I'm pretty sure their European patent (granted in 2004) is used as a basis by the description. That patent # is 1171813 (I got my info off this site
From the description it appears to be the same, at least, and it does pretty much describe a form of autocomplete (when a list of choices is displayed not a single choice). I don't know if it requires some form of activity to show the choices, but this sounds a like pressing cont-D after set filec in the csh (tcsh, zsh and bash use tab completion, but filec is much older) as applied to just about any device (like the described pointer pointing at a character).
Traveller would not make a good MMORPG, IMO. Paranoia might... If you want a spaceship combat game, try EVE: Online.
The problem with Traveller is people are either unskilled or old and skills come slowly (usually 1-3 a year). People are extremely squishy (basically 2-4 'HP' that never increase), and armor is almost exclusively specialized vs a type of weapon - reflective armor won't save you vs a shotgun. Most people are too poor to own a ship, so they'll be hired on as cannon fodder or menial jobs. Basically, it doesn't suit itself to a more 'action' genre without lots of modifications.
Not that it isn't possible - one of the best Traveller games I played had the GM mod the game based on his idea of the future and tied us into events in the game's story. Essentially, we were a bunch of manufactured super-soldiers (no belly buttons) trained from birth by an interface with a computer (so we had a LOT more skills) and were awoken and given a mission to assassinate a dictator. After we completed our mission and as we were escaping, we found out we had just killed the emperor. With that exposition, we had a bunch of mysteries - who made us? are there others like us, hidden and sleeping, waiting to be activated? why kill the emperor and send the galaxy into chaos? can we trust anyone or anything onboard this ship (especially after we found a remote controlled self-destruct, disabled it, then later got the signal)? One nice thing was the GM then allowed us to learn or improve one rank in any skill up to level 2 by hooking to the computer (I think it took a week for level 1-2 and a month for 3), which made for a much faster paced game.
If you're letting a pre-pubescent kid play a very violent game, you have some serious problems. It made me think of the movie "Inside Man" where a young black kid is playing an extremely violent 50-cent game glamorizing the gangsta lifestyle and the bank robber says "I'm going to have to talk to your father about this game."
And quite honestly, if they see sex before puberty, what will they make of it? I saw Bugs Bunny and similar cartoons as a kid and all the adult jokes and innuendo went completely over my head. Relating that to sex, a kid that has no interest or understanding of sex is not going to go out and actively seek it. When I was 8, if I even saw two people kissing (much less screwing) I'd go eeew - that's gross (heck, mom even said "close your eyes, they're going to kiss"). By 14, it'd be nothing worse than some of the porn magazines stolen and hidden in a neighborhood clubhouse.
Not necessarily Christianity - the Apocrypha describes Lilith, the first wife of Adam and is often associated with both Incubus and Succubus demons. Lilith appears in both Jewish and Christian writing (but only as a screech owl in the Bible).
Islam has a succubus that cuts the penis off and eats adulterous men that fall into her temptations. I don't remember her name, but it was creepy enough imagery to remember the story.
A book I borrowed from the library in college on gods and angels (the name is eluding me at the moment) described Cherubim, Seraphim, and Ophanim as eunuchs, so I was just using their words - asexual works, too. Technically, since angels are also shape changers, it is entirely possible for them to assume one sex or the other. Cherubim have a natural form with a human body, Ox face and feet and 8 conjoined wings, as I recall, while Seraphim typically have 6 wings - 2 on the head, 2 on the feet and 2 large ones on the back. I don't really remember anything about the Ophanim other than they are closely related to Cherubim and have lots of eyes. That book also described most angels with colored wings, which I found fascinating because I've never seen that in picture.
I won't pretend to remember exactly what parts are in the bible and what are outside because I don't know - I've read several translations of the bible since I was a child and various related and non-related works (parts of the Apocrypha [deuterocanonical books in Catholicism], Qu'ran, Torah, parts of translations from the dead sea scrolls, etc). Bible translations vary widely, mainly because at best, an English translation is 3rd generation and often 4th or more since the original Arameic scriptures don't exist (like one I recall being Arameic->Hebrew->Greek->Latin->English).
