Interesting that one of the main reasons I've heard for not running as root wasn't mentioned yet:
E-mail virus infection as a user other than root is MUCH less destructive than viruses as root, unless the virus compromises root.
On Windows 95/98/ME or MacOS 9 or earlier, running the virus infected e-mail compromises your entire machine and the virus can destroy everything if it wants.
On NT/2000/XP, things are a little trickier because the only user that has permissions to do everything is an admin user. Unfortunately, far too many people run as admin users on those platforms because that is the default setup. I've also heard it isn't hard to open back doors in other ways, but I haven't chased this myself.
Any UNIX variant including MacOS X - only the root user can erase everything or cause system instability. Also, only a root user can stop some processes, like your virus checker. Run as root, virus checker is down, virus is installed, Harddisk is wiped clean. Run as a user, worst case scenario, your user data is wiped out. Want a backup? have a cron job running as root copy the critical data once in a while (as non-execute).
More reasons: You're surfing the web as root and run a java application. A malicious user exploits a java bug and uploads an exploit program that sends the contents of your entire harddrive to him and then erases the contents on your end.
You download a trojan program and run it. Running as root, you lose your harddrive. As a user, you only lose that user's data. Your system still boots and you don't need to reinstall all 25000 programs you own, only restore the data (which I hope you burned on a CD-R or backed up:)
A malicious Word macro virus can delete your hard drive as root.
You run as root. A malicious Word macro virus alters your mail server to be an open relay and sends an e-mail to spammers everywhere about it.
Maybe you should ask yourself why is Venice sinking?
There are many reasons a city could sink - icecaps melting, built on poor soil, erosion, earthquakes (especially along certain types of faults), etc. Pick one.
Herculaeum sunk from a massive earthquake, at least according to old records about the city. 7 pagodas apparently from a rapid flood. I vaguely recall this legend from studying Asian mythologies (mainly for use in RPGs) but I can't remember any more details off the top of my head.
I'm not a big fan of any major telecom, as I think they all are behaving monopolistically. I could spout a whole line about unfair competition of Quest (which I have in my area) but I'll let the lawyers handle that.
Back to the point of the original message, tho - this sort of contract is extremely common in the industry. Every company I've worked for (3) or applied for (about 12) in the last 5 years has had me sign this exact thing or would have me sign it. That includes all sizes of companies - smallish (100 employee 3 year old), midsized (2200 employee 25 year old), and large (100,000+ employee 30+ year old).
I can still do Open Source, as long as I don't write code that has anything to do with their line of business. That's a tough call, though, because I don't know half the lines of business my company is in... (the 100000+ employee one, above)
If they wanted to, they could retroactively claim any code I've written has something to do with their line of business and force all my changes out and claim the code as theirs. It's hard to argue with companies the size of IBM or Microsoft because their lines of business could be construed as ANYTHING.
My father-in-law builds commercial ovens for a living, and sometimes he goes months without a paycheck... then all of a sudden it's good times again and he's paid for that month and all the previous.
You might think that the company was on its last legs, but they've been doing that for 22 years.
OTOH, they have laid off all but 6 employees several times and those 6, including the owner, go unpaid until the customer pays for the contract. There are some up-front fees, but I'm pretty sure those don't go to the employees (probably used for buying materials and paying rent)
Re:No, GNU/Linux and MacOS are not UNIX
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Penguin2Apple
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no, compliance costs money.
aims means they have it compliant to the best of their knowledge, but haven't paid for certification.
My vague recollection of Posix compliancy is that it passes a closed (proprietary) set of tests by a company (X/Open, I think). Single UNIX certification has the same requirement and I think is handled by the same company.
I remember Apple didn't see any reason to pay for this. Linux doesn't pay for anything, so it's easy to understand why they're not compliant:)
Re:No, GNU/Linux and MacOS are not UNIX
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Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 1
Right, but supporting the single UNIX specification and paying a group (X/Open) to say you're certified are two different things.
I remember somebody from Apple saying that MacOS X is Posix compatible but not compliant and then mentioning that the company didn't feel it necessary to pay the fees involved.
This is a lot like saying you're ISO9000 certified - a lot of companies have a process that is good enough for ISO9000 but don't want to pay the fees for certification. I worked for a company that did this, their opinion of ISO9000 was that it was a waste of printed paper:)
Out of curiousity, what evidence is there of Roman and Phoenicians reaching the Americas?
