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User: Creepy

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  1. Re:I messed with SDL on Game Programming w/ the Simple Directmedia Layer? · · Score: 1

    hmm - I've ignored SDL for the most part because of its lack of 3D, but I may want to check it out now - I wrote a thread library that supported pthreads, Windows Native Threads, and Mac Threads and found it was a pain in the ass. I expected the mac to be the hardest to implement since it uses cooperative threads, but nope, Windows took the cake with two Handles (one for Windows and one for me). I had to write a macro to make my function pointers work. Mac and pthreads were actually quite similar, except that I had to add functions into the mac thread to give itself up from time to time (but that was in the thread itself, not a separate parameter to create the thread).
    That being said, I would prefer to save the two weeks it took me to write it (during free time) for better things.

  2. Re:It's the bond prices, stupid on Dangers in the DSL World · · Score: 1
    The phone companies had to drop prices to around $50 to compete with cable. Also, 1500/128 is usually PPPoE which has many of the same problems as cable modem, if I remember correctly.

    I think the real problem is startup costs combined with support costs and advertising - it takes a lot of support to get users up to speed and a lot of advertizing to get consumers aware of and confident of your product. When the users are up to speed, they require less support and are much cheaper to maintain (except when not paying bills).
    Residential DSL has to be priced at a low rate, but business rates are usually much higher. Support costs, on the other hand, are relatively higher for residential since many users are not computer savvy (trust me on that, I worked phone tech support for 2 years). Marketing costs are also much higher for residential services, something the phone and cable companies cheat at to lower their costs - they send the ads with your monthly bill (there aught to be a law against this...). Due to these issues, it takes several years to become profitable, since you need to advertise to build a customer base, hire extra support to help the customers use the service, and install all the equipment, usually involving a substantial loan. That loan demands payments, and if you are still dumping in startup costs and can't make payments, you end up bankrupt.

  3. Re:Good thing I've got cable on Dangers in the DSL World · · Score: 1
    I also won't go with Cable modems because of the disallowance of running servers and no static IPs. I also can't use the local Baby Bell system (Quest) for the same reason.

    I've heard that some Canadians have Cable Modems with statically assigned DHCP addresses (essentially static IPs since you always get the same IP address), but I've never heard of it in the US (probably because my cable provider MediaOne doesn't support it).

    Funny thing is my mom just got a new computer and cable modem and PWS came pre-installed and ON. I wonder how many other people break cable modem rules from that alone :)

  4. Re:Mac people don't know how to use top on OS X · · Score: 1
    many UNIXs report confusing memory numbers in top that are not the real values
    To make matters worse, most UNIXs have their own tool for getting real memory numbers - examples are dmesg | grep mem on Solaris, for AIX you'd use the SMIT tool's change/show characteristics of operating system, for hp do a dmesg | grep Physical, and for sgi you'd use hinv -c memory. dmesg is a fairly common program for getting real stats, but still not universal.

    Another thing that might happen (but probably not on macs) is that AGP cards originally were designed to claim physical memory as graphics memory and might be claiming a small portion as their own (not true with most newer cards). My cheap PC has 128MB of memory, but 2 are claimed by the AGP card (the minimum allowed by the motherboard [card is soldered on] since I have and use a much better PCI card). I doubt this is the case for them, since the earliest AGP cards on macs already had on board memory.

  5. most of the software profiles as beta or dev on OS X · · Score: 1
    I was looking at the system profiler and a good chunk of the system software is listed as either beta (b) or development (d) versions.

    I'm surprised Apple didn't force all these to release numbers...

  6. Re:Developer tools on OS X · · Score: 1
    Some of the manuals are not done or near done, though. I am trying to get my Linksys ethernet card (2nd card for LAN) to be recognized by the system, which probably will mean writing a device driver for it. PPC Linux IDs and allows/uses the card, so I know the card works on the hardware (I don't know the BSD equiv of tulip.c, though). I ran through the IO manual and it is full of stubs "Add Heading here" and references to an Intel driver that doesn't exist in the folders or on their web site (it would seem a good starting place for writing an ethernet driver, tho). The manual is also riddled with errors - one shows a section on 'Child Nodes' and says there should be four when in fact there should be 6 (there are 4 for the section they are describing, + 2 for the section before that one).

    Anyhow, I haven't tried many of the other tools yet, so I can't say what state they or their documentation are in.

  7. Re:More Mac Games Now? on OS X · · Score: 1
    and buggy -

    turn on the console and play around with the browser - I get non fatal errors all the time.