DnD succubus are shapechangers. Read the Monster Manual and see for yourself. My 2nd edition monster manual was stolen in Jr High, but I didn't think they were full shape changers in that (just human and demon form). It's been a while, I could be completely wrong. I've played 3rd edition D&D and even have the Player's Handbook, but the guy that plays DM never let me look at the MM.
because succubii and incubii are associated with lust and adultery and that is a bad thing in religion. Ever notice that while angels are generally associated with male names, they are actually described as eunuchs? The whole point is heavenly creatures don't have the lusts and desires of mortals (or need them). Demons like the succubus don't have such desires, either, they play off the mortal needs of such things and take life force, create demon children, or find adulterers to eat, depending on the story. Most stories of succubii have them being demons that take the form of beautiful women (suggesting shapechangers). D&D never really used that aspect, from what I recall.
I wouldn't worry TOO much - there are still many other large studios and self-publishers like primarily console producers Konami and Capcom, mixed studios like Microsoft Game Studios, Atari (nee Infrogrames), and Vivendi (owner of Blizzard), and primarily PC studios like Apogee (3D Realms), Id, and Epic Megagames, just to scratch the surface.
Unions like the Directors Guild of America require movie studios to show credits at the start, which is why George Lucas resigned from it to release Star Wars credits free (not that he was the only one to ever do it - two of the "greatest films of all-time" - the Godfather and Citizen Kane - didn't have any). If all else fails, unionize.
As far as computer games go, does it really matter if it's one part of the company or another? Blizzard's Diablo games and Warcraft games were done by two entirely different teams - Diablo was developed by an indie called Condor which was purchased by the Warcraft RTS company Blizzard 6 months before release and rebranded as Blizzard North. The title was still released by 'Blizzard' and lived up to Blizzard's reputation of being a stable, well written game.
I hate to break it to you, but from my experience (tech support), even US based call centers operators are trained to essentially read from a script. Generally, I would read a cookie-cutter opening, give my name and extension in case we got disconnected, ask for certain information, and then proceed to diagnose their problem (often looking up the fix in a database). The only exceptions were when the caller cut me off and requested to speak with a particular person (often because they had lost the name or extension, which I could look up from their incident report and transfer them)
Incidentally, that call center got outsourced to India about a year after I quit. From what I understand, call center cities in India even have better phone infrastructure than the US, and I fully believe it. Our equipment was so bad that whenever a third party connected (such as a monitoring agent), the phone would sound like it was underwater or have a bad reverb.
When I first saw this, I was thinking "oh, sh*t, they made another major API shift?!?," (like from 9 to 10 - a jump from 10 to 10.1 like that would orphan 10 owners) but that doesn't seem to be the case.
As far as I can tell, though, this is not really any different than in the past, except that MS is using a minor revision number instead of a major one - DX8.1 hardware is not forward compatible with DX9 any more than 10 is to 10.1. Forcing certain "minimum" support such as 4x AA isn't a big deal when all cards that I know of that support DX 10 already support 4xAA (or 8xAA) as well. The real problem with AA is when you mix in hardware HDR lighting which can cause jaggies, but nVidia and ATI support this already in all DX10 compatible cards (ATI since DX9 cards in the 1xxx series). This change may be to target Intel GMA sets, which Intel is attempting to get to being DX10 compatible by early 2008 by finally adding in HW T&L (the GMA 965 chipset supports HW T&L, but drivers are beta - see here)
OpenGL is in the midst of a move similar to DX9 to DX10 as they move from OpenGL 2.x to OpenGL 3. Long's Peak (OpenGL 3) is set to be ratified in August or early September and have a new rendering profile (once called "Lean and Mean") that is not backward compatible with older versions of OpenGL, but the older API will still be available. OpenGL 3.1(?) code-named Mt Evans is 3-5 months behind and will roll in features for modern GPUs (geometry shaders, texture arrays, etc). Originally, this was to be a "standalone" release and not include the backwards compatibility, but it now seems like they will deprecate the old API but still contain it, even with Mt Evans (gleaned from message boards, which often don't always know what's going on).
I also think this anti-tech stigma is more American and European, as I know many tech savvy Chinese and Indian women from outsourcing.
Some of this may be peer pressure or other factors, too - I never see women buying games, but the Vent server I use is 50% or more female whenever I listen in (it's a shared WoW/GW server). It may be that girls like audio chat more than guys, but some of them are damn good players, too. Most that I talk to prefer and exclusively play co-op PvE, and prefer to do it with other girls, though I think the maturity factor of many guys has a lot to do with that.
I thought about mentioning that, as I worked on a government project for Windows NT 3.51 that required POSIX but didn't use it (love that guv work), but I was under the impression that MS was never fully compliant until the purchase of Interix (either that or the compliance test changed - I'm pretty sure it requires a standard set of tools now, something Interix had and Windows did not).