I know many Egyptian mummies were found with cocaine in their bodies, which is native of South America. Also, one of the major port cities, Herculaeum (sp?) sunk into the sea after a great earthquake and probably took evidence with it.
The phoenicians were great traders in the Mediteranian and surrounding areas, but I don't remember any cross atlantic evidence (hmm... maybe I need to watch Discovery channel more:)
As for the Romans, I don't remember ever hearing anything about them going to the Americas. Most boats from the Roman Empire were coastal trading ships or war ships, neither of which are built for cross-oceanic voyages. I don't mean to discount them, I'm sure they could have built such ships, I just don't remember ever hearing anything about it. Maybe this is another artifact thing (like the Egyptian mummies with cocaine).
I doubt if that CGI 'sploit has much success anymore, as most CGI programmers I know make sure to disallow ; (and other characters as well) from parsed GET and POST lines unless they have to.
I'm sure it still happens, but that's why security companies are in business - to find and fix flaws like that.
NAT also gives one other nice feature - the ability to run home networks without paying an "IP Tax." My current provider attbi (and since Northpoint's demise, only alternative to Quest DSL, i.e. the lesser of 2 evils IMO), gives me one DHCP address which I pay ~$46/month for, since I also get Cable TV ($56 otherwise). Additional DHCP addresses though them are something like $10/month (that might be for 3). So by using NAT, I pay at least $120 less every year in IP taxes. My former static IP provider, PhoenixDSL, had a $10/IP fee for additional IPs (but cost $40/month while they lived). I have 3 computers, so I would've paid $240/year in IP taxes through that system.
Obviously it's in the best interest of ISPs to get everyone to pay for additional IPs, but it's certainly not in MY best interest:)
btw, I also have Covad in my area, but they only offer $100+ SDSL lines starting at 128/128, which is totally unacceptable. Quest offers 640/128 ADSL, but cost is $60/month once I tack on an ISP (not including MSN, which is cheaper, but Windoze only). In contrast, I was running 780/384 with Northpoint/Phoenix for $40.
I don't see why a properly set up NAT wouldn't handle this - as a matter of fact, my home network connected just fine with overlapping 192.168.x.x domains. Routing IPSec and ISAKMP packets is a much bigger issue with VPN, because NAT mauls the header and doesn't recompute the checksum used to identify the sender unless your firewall is set up to do this for you. Once the packet is outside your firewall, it has your (firewall's) static IP (or DHCP equivalent, since DHCP functions like a static IP as long as you're on a network) as an address to send back to, and your firewall machine needs to keep a table of all of these packets so it can re-route them on return.
Oh, and by the way, it's 192.168.x.x and I think 10.0.x.x as well (I don't use that set), where x can be between 0 and 255.
DHCP shouldn't affect anything, either, it just assigns any machine plugged in an internal static IP (as far as the firewall is concerned) until the timeout value is hit (if ever). Yes, it does make migration to another subnet relatively painless, but usually you won't need to do this. The whole purpose of DHCP was to share a fixed set of static IPs in the same way as a modem pool shares a fixed set of dialup lines. The protocol became popular because it is easy for an administrator to remove and add machines into a network because the administrator doesn't need to go to each individual machine and set up its IP.
I really don't know how Microsoft's PPTP protocol or L2TP are handled, but I would guess both of them has some support for being routed through firewalls.
The other IPSec protocol, AH (Authentication Header) can't be used over a firewall, so you don't see it used much in the real world.
Yeah, but elite isn't even the first - first person game. I'm pretty sure the battlezone arcade cabinet was out before 1984, and if you insist on 3 planes of movement, so was Sublogic Flight Simulator WAAAY back in '79 - heck this was the first 1st person shooter that I remember, as it had a WW1 combat mode. If you say Space 1st person simulator (or shooter), the 1982 (or maybe it was even '81) Apple ][ game Space Vikings, also by SubLogic (wireframe). I never felt Space Vikings was a very good game (but it was a top 10 seller in '82), as opposed to Elite, which was a great game (and a top seller in '84) which is probably why Space Vikings is mostly forgotten.
