Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

2 Scoops of Quickies 96

Posted by CmdrTaco from the amazingly-lame-titles dept.
Ed Bailey wrote in to say that the Linux-7K project to get Linux on the Psion has started Bearing Fruit Fict sent in a link to LinuxApps which recently got a recamp. Looks strangely familiar GVeloper wrote in to say that gdev has been revamped (to use Slash) as well as containing some comments about glide and glade possibly merging. Lincoln sent us a link to a CG short parody of the politics of sfx which will be of interest to Star Wars fans. my copy of xanim won't play it, but several people told me it's really excellent. freejack wrote in to say that the Star Tribune rated Slashdot in top sites for geek gossip mongers. Whatever that means. Shave sent in a link to Jerry Pournelle's web site a where he talks about Refund Day and Slashdot (and neither in particularly cheerful terms) And finally, for the gamers out there, mgix sent a link to a N64 Emulator that can do Zelda64. That game has been a staple in the Geekhouse for weeks now. Addictive.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

2 Scoops of Quickies More

2 Scoops of Quickies

Comments Filter:
  • He used to be interesting, but he's written the same column for 15+ years now, and it's gotten very tiresome. And this is a guy who manages to use his GPS and laptop to tell him where he managed to roll his SUV in Death Valley. Gads. I use the same combo, but I think I'll not drive quite so fast.
  • Posted by OGL:

    > as well as containing some comments about glide
    > and glade possibly merging

    heh, that's what we need...a GTK interface builder merging with a 3D API =)

    -W.W.
  • Posted by Jeremy Witt:

    MpegTv can play it where xanim failed..

    the link is www.mpegtv.com [mpegtv.com] (I think)

    Warning: They have some crazy closed license thing for it... (Linux Shareware? What the heck is that?)

    JWitt

  • Loved "The Mote in God's Eye." Hate his MS-Bootlicking attitude. At one point, he describes a complete fiasco with the registry on one machine-- talks about how it took him a day to fix it. Yet he goes on and defends the quality of Microsoft's work? I don't get it.

    Secondly, concerning the refund:

    Don't most states have lemon laws? Like, if you buy a product that has defects, the manufacturer is responsible? Couldn't that be used against Microsoft? Even after the package is opened, once you start losing work and the computer crashes-- once all this happens, the product is obviously defective. Invoke the lemon law, if your state has one that covers software (it doesn't have to cover software explicitly).

    Just a thought. As usual, I am not a lawyer, and would kill anyone who accussed me of being one. So my advice is worse than useless-- it's probably wrong. Standard disclaimers apply.
  • Pournelle is worried that our returns of Windows, *in compliance with the EULA*, might tick off Microsoft and they might not deliver the next version of Windows to allow him to format a floppy without setting his hair on fire.

    Here's a free clue, Jerry: WE DON'T CARE. We don't care if Microsoft ships a pile of rubbish as Windows 2000, because we have a better way: Open Source.

    You have no real evidence that people are going to pirate Windows and ask for the refund; few would go through the hassle of dealing with the OEMs and Microsoft for a measly $50-$100 if they didn't really believe in what they were doing.

    People are asking for their refund because it's The Right Thing to Do. PC buyers shouldn't have to pay for what they don't want.

  • Agreed on the sequel, but they've done other good stuff (I dug Lucifers Hammer...)
  • I'd noticed a couple days ago that the site had been updated.. Just saw how good the improvements had been today. The categories on the left which allow you to expand/collapse just rock. :)

    Regarding its similarities to freshmeat, I think linuxapps.com has always been the more complete of the two, with freshmeat mostly geared toward actively developed and new stuff, w/ user reviews.

    Freshmeat's email-notification of version changes and the new interface rock, too, imho. :)

  • Pournelle indeed does have a point, and that is why, in the Bay Area effort [linuxmafia.com], we will verify in advance that all participants are absolutely legitimate. Other organised refund efforts have been, and are, strongly encouraged to do likewise.

    Rick Moen
    rick@hugin.imat.com
  • What are you babbling about?

    The comment was about stability. MS has pretensions of taking over the server market with NT, but they have a long way to go to achieve the stability of unixen. Linux has plenty of server side apps, and is approaching a decent selection on the client side.
  • have you ever had to reinstall and it was blatently nothing you did?
  • Ever heard of a company called Corel...
  • Do you expect me to pay any attention after you just called someone "penis"???
  • The sequel wasn't that bad...
    Both of the have fairly average books for the industry IMHO.