Just to clarify, the money wasn't laundered, more concealed - he hid a lot of it in cereal boxes (1.1 million). Laundering is sending it through accounts and/or businesses to conceal its origins and make it clean money in the account. I've never read that he did that.
He also didn't really "flee" the country - as I understand it, he used a fake passport to go to the Dominican Republic to set up his pharmacy there after it was shut down in 2005, then _returned_ to Minnesota and continued spamming and selling drugs. This is what was deemed to be a blatant disregard for a court order and part of the reason why the punishment was so severe.
whether he was seriously threatening the witness or not is debatable.
In the phone call, Smith told Roanna Cleofe that he wanted her to arrange to have someone take photos of Hollis' children. If Hollis wants to testify, she can, he said. "We're going to give her the option of which one of her kids she's going to sacrifice for doing so."
Cleofe, who has been charged in connection with the alleged threat, told an FBI agent that she didn't believe Smith was serious.
- Dan Browning, Star Tribune (story link), 2-Aug-2007
heh - I just noticed that story hyperlink is leet (1337 [+ 623])
to nitpick, MS didn't cobble it together, they bought the company Interix and acquired it as part of the purchase. Prior to 1999 I believe they were licensing it from Interix.
Emulate isn't the right word, either, since the code is native and implemented in an API over the NT kernel. To say this is emulation is like saying WINE is Windows emulation.
I find the tools more useful than the rest of it. I'll take grep over Windows search any day.
Unix is trademarked by the Open Group, and so to be Unix, you need to pay them to certify your OS. There are several other similar cases in the industry - POSIX is a biggie, as is OpenGL. Often you'll see OpenGL compatible (like Mesa) or POSIX compatible (like Linux and even MacOS X for a while) - basically, they're saying they're API compatible, but not certified.
My understanding of Virtualization environments is they essentially run a small OS (e.g. Linux) that runs other OS's in a "transparent emulator." Essentially, the master OS gives time slices for each of the the children OS's to run natively except for any I/O (including startup such as BIOS), which it needs to direct and handle itself (for many reasons). As far as I know, this technically requires no "new instructions," but due to a design issue, IA-32 has been problematic for virtualization (specifically, hardware managed TLBs which can cause page faults), so there may be some special instructions or code that emulates those instructions.
That said, after peeking at the source code of MoL, I don't see a ton of work that would need to be done to port it, but it wouldn't be trivial. MacHeadersOSX.pch needs an Intel define, any filesystem I/O would need some work (didn't actually find those files), and most importantly, an EFI or BIOS (if the Boot Camp firmware update is loaded) handler needs to be written to handle devices. I'm not sure how ethernet packets are handled in the code, but there may be endian issues because OSX on PPC wouldn't need to translate packets to big-endian. I don't own an Intel mac, so it's doubtful I'll do the port (heck, my mac is 8 years old already).
In response to your answer for "why not," the same thing happens on the Windows side, and as I understand it, WINE does not implement many of the APIs deprecated for unification (when Windows 2000 was released there was a unified API to bridge the kernel changes and move the 95/98/Me crowd to the new kernel and not destroy their app investment). Apple has a similar large set of APIs that could reasonably be skipped. Still, it's a huge undertaking with a fraction of the programmers that WINE enlists, so probably unlikely unless market share increases.
*originally* mac only - it was ported to x86 later.
It wasn't even Bungie's first FPS, per-se - that would be Pathways Into Darkness (wiki here. Some argue that this was technically a first person RPG with shooter and horror elements (like Ultima Underworld, TES Arena, etc), which I wouldn't disagree with, but I found it more intense and difficult than most shooters of that era (Wolf 3D, Doom) and even the next generation (like Rise of the Triad, Marathon, and Duke Nukem 3D).
on a completely unrelated note, Marathon and Rise of the Triad both had voice chat support, a feature that pretty much disappeared for about 10 years before reappearing in shooters. Who had it first is speculative (my understanding is Rise of the Triad shareware beat Bungie's release by 2 months, even though the full game of RotT wasn't released until ~5 months later). I used this feature in both games a lot in late night college lab frag-fests until the group moved pretty much exclusively to DN3D (which gave me worse motion sickness than the rest and limited my play time).
Apple stopped hardware licensing, effectively killing BeOS as an alternate pre-bundled OS (why buy Be when you get MacOS for free?). Be responded by porting to Intel where it attempted to get hardware contracts, but only could get them with minor players due to MS licensing. They really didn't position themselves to get bought until the money got tight.
