The Bridge

@ArdaXi eh, if we got the word out that "hey, everybody, technology X (DNS or whatever) is compromised, and we're switching" people would catch on. If you said "hey everybody, at&t is parsing all your packets and screwing up your internet access, but, uh... they're the only ISP you can get... so... uh... live with it or don't have internet access?"

@agent86 You're... allowing monopolies?

That is bad.

Anyway, there are alternatives to mainstream ISPs.

@ArdaXi not me personally, but that's the way it is here. I think I have 2 choices in terms of ISP where I live. One's the cable monopoly, and the other's the telephone monopoly.

Which we might all want to switch to, at least in addition to the main internet, soon enough.

@ArdaXi You didn't know how bad broadband Internet is in the US?

7:03 PM

@agent86 Yeah, I meant plural you.

@Powerlord I did not.

For most people, their choices are Comcast, AT&T, and possibly 1-2 satellite companies.

@ArdaXi and if the city tries to set something up municipally, the monopolies whine and moan and get it shut down

Hrm. High time for a proper darknet.

yeah, there's also wireless (ie, mobile phone-based internet) and satellite, which have their own monopolies.

Especially with the whole SOPA/PIPA/ACTA business.

7:05 PM

The US is the global leader in Internet... monopolies.

Sounds pretty bad.

Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast own the cables and the telephone lines, so there's not much others can do.

Hell, the US government actually sold its Internet backbone pieces off in the 90s.

Here, you have a choice of like 5 major players in DSL, cable is like two or three.

But there's smaller ISPs out there too.

The US Internet backbone used to be run by the US National Science Foundation.

As was DNS, for that matter.

7:07 PM

when I lived in another city, I had a choice between 2 DSL providers. the non-telco one was awesome, I miss them :(

We need to move to a decentralized model.

they didn't do PPPoE, the latency was super awesome crazy low (like 5 msec to servers 300 miles away)

I'm jealous of the Canadians, who have TekSavvy... one of the highest rated ISPs in North America according to Broadband Reports.

here though, I contacted at&t to get DSL when I moved into my house, and even though the previous owner had it, they couldn't switch me on, even after weeks of saying "tomorrow. for real, tomorrow this time"

I use a small wireless company, but I'm sure they get theier service from AT&T.

7:09 PM

My choices in Broadband Internet are Broadstripe cable and... um... lets check AT&T's site to see whether they say they provide service to here or not. They seem to change their mind every 1-3 months.

Thing is, we have the technology available to, basically, set up our own internet, user-based, with no ISPs.

Only barrier is adoption.

Well, like @agent86 said, any attempts for a community to start its own municipal broadband network are tied up in court for years by Comcast and/or AT&T. This includes areas which those companies refuse to service.

(Well... that and latency)

@Powerlord Ah, but I'm not talking about official.

I'm talking about underground, clandestine if necessary.

@ArdaXi So, you plan on interconnecting with another network and hoping they don't notice?

@Powerlord No, I'm talking about setting up a system similar to ad-hoc Wi-Fi.

It doesn't have to have a direct connection to the real internet.

Ian Pugsley

7:14 PM

(two weeks later, @ArdaXi disappears)

@ArdaXi I have an internet in my house. :O

Ah, hehe, no. Like I said, without adoption, it won't get anywhere.

But it is definitely possible to set up a decentralized ad-hoc Wi-Fi network that spans thousands of miles.

That Arda is a Spah!

There's a region in Spain that does it, it's done in Africa.

starts agent86net Agent86net is only $19.95/mo! You can get to my computer, and my other computer, and my laptop computer* (*laptop computer only available with $5/mo Laptop Access surcharge)

7:15 PM

(Is it bad that I named my Itsy Bitsy Spyer in TF2 "Spy's Sappin' Mah Pocket!" ?)

Set something like that up worldwide, slap some encryption on it, and you can share anything with anyone, and there's no way it can ever be stopped.

You can even tunnel it over the real internet if you must to reduce latency.

@ArdaXi A world-wide ad hoc wireless network? You don't think distance would be a problem?

@Powerlord No, I don't, unless the internet actually disappears.

Also, the SourceMod devs have WTF logic something.

And even then, as long as adoption is widespread enough, it will work out.