Flight Simulator 2 used filled polies back in '83 (about the same time as I,Robot), but the technologies used are different. I,Robot used the re-rendered poly technique that most games today use (guessing by the description and screenshots), while Flight Sim 2 used deltas (changes) and only rerendered those areas that needed to be repainted. Re-rendered polies really weren't necessary for most games until textures were added later (with Ultima Underworld, I think). Textures require the screen to be re-rendered for proper locations of the colored pixels, which is why all modern games re-render the scene.
here's a some refs:
SubLogic flight simulator
http://apple2history.org/history/appy/aha78.html http://simflight.com/fshistory/fsh/timeline.htm
Sublogic Space Vikings
http://apple2history.org/a/appy/aha82.html
Yeah, but Star Trek had a bad 'I' and they still made more. The rule of thumb used to be see only Even Numbered treks and skip the rest, but I think 6 broke the rule (IMO).
I'm worried that Ford is too old and creaky for the part. Maybe young indy again... with dad and grandpa. I don't know. I can't see it.
I think I saw it a few years after it was out - maybe '90 or '91 (definitely college 4 me). I think I saw it again at a '2B' party (Batchlors and B Movies, a friends' soon-to-be-wife approved batchelor party) a few years later along with another stinker, Dinosaur Island.
thinking back, though, that wasn't much of a stretch for Bill - he was hosting a TV dating show back then, or shortly thereafter (at the time I saw the movie he was... but maybe that was the second time) and was probably desperate for anything. Heck Bill was in Ratboy - anyone who's seen that knows desperation.
Also in PopSci magazine (Superchoppers Issue)
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New Deep Sea Squid
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I read about this in the Popular Science that I got this past Saturday (Super Choppers issue). Then today it was in my local newspaper credited to Newsday... Now this, credited to Reuters.
I didn't check who wrote the article, but I think it's exactly the same in all three cases.
I thought it strange to read about a science discovery in Popular Science before the news media - usually magazines are the last place to see new discoveries because they're put together and sent to publishing so far in advance - usually a week to two weeks. Maybe these times have been improved from my days as a jogger* at a printer (printing Disney Catalogs, day in, day out), tho.
*jogger - the guy who pulls stacks of printed pages off a printer. On newer presses joggers just pull off and stack the printed magazines. Don't know if this term is universal or just used by the Quebecor (sp? I think they're extinct anyway, so who cares), whom I worked for about 12 years ago.
Yeah, but so do most movies... look at Star Wars, for instance (The Seven Samurai).
If you think about it, though, all stories follow a basic formula - A character or characters progress through a sequence of events over time. The sequence is not always linear, but usually at the end the character either accomplishes or fails some goal or goals. Usually the progression is success, setback, success (sometimes happening many times), but occasionally you get success, setback, failure. Usually books and movies that end in failure are considered dark tales - 1984 for example. I have yet to read a failure, setback, failure book, but I'm sure there are such. I have seen a movie that was failure, setback, failure, but that was a documentary on some guy making a bearproof suit so he could wrestle grizzlies... Success, success, success happens as well, mainly in munchkin D&D games, but I digress:)
Take Rocky (the boxing movies) which are about as dumbed down as it gets. Rocky wins fight. Rocky loses fight to bruiser. Rocky beats bruiser in comeback.
LOTR can be similarly summarized... but I don't want to spoil anything. Sorry about the Rocky spoiler:)
what is it with the backwards ie's in this thread? Refs to Tolkein and Tolkien in this subject and your thier instead of their...
Reportedly former vice president Dan Quayle was the first choice, but he was spelling the position 'CompLIEnse offiser'.
Weird time...
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Binary Watch
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I was half expecting to read 23:59:59 on the watch, but it reads 23:59:50. Didn't I hear Norway moved to a 50 second minute somewhere...
hah - gotta get my slams on Norwegians when I can. I went to school with a girl who used the e-mail sig the Norwegan goddess, so we of course made fun of her as the Nor-WEGG-An goddess rather than the Nor-Weeg-An goddess. Ah, the good old days:)
Anyhow, straying offtopic. Not much you can say about a friggin watch, tho (ooh - mine does base 2!).
I can just imagine a conversation here:
So, is there a time I can take you home and show you the true meaning of love?
Scrawling on a bar napkin: 11001
Um, is that supposed to be a time? It looks like you forgot the colon... what's the extra one for?
It's in binary - see? Look at my watch.