Windows was already entrenched on the PC side and most companies signed exclusive OS deals with Microsoft for a price cut on software, leading to monopoly hearings (which MS LOST, but all they were really required to do was offer a rebate if users did not want Windows). Be has a separate lawsuit still in court. Linux was emerging but more importantly, was free, which led more of a grassroots adoption, as Microsoft couldn't crush them by price (as they used to destroy companies like Netscape). Windows problems in the server market (e.g. the "Ping of Death") and UNIX fanatics helped it along.
I had fun multi-booting a mac (BeOS [beta], SuSE Linux [mac beta], a BSD flavor {Open, I think), and MacOS7 and 8. Later I added about 6 more OSes using VirtualPC (and finally stumped $800 to build a PC - Virtual in emulation was faster than my existing PC for a while).
I happen to agree with Linus [sometimes] and could care less about worshiping him - it's my opinion that the GPL v3 is more the FSF/RMS's political agenda and not what is best for OSS developers. While I'm not a fan of software patents or DRM, invalidating them via a clause in a license is a purely political move (I think the anti-DRM stance was ditched, but the patent one still remains).
I honestly have no problem with people using GPLv3 like with gcc - in many cases, it's perfectly good. I don't like the ideological aspects, but in some ways Microsoft threw the first punch by asking for royalties from several vendors and getting payout from some (like Novell) and the FSF is responding. Still, I'm not sure if the license is the place for that response - I'd rather see a lawsuit that forces Microsoft to show its patents and prove them unintuitive (like so many of them).
are you sure? I remember something similar to the first poster, Oblivion defaulted to the male texture unless an override was present such as the female texture. There was also some odd naming, too, as I think female textures were all in a container _male (something like that - its been a while) and those contained the bra art. I believe all the first "topless" mods did was remove the _male files, skinning the female character with the male nipples.
Still, it was hardly the first game to ship with art that could be modded to be topless without adding any code - even before San Andreas - Gothic (I) shipped in Germany with a topless bathing scene and they covered it up with a bra for the US version to get an M rating. You could get the original version simply by copying the CD included art over the installed art. Still, it was difficult to get to the location where the woman was bathing because it was near the endgame and you had to wait for the scripted event.
I think some locations changed, because when I first got their service, it was hardware tied but when my machine died and I replaced it, I was able to connect without calling them. I also added a hardware router (which has a separate IP).
I eventually left them 5 years ago for multiple reasons - #1) ethics - I couldn't comply with their terms of service, as I was running multiple machines (using NAT), servers (like sshd and later httpd on my hardware router [note: Comcast blocks port 80 externally]), a non-supported OS on the primary connection machine (Linux), and a couple of other minor issues.
#2) lack of business or static IP offerings (and I really just wanted a static IP for ssh so I could check my mail and check some open source code build statuses from work). They've since started offering this, but I'm long gone.
#3) terrible peak hour performance - I couldn't even play Dungeon Siege during peak hours, much less host a game, but at 2AM I had no problems, even with hosting. 1500ms ping times and 200kbps (max speed - usually worse) are not acceptable (note: the peak hour speed improved significantly when they switched from 3Mbps to 6Mbps, according to my neighbor).
Heh - they practically do - the MS shakedown virus was more than effective - Windows infects almost all personal computers out there. I dubbed it shakedown as in Microsoft capturing most of its existing marketshare using exclusive discounts to companies if they only bundle Microsoft products, which is pretty much the same thing as extortion in my eyes.
Well, that and the fact that no sane Linux user that I know of would pay $275 for an extra 1GB memory module - I can get 2 2GB modules for cheaper than that (all fully warrantied, but I don't know about the laptop). The priciest DDR2 667 one on Newegg is $210, but I don't see why anyone would pay that for a CAS 5 module (which can be had in the $36 range according to pricewatch). 160GB drives start around $90-$95.
Assuming you take the 10 minutes it takes to do the labor yourself (which is what it took me the first time including the time to find my small screwdriver set) and bill your time at $100/hour (we'll round for convenience), it's about $40 + $100 + $20 = $160. That doesn't include reinstalling linux if you only have a single drive slot, but in either case you have a spare drive.
The reality of it is that Dell charges too much for components, but that is common in the industry (Dell is by no means alone - Apple has gouged this way for years - I remember them asking for $475 for an identical module I bought for $80). By my estimate, even if they have a $200 part (ha!) and have hideously slow labor (ha! again) that can only install 1 module every hour, that's still $75/hour. Neither part is all that risky to install and I seriously doubt they use warranty tape (if you break it, it leaves marks that say void), so if SOMEHOW you screw it up, you just throw the old parts back in and send the laptop back as defective.