7:17 PM

►

<rant>ThrowNativeError is for a library (called "natives" in SourceMod for whatever reason) to throw an error in the calling plugin. The first (required) argument is the error type. One of the errors literally means "Error originates from a native". And it's literally the only one that makes sense to throw here. So why is that argument even there?</rant>

Besides, you think people in China don't have something like this? They're pretty good at circumventing the firewall.

@ArdaXi From my knowledge, they use things like TOR and VPNs.

@Powerlord Well, that too, but those are also easily broken.

I'd have to ask Melissa about that... she lived in China for a while.

7:20 PM

They use stuff like Freenet.

Which is a great example of how this would work, except not (directly) over the internet.

Oh right. I was going to write this week's blog post about Tiny Barbarian. But I don't feel like it.

Basically, data is stored on every computer that accesses it, and when you want to request something, you go via people you trust to whoever has it.

That way, only your trusted friends know what kind of data you're requesting, and even then they don't know if its meant for you or if you're relaying for someone else.

Whoa, the TF2 Heavy's Large Luchadore is a Misc item? Temptation to equip mine is growing...

There's a pretty cool system to do this with Wi-Fi too. Basically, if you want to talk to someone you send out a ping to everyone you're connected to, they relay it to everyone they know, and when a message comes back, every node notes which node they had to send it to.

@Powerlord It's not just a base class for other stuff? That sounds like complaining Python has "Exception" that it could throw for everything (but it's usually subclassed)

7:38 PM

Why does this happen?

I don't really think it should be a synonym anymore, but it seems weird.

@NickT It's a command that's only supposed to be used by library commands. The standard version (ThrowError) doesn't take an error code.

7:54 PM

@Powerlord Well probably they hoped other error codes to be more... desciptive?

Reminds me of darker times when I messed around with Excel VBA, and some times the native Excel API would return the "4001: Application defined error" exception

(typically this happened like when I tried to act on merged cells in ways that weren't allowed)

still... that's a pretty large WTF.

@badp The other error codes are internal errors codes.

Things like "Heap went beyond its minimum value"

@Powerlord still beats "something wrong happened"

OK, maybe some would be useful here, like "Invalid index parameter""

@badp Well, after the error code, you give the error message.

@Powerlord okay, I imagine you can only do so much if adding new error codes requires like changing an enum or something.

you as a consumer anyway

Although, now that I think of it, I bet that error message only works with the error code that means "Error originates from a native"

You can see their examples as to how they use this function.

> return ThrowNativeError(SP_ERROR_NATIVE, "Invalid client index (%d)", client)

> return ThrowNativeError(SP_ERROR_NATIVE, "Client %d is not connected", client)

So, they don't even use the error codes that would correspond to invalid index.

8:01 PM

so uh why not have instead return ThrowNativeError(SP_CLIENT_NOT_CONNECTED, "Client %d is not connected", client)

because sourcemod is kind of a mess?

I just don't see how you can build error catching given this error throwing

that's pretty much the answer to everything when it comes to sourcemod. it's a great project, and enables a lot of other things to work that normally wouldn't, but it's not as if it all is a perfectly oiled machine

@badp It's not meant to be error catching, but rather to control how the error is logged.

@Powerlord basically, On Error Give Up.

8:03 PM

@badp Yup.

Welcome to SourceMod!

this whole project is mainly focused around making it easy to write plugins, the plugin language is Pawn, which is like C but stripped down further if you can imagine that.

I imagine it beats On Error Resume Next! (which is still kinda useful)

Then again, SourcePawn isn't an OO language.

I mean, you can do duck typing with On Error Resume Next!

@agent86 The best part is, I'm currently converting something from C++ to Pawn.

8:04 PM

it's like if you tried to write C without pointers, among other things

@Powerlord yeahhhh, good luck with that one.

I remember using it like that still when I was messing around with VB and the form had some kind of collection property with all the controls, which was pretty pointless since it basically returned Object's with little in common. I would just loop over them, set (say) the font and if a control doesn't support that? On Error Resume Next.

exception handling is Right Out.

Yeah, you just can't do it properly in VB6/VBA. Dunno about VB.net

at any rate. Later

@agent86 Well, it's written as a SourceMod Extension, it's just that people are reporting strange crashes and I'm not sure if it's being caused by memory leaks or something else.