That's a weird watch... it looks like it's almost that time now... you're not trying to pull something over on me, are you?
Naw. Ask one of your buddies over there, maybe they can figure it out.
Smiling slyly - by the looks of things, it's almost that time now.
I'm waiting...
(asking buddies) What the f*ck is binary? For that matter, what the f*ck does 11011 mean in it?
(shrugging) The heck if I know.
Me either. Hey, your friend over there just headed out the door... did you get a phone number?
Shit!
(for the technically challenged or lazy, 11001 binary is 25 decimal [16+8+1=25] - thanks go out to the Dukes of Stratosphear [aka XTC] for their strange and weirdly inspiring song 25 O'Clock)
um, as far as I know phoenixdsl never actually went bankrupt - they just merged with a business only provider who dumped all the home connections to other providers. They dumped me to Telocity, but with Northpoint's demise about 2 months later, Telocity no longer offered service in my area (Rhythms and Quest in area, but SDSL only - and I'm only about 5000ft from the local hub... which only Quest has equipment in... which Quest had no more lines to connect more users with... go figure). Quest wanted more money for less service anyway, so I went with a cable modem instead. Now I've lost service with that.
No calls, just a warning that it might happen about a week ago then no connection on Saturday morning. I actually had service until about 8:30 AM CST, as I was on the internet at the time the plug was pulled.
Yeah, and it's fun getting spam from @home when my provider (mediaone) explicitly prohibits it. I don't know if that's a universal @home prohibition, or just a mediaone prohibition.
They also prohibit portscans, but for a while I was getting around 3 a second... then there's the hacker wannabes that keep trying to hack into my system (the silly little people). Most (hopefully all) of the hacker wannabes were detected logged and their IPs blocked. One I even sent a nasty message to when I could figure out an e-mail address for the owner.
Now if I could just do the same for all the spammers. I've already filtered out about 6 of them, but some change their friggin name every time they send. It would be so much easier if I could just block the @home and mediaone domains, but then I wouldn't be able to send mail to several friends who are also on the network. Sigh.
My favorite prohibition (from mediaone, at least) is the running of servers. I'm running either PC Linux or MacOSX (occasionally SuSE PPC Linux as well) as my outside world server, depending on which machine I feel like should be the server and both come with several servers running by default. I even noticed windows XP starts a couple of servers (remote tech support, for one, and I'm sure there are other processes that are technically servers [passport?]) without most user's knowledge, so I'm guessing that about 60-90% of users are breaking this rule, and only about 1/2 of that are doing it intentionally.
Microsoft has been pulling the licensing trick since Windows 3.1.1 and maybe even before that - there once were other DOS's, not just MS-DOS. Microsoft used bundling tactics not only to make their version of DOS dominant, but also destroy all other OS's on the PC platform. I remember when manufacturers got a huge price break for only selling Windows and no other OS's. Tack on Office and you got another huge break. Microsoft was forced to stop this practice as part of an antitrust filed in the mid '90s, but no one seems to remember that (I think it was settled out of court, but those were my college years - a bit hazy:).
But back to the original example - if Ford, offered Blaupunkt stereos it might be different, but Microsoft would build their own and only offer their factory models. They then tack the fee for the stereo onto the price of the vehicle. The Ford costs more (look at how the price went up from Win95SE to Win98) but you get a "free" factory stereo with it. To be even more realistic, Ford would then wire the stereo directly to the electrical system so it can't easily be replaced or removed without breaking the entire vehicle.
Most of the time, though, Microsoft just starves out the competition by bundling the feature and tacking the development cost onto Windows (or server machines in the case of IIS). Netscape, Novell Netware, DR-DOS, and many others with little or no other revenue stream can't last long against the sort of "competition."
In writing this, I realized why Microsoft hates Open Source so much - it's not that the Open Source community is a threat, it's that if the Open Source community ever becomes a threat, there's no easy way to destroy them (bundling doesn't work when the competition works for free).
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that one of the main reasons I've heard for not running as root wasn't mentioned yet:
:)
E-mail virus infection as a user other than root is MUCH less destructive than viruses as root, unless the virus compromises root.
On Windows 95/98/ME or MacOS 9 or earlier, running the virus infected e-mail compromises your entire machine and the virus can destroy everything if it wants.