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I'm pretty sure their European patent (granted in 2004) is used as a basis by the description. That patent # is 1171813 (I got my info off this site
From the description it appears to be the same, at least, and it does pretty much describe a form of autocomplete (when a list of choices is displayed not a single choice). I don't know if it requires some form of activity to show the choices, but this sounds a like pressing cont-D after set filec in the csh (tcsh, zsh and bash use tab completion, but filec is much older) as applied to just about any device (like the described pointer pointing at a character).
Traveller would not make a good MMORPG, IMO. Paranoia might... If you want a spaceship combat game, try EVE: Online.
The problem with Traveller is people are either unskilled or old and skills come slowly (usually 1-3 a year). People are extremely squishy (basically 2-4 'HP' that never increase), and armor is almost exclusively specialized vs a type of weapon - reflective armor won't save you vs a shotgun. Most people are too poor to own a ship, so they'll be hired on as cannon fodder or menial jobs. Basically, it doesn't suit itself to a more 'action' genre without lots of modifications.
Not that it isn't possible - one of the best Traveller games I played had the GM mod the game based on his idea of the future and tied us into events in the game's story. Essentially, we were a bunch of manufactured super-soldiers (no belly buttons) trained from birth by an interface with a computer (so we had a LOT more skills) and were awoken and given a mission to assassinate a dictator. After we completed our mission and as we were escaping, we found out we had just killed the emperor. With that exposition, we had a bunch of mysteries - who made us? are there others like us, hidden and sleeping, waiting to be activated? why kill the emperor and send the galaxy into chaos? can we trust anyone or anything onboard this ship (especially after we found a remote controlled self-destruct, disabled it, then later got the signal)? One nice thing was the GM then allowed us to learn or improve one rank in any skill up to level 2 by hooking to the computer (I think it took a week for level 1-2 and a month for 3), which made for a much faster paced game.
If you're letting a pre-pubescent kid play a very violent game, you have some serious problems. It made me think of the movie "Inside Man" where a young black kid is playing an extremely violent 50-cent game glamorizing the gangsta lifestyle and the bank robber says "I'm going to have to talk to your father about this game."
And quite honestly, if they see sex before puberty, what will they make of it? I saw Bugs Bunny and similar cartoons as a kid and all the adult jokes and innuendo went completely over my head. Relating that to sex, a kid that has no interest or understanding of sex is not going to go out and actively seek it. When I was 8, if I even saw two people kissing (much less screwing) I'd go eeew - that's gross (heck, mom even said "close your eyes, they're going to kiss"). By 14, it'd be nothing worse than some of the porn magazines stolen and hidden in a neighborhood clubhouse.
Islam has a succubus that cuts the penis off and eats adulterous men that fall into her temptations. I don't remember her name, but it was creepy enough imagery to remember the story.
A book I borrowed from the library in college on gods and angels (the name is eluding me at the moment) described Cherubim, Seraphim, and Ophanim as eunuchs, so I was just using their words - asexual works, too. Technically, since angels are also shape changers, it is entirely possible for them to assume one sex or the other. Cherubim have a natural form with a human body, Ox face and feet and 8 conjoined wings, as I recall, while Seraphim typically have 6 wings - 2 on the head, 2 on the feet and 2 large ones on the back. I don't really remember anything about the Ophanim other than they are closely related to Cherubim and have lots of eyes. That book also described most angels with colored wings, which I found fascinating because I've never seen that in picture.
I won't pretend to remember exactly what parts are in the bible and what are outside because I don't know - I've read several translations of the bible since I was a child and various related and non-related works (parts of the Apocrypha [deuterocanonical books in Catholicism], Qu'ran, Torah, parts of translations from the dead sea scrolls, etc). Bible translations vary widely, mainly because at best, an English translation is 3rd generation and often 4th or more since the original Arameic scriptures don't exist (like one I recall being Arameic->Hebrew->Greek->Latin->English). DnD succubus are shapechangers. Read the Monster Manual and see for yourself. My 2nd edition monster manual was stolen in Jr High, but I didn't think they were full shape changers in that (just human and demon form). It's been a while, I could be completely wrong. I've played 3rd edition D&D and even have the Player's Handbook, but the guy that plays DM never let me look at the MM.
because succubii and incubii are associated with lust and adultery and that is a bad thing in religion. Ever notice that while angels are generally associated with male names, they are actually described as eunuchs? The whole point is heavenly creatures don't have the lusts and desires of mortals (or need them). Demons like the succubus don't have such desires, either, they play off the mortal needs of such things and take life force, create demon children, or find adulterers to eat, depending on the story. Most stories of succubii have them being demons that take the form of beautiful women (suggesting shapechangers). D&D never really used that aspect, from what I recall.