  • Help... (Score:1)

    by Puff ( 3954 )
    Has anyone else not been able to get into gDEV [gdev.netg]
  • And a great SF writer when he's teamed up with Larry Niven. I know fiction writing is supposed to be much harder than non-fiction, but he'd have contributed a lot more to society if he had dropped the computer article gig ten years ago and put just a tenth of those words into novel form.
  • I do like several Niven/Pournelle team books (esp. Lucifer's Hammer) better than what either of them has written alone, but Pournelle isn't a bad writer even alone. I just finished reading through his Falkenberg novels, and while they aren't exactly bleeding-heart-liberal, they aren't bad writing or ultraconservative propaganda either.

    As for Reagan, I'm not at all disappointed with the results of his right-wing foreign policies - there are reasons we have one Germany and zero Soviet Unions today, and he was one of them. I'm much less happy with the $2 trillion in debt piled up during his administration, the tax cut and broken economic theory that boosted it, and the inept handling of the air traffic controller strike...

    And as for Star Wars, well, hit User Info and see my older /. postings on the shuttle - the political failures again far outweighed the technical ones.
  • Subject says it all. Niven wears the talent pants in their little "family".
  • For those of you who don't want to go mucking around in that guy's website trying to find the article that mentions /., go here [jerrypournelle.com]; it's near the bottom of the page. Not that much about it, just that he doesn't give much credibility to /. posters because they use words like "Windoze," and that he doesn't think Refund Day is all that big because most of the people stating they're going to participate in it have probably booted their computers to Win95/98 at least once.

    -mike kania
  • Compare these two writers, both in a similar situation, having left the warm fuzzy confines of major magazines.

    Mr. Katz, in writing on slashdot, becomes a part of the Internet community. He explores exciting new technologies like Linux. Showing himself to be openminded and excited about the things he writes about.

    While Mr. Pournelle retreats to Chaos Manor, anticipates people will pay to read his column, in which he revisits all those IRQ clashes, OS crashes -- the reasons most of us left the windows world -- and then has the gall to reiterate tired rhetoric about the Reagan era!

    Thinking about the comparison, I don't feel half bad about Katz writing on slashdot.
  • Jerry is either a very poor web designer or is paying one far too much.

    Still, a browse through the available corpus of Linux Advocacy information would do many slashdotters a considerable amount of good.

    Terms like "Windoze", besides sounding very stupid around the third time, won't win many hearts.
  • Since Pournelle charges a subscription for access to part of his site, perhaps that other "professional writer" Jon Katz could be a "subscription only" part of Slashdot.

  • Think what you will about Jerry (I know I do), but one portion of his brief missive on the subject is extremely important. Jerry believes that some people will use Refund Day as a way to screw MS out of some money while still using Windoze [sic] on their machines.

    This must not happen.

    If it does happen, you can bet that the Microsoft FUD Factory will play it to the hilt. "Linux Advocates Indicted for Software Piracy," is what the headlines will say.

    Please, please, please don't do this. Do not "return" copies of Windows you are still using. Truly, the meager sum you receive is not worth the potential negative impact to the community. Don't do it.

    Schwab


  • hah! he reckons NT is "pretty doggone stable" - obviously he doesn't use it for anything more stressful than typing into FrontPage.

    It's called 'd0ze' because it's for ppl like him...
  • He says Dell et all standardize on M$ because that's commodities rule, yet doesn't comprehend that just about everything *except* the OS is interchangeable - disk drives, monitors, sound cards, even the bloody processor to an extent. ONLY M$ has a lock on their particular piece of the pie.

    He says Linux sucks because you have to recompile to use a different sound card. Duh. No you don't, if you compile all of them, which is what M$ does. Is he so lame as to think that M$ has a single solitary sound driver which can deal with every sound card out there? I don't expect him to know about modules, and changing drivers without rebooting, but this is really pathetic.

    If this is what Pournelle thinks of as intelligent reasons for M$ success and Linux failure, then there is nothing to fear for free source fans. These nuts have blinders on AND have their head buried somewhere dark. You must know your enemy to defeat him, and obviously M$ supporters don't.

    Like that idiotic PC Week interview where the moron says Linux could have kept the copyright to Linux and been a millionaire by now. Duh!

    --
  • Has it been slashdotted into oblivion already?
  • The link in the article doesn't seem to work. However, this [emuunlim.com] should take you there. Note that right after the announcement of it's release is an announcement that it's being DISCONTINUED. Prolly Nintendo being understandably upset. Still available for d/l now, though.
  • So, where can I get a device to make rom images, or where are the specs so I can build one?

    -Erik
  • Blah. Horrible web site! I couldn't find anything on it. And people sent him money? What the hell for, it's utter crap. That site is enough to make you dyslexic.

