up for them in the past. At some point since I moved out, my dad decided to reformat the computers and has left them at basically vanilla installs -- no updates. the machines were crawling with blaster, sasser, and tons of other crap. i hooked my laptop to the network and was able to use it without infection.
worst thing that happened? having to clean 3 computers and set them to autoupdate / install while i should have been at the beach
I've got multiple boxes at my place, and while most of them are Linux / BSD, I keep windows on a laptop. I've brought this laptop (running win2k pro) to different wireless hotspots, different ethernet lan hookups, and even into my friends apartments and hopped on their lan, with insecure machines.
My laptop does not have an antivirus, spyware remover, or firewall. However, I've never had a problem. Probably because I update windows every time I use the computer and I disabled all but the imperative system services. And I've never had a virus, spyware, or any other sort of issue. Then again, I use firefox w/ flashblock & adblock and the like.
Is this the case for other slashdotters? Or am I the luckiest person this side of the Atlantic?
I work as an undergrad on a co-op for a major office in my university. I do a ton of research work and programming and work in a very competetive, research driven environment.
:]
The pay isn't the best (I had received offers for more money), but the people I work with and the opportunities I've received are outstanding.
Expect to work closely with a professor, a post-doctorate, grad students, undergrads, and all sorts of folks... and forge good relationships with all of them. that reference from the professor, or the good word from the post-doc when he starts working for IBM (or another random large company) can go a long way.
Look into cheaper (or even free) tuition. I know that the guy next to me gets free tuition in exchange for his work week, so he stocks up on night classes, and has gotten his masters and is working on a PhD.
The work environment is going to be very casual -- as long as you get the job done. I am assigned 40 hours per week (on my word -- no timecard), and I can work whatever hours i want. I've worked nights, weekends, whatever, to fit my schedule best. Eventually I settled into a 7-3 shift (I like mornings) and it was embraced by all my coworkers, who took it to mean that I was very hard working
Make good friends with the office accountant (or secretary, if there is none). Get her/him gifts and engage in conversations. Basically make them a buddy, because you need to make sure your paychecks come through, as well as your reimbursements and travel costs.
My 6 month co-op term is up, but I'm going to be staying on and working for another project. The office got a new project, and was interviewing undergrads for it. They didn't like any of the candidates, so they grabbed me and interviewed me, and asked how I'd like to work for them some more. I accepted and now have another term of work with them, doing some really amazing research work. In fact, we're competing for a very large government check, and if they choose our design and buy our IP, I reap a dividend check, as an undergrad (and my chunk will be large enough to pay my tuition and buy me a house afterwards). So I've got some pretty good inspiration.
To sum it up:
1) make friends with everyone
2) follow up on paperwork, especially with the accountant
3) don't bs anyone -> there are people in the office who know much more than you and, most likely, can call out your BS by pointing to a white paper that says the exact opposite of what youre saying
4) deadlines are going to come. ask for help from your coworkers if you need it. finish early.
5) find a way to get cheap/free tuition. school is expensive. take nightclasses and cheat the system.
hope that helps
-mike
"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," -- Bill Gates
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman, IBM
"There is no reason anyone in the right state of mind will want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President, DEC
Revelation from the future -- M$ releaes a mp3 player similar to the ipod, with very similar 'technology'
Are people really this dependant on google that when there is an outage, people really flip out?
I mean, there are other search engines.
Other email services.
Other mapping things.
Seriously, what were people doing a couple years ago? If your life is that in tuned to google, maybe its time to 'log off' (and pardon the cliche).
As far as interaction with the environment, Duke Nukem 3D completely changed the way I thought about fps. Unlike Doom, you could jump, duck, fly (jetpack), and interact with the environment other than going into elevators and opening doors. And the multiplayer fun was amazing and brilliant. From being able to demolish buildins, starting moving projectors, blowing halls, and giving strippers money to see those horribly drawn boobies, it paved the way for the FPS series' to come (Quake & Half Life).
In both look and form, the search mechanism is similar to the Spotlight feature in Apple Computer's Mac OS X Tiger...
M$ Longhorn Strategy
1) Develop Operating System
2) Steal aspects of other operating systems
3) ???????
4) Profit!
If it costs less than the $10 i have to pay for a movie ticket, plus the $5 for a soda and $4 for a small popcorn, then I think it's a definate plus.
Went to see sin city last night. $20 for two tickets, $4.50 for a soda, and $4 for a popcorn. Not exactly a cheap date anymore.
A New York Times article that doesn't require registration?
What's next?
I'm scared...
That link should be .html, not .htm
click
When I was younger, I used to purchase a ton of cd's. It was what I spelt my allowance on -- my choice.
But as I got older, I started to realize what a waste it was to spend $18-$20 on an album from which I would only listen to one or two songs.
So When Napster came out, I found out about it early (one of the first thousand users) and was able to ride the bandwagon on it, collecting songs that I would listen to and none of the ones that I wouldn't. I still bought CD's that were worth the price tag (the ones where every song on the album were decent and not just a crappy filler song).
Then I mostly stopped listening to new music. I've gotten a lot more comfortable listening to new, independent bands and buying their albums. Because it means more to me to give an independent band $15 for which I know $15 is going directly to the band. The quality of the music is also higher.
I've bought more CD's in the past year than I've bought since I was 12. And I feel good knowing that the money I spend is going to the artists, and not some shitty company.
If I ever sign up for a Slashdot account, Oday Juarez is going to be my nick.
no, it's not.
The nickname 'Oday Juarez', or another similar to it, is already in use. Please choose another.
I'm guessing that it's going to be similar to the vectorization capabilities of matlab. for example:
% create a vector of numbers from 0->2pi
x=[0:pi/4:2*pi];
% take sin of values
y=sin(x);
which will take all of the sin values of the y, as opposed to the for loop:
for m=1:1:length(x)
y(m)=sin(x(m));
end
the vectors run much faster...