8:21 PM

@Powerlord much of SM is kind of hacky on the whole. There's a lot of things that it does that I would consider to be "risky" in many cases. Sometimes using certain parts of it can cause problems whether it's a plugin or an extension. debugging is a real PITA.

there's a lot of places where they are looking at some flat areas in memory and kind of "guessing" what is where

and then they go poking at it, and all hell breaks loose

... sometimes

I just remember at least once a month there being a game update that caused SM to crash on startup until someone patched it, which doesn't really seem like a great way to run a game modification

@agent86 The reason it's this way is that Valve refuses to actually update their SDK or even expose these functions.

The current "official" SDK for Team Fortress 2 was released in 2007.

For reference, that's the year the game was released and isn't even the engine TF2 runs on (it runs on Source 2009 now)

I'm aware it's largely unsolvable as a problem. I think it sucks for everybody.

At least SourceMod has a GameData autoupdater these days. Most of the time, they can update the gamedata to prevent crashes... assuming it doesn't crash on server start.

yeah, I think that was added after I stopped being eGO's administrator. we'd just be down for however many hours it took for a SM dev to patch the mod after a new update rolled out.

and then it was logging into each box and grabbing the update

Ugh, the more of this I try to convert to Pawn, the more I realize that making it an C++ SourceMod Extension was the correct choice.

In the C++ code, I can clean up things when the plugin using this API calls CloseHandle on it.

Pawn has no way of doing that (since it doesn't have objects and I have to fake it)

Q: On the coming murder of meta-tagging

8:38 PM

Uh, Hi, Sorry to just barge in --

I just wanted to link this meta post :D

3

The winds of change, they are a'blowin. This week's meta-murder question is: Have we not been clear enough that meta-tags are a Bad Thing™? In her answer, Grace specifically calls out previous tag-burning parties I've held here on meta. In further discussing this with her, she said the foll...

kthxbai~! :D /waves

Hello, @Aarthi.

@RavenDreamer Heyo! :D

Howdy!

@Aarthi lazers links all the meta.gaming posts in here, I think?

@RonanForman HEEEE It's Ronan! :D

@agent86 Aww. Some chatrooms don't have that.

Figured better safe than sorry?

also some people ignore those feeds

8:46 PM

@Aarthi :) no problem

was there something in particular you wanted to discuss about it?

After about 10 minutes I can' play almost all of the first 30 seconds of SMB world 1

on guitar that is.

@agent86 nothing in particular, but since we're Killing Tags, I figured chat was the best place to pastede something like this

@Aarthi muuurderrrr

i monitor all the metas, so when stuff like this comes up I want to be sure it gets lots of visibility.

@agent86 ahahaha

Aubergine

So, I just came to complain. Tried a couple of demos on my PS3, and they were pretty lame.

8:51 PM

@Aarthi monitor ALL the metas? :(

Q: An old play station game i can't remember the name of?

Even Meta.SO?

Aubergine

Anyone else tried Asura's Wrath?

Lazers

1

so this game was pre 2004, it was a puzzle solving game with platforms where you had to kill animals and take their skins to become that animal (e'g' fox or sheep) and avoid being attacked by other animals like bears ect. each animals had their own abilities (e.g. sheep could float in strong wind...

identify-this-game

@agent86 Everything but mso :P i can't handle mso

9:06 PM

You don't have to worry about Meta participation on Gaming. ♪

@GraceNote That's a load off my mind

\o/

kthxbai~!

@Aarthi, bai :P

@Aarthi Thanks for the t-shirt!

9:29 PM

@RonanForman Thank me by sending me a picture of you wearing it. :P

►

@Aarthi I don't remember that...

this is starting to get kinky...

@agent The zebra thing or my t-shirt that causes amnesia?

@RonanForman I think you mean 'which'.

9:37 PM

@Raven You have permission to change my name to "John The Green".

@Aarthi Oh, I read that wrong. NEVER!!!

@John Can't you just do it yourself?

@Arda No, because I haven't had my current name for 30 days yet.

@agent86 It'd be kinky if it were a picture without him wearing it.

@GraceNote what's a meta

9:38 PM

@John There's ways around that though. ♫

that's that stupid cocoon from pokemon, right?

@ArdaXi well, I assumed that was the next request. or a pic of him just wearing that.

@NickT Let's not traverse that road. It may be a bit too recursive.

@NickT No, that's a metametapod.

@GraceNote Let's not traverse that road. It may be a bit too recursive.

9:45 PM

@Powerlord Let's not traverse that recursion. It may be a bit too recursive.