On NT/2000/XP, things are a little trickier because the only user that has permissions to do everything is an admin user. Unfortunately, far too many people run as admin users on those platforms because that is the default setup. I've also heard it isn't hard to open back doors in other ways, but I haven't chased this myself.
Any UNIX variant including MacOS X - only the root user can erase everything or cause system instability. Also, only a root user can stop some processes, like your virus checker. Run as root, virus checker is down, virus is installed, Harddisk is wiped clean. Run as a user, worst case scenario, your user data is wiped out. Want a backup? have a cron job running as root copy the critical data once in a while (as non-execute).
More reasons:
You're surfing the web as root and run a java application. A malicious user exploits a java bug and uploads an exploit program that sends the contents of your entire harddrive to him and then erases the contents on your end.
You download a trojan program and run it. Running as root, you lose your harddrive. As a user, you only lose that user's data. Your system still boots and you don't need to reinstall all 25000 programs you own, only restore the data (which I hope you burned on a CD-R or backed up
A malicious Word macro virus can delete your hard drive as root.
You run as root. A malicious Word macro virus alters your mail server to be an open relay and sends an e-mail to spammers everywhere about it.
Notice the trend yet?
Hope that helps.
Maybe you should ask yourself why is Venice sinking?
There are many reasons a city could sink - icecaps melting, built on poor soil, erosion, earthquakes (especially along certain types of faults), etc. Pick one.
Herculaeum sunk from a massive earthquake, at least according to old records about the city. 7 pagodas apparently from a rapid flood. I vaguely recall this legend from studying Asian mythologies (mainly for use in RPGs) but I can't remember any more details off the top of my head.
Then there's the ones you really don't want to know about...
I learned Oberon, and I'm now "King of the Faeries..."
Yeah, it works, but the side effects suck -
I started to stink like a camel and spit like a camel, so I had to give it up to save my marriage.
oh, yuck - My Magic 8 ball says "You may rely on it" to the Exchange question...
:)
Maybe it meant "You may rely on it to lose your mail."
Hmm... I asked it if that's what it meant and it replied "Most Likely"
Just to get back on topic, "Will Warcraft III be cool?"
8 ball: "As I see it, yes"
so there you have it
I'm not a big fan of any major telecom, as I think they all are behaving monopolistically.
I could spout a whole line about unfair competition of Quest (which I have in my area) but I'll let the lawyers handle that.
Back to the point of the original message, tho - this sort of contract is extremely common in the industry. Every company I've worked for (3) or applied for (about 12) in the last 5 years has had me sign this exact thing or would have me sign it. That includes all sizes of companies - smallish (100 employee 3 year old), midsized (2200 employee 25 year old), and large (100,000+ employee 30+ year old).
I can still do Open Source, as long as I don't write code that has anything to do with their line of business. That's a tough call, though, because I don't know half the lines of business my company is in... (the 100000+ employee one, above)
If they wanted to, they could retroactively claim any code I've written has something to do with their line of business and force all my changes out and claim the code as theirs. It's hard to argue with companies the size of IBM or Microsoft because their lines of business could be construed as ANYTHING.
Hmm...
:)
As of late, I drink more coffee and less beer. Maybe I need to move to the east coast
We do less heroin and crack. That, or German and Swede dominant ancestries (stubborn little buggers).
My father-in-law builds commercial ovens for a living, and sometimes he goes months without a paycheck... then all of a sudden it's good times again and he's paid for that month and all the previous.
You might think that the company was on its last legs, but they've been doing that for 22 years.
OTOH, they have laid off all but 6 employees several times and those 6, including the owner, go unpaid until the customer pays for the contract. There are some up-front fees, but I'm pretty sure those don't go to the employees (probably used for buying materials and paying rent)
no, compliance costs money.
:)
aims means they have it compliant to the best of their knowledge, but haven't paid for certification.
My vague recollection of Posix compliancy is that it passes a closed (proprietary) set of tests by a company (X/Open, I think). Single UNIX certification has the same requirement and I think is handled by the same company.
I remember Apple didn't see any reason to pay for this. Linux doesn't pay for anything, so it's easy to understand why they're not compliant
Right, but supporting the single UNIX specification and paying a group (X/Open) to say you're certified are two different things.
:)
I remember somebody from Apple saying that MacOS X is Posix compatible but not compliant and then mentioning that the company didn't feel it necessary to pay the fees involved.
