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3D, FPS File Manager 226

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stress-release-through-file-management dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Has your boss pissed you off and left his Samba share open to the world? Looking for something different in a file manager? Brutal File Manager may be for you. I found its Freshmeat page while I was looking for a new filemanager. I thought maybe the Slashdot crowd could appreciate it. So far only the delete function works." That's the only one you need anyway.
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3D, FPS File Manager More

3D, FPS File Manager

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  • Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sla$hd0tSux0r ( 762264 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:32PM (#8761884)
    Can you imagine a flashmob of these?

  • Boss? Samba? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:33PM (#8761886)
    Somehow, "boss" and "samba share" in the same sentence seems strange to me.

  • No! (Score:4, Funny)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <be@@@eclec...tk> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:33PM (#8761889) Homepage Journal
    Now the script kiddies and gamers will combine forces!!

    I can see it now, insted of "3y3 0wn j00"

    We will simply see "pwn'd"

    Question though, if your directory uses symlinks, would that be considered a wallhack??

  • I wonder if these kind of things will ever become more than an internet novelty?
    • Actualy, I hope they will. Maybe someone would release same feature for users. Of course, software compatible monitors required (you know, those with machine gun pointed at user)

  • Jinx (Score:5, Funny)

    by Keeper ( 56691 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:33PM (#8761892)
    Server downtime
    Date: Saturday 17th of January 2004
    We've had some problems with our server the last few days but it should be fixed now, sorry for the inconvenience it may have caused     ...that was, until your server was posted on the frontpage of slashdot...

  • Back in the day... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:35PM (#8761896)
    ...we had a port of Doom that let you kill processes. I think it was called psdoom or processdoom or something. A friend and I wanted to modify it to do a portscan and represent all visible Windows machines as enemies. Shooting one would send a brief pingflood to one. Killing it would send it the Ping-Of-Death... :) (This was back in those days...)to

  • New Tron (Score:5, Funny)

    by moresheth ( 678206 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:35PM (#8761898)

    This paves the way for us to make a MMOFPSFM.

    Defend your files from other users on the network, and break into a coworkers base and share his files....

    • Capture the Flag ! BOFH Style ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by da5idnetlimit.com ( 410908 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:19PM (#8762130) Journal
      I remember the Bofh having to play paintgun with the beancounters...

      Maybe someone should send this link to Simon Travaglia ...

      So, I wanna see a "Capture the Flag", and also the possibility to form teams between services...

      For my part, I'll stay warm and cosy playing the same team as the IT guy with ultimate fine tuning access to all corporate network speed and latency 8)

      Also, as a new virus, a Bot like Sarge, this file manager and machines fighting across the networks against each others..

      I, for one, Welcome our Beowulf Bots Division OverlordZ 8)

      Yummy 8)
      • So, I wanna see a "Capture the Flag", and also the possibility to form teams between services
        I think you're on to something... but how about a 'capture the flag' 3D FPS interface for eDonkey/eMule or whatever, where the opposing team is the RIAA!

        successfully capture the flag and you get to keep your mp3, if they capture the flag, you will never, ever be able to illegally download that mp3. That would rule!

    • Re:New Tron (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tantrum420 ( 312608 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:41PM (#8762230)
      > This paves the way for us to make a MMOFPSFM.

      I was thinking this myself. It could bring a whole new meaning to the term "cyberterrorism". It would be a whole new Counter-Strike where the Feds actually are the Feds.

      Imagine a team of 3L33T FPS players from the Cult of the Dead Cow getting together and flashmobbing CitiBank. They start spawning in a map representing CitiBank's IT infrastructure and scaling the walls looking for an open window to enter (port). Once they get into a window, they might have to pick a couple of locks (crack passwords) or defeat a virtual fingerprint scanner (Buffer Overflow) and then they'd have access to the rest of the building. Real leet0 ninja teams would have to sneak around (hide logs) via thief or hitman to avoid the security (IDS's) to locate the files they were looking for. If they set off a laser tripwire (Snortbox) the Counter-Terrorists (Secret Service) would be notified and they'd start spawning in on the maps a la "The Matrix". It'd be a huge gunfight, file fragments would be flying everywhere, and people would be dropping off-line left and right while plugged into their Nebuchadnezzar-like chairs.

      It seems that "The Neuromancer" is closer to actualization than I ever imagined.

      Televised Tournament Mode should be a hit on Fox.

      T
    • While the BOFH really did allow beancounters to play Doom for a chance to save their files, the BGFH [cexx.org] did something very similar to the original program stated in the article.