    As for mice, my logitech scroll mouse works great - even the second button. The third button does nothing at the moment, but it wasn't hard to get used to right-click copy, right-click paste (netsccape UNIX uses it, so I was already well trained).

    Two other problems with getting games - we need device drivers for joysticks and gamepads and easy networking. OpenPlay will be the source for supporting these, I think, but it's half baked at the moment.

  8. Re:So... on Northpoint Points South · · Score: 1
    teleco deregulation allows other companies to set up their systems in the teleco central offices. These companies then pay service fees to use the lines and the main provider (baby bell) does maintenance on them (but doesn't provide the phone/dsl service).

    In essence, we have can have 1 to 3 providers - one if the phone company supplies the service, ISP, and line, and three if the phone company provides only the line, the service is provided by a 3rd party privider and the ISP is somebody else. I have this (3 provider) scenario.

  9. telocity != down! on Northpoint Points South · · Score: 1
    hmm... I have telocity, and I'm still up (ssh'd in right now).

    either I'm in for a screaming halt today, or it only affects some telocity users in some areas. I'm not sure what provider they use for my area (Minneapolis) - my former ISP was phoenixDSL who used Northpoint, but the account was sold to telocity when phoenix was bought by Megapath (who don't do residential).

    I also wouldn't worry too much - typical telocity contracts are month to month, no installation charges, free static IP, and more for ~$50. If you hate the service (or it goes out on you) you just send the modem back and quit it.

    I am one of the unfortunate few who don't have the luxury of being able to get out at any time - my year contract with phoenix is still valid with telocity, meaning I can't dump their service until June. I also didn't get the right to refuse the price hike from $40 to $50, but $50 seems to be the best I can get these days, so I guess I'll have to live with it. Cable modem is not an option for me even though it's cheaper - I value static IPs too highly. Cable in my area also has a 'no servers' restriction, which I think is ludicrous - just about every machine out there installs a web server (apache, pws, whatever the mac personal web server is called) by default, which is a violation of their contract. I wasn't willing to live with those terms whether they enforce them or not.

  10. Re:MSN DSL customers really screwed... on Northpoint Points South · · Score: 1
    I guess it just depended on what the problem was - I had 3 outages due to line problems and all were diagnosed and fixed within a day of the problem report being filed. I believe Quest is actually responsible for fixing my line, but techs at Northpoint needed to diagnose the problem and I never had to wait long while the ISP was contacting them.

    I actually liked Northpoint as a provider... except they still owe me a rebate.

  11. Re:Cable and DSL Speed on A Study on Regional DSL and Cable Speeds? · · Score: 1
    that was supposed to say
    Keep in mind that average speeds are judged by download speeds and therefore could be affected by rates at the sending end and bottlenecks over the internet.

    Proof-reading. It's a good thing :)

  12. Re:Cable and DSL Speed on A Study on Regional DSL and Cable Speeds? · · Score: 1
    I have telocity in Minneapolis and get peak speeds around 800Mbps (supposed to cap at 792 but I've had peaks around 810... bad capping?) and average of 600-650. I never checked upload speeds, but they're slightly better than I was getting though PhoenixDSL, judging by xterm speed at work. I still miss Phoenix for residential (bought by Megapath), mainly for the $40/mo. 792/384 rates (averaging more like 640-250).
    Keep in mind that average speeds are judged by download rates and therefore could be affected by

    This is the fastest service the twin cities offers for residential DSL for $50/mo without a boost to $80/mo, and that group only does DHCP. DSL rates go much faster, but prices scale as well. I also think it's absurd that some companies charge $100+ for 128kbps DSL

  13. Re:Confused from the UK on Sophomore Uses List Context; Cops Interrogate · · Score: 1
    Public schools do racial profiling to make sure people from minority races can get into the better schools. The sad part about this is that because of these quotas many deserving kids have to go to the 'dumb' schools and many non-deserving kids go to the 'smart' schools. Case in point - my neighbor a few years back had a 6 year old who knew his alphabet, could read easy books, and could count to 100. He was Italian-American, which in America is Caucasian (white). Since they met the criteria for the good schools, they applied and were rejected, despite the school having several open seats. The school year started STILL WITH THE SEATS OPEN in the 'smart' school, and his kid had to go to the 'dumb' school, where they spent the first 3 months learning their alphabet and counting to 10.
    Sorry about calling them 'smart' and 'dumb' - maybe accelerated and typical would be better names.