This is a lot like saying you're ISO9000 certified - a lot of companies have a process that is good enough for ISO9000 but don't want to pay the fees for certification. I worked for a company that did this, their opinion of ISO9000 was that it was a waste of printed paper
Out of curiousity, what evidence is there of Roman and Phoenicians reaching the Americas?
:)
I know many Egyptian mummies were found with cocaine in their bodies, which is native of South America. Also, one of the major port cities, Herculaeum (sp?) sunk into the sea after a great earthquake and probably took evidence with it.
The phoenicians were great traders in the Mediteranian and surrounding areas, but I don't remember any cross atlantic evidence (hmm... maybe I need to watch Discovery channel more
As for the Romans, I don't remember ever hearing anything about them going to the Americas. Most boats from the Roman Empire were coastal trading ships or war ships, neither of which are built for cross-oceanic voyages. I don't mean to discount them, I'm sure they could have built such ships, I just don't remember ever hearing anything about it. Maybe this is another artifact thing (like the Egyptian mummies with cocaine).
I doubt if that CGI 'sploit has much success anymore, as most CGI programmers I know make sure to disallow ; (and other characters as well) from parsed GET and POST lines unless they have to.
I'm sure it still happens, but that's why security companies are in business - to find and fix flaws like that.
NAT also gives one other nice feature - the ability to run home networks without paying an "IP Tax." My current provider attbi (and since Northpoint's demise, only alternative to Quest DSL, i.e. the lesser of 2 evils IMO), gives me one DHCP address which I pay ~$46/month for, since I also get Cable TV ($56 otherwise). Additional DHCP addresses though them are something like $10/month (that might be for 3). So by using NAT, I pay at least $120 less every year in IP taxes. My former static IP provider, PhoenixDSL, had a $10/IP fee for additional IPs (but cost $40/month while they lived). I have 3 computers, so I would've paid $240/year in IP taxes through that system.
:)
Obviously it's in the best interest of ISPs to get everyone to pay for additional IPs, but it's certainly not in MY best interest
btw, I also have Covad in my area, but they only offer $100+ SDSL lines starting at 128/128, which is totally unacceptable. Quest offers 640/128 ADSL, but cost is $60/month once I tack on an ISP (not including MSN, which is cheaper, but Windoze only). In contrast, I was running 780/384 with Northpoint/Phoenix for $40.
I don't see why a properly set up NAT wouldn't handle this - as a matter of fact, my home network connected just fine with overlapping 192.168.x.x domains. Routing IPSec and ISAKMP packets is a much bigger issue with VPN, because NAT mauls the header and doesn't recompute the checksum used to identify the sender unless your firewall is set up to do this for you. Once the packet is outside your firewall, it has your (firewall's) static IP (or DHCP equivalent, since DHCP functions like a static IP as long as you're on a network) as an address to send back to, and your firewall machine needs to keep a table of all of these packets so it can re-route them on return.
Oh, and by the way, it's 192.168.x.x and I think 10.0.x.x as well (I don't use that set), where x can be between 0 and 255.
DHCP shouldn't affect anything, either, it just assigns any machine plugged in an internal static IP (as far as the firewall is concerned) until the timeout value is hit (if ever). Yes, it does make migration to another subnet relatively painless, but usually you won't need to do this. The whole purpose of DHCP was to share a fixed set of static IPs in the same way as a modem pool shares a fixed set of dialup lines. The protocol became popular because it is easy for an administrator to remove and add machines into a network because the administrator doesn't need to go to each individual machine and set up its IP.
I really don't know how Microsoft's PPTP protocol or L2TP are handled, but I would guess both of them has some support for being routed through firewalls.
The other IPSec protocol, AH (Authentication Header) can't be used over a firewall, so you don't see it used much in the real world.
Hey Rob -
:)"
:)
Re:
"Dork. You made me cry.
from http://www.funtrivia.com/Animals/Whales2.html:
"A whale's penis is called a dork."