    He's one of those people who thinks that he gets instant credibility because he's published stuff in mainstream press (i.e. books). Remind anyone of a certain other slashdot irregular? ;)

    BTW he does write decent SF (and I'm quite picky about SF). Check out his Mote series...quite decent. Lucifer's Hammer is ok too, if a bit pulpy. Footfall is also a good read.

    JB
  • After reading The Mote is God's Eye, I thought he must be a pretty cool dude. After reading his comments on this topic (well, after finding them, his site is crap), I must conclude that Niven wrote the whole damn thing.

    What an asshole.
  • Ringworld kicked ass
  • dammit, I was all for this, I was even going to put a TINY win95 partition on my drive to use this emu. But just like the tides, one can predict the actions of the lamers greedily searching for all the roms they can find.

    The emu "Scene" has become nothing more than snot-nosed 14-year-olds wanting to play games for free. they could care less about the effort put into the emulators, I've seen TONS of letters from people literally pissed at the authors for not having certain games working. I mean, the people are doing this for free, and the kiddies want more. they're not happy with what they have... (oh my god, I'm sounding like my father.)



    I own a n64, I own Zelda, and SMB64, and Banjo Kazooie, and when I order my ROM copier tomorrow (email me and ask me where I'm getting it, and for how much), I'll be almost ready to get these games up. I'm the type of people that are being affected the most by the lamers with their "plz g1v m3 r0mz" crap.



    heh. I wonder how terribly bad they run on a p133 (if at all). if they don't work, I'll bring my backup system and emu to my friend's house and see what an overclocked celeron can do to it. :-)



    oh, and if anyone emails me asking me for roms, I'll put a hex on them and their families.

  • Pournelle hasn't been relevant in years. The last time I read him was at least five years ago; I see he hasn't acquired a single clue since then.

    JT
  • So what? Even if they did that, where would it get them? What evidence would they have that linux users are any more prone to pirating software than the average joe? How would the actions of a handful of people have any bearing on the moral character of millions of linux users?

    They may as well say that linux users are communists, or witches, or heretics... it'd be pointless...

    The only thing that MS could do if there was evidence of piracy is use that as an argument to refuse people their refunds. However:

    1. MS would find it difficult to actually prove piracy is taking place.
    2. Even if they could, that doesn't mean everyone who seeks a refund is guilty of piracy.
    3. MS still has to comply with its own EULA.

    Furthermore, since when does MS need evidence to spread FUD?? If they really wanted to, they'd do it regardless.

    Pournelle may have a point, but it's irrelevant. The issue is not about MS being ripped off by pirates, it's about Linux users being ripped off by MS. There will always be pirates - that's no reason to refuse a refund to linuxers.

  • Speaking of Open Source, I almost fell over in my chair a couple of weeks ago when a sales rep told me that they used Ghostscript in their (wickedly expensive but wicked fast) printers because it was open source.

    In trying to track down a problem, their programmers have looked at the output and are working on a fix. Try that with Adobe. Not.

    So, if any of you are looking for high-volume printers with immense duty cycles (repeat after me: a million pages a month), and some cool people (from my limited experience), look at:

    http://www.ati-usa.com/

    _Deirdre
  • Actually, aside from the subtly derisive intent behind using a spelling like "Windoze" to refer to Microsoft's OS(s), there is a really sound reason as well--this particular term at least helps distinguish to computing newcomers between Windows9x/NT and the concept of windows for a GUI. I've seen too many instances of people pointing at the Mac's GUI (for one example) and saying that it somehow "immitates" Windoze; I've seen X on Linux refered to on distrib boxes as a "Windows95 clone." Not that I have any particularly fanatical liking for Apple, though I do think their OS is superior in general to anything from Microsoft (NT 4 Workstation wins by a hair for stability but loses overall to MacOS 8.x for basic user-friendliness and general app performance), but the fact is I started working on computers the year before the Mac first appeared and I've been working recently on a book on the history of personal computing, and so I have some idea of who did what (in Microsoft's case you can add "to whom") and when, and where exactly all this nifty stuff comes from. So it angers me when people say Gnome is "just like Windows," because they are basically starting off on the wrong foot in their interpretation of what they see. Anyway it may be a subtle distinction but I think it's an important one. I've also seen the spelling Windoze thrown around in print-chatty Brit PC mags a lot.