Whoa, c++ isn't letting me use delete this; in one of my objects.

> error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: __thiscall RedrawTimer::~RedrawTimer(void)" (??1RedrawTimer@@QAE@XZ) BuiltinVoteHandler.obj

Since I never specified a destructor, I'm not sure why it's complaining.

Or can I not use delete without a destructor? >:/

...damn it, I did, and I really didn't define it.

It just didn't complain until now.

I need to deallocate these objects, because I noticed I was allocating them with new but not deleting them (whoops).

Off-topic > migrate to stack overflow.

@RonanForman or game dev.

This is a TF2 server extension!

I've come to the conclusion that your work for the government is working on TF2.

@GraceNote Lets just say that I'm not currently assigned to doing anything in particular on this project.

I assumed I was going to be assigned a new task at today's meeting, but that got canceled.

9:55 PM

His job is to keep the average American distracted so they don't notice they're slowly being replaced with aliens.

@Powerlord is secretly gaben

he just wants to fly under the radar and not get asked when Ep3 is coming all the time

Besides it's not like he could just throw up a date and expect us to believe him.

2012/12/12

He could say "tomorrow" and that would translate to any time between tomorrow and 2017

Quick, let us fervently believe him

9:59 PM

@Powerlord I can't remember if that's before or after the predicted end of the world

the valve time modifier certainly puts it after the event though

@Arda Yeah, but I only want to make that change here, not everywhere.

@Badp That's before. The world ends on 2012/21/12

@badp Glad someone caught that. ;D

10:16 PM

@RonanForman don't forget about the metallic alternatives!

@OrigamiRobot Uranium?

Skarner is really that good in jungle? rog.clgaming.net/tier-lists/46-jungle/latest

I heard MegaUpload got shut down by the RIAA/MPAA.

@John I thought I already did?

Q: How do I unlock the additional batsuits in Batman: Arkham City Lockdown?

10:34 PM

@Powerlord more like shut down pending an investigation

Lazers

0

Batman: Arkham City Lockdown has several additional batsuits available. I've completed all the stages once, and am now going through them again. I expected to unlock one or all of the suits as I progressed, but that hasn't happened. I see that there's a Purchase button next to the suits, but as...

arkham-city-lockdown

0

Q: What combos are available in Batman: Arkham City Lockdown?

What combat combos are available in Batman: Arkham City Lockdown? The tutorial teaches you two: → ↑ → ← → ← It then urges me to discover others. To this point, I haven't found any. My usual tactics are to wait for an enemy to attack, swipe ↓ to deflect, t...

arkham-city-lockdown

Ah there we go. Thanks @Raven!

@John I think it was like that when you asked. :x

@John Don't make me think I'm crazy. You won't like it when you make me think I'm crazy.

@Ull Not when I checked.

10:37 PM

@RavenDreamer do you turn into the quizzical huh-k?

as long as your pants stay on, I'm good.

3

@Raven You volunteered to be a moderator of this site. The Crazy Ship has sailed.

@John Shut up and salute Darth Shark! >{{D:>

That's my ASCII shark.

If anyone is interested, some new Diablo 3 info was released today. rallythehorde.com/2012/01/game-preview-diablo-3-details.html

2

@RavenDreamer I prefer Shark Vader.....

He could probably use work.

10:39 PM

@Raven Salute a shark?

@John It sounds better than "stick out your arm so the shark can get some dinner".

@spugsley I don't like the art style for Diablo III.

@RavenDreamer you're one of those people...

@RavenDreamer I'm okay with it because it reminds me a lot of Dungeon Siege. I know most people didn't care for that, but I was a fan

@Raven You would... eat me?! Runs away sobbing

3

@spugsley It doesn't remind me of Dungeon Siege. It reminds me of Isometric Diablo II.

@John Only your arm.

10:41 PM

@RavenDreamer Save some blood for me will ya?

@ArdaXi You can have the legs!

...

@RavenDreamer Please wait until we all have Hallow Armor in Terraria before you eat @John

@spugsley It's kinda hard to explain. I think the artwork looks good when nothing's moving...; it looks "sprite"-y.

@RavenDreamer I see what you're saying. I just happen to like it though I can't really articulate why. But it doesn't 'feel' like Diablo.

10:44 PM

@spugsley It doesn't feel 3d. If that makes sense.

@RavenDreamer does it need to?