I wouldn't worry TOO much - there are still many other large studios and self-publishers like primarily console producers Konami and Capcom, mixed studios like Microsoft Game Studios, Atari (nee Infrogrames), and Vivendi (owner of Blizzard), and primarily PC studios like Apogee (3D Realms), Id, and Epic Megagames, just to scratch the surface.
Unions like the Directors Guild of America require movie studios to show credits at the start, which is why George Lucas resigned from it to release Star Wars credits free (not that he was the only one to ever do it - two of the "greatest films of all-time" - the Godfather and Citizen Kane - didn't have any). If all else fails, unionize.
As far as computer games go, does it really matter if it's one part of the company or another? Blizzard's Diablo games and Warcraft games were done by two entirely different teams - Diablo was developed by an indie called Condor which was purchased by the Warcraft RTS company Blizzard 6 months before release and rebranded as Blizzard North. The title was still released by 'Blizzard' and lived up to Blizzard's reputation of being a stable, well written game.
I hate to break it to you, but from my experience (tech support), even US based call centers operators are trained to essentially read from a script. Generally, I would read a cookie-cutter opening, give my name and extension in case we got disconnected, ask for certain information, and then proceed to diagnose their problem (often looking up the fix in a database). The only exceptions were when the caller cut me off and requested to speak with a particular person (often because they had lost the name or extension, which I could look up from their incident report and transfer them)
Incidentally, that call center got outsourced to India about a year after I quit. From what I understand, call center cities in India even have better phone infrastructure than the US, and I fully believe it. Our equipment was so bad that whenever a third party connected (such as a monitoring agent), the phone would sound like it was underwater or have a bad reverb.
When I first saw this, I was thinking "oh, sh*t, they made another major API shift?!?," (like from 9 to 10 - a jump from 10 to 10.1 like that would orphan 10 owners) but that doesn't seem to be the case.
As far as I can tell, though, this is not really any different than in the past, except that MS is using a minor revision number instead of a major one - DX8.1 hardware is not forward compatible with DX9 any more than 10 is to 10.1. Forcing certain "minimum" support such as 4x AA isn't a big deal when all cards that I know of that support DX 10 already support 4xAA (or 8xAA) as well. The real problem with AA is when you mix in hardware HDR lighting which can cause jaggies, but nVidia and ATI support this already in all DX10 compatible cards (ATI since DX9 cards in the 1xxx series). This change may be to target Intel GMA sets, which Intel is attempting to get to being DX10 compatible by early 2008 by finally adding in HW T&L (the GMA 965 chipset supports HW T&L, but drivers are beta - see here)
OpenGL is in the midst of a move similar to DX9 to DX10 as they move from OpenGL 2.x to OpenGL 3. Long's Peak (OpenGL 3) is set to be ratified in August or early September and have a new rendering profile (once called "Lean and Mean") that is not backward compatible with older versions of OpenGL, but the older API will still be available. OpenGL 3.1(?) code-named Mt Evans is 3-5 months behind and will roll in features for modern GPUs (geometry shaders, texture arrays, etc). Originally, this was to be a "standalone" release and not include the backwards compatibility, but it now seems like they will deprecate the old API but still contain it, even with Mt Evans (gleaned from message boards, which often don't always know what's going on).
I also think this anti-tech stigma is more American and European, as I know many tech savvy Chinese and Indian women from outsourcing.
Some of this may be peer pressure or other factors, too - I never see women buying games, but the Vent server I use is 50% or more female whenever I listen in (it's a shared WoW/GW server). It may be that girls like audio chat more than guys, but some of them are damn good players, too. Most that I talk to prefer and exclusively play co-op PvE, and prefer to do it with other girls, though I think the maturity factor of many guys has a lot to do with that.
well, at least Amiga is more secure against wireless IP packet sniffing and cookie stealing (yes, there is a wireless driver for Amiga).
oh wait, it isn't.
trolling today, are we?
I thought about mentioning that, as I worked on a government project for Windows NT 3.51 that required POSIX but didn't use it (love that guv work), but I was under the impression that MS was never fully compliant until the purchase of Interix (either that or the compliance test changed - I'm pretty sure it requires a standard set of tools now, something Interix had and Windows did not).