    I had an interesting elementary education, myself, having been transfered from an ordinary public elementary school to a conceptual alternative public elementary school. We didn't have grades and were (at least in my case) motivated to learn by incentives - time in the playground, time in the game room, time to read whatever we wanted, and most importantly, computer time on the dozen or so Apple ]['s we had (the most of any school in my district at the time). I got hooked on computers, and talked my parents into getting one.

  14. LSL1 based on "Soft Porn" text adventure on Leisure Suit Unix · · Score: 2

    I'm probably the only one who remembers this, but LSL1 was essentially a graphics port of the text adventure Soft Porn, which may by why it was more lewd than the second LSL.

  15. Re:.sig!! Yay!! on Descrambling CSS w/ 7 Lines Of Perl A DMCA Violation? · · Score: 1

    It doesn't fit in the recomended 3 lines... but it is ASCII, so should compress nicely. Try that, then run the output through a text encoder and you should be able to compress it to 3 lines or less. Due to the lack of white space, I'm guessing you need a pretty good compression, though (I get about 50-80% using gzip/uuencode on typical text files (program source I posted to newsgroups), so I'd guess between 30-60% for this file). bz2 might work better.

  16. Other problems with DSL/Cable on The State of Broadband · · Score: 1
    First off, I think it's unfair how Cable and Phone Companies often advertise their services - inside their monthly bills! What makes it really unfair is that most people own a phone and only can get service from one provider (despite deregulation attempts), meaning they have free postage on advertising to over 90% of the population. Cable may have a smaller number of subscribers than phone, but they still have a good basis of people to work from - people who make enough to afford a luxury service (which cable is) and can probably afford another. Personally I think regulated monopolies shouldn't be able to compete in high speed internet services or have restrictions put on them. I know the phone company technically isn't a regulated monopoly anymore, but effectively they still are, because I still only get one choice for local access provider (Quest).

    I think MediaOne has now started to offer local phone service in my area, with lots of features for a fraction of Quest's - which would be great except that I'm exchanging a monopoly that is being forced to compete for a monopoly that doesn't have to. I want fair competition already!

    Another problem is when one company owns both the cable and phone provider in an area and offers either DSL or Cable but not both. For instance AT&T and MediaOne have the same owner, and they only offer one or the other for DSL and Cable services in most areas. I saw a report on this in the Star Tribune, and their justification was that they didn't want to compete with themselves.

    Maybe I'm just upset that most of the monopolies offer inferior service speeds and no static IPs for higher rates than independent companies for residential service. I also think DSL advertising from the telecos is deceptive - $20 for high speed access... let us not mention that you need an ISP that is ~$20 and probably $10 more for high speed access.
    I haven't actually looked into the costs since last year because I've been under a year contract with PhoenixDSL that has been transferred to Telocity (with the bankrupt Northpoint providing the line). I'll be shopping around again soon - I like having a choice - unlike cable!

  17. Kin! on Computer Science vs. Computer Engineering? · · Score: 1
    I lasted a little over 2 years as a CmpE before switching to music for two quarters, then to CS where I got my degree, so I've been there. I was doing rather poorly at CmpE - which I call "Glorified EE." The first 2 years my classes followed the same path as EE and were some of the dullest classes I ever took. I started to get interested in my 3rd year, but by then I needed to retake a couple of classes I'd either dropped or failed (got a D in to be exact) and really never wanted to see them again. That caused a quick degree change to Music while I analyzed my options (and bounded to a 4.0 while there) and finally to CS (actually I was a CS/Music double major for about a year before dropping music for instant financial gratification). Personally I liked CS better, but I think that's because I got to ditch the early boring classes that I covered while in CmpE. They did make me take some worthless classes to get my degree - I had to take Scheme, normally a first year class, in my Senior year. The sad part was that I already had finished the classes that it was a pre-req for while in CmpE and continued on. I did manage to skip the intro class by cramming hard to learn the language and just took the second class (easiest A I ever had).

    My opinion of the two are:
    If you want to build and design computer chips, circuitboards, motherboards, controllers, and the like CmpE is the right route - it is essentially Electrical Engineering with some componentized classes that they don't get. What I mean there is while EE's usually focus on building components, CmpE's focus on building things with the components (ie, putting together a computer). There is a LOT of overlap - my classes followed the same track as EE in 80% of the classes (all non-electives, to be exact).
    CSci and CmpE overlap in one major area - writing of microcode (the actions on a chip that make up an assembly instruction). I know both CSci people and CmpE people who do this for a living.
    CSci focuses primarily on high level coding, with a couple of delves into assembly code and other low level languages. The purpose is to get people writing readable structured code that is maintainable and teaching students to work as a team to develop code (at least in the last year). I was a graphics and UI specialist, so I like my code pretty high level, which also explains why I didn't do so well in CmpE.