  • But what if you suck at FPS games? (Score:5, Funny)

    by skidde ( 670293 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:35PM (#8761899) Homepage
    Oh look, there's that test file I wanted to del- oops, there goes /etc/passwd....
  • ...the good 'ole Doom Process Killer. Where the processes of the computer showed up as enemies with a number above (The PID), an then you could frag (kill -9) them to eternal peace in /dev/null

    Aahhh.. Active aggression therapy.

  • Then the question is... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If it works for the FAT Filesystems and supports multiple users, then do you:

    Frag in the file system, or
    De-frag the file system.

  • Gotta be careful... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:37PM (#8761917) Homepage
    I can just imagine someone getting enraged at their computer, then going into BFM and inadvertently blowing away a whole bunch of critical system files.

    "RRRRRRRRGH - " *blam blam blam*
    "Nooooo! Not inetd.conf! I didn't mean it!!"

  • I can see it now (Score:4, Funny)

    by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:37PM (#8761919)
    # nohup rm -rf / &

    Now becomes...

    # Use the BFG in /

  • i do this, kinda (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitalsushi ( 137809 ) * <slashdot@digitalsushi.com> on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:39PM (#8761932) Journal
    I put this in my friend's rc.local:

    while `sleep 900`;do kill -9 $RANDOM;done

    Every 5 or 6 days I'll hear him screaming at the top of his lungs and going "HOW IS THIS BETTER THAN WINDOWS?!" And I just snicker at him... screw this advocacy stuff, sometimes you gotta enjoy life!

  • It's not a real "file manager" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Keeper ( 56691 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:40PM (#8761936)
    From the story: So far only the delete function works.

    Except it doesn't. When you shoot a file, it removes it from the display, but not from the drive. This was just someone's program for a school project.

    Aside from the fact that it seems very hard to navigate (ie: find what you're looking for), I would think that actually implementing this would be dangerous (whoops, I accidentally shot a file) and not very user friendly (crap, I've got to delete all of the .txt files in this directory with 800 files in it...).

  • Yeah, okay, sure.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by hot_Karls_bad_cavern ( 759797 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:42PM (#8761946) Journal
    "...Then, armed to your teeths you go through these rooms and delete files by shooting att them. ..."

    Precisely what i want some kid to be thinking whilst he's running extremely new (and possibly dangerous) software on the network looking for things to destroy with his new spear, shotgun, or sniper rifle. Just in time for Monday - horray.
    • Use it as a Darwinian test. Run it in safe mode, but don't tell him. If he uses some sense about things, then he might be OK. Otherwise, gently explain that "things aren't working out" and recommend him highly to your competition.
  • Wait, this is doom... I know this!

    Except in my version the next line in the script is

    "Look out, VelocirAAAAAIGHH!" [munch munch...]

  • Browsing Inbox (Score:5, Funny)

    by ssssmemyself ( 709098 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:43PM (#8761953) Homepage
    Aah! It's a business deal from South Africa! *BLAM* That's right spammers, bring it on!

  • psdoom is more fun! (Score:5, Informative)

    by bettlebrox ( 264668 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:45PM (#8761960) Homepage Journal
    Interesting way to manage files. But I think psdoom is much more fun:
    http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

    The original idea for psdoom was by Dennis Chao:
    http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/

    (And reported on slashdot sometime recently"
    http://slashdot.org/articles/99/10/20/1110242.sh tml ).

    I think this line from David is hilarious:

    "... after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated."

    Imagine using the BFG to shut your system down. :)
  • Any one remember the "unix" interface in Jurasic park. You know the, "Hey I know this, it unix." or whatever the girl said. Dosn't the look of this remind any one else?

  • i ran this on my mac... (Score:3, Funny)

    by kochsr ( 144988 ) * on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:47PM (#8761973) Homepage
    and it worked fine, but safe mode does not appear to work (you are supposed to be able to kill files in the game, but not actually on your hard drive.) maybe i should send them an email.
    • and it worked fine, but safe mode does not appear to work (you are supposed to be able to kill files in the game, but not actually on your hard drive.) maybe i should send them an email.

      Right after you get your e-mail client reinstalled?
  • Does anybody really think this is useful? Maybe if they could carry the 3D concept farther, for example represent processes as machines that you plug files and other machines into...

  • more ideas (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jdkane ( 588293 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:49PM (#8761992)
    What would be really fun is a deathmatch -- whoever hosts is at risk. You would have to stop the other players before they actually bring down your computer system. With something at risk I'm sure the game would be that much more exciting.

    They should try doing this with the Quake engine to have more realistic worlds.

    Is there a prompt option to confirm deletion? e.g. Do you really want to blow up this file?