We never knew
Yeah, but elite isn't even the first - first person game. I'm pretty sure the battlezone arcade cabinet was out before 1984, and if you insist on 3 planes of movement, so was Sublogic Flight Simulator WAAAY back in '79 - heck this was the first 1st person shooter that I remember, as it had a WW1 combat mode. If you say Space 1st person simulator (or shooter), the 1982 (or maybe it was even '81) Apple ][ game Space Vikings, also by SubLogic (wireframe). I never felt Space Vikings was a very good game (but it was a top 10 seller in '82), as opposed to Elite, which was a great game (and a top seller in '84) which is probably why Space Vikings is mostly forgotten.
l
Flight Simulator 2 used filled polies back in '83 (about the same time as I,Robot), but the technologies used are different. I,Robot used the re-rendered poly technique that most games today use (guessing by the description and screenshots), while Flight Sim 2 used deltas (changes) and only rerendered those areas that needed to be repainted. Re-rendered polies really weren't necessary for most games until textures were added later (with Ultima Underworld, I think). Textures require the screen to be re-rendered for proper locations of the colored pixels, which is why all modern games re-render the scene.
here's a some refs:
SubLogic flight simulator
http://apple2history.org/history/appy/aha78.htm
http://simflight.com/fshistory/fsh/timeline.htm
Sublogic Space Vikings
http://apple2history.org/a/appy/aha82.html
Yeah, but Star Trek had a bad 'I' and they still made more. The rule of thumb used to be see only Even Numbered treks and skip the rest, but I think 6 broke the rule (IMO).
I'm worried that Ford is too old and creaky for the part. Maybe young indy again... with dad and grandpa. I don't know. I can't see it.
yeah, ugh.
I think I saw it a few years after it was out - maybe '90 or '91 (definitely college 4 me). I think I saw it again at a '2B' party (Batchlors and B Movies, a friends' soon-to-be-wife approved batchelor party) a few years later along with another stinker, Dinosaur Island.
thinking back, though, that wasn't much of a stretch for Bill - he was hosting a TV dating show back then, or shortly thereafter (at the time I saw the movie he was... but maybe that was the second time) and was probably desperate for anything. Heck Bill was in Ratboy - anyone who's seen that knows desperation.
I read about this in the Popular Science that I got this past Saturday (Super Choppers issue). Then today it was in my local newspaper credited to Newsday... Now this, credited to Reuters.
I didn't check who wrote the article, but I think it's exactly the same in all three cases.
I thought it strange to read about a science discovery in Popular Science before the news media - usually magazines are the last place to see new discoveries because they're put together and sent to publishing so far in advance - usually a week to two weeks. Maybe these times have been improved from my days as a jogger* at a printer (printing Disney Catalogs, day in, day out), tho.
*jogger - the guy who pulls stacks of printed pages off a printer. On newer presses joggers just pull off and stack the printed magazines. Don't know if this term is universal or just used by the Quebecor (sp? I think they're extinct anyway, so who cares), whom I worked for about 12 years ago.
Yeah, but so do most movies... look at Star Wars, for instance (The Seven Samurai).
:)
:)
If you think about it, though, all stories follow a basic formula - A character or characters progress through a sequence of events over time. The sequence is not always linear, but usually at the end the character either accomplishes or fails some goal or goals. Usually the progression is success, setback, success (sometimes happening many times), but occasionally you get success, setback, failure. Usually books and movies that end in failure are considered dark tales - 1984 for example. I have yet to read a failure, setback, failure book, but I'm sure there are such. I have seen a movie that was failure, setback, failure, but that was a documentary on some guy making a bearproof suit so he could wrestle grizzlies... Success, success, success happens as well, mainly in munchkin D&D games, but I digress
Take Rocky (the boxing movies) which are about as dumbed down as it gets. Rocky wins fight. Rocky loses fight to bruiser. Rocky beats bruiser in comeback.
LOTR can be similarly summarized... but I don't want to spoil anything. Sorry about the Rocky spoiler
what is it with the backwards ie's in this thread? Refs to Tolkein and Tolkien in this subject and your thier instead of their...
Reportedly former vice president Dan Quayle was the first choice, but he was spelling the position 'CompLIEnse offiser'.
I was half expecting to read 23:59:59 on the watch, but it reads 23:59:50. Didn't I hear Norway moved to a 50 second minute somewhere...
:)
hah - gotta get my slams on Norwegians when I can. I went to school with a girl who used the e-mail sig the Norwegan goddess, so we of course made fun of her as the Nor-WEGG-An goddess rather than the Nor-Weeg-An goddess. Ah, the good old days
Anyhow, straying offtopic. Not much you can say about a friggin watch, tho (ooh - mine does base 2!).
