Free Love

Fellow Slashdot Author and geek Emmett Plant stopped by the Geek Compound and therefore warranted another episode. We talk about Red Hat teaming with Real Networks, the new offerings from Palm Computing, and more.

Geeks

[MoiTominator]

I think Geeks in Space could develop into an incredible platform for geek/tech news if further refined and recorded a little more regularly. The staff definately has chemistry on the air and is entertaining and informative to boot.

You guys should try ABIT!

[handorf]

They ROCK. Nice, stable Mobos (IMHO) and rocking advancements. They're the only boards I've bought since my P75.

Nothing like changing processor voltage from the BIOS.

And the BP6 ROCKS! Nothing like ATA-66 and Dual Celerons.

*sucker*

[BrightSun]

you can almost sprechen sie deutsch too.

return = zurückgehen not returnen
Sie is feminine not masculine
Schweinhund = pig dog not SWEINHUND
communism iscommunism not Kommunism
government is Regierung
fuck is fich

ok this is getting boring.
your grammar sucks and you dont know german very well and get it confused with russia

if you are going to insult these good gentlemen at least do yourself a favor and either
a) do your homework
b) pick a language you know

you make yourself look stupid

PalmV wireless

[paulm]

I am listening to the show right now and someone
was saying they wish they could get palmV wireless
inet access (me too). There is this thing called
omnisky [omnisky.com].
I haven't tried it, but it's there.

Re:You guys should try ABIT!

[Topman]

Could not agree more, BP6 and U2W SCSI rocks more!

Seriously, I have nothing but praise for Abit boards.

What was the name of that laptop company?

[JJC]

Couldn't quite hear what it was called. Thanks.

Tuxtops?

[prodeje]

wwww.tuxtops.com

Re:You guys should try ABIT!

[handorf]

True, but unf. I'm on a budget! Still gotta eat. :-) One of these days, though, I hope to settle down with a nice little hardware RAID-5 array all my own... :-)

No, for the moment at least ATA-66 will be fine for me.

3D Arkanoid?

[David Gould]

With all that talk about Arkanoid toward the end there, I have to ask: has anyone else seen a 3D version? I got a crippled (limited to first four levels) version of a Mac game called (I think) "Diamonds 3D" in the shareware bundle that came on a hard drive I bought a while ago. It's basically an expansion of the Arkanoid concept to three dimensions, and it's good enough that I'll probably buy the full version if I ever get around to it.

The three-dimensionalization is done in basically the same way as the various 3D Tetrises that I've seen (3Tris, Block-Out, etc.): you are looking straight down (or forward, or up, if you prefer, but "Remember, the enemy gate is always down.") into a rectangular space, with bricks in various formations that you need to break by hitting them with the ball. At the top is your (conveniently transparent) paddle, which tracks your mouse. You drop the ball down, it bounces around, hits bricks, and comes back up at you, and you need to hit it. The ball's speed and angle are controlled by how fast the paddle is moving when you hit it, and if you were moving too fast, it becomes a blur that you have no hope of catching the next time. When you miss it, it escapes with a sort of neat broken-glass effect, apparently meant to indicate that it shot through your screen. There are various special things, e.g, special diamond bricks that can only be broken after all the normal ones are gone, and different color bricks that can only be broken after you've hit a switch to turn your ball the same color.

By the way, wasn't it a bit weird to describe Arkanoid (as if anyone worthy of reading Slashdot, let alone listening to GiS, would not remember it) with "It's like 'Breakout'."? I remember Breakout as one of the audio-tape-loaded games on the 16K Commodore Pet that used those weird PETSCII [tuxedo.org] graphics and had no physics whatsoever, so the ball would only move at 45-degree angles and could only hit odd- or even-numbered bricks on the respective parity lives. It just seems that that is a bit more obscure than Arkanoid, and therefore doesn't help much as an explanation. Or is "Breakout" also the name of some more recent and/or popular game that I should know of?


David Gould

Breakout

[Haplo]

Well, if I remember right, there was a version of breakout on the Atari in the mid-eighties. Probably the version most people think of when they say breakout (its what I think of). Also, it could be that "Breakout" has become the generic name for a whole class of games, like coke for colas, xerox for copies, etc....

GIS On A Rio 500 - Damn Cool

[Omicron]

I had to take a walk across campus to help someone out on some ASP code they were writing, and I had to leave while I was listening to Geeks In Space. I was kinda ticked because I wanted to keep listening. I completely forgot about my new rio player...i quicked dumped the mp3 on the rio, and talk about cool. I was just kinda amazed I guess, to actually listen to GIS somewhere besides my computer. This thing is so cool, and so is geeks in space. Keep up the good work!