    • While this would be a neat deathmath, it could be a GREAT variation on capture the flag. Each player would host her own machine and there would be one main room that linked between each player's root directories. You would go around and try to kill your opponents' machines, but you would still need to defend your own. People playing as root could get an extra weapon bonus since they are also opening up more processes to the threat of death. The winner is the last person still playing the game.

      The down

    • " You would have to stop the other players before they actually bring down your computer system. With something at risk I'm sure the game would be that much more exciting."

      I think you just gave reality TV a last-ditch idea. Interesting, but absolutely prone to abuse.

  • What if.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by popmaker ( 570147 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:53PM (#8762005)
    What would happen if you shot the game itself?

    It is a bit weird shooting a computer game, at least the computer game you are playing at the moment.

    Oh, yes, this game comes with self-centered violence

  • For those of you who prefer text mode... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zoeblade ( 600058 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @12:56PM (#8762019) Homepage

    Sounds like MUD Shell [xirium.com], only graphical.

  • "Beneath Steel Sky" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:00PM (#8762034) Journal
    Actually, I was dreaming about this kind of User Interface ever since I played the classic "Beneath Steel Sky" [gamershell.com] graphical adventure. In this game, the player enters a virtual reality system to perform certain file management functions (basically, find an encrypted file and decrypt it). The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here [mobygames.com], with sample screenshot from the VR UI [mobygames.com]. In fact, the VR Dock looks almost like a real Dock from MacOS X, introduced many years later. I wonder if Jonathan Ive played this game...

    • Re:"Beneath Steel Sky" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Deraj DeZine ( 726641 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @02:11PM (#8762418)
      I'm not sure if anyone's interested in the game, but it has been released as freeware and can be run under the ScummVM emulator on a variety of platforms. All the necessary files can be had here [sourceforge.net].

    • Re:"Beneath Steel Sky" (Score:3, Informative)

      by droleary ( 47999 )

      The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here, with sample screenshot from the VR UI.

      Most of those make it look more like Microsoft Bob than any useful sort of file manager. In general, 3D doesn't have a foundation for efficient file management. Current 2D technology involves direct manipulation, and users will not be drawn to a system that makes you run around to do

      • Here's what I said the last time [slashdot.org] this came up:

        My own preference would be a simple rooms metaphor, but files are represented as columns. The shape of the column base indicates file type (triangle for regular file, square/rectangle for char/block device, hexagonal for pipe/socket), the height indicates file size (log2), the color indicates permissions, and the texture indicates detailed file type (text, image, binary, etc.). Symlinks are partially transparent.

        The color of the room indicates permissions

        • You could tell a lot about a file in a single glance.

          No, you couldn't. You make the same mistake that everyone who struggles with 3D makes. You go for the "oooo-ah" whiz-bang factor instead of the "oh yeah" eureka factor. You need to sit down and think about what people actually do with files before you bother to work out a better way.

          My own preference would be a simple rooms metaphor, but files are represented as columns.

          Already a mistake, because you turn moving between directories into t

          • Already a mistake, because you turn moving between directories into to moving between rooms. A directory is a virtual room such that you can "teleport" between them with a simple click.

            Okay, I'd figured the north wall would have the "door" back to the parent directory (possibly more than one if you followed a symlink to get there). The east wall is textured with a 2D map of the filesystem (zoomed in a bit, most likely) showing "you are here". The south wall has "doors" to the subdirectories. The west wall

    • I just installed SuSE 9.0 yesterday and was stunned to see Beneath A Steel Sky as part of the default install.
  • Honestly I'd be weary of the player killers roaming around.

  • Oooh... (Score:2, Funny)

    by popmaker ( 570147 )
    A crazy idea but...

    This, combined with a virus detector would really bring a whole new dimension (literally) to virus protecting!

    I imagine little green disgusting creatures... and worms, there'd have to be worms, eating away your Stuff and then you'd ... you'd ... I think you can picture the rest ...
  • ...with Ruby-DOOM [rubyforge.org].

    On the other hand, generating a WAD file from a bitmap was tricky enough... ack.

  • Kids these days... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday April 04, 2004 @01:20PM (#8762135) Homepage Journal
    In the early days of computing, there've been file managers that were so badly designed they were often as dangerous the command line.

    From the Unix haters' handbook [idge.net]:

    A shining example is Sun's Open Windows File Manager, which goes out of its way to display ore dump files as cute little red bomb icons. When you double-click on the bomb, it runs a text editor on the core dump. Harmless, but not very useful. But if you intuitively drag and drop the bomb on the DBX Debugger Tool, it does exactly what you'd expect if you were a terrorist: it ties the entire system up, as the core dump (including a huge unmapped gap of zeros) is pumped through the server and into the debugger text window, which inflates to the maximum capacity of swap space, then violently explodes, dumping an even bigger core file in place of your original one, filling up the entire file system, overwhelming the file server, and taking out the File Manager with shrapnel. (This bug has since been fixed.)