I can just imagine a conversation here:
So, is there a time I can take you home and show you the true meaning of love?
Scrawling on a bar napkin: 11001
Um, is that supposed to be a time? It looks like you forgot the colon... what's the extra one for?
It's in binary - see? Look at my watch.
That's a weird watch... it looks like it's almost that time now... you're not trying to pull something over on me, are you?
Naw. Ask one of your buddies over there, maybe they can figure it out.
Smiling slyly - by the looks of things, it's almost that time now.
I'm waiting...
(asking buddies) What the f*ck is binary? For that matter, what the f*ck does 11011 mean in it?
(shrugging) The heck if I know.
Me either. Hey, your friend over there just headed out the door... did you get a phone number?
Shit!
(for the technically challenged or lazy, 11001 binary is 25 decimal [16+8+1=25] - thanks go out to the Dukes of Stratosphear [aka XTC] for their strange and weirdly inspiring song 25 O'Clock)
um, as far as I know phoenixdsl never actually went bankrupt - they just merged with a business only provider who dumped all the home connections to other providers. They dumped me to Telocity, but with Northpoint's demise about 2 months later, Telocity no longer offered service in my area (Rhythms and Quest in area, but SDSL only - and I'm only about 5000ft from the local hub... which only Quest has equipment in... which Quest had no more lines to connect more users with... go figure). Quest wanted more money for less service anyway, so I went with a cable modem instead. Now I've lost service with that.
No calls, just a warning that it might happen about a week ago then no connection on Saturday morning. I actually had service until about 8:30 AM CST, as I was on the internet at the time the plug was pulled.
Yeah, and it's fun getting spam from @home when my provider (mediaone) explicitly prohibits it. I don't know if that's a universal @home prohibition, or just a mediaone prohibition.
They also prohibit portscans, but for a while I was getting around 3 a second... then there's the hacker wannabes that keep trying to hack into my system (the silly little people). Most (hopefully all) of the hacker wannabes were detected logged and their IPs blocked. One I even sent a nasty message to when I could figure out an e-mail address for the owner.
Now if I could just do the same for all the spammers. I've already filtered out about 6 of them, but some change their friggin name every time they send. It would be so much easier if I could just block the @home and mediaone domains, but then I wouldn't be able to send mail to several friends who are also on the network. Sigh.
My favorite prohibition (from mediaone, at least) is the running of servers. I'm running either PC Linux or MacOSX (occasionally SuSE PPC Linux as well) as my outside world server, depending on which machine I feel like should be the server and both come with several servers running by default. I even noticed windows XP starts a couple of servers (remote tech support, for one, and I'm sure there are other processes that are technically servers [passport?]) without most user's knowledge, so I'm guessing that about 60-90% of users are breaking this rule, and only about 1/2 of that are doing it intentionally.
Microsoft has been pulling the licensing trick since Windows 3.1.1 and maybe even before that - there once were other DOS's, not just MS-DOS. Microsoft used bundling tactics not only to make their version of DOS dominant, but also destroy all other OS's on the PC platform. I remember when manufacturers got a huge price break for only selling Windows and no other OS's. Tack on Office and you got another huge break. Microsoft was forced to stop this practice as part of an antitrust filed in the mid '90s, but no one seems to remember that (I think it was settled out of court, but those were my college years - a bit hazy :).
But back to the original example - if Ford, offered Blaupunkt stereos it might be different, but Microsoft would build their own and only offer their factory models. They then tack the fee for the stereo onto the price of the vehicle. The Ford costs more (look at how the price went up from Win95SE to Win98) but you get a "free" factory stereo with it. To be even more realistic, Ford would then wire the stereo directly to the electrical system so it can't easily be replaced or removed without breaking the entire vehicle.
Most of the time, though, Microsoft just starves out the competition by bundling the feature and tacking the development cost onto Windows (or server machines in the case of IIS). Netscape, Novell Netware, DR-DOS, and many others with little or no other revenue stream can't last long against the sort of "competition."
In writing this, I realized why Microsoft hates Open Source so much - it's not that the Open Source community is a threat, it's that if the Open Source community ever becomes a threat, there's no easy way to destroy them (bundling doesn't work when the competition works for free).