    I do however want to add that there are numerous other terms that /.ers regularly employ which make them look childish. "Microsucks," "Winbloat," etc., etc. While this may give people a pretty clear picture of what someone's opinion of Microsoft or its products is, it's basically ill-humored and on a level with the standard copy one used to find in the pages of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine (anybody remember that beloved old rag?) or junior high-school playground blather. I understand though how pissed people can get when it's Microsoft-in-your-face every day.

  • Yeah. Kinda weird. Exactly what the hell was that all about?
  • Yeah. I think I'll submit it to webpagesthatsuck.com. Be surprised if it hasn't been already, though.
  • I just got an e-mail from Vic Flanders after I submitted jerrypournelle.com to him. He says "I'll be using this one for sure."
  • http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/sucker.html
  • Check out

    http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/sucker.html
  • Charming. I see you actually created a /. profile just for this occassion. I guess the dig about "anonymous cowardice" earlier got to you . . . .
  • What a poorly organized website!

    Agreed! At least Truth in Advertising made him call it "Chaos". It seems like he's using M$ Word 97 Save as Html to just barf out whatever's on the top of his head. Bleh!
  • He used FrontPage to pump that stuff out. yuck!
  • The animation was spectacular, but unfortunately it wasn't funny. Downhill from the opening sequence: "20th Century Sux".
  • Emunews [classicgaming.com] is carrying the announcement and mirroring the emulator. Download it here [classicgaming.com].
    'New N64 Emu Plays Commercial ROMs! A major new emulator has debuted. The world's first Nintendo 64 emulator that actually plays commercial games! Epsilon and RealityMan are the authors behind this masterpiece. Called UltraHLE, this one's for Windows 95. It requires at least PII 300 and a 3dfx graphics card
    "UltraHLE gives PC owners the first chance ever to run commercially available Nintendo 64 games (rom
    images). The current aim of UltraHLE is not to run as many games as possible, it is to run some of the best titles as well as possible (e.g. Super Mario 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time etc)."'
  • At least Pournelle has a _constructive_ attitude.
  • Damn! The n64 emulator needs a voodoo2.
  • So where do we dl the emulator? Maybe someone should help this guy port it to Linux...I would...but Im to to shabby when It comes to programmin :P Anyway I want a dl link and a link to the n64 roms!
    Natas
  • Hear Hear! Pournelle's columns have, historically, been full of mis-information and dreck. For example, in the particular column he posts this month on his site (that slams Linux, by the way) he makes the assertion that you cannot use a Palm III in an old-stlye PalmPilot dock. Funny, mine works fine. The only problem is you have to give the Palm III a light "push" (rather than just dropping it in) to make sure the little I/O door gets pushed aside. Other than that, it works fine. It sits in my old cradle, and syncs on demand.

    Fool.
  • IT is real !!!
    gee, this humble pie tastes great
    I have just been enjoying a game of mario64 :)

    it does not run (well) om a k6200 or p200
    but it is fine on a pII333

    DAMM GOOD JOB !!
  • You know guys, I've been waiting for this all my life long... A N64 emu... Now why the hell wouldn't Zelda64 work for me??
  • I remember reading Pournelle's Chaos Manor when
    he started it. He always was getting fast new
    machines from the manufacturers (who wanted him
    to write about their machines) and writing about
    all the problems he had setting them up and just
    generally getting a big hard-on about how fast they were.

    At the time I was envious because it seemed like every week somebody sent him a machine that was even faster. I quit reading byte and picked one
    up again several years later and Pournelle is still doing the same thing. He keeps getting new machines and pulling his hair out trying to get everything working the way he wants it to. I would have gotten tired of that after about one month.

    But anyway, no matter how much trouble Pournelle has with anything, I am not sure if the manufacuterers will send him new stuff to "review" unless he heaps praise upon it.

  • "My copy of xanim won't play it"

    I've seen this a couple of times from you, Rob. You probably need to recompile xanim [pubnix.com] with the extra (non-free but zero-dollar) codecs:

    This may be a problem if you're strict about only running free software, but it really improves compatibility.
  • One wonders if it would be legal just to buy the games and play them on the PC then...
    We'll see how Sony treats the VGS, and whether a raftload of Mac users add significantly to their user base.

    On the other hand, Nintendo, or any other game company for that matter, would do well by hiring these two guys quick! Heck, even without N64 emulation, these guys could now release a Glide Game Spec/API close to but not the same for N64, the way MESA is close to, but not exactly GL, and in the process, cause every person with a Voodoo card to lose countless hours in sleep and productivity =)

    Score one for the programmers here!
    -Twinkie
  • Linux on the Psion, now we are really cookin'.
    Pity the ftp server appears to be suffering a minor stroke due to the /. effect.

Slashdot Top Deals

//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH

Close