    But that's not all: the File Manager puts even more power at your fingertips if you run it as root! When you drag and drop a directory onto itself, it beeps and prints "rename: invalid argument" at the bottom of the window, then instantly deletes the entire directory trwe without bothering to update the graphical directory browser.

    I wasn't around back then, but I would argue CDE is nearly as unusable :)

  • All these graphics seem too bloated. My shell [sourceforge.net] has functionality above and beyond delete. It is smaller, faster & I can slay files & directories without the boss being any the wiser.
  • They never had the chance, couldn't even move, when the hammer fell. If only the bytes could scream...
  • This could ( with proper extensions, and getting rid of the 'doom components' ) help people visualize and manage complex data structures easily..

    Extend it to network devices.. you have a really useful tool..

  • Didn't realize this until my friend mentioned it, but does the sceenshots remind anyone else of that scene from "Jurassic Park" where the little girl puts on virtual reality gear to navigate through the files and thus "hack" it, while commenting, "It's an Unix system"?
    • You're almost right. You're thinking of the scene from "Cretaceous Park" where the little girl says "I know this, this is Linux!", shortly before a wooly mammoth (a kind of sabre-toothed tiger) chases them in their Subaru.
  • Perhaps computer hardware is finally ready for a fully 3D unoptomized representation of a system. Instead of adding folders you add rooms. Data and application would be organized by the theme of the rooms, with many themes available. Anyone could add more themed rooms. Applications would have arms and legs like people, and could be shot to start them up and shot to shut them down. You could even shoot to kill, though that should require a separate gun and a confirmation prompt, and even then it just go
  • I want an OpenGL FPS usenet newsreader, with posts on billboards and reply-networks as connecting gates, and a racecar GUI. I want the same for a Web browser, precaching the links in parallel as I approach. But for now, I'd settle for a browser that just showed my following a link as the link anchor swinging open like a door, then the view swallowing my monitor as the next page zooms in through/behind it, filling my window.

    "This is a Unix system. I know this." - Lex, _Jurassic Park_ [monash.edu.au]
  • The basic idea is to represent different folders on your computer as rooms in a 3D environment. Then, armed to your teeths you go through these rooms and delete files by shooting att them.

    And let me guess... the bigger the file, the more times you have to shoot at it to kill it...

    They should allow you to kill running programs, too.

  • When you're deleting spyware... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04, 2004 @02:15PM (#8762442)
    ...do the files shot back?
  • Lex: It's a UNIX system! I know this!

  • What fun have a game if the others wont react? if they are just sitting ducks waiting for a shot?

    Of course, playing it in /sbin or /etc will have a kind of shooting back in the long run, but that would be more like pacman type game eating poisoned pills than an FPS.

    Thinking more on this, maybe a gaming interface could be good for some task like file management, but... what kind of game would be? An FPS have not the right analogies, something like Mario (i.e jump over a file to destroy it, but you can wa

  • I recall reading somewhere, several months ago, about a project at MS Research that displayed multiple workspaces in a 3D FPS way, basically like paintings hanging on the walls in a gallery. You walk around and click on a workspace, and it expands to fill the screen.

    The article said that this made it easier to keep track of things, because humans have good 3D memory, so remembering that you are working on the budget proposal on the workspace that is in the middle of the far wall in the third room on the

  • I made a 3D file manager in Java once. It was kind of cool although it never seemed to be a very usable tool. It's more of an artistic project if anything.

    Check out the screenhsots [comcast.net]

    Now why didn't I make the front page of slashdot?
  • Someone should make an email client that has an FPS interface. now THAT would be fun.
  • All your /home are belong to us?
  • from the web page had me in hysterics for a good 20 minutes straight:
    Setup & usage Before you run Bfm you should setup bfm.conf and change the settings the way you want. It is recommended to enable safe mode unless you really want to remove files and before you know how Bfm works. The shotgun for instance spreads its shots in a cone which you should be aware of.

    unedited...
  • William Gibson's brilliant novel 'Neuromancer'. Or Tron for that matter. Gibson coined the term 'Matrix' to describe his 3d-cyberspace fantasy, where you kind of plug your brain directly into the network so you can 'see' files and programs etc.

    Alot of science fiction is more visionary than you may think. For example Arthur C. Clarke, author of '2001', put the concept of the satellite in a short story in the 1940s, and now he's credited with being the first to suggest the possibility.

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