Comment Re:And no patents (Score 1) 725
Pipelining was invented by Douglas McIlroy, not Dennis Ritchie. But that, of course, doesn't lessen Dennis' status one bit.
Comment Re:Meh... (Score 1) 210
Many moons ago I was playing an old game called Midwinter. One of the ways to win the game was to blow up the building where the commander of the invading army was staying.
The game involved warning NPC's about the invasion and also recruiting them to help. But some of them didn't get along and could only be recruited by specific characters. You could play from the viewpoint of any recruit, and you had to worry about supplies, routes of attack, and other various strategic bits. I imagine playing the game as intended would take a long time to win.
I fired up the game, simply ignored the invaders completely, skied all the way to said building and blew it up with the initial character. Total time, 15 minutes.
I wished I hadn't done that. It ruined the game for me since I then didn't want to play it The Proper Way, with all the recruiting and grand strategy.
Comment Re:Comes down to promotion I think. (Score 1) 125
Space Pirates and Zombies is on Steam, unlocking on August 15th.
Comment Re:The "switch" key (Score 1) 129
It's available on gog.com for $5.99.
Comment Ignore the Curmudgeons (Score 1) 140
Congratulations on your achievement, and may there be more in your future.
Comment Re:Capt. Obvious reports. (Score 1) 262
Won't it make them think "stay off his lawn"?
Comment Re:No Surprise There (Score 1) 464
-1 is the only way to browse. Otherwise you let modders with axes decide what you get to read.
The line between insightful and flamebait is often blurry. Why let someone else draw the line for you?
you == generic && != The_Moof
Comment Re:Why remake just FPS titles? (Score 1) 518
I'm reprogramming Below the Root from the ground up to run on modern computers. It's an as-is clone: same graphics, same sound, using the Commodore 64 version as my baseline. I've extracted all the sound and music, most of the graphic blocks, and I've re-created the sprite sheets. It's taken me longer than I'd have liked, but I'll get there (my sig strikes home).
The author of the books gave me license to clone the game. Years ago someone bought the rights to make a movie and possible new game, so the author couldn't give me permission to redo the game with new graphics and sound. Alas, whoever bought the rights has apparently done nothing, or at least not that the author knows of.
Comment Re:Poor metropolitan area (Score 1) 168
I grew up in Prince George's county Maryland and now live in Kent county Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. The entire county has less that 20,000 people (the smallest population in the state) and it's almost all farmland and waterways. Yet Kent County had its roads cleared very quickly after the big snow this year and our power went out for maybe 2 hours. Kent county has the most efficient emergency crews I've ever seen and I'm willing to bet they only have a fraction of Montgomery County's budget.
Comment Re:Hmmm (Score 5, Informative) 641
It's derived from the same place we get the word nigger.
The two words are not derived from the same place.
Definition and history of "niggardly". Possibly Scandinavian origin, 14th century.
Definition and history of "nigger". French and Spanish origin, 17th century.
Comment Re:Writing For Video Games (Score 1) 85
Quirkz, I think a thoughtful, moving story could be created off of the roadmap you've provided. A skilled writer could make the "worry about the peace" absolutely gripping.
And perhaps the "ugly damsel" is the most beautiful woman in the world to the main character...Niafer from "Figures of Earth" by James Branch Cabell springs to mind.
Comment Wishful (Score 1) 324
There are many folks on here saying a variation of "Don't Do It".
- If you really want to be a game developer, you'll ignore their advice.
- If you listen to their advice, then you didn't really want to be a game developer.
Walking away from a creative passion because someone tells you that you should is a fairly good sign that it wasn't really a passion.
Obama Looking At Open Source? 306
An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.'
The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."
Details Emerge On the 2006 Hacking of Congress 77
The National Journal just published an article with details about the hacking of Congress in 2006, possibly by agents in China, though the attack's origin is uncertain. The article notes the difficult work of the House Information Systems Security Office, which must set security policies and then try to enforce them on a population of the equivalent of C-level executives. The few members who have called attention to the issue of Congressional cyber-security have been advised to shut up about it, by whom the reporter did not discover. "Armed with this information about how the virus worked, the security officers scanned the House network again. This time, they found more machines that seemed to match the profile — they, too, were infected. Investigators found at least one infected computer in a member's district office, indicating that the virus had traveled through the House network and may have breached machines far away from Washington. Eventually, the security office determined that eight members' offices were affected; in most of the offices, the virus had invaded only one machine, but in some offices, it hit multiple computers. It also struck seven committee offices, including Commerce; Transportation and Infrastructure; Homeland Security; and Ways and Means; plus the Commission on China, which monitors human rights and laws in China."
Pandora Trying Out Invasive Commercial Breaks 244
Nathan Halverson writes "The popular online radio service Pandora.com has added brief commercial interruptions to its service. Pandora says this is a trial and is targeted to a subset of listeners at this point. In one case, a brief ad for the Fox TV show 'Lie To Me' interrupted the music stream for about 15 seconds after ten songs had initially played, and the same commercial interrupted 22 songs later. 'But [Pandora's] founder promised the site will never carry as many audio ads as broadcast radio, despite the fact it pays substantially higher royalty fees to the recording industry.'"