  18. DeCSS on USA Gov. Brief in MPAA vs. 2600 case Online · · Score: 1
    What exactly does the goverment have against removing Cascading Style Sheets anyway :)

    Seriously, though, I think the requirement is that the party being infringed upon needs to send a letter in writing [snail mail] to the infringing site stating that they have a link to an illegal program and that they must remove it or they will be shut down. Once the site is aware of it (as in 2600's case) they need to follow through and remove the link or face legal action. Because of the written letter part, search engines can remove that site if required.

    Don't quote me on legal mumbo jumbo tho - I sold my soul to a company, not the devil (I'm a programmer, not a lawyer :)

  19. Re:It�s a trilogy on Hannibal's Return · · Score: 1
    Interesting - the internet movie database for Manhunter) gives it 7.2/10 from a little over 1300 votes. Silence gets an 8.5/10 from a little under 31000 votes. Obviously volume might make a difference here.

    Haven't seen it myself, but have planned to since I heard about it being a trilogy from a Best Buy sale on the DVD bundle of Manhunter/Silence.
    Incidentally that was the first I heard of the trilogy :)

  20. Re:typewriter not keyboard on Answers From 'They Might Be Giants' · · Score: 1
    Keyboard has a distinctly different meaning to musicians...

    Certainly midi typing through a keyboard would be impractical, tho I'm sure some /.er out there has done it.

  21. why not High Speed Internet? on Iridium Repurposed For Science · · Score: 1

    I was always wondering why they didn't reposition for high speed internet - there are lots of people who don't get cable or DSL lines and would love to be able to get reasonably priced access to the internet. Starband is doing something like this, but I don't know much about it (got DSL myself).
    It would also be a salesperson's dream, as you could haul around the transceiver as part of a portable computer setup and then it wouldn't seem too bulky (or at least the tradeoff would be worth it). I (co-)wrote a paper in a college tech writing course where one of our goals was internet anywhere for our sales force and we thought Iridium would be the choice for it (this was when only about 1/2 of the satellites were up). I really think Motorola dropped the ball on this one. Then again, maybe the network can't handle high speed data transmission.

  22. Re:What was before email on The First Email Ever Sent · · Score: 1
    Funny, the only void I remember back then was the Nixon tape...

    Then again, I was only 1, so I could have been hallucinating the whole thing (2nd hand 60s?)

    Yet I digress...

  23. 1/3-1/3-1/3 split is a Republican win on Statistics, Elections, Frustration · · Score: 1

    The really sad part is that if Jesse, Bush, and Gore all split 3 ways (replace Jesse with your 3rd party choice) we'd have the Republican controlled House of Representatives electing Bush since no candidate had a Majority. The US system is really screwed up when you get three parties IMOHO.

  24. Re:Lame aspect ratio. on D&D Trailer · · Score: 1

    probably because the trailers are created to be broadcast on TV, not the web. They are just put on the web for our amusement (that and they can get an idea of popularity by watching how many geeks post stuff to /.).

  25. Re:Piracy on Microsoft vs. "Naked PCs" · · Score: 1
    even worse -

    they're talking as if there is no other OS except Windoze. Then again, if I were at M$, I would tell everyone there was no other choice except Windoze...

    scary thing is that I own 3 copies of Windows 95 and one of 98. 1 of the 95's came preloaded on my PC, 1 came with VirtualPC for my Mac, and one I bought from the store to put on the PC that replaced the first one. Both PCs and the mac have since met their maker, meaning I have 3 friggin copies of the OS.
    I admit, the first PCs was because I tried to overclock it, but the other PC and the mac had a power supply and motherboard fail, respectively. I purchased an old Pentium I and bought a copy of Win95 to make it until I could afford to replace my original mac and PC. I probably would have just used one of my OEM (just what machine is the OEM copy of VirtualPC licensed to, anyway?) copies, but I had just moved and had no idea which box they were in (found 'em just last week - 2 years after I moved in :). Win95 was about $24 at the time since Win98 had just been released, and I needed my crack (er, games).