@RavenDreamer I might have a different opinion when I'm actually playing as opposed to watching other people play

@OrigamiRobot Not per se. But if I can't stand to look at my character for hours on end, I ain't gonna be playin' it.

@John cry for me

Your tears give me nourishment.

@RavenDreamer I guess im in the minority in that I dont care what my character looks like. I actually hate most character customization in games. I find it to be a waste of time.

10:49 PM

@OrigamiRobot I definitely think you're in the minority with that

@OrigamiRobot I see two ways to play a game. Immersive - i.e., I am the character on the screen, and Story-based - I am developing a character on the screen.

In both cases, appearance matters a lot.

I'm having a hard time comprehending why you wouldn't care. :P

@RavenDreamer I'm with you on that. Same reason why it irks me to no end when there aren't playable female characters in a game. I want to play a lady. If there is no lady, I'm not going to play it (with the exception of the Witcher)

@spugsley that's sexist.

@Wipqozn can't help it. My style of gaming is definitely immersive and I want to play a female character

which actually brings me to the one thing I didn't like about Diablo 2. Gender separation by class. It was very odd. I'm glad it's been remedied in D3

Q: How can I get Grade 1 Lost Artifact Fragments?

@spugsley So Female character or acceptable man-candy alternative? (e.g. Geralt)

@spugsley It was size / animation / time constraints, most likely. Blizzard was much smaller company back then.

oh, good lord, what is this.

nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/…

Lazers

10:55 PM

0

I can't seem to get any Lost Artifact Fragments through my Archaeology missions. I've been repeatedly doing the other missions that yield other Grade 1 materials in order to clear them out and hopefully have a mission that yields Grade 1 Artifact Fragments, with no luck. Torhead claims "Memoirs...

swtor

2

Q: What's the quickest way to wipe off the poison goo?

When fighting Joker, he will occasionally cover Batman's face with poison goo, which you then have to swipe away. If you can remove the goo in less than 5 seconds, you earn the Last Laugh achievement. What's the best technique to quickly wipe away the goo? Is there anyway you can dodge the goo...

arkham-city-lockdown

@RavenDreamer The character doesnt have to look like me to immerse me

@OrigamiRobot Good?

I defined a style of playing; don't take issue with my terminology, yo! ♪

@RavenDreamer I think with the Witcher it was more about the type of game. It was fun as hell, but not as immersive as I would have liked.

@spugsley 1 or 2?

@RavenDreamer I just think its a waste to spend time on a character's appearance when the only time you see their face is during the character creation

10:58 PM

@RavenDreamer oh god, one definitely

@OrigamiRobot Depends on the game. So much.

brb sandwich.

@RavenDreamer two was garbage. I wrote a very nasty, angry, fuck-word ridden review of it

Interesting prophetic video from 2006 - Kodak saw the future but couldn't avoid its own: http://bitly.com/xGCfxP

Tweeted by petapixel on January 19, 2012 at 10:22 PM

@spugsley gender doesnt matter to me either. I'll play as a lady character. w/e

@RavenDreamer here's the angry Witcher 2 review, if your interested: rallythehorde.com/2011/06/…

@OrigamiRobot I know. And I hate that it bothers me. I've probably missed out on some excellent games. I know I missed out on excellent classes in Diablo 2 for this reason. But, it's something I feel pretty strongly about

11:03 PM

> And, the whole nudity everywhere was a just an exciting bonus - it was a great game even before they added gratuitous boobage.

Bwahaha.

I defnitely dont want the character to look like me if the game is going to dictate any of my actions/decisions

oh man

I went heavy on offblast for lack of alternatives, walked up the hill, went through the left door with a quickfix medic

killed a couple of people then got myself killed

did this twice

@RavenDreamer Hahaha, there was no reason to deny it

third time I do it again but pop up on the right exit

I get first blood crits

I mow down the entire team basically

Good job @badp

11:06 PM

@spugsley I had a positive review of the game, perhaps because I hadn't played the witcher first.

Not enough to play it through twice though, apparently.

@RavenDreamer That's probably why. The first one was incredible. They changed a lot of things that really worked. I have such a hard time understanding why developers do that. It's become such a trend

I then took a moment to type 'wtf'

I realized what happened only when I died

bbl - gonna go make some pancakes

@RonanForman your "pun in in ten did" line is my new favourite phrase in the English language.