He also didn't really "flee" the country - as I understand it, he used a fake passport to go to the Dominican Republic to set up his pharmacy there after it was shut down in 2005, then _returned_ to Minnesota and continued spamming and selling drugs. This is what was deemed to be a blatant disregard for a court order and part of the reason why the punishment was so severe.
whether he was seriously threatening the witness or not is debatable.
heh - I just noticed that story hyperlink is leet (1337 [+ 623])
or just play Duke Nukem 3d - the line is virtually identical.
oh heck - **** spoiler ****
Duke Nukem (Duke):
It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all outta gum!
They Live (Nada/"Rowdy" Roddy Piper):
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum.
esquire - heh, probably not as in lawyer (as commonly used in the US)...
to nitpick, MS didn't cobble it together, they bought the company Interix and acquired it as part of the purchase. Prior to 1999 I believe they were licensing it from Interix.
Emulate isn't the right word, either, since the code is native and implemented in an API over the NT kernel. To say this is emulation is like saying WINE is Windows emulation.
I find the tools more useful than the rest of it. I'll take grep over Windows search any day.
Unix is trademarked by the Open Group, and so to be Unix, you need to pay them to certify your OS. There are several other similar cases in the industry - POSIX is a biggie, as is OpenGL. Often you'll see OpenGL compatible (like Mesa) or POSIX compatible (like Linux and even MacOS X for a while) - basically, they're saying they're API compatible, but not certified.
then you say you had music in your blood (and bones, and spleen)?
My understanding of Virtualization environments is they essentially run a small OS (e.g. Linux) that runs other OS's in a "transparent emulator." Essentially, the master OS gives time slices for each of the the children OS's to run natively except for any I/O (including startup such as BIOS), which it needs to direct and handle itself (for many reasons). As far as I know, this technically requires no "new instructions," but due to a design issue, IA-32 has been problematic for virtualization (specifically, hardware managed TLBs which can cause page faults), so there may be some special instructions or code that emulates those instructions.
That said, after peeking at the source code of MoL, I don't see a ton of work that would need to be done to port it, but it wouldn't be trivial. MacHeadersOSX.pch needs an Intel define, any filesystem I/O would need some work (didn't actually find those files), and most importantly, an EFI or BIOS (if the Boot Camp firmware update is loaded) handler needs to be written to handle devices. I'm not sure how ethernet packets are handled in the code, but there may be endian issues because OSX on PPC wouldn't need to translate packets to big-endian. I don't own an Intel mac, so it's doubtful I'll do the port (heck, my mac is 8 years old already).
In response to your answer for "why not," the same thing happens on the Windows side, and as I understand it, WINE does not implement many of the APIs deprecated for unification (when Windows 2000 was released there was a unified API to bridge the kernel changes and move the 95/98/Me crowd to the new kernel and not destroy their app investment). Apple has a similar large set of APIs that could reasonably be skipped. Still, it's a huge undertaking with a fraction of the programmers that WINE enlists, so probably unlikely unless market share increases.
actually, it'd still be WINE if they kept the name (acronym is WINE Is Not an Emulator).
*originally* mac only - it was ported to x86 later.
It wasn't even Bungie's first FPS, per-se - that would be Pathways Into Darkness (wiki here. Some argue that this was technically a first person RPG with shooter and horror elements (like Ultima Underworld, TES Arena, etc), which I wouldn't disagree with, but I found it more intense and difficult than most shooters of that era (Wolf 3D, Doom) and even the next generation (like Rise of the Triad, Marathon, and Duke Nukem 3D).
on a completely unrelated note, Marathon and Rise of the Triad both had voice chat support, a feature that pretty much disappeared for about 10 years before reappearing in shooters. Who had it first is speculative (my understanding is Rise of the Triad shareware beat Bungie's release by 2 months, even though the full game of RotT wasn't released until ~5 months later). I used this feature in both games a lot in late night college lab frag-fests until the group moved pretty much exclusively to DN3D (which gave me worse motion sickness than the rest and limited my play time).
Apple stopped hardware licensing, effectively killing BeOS as an alternate pre-bundled OS (why buy Be when you get MacOS for free?). Be responded by porting to Intel where it attempted to get hardware contracts, but only could get them with minor players due to MS licensing. They really didn't position themselves to get bought until the money got tight.
Windows was already entrenched on the PC side and most companies signed exclusive OS deals with Microsoft for a price cut on software, leading to monopoly hearings (which MS LOST, but all they were really required to do was offer a rebate if users did not want Windows). Be has a separate lawsuit still in court.
Linux was emerging but more importantly, was free, which led more of a grassroots adoption, as Microsoft couldn't crush them by price (as they used to destroy companies like Netscape). Windows problems in the server market (e.g. the "Ping of Death") and UNIX fanatics helped it along.
I had fun multi-booting a mac (BeOS [beta], SuSE Linux [mac beta], a BSD flavor {Open, I think), and MacOS7 and 8. Later I added about 6 more OSes using VirtualPC (and finally stumped $800 to build a PC - Virtual in emulation was faster than my existing PC for a while).
I happen to agree with Linus [sometimes] and could care less about worshiping him - it's my opinion that the GPL v3 is more the FSF/RMS's political agenda and not what is best for OSS developers. While I'm not a fan of software patents or DRM, invalidating them via a clause in a license is a purely political move (I think the anti-DRM stance was ditched, but the patent one still remains).
I honestly have no problem with people using GPLv3 like with gcc - in many cases, it's perfectly good. I don't like the ideological aspects, but in some ways Microsoft threw the first punch by asking for royalties from several vendors and getting payout from some (like Novell) and the FSF is responding. Still, I'm not sure if the license is the place for that response - I'd rather see a lawsuit that forces Microsoft to show its patents and prove them unintuitive (like so many of them).
are you sure? I remember something similar to the first poster, Oblivion defaulted to the male texture unless an override was present such as the female texture. There was also some odd naming, too, as I think female textures were all in a container _male (something like that - its been a while) and those contained the bra art. I believe all the first "topless" mods did was remove the _male files, skinning the female character with the male nipples.
Still, it was hardly the first game to ship with art that could be modded to be topless without adding any code - even before San Andreas - Gothic (I) shipped in Germany with a topless bathing scene and they covered it up with a bra for the US version to get an M rating. You could get the original version simply by copying the CD included art over the installed art. Still, it was difficult to get to the location where the woman was bathing because it was near the endgame and you had to wait for the scripted event.
I think some locations changed, because when I first got their service, it was hardware tied but when my machine died and I replaced it, I was able to connect without calling them. I also added a hardware router (which has a separate IP).
I eventually left them 5 years ago for multiple reasons -
#1) ethics - I couldn't comply with their terms of service, as I was running multiple machines (using NAT), servers (like sshd and later httpd on my hardware router [note: Comcast blocks port 80 externally]), a non-supported OS on the primary connection machine (Linux), and a couple of other minor issues.
#2) lack of business or static IP offerings (and I really just wanted a static IP for ssh so I could check my mail and check some open source code build statuses from work). They've since started offering this, but I'm long gone.
#3) terrible peak hour performance - I couldn't even play Dungeon Siege during peak hours, much less host a game, but at 2AM I had no problems, even with hosting. 1500ms ping times and 200kbps (max speed - usually worse) are not acceptable (note: the peak hour speed improved significantly when they switched from 3Mbps to 6Mbps, according to my neighbor).
Heh - they practically do - the MS shakedown virus was more than effective - Windows infects almost all personal computers out there. I dubbed it shakedown as in Microsoft capturing most of its existing marketshare using exclusive discounts to companies if they only bundle Microsoft products, which is pretty much the same thing as extortion in my eyes.
Well, that and the fact that no sane Linux user that I know of would pay $275 for an extra 1GB memory module - I can get 2 2GB modules for cheaper than that (all fully warrantied, but I don't know about the laptop). The priciest DDR2 667 one on Newegg is $210, but I don't see why anyone would pay that for a CAS 5 module (which can be had in the $36 range according to pricewatch). 160GB drives start around $90-$95.
Assuming you take the 10 minutes it takes to do the labor yourself (which is what it took me the first time including the time to find my small screwdriver set) and bill your time at $100/hour (we'll round for convenience), it's about $40 + $100 + $20 = $160. That doesn't include reinstalling linux if you only have a single drive slot, but in either case you have a spare drive.
The reality of it is that Dell charges too much for components, but that is common in the industry (Dell is by no means alone - Apple has gouged this way for years - I remember them asking for $475 for an identical module I bought for $80). By my estimate, even if they have a $200 part (ha!) and have hideously slow labor (ha! again) that can only install 1 module every hour, that's still $75/hour. Neither part is all that risky to install and I seriously doubt they use warranty tape (if you break it, it leaves marks that say void), so if SOMEHOW you screw it up, you just throw the old parts back in and send the laptop back as defective.