Hi

I've released a new X win version of my attempt at the 1980s arcade game QIX.
It compiles and runs on Linux, FreeBSD and OSF/1 and with Linux there is
also sound.

Its written in C++ and doesn't require any special libraries (graphics just
use Xlib and Xext and sound data is written direct to /dev/dsp) so if you're
interested you can get it here:

http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/zips/xix131.tgz

I have also written another game called Final Gun which is my own idea and
is a simple 3D game. It runs on the same platforms and it doesn't require
any special libraries either:

http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/zips/finalgun_110.tgz

Have fun.

NR

On comp.os.linux.misc, x...@xix.world <x...@xix.world> wrote:

Games aren't my thing, but I'd like to thank you for
your work on behalf of the Linux community. People like
you are the foundations of Linux.

Salute

Sid

On 11/20/2010 12:00 PM, Sidney Lambe wrote:
Damn win-troll

*plonk*

On Saturday 20 November 2010 23:09 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody

There are many reasons as to why would want to killfile Sidney Lambe -
his abrasive personality and spurious hostilities being probably the
most significant of them.

However, there is definitely one thing he is not, and that is a
Win-troll.  Furthermore, I do not see anything wrong in what he has
written here, and in fact, when I saw x...@xix.world's post - I remember
him from his earlier announcements of games which he has ported to
either UNIX/POSIX in general or GNU/Linux in particular, or which he
has written from scratch - I too felt like thanking "XIX" for his hard
work and congratulating him on his efforts, just like Sidney Lambe did.

It is always nice to, as a GNU/Linux user and advocate, "meet" the
developers, no matter what it is they develop.  These are people who
are doing their best to offer us usable software, whether it's a game,
a tool or a kernel driver for a given piece of hardware, and these
people do deserve our recognition.  These people are the foundations of
the FOSS community.

And that is what Sidney Lambe has done now.  I repeat, there are many
reasons as to why you would want to plonk him - and I myself have /had/
to killfile him as well quite a while ago - but if you're going to do
it, then at least make sure that it's for the right reason.  The quoted
comment above is not a valid reason, and neither would calling him a
Win-troll be, because I can assure you that he absolutely abhors
Windows.  That's why he also absolutely abhors anything that even in
the remotest way reminds him of Windows, such as KDE, Gnome or XFCE.

Sidney Lambe - or Alan Connor, or Evergreen, or whatever pseudonym he
wishes to use - may have personality and social issues, and someone in
one of the groups I'm subscribed to has already claimed to know him in
person, and that "Sidney" would be a crack addict, and all of that may
be true (or not), but a troll he is not.  

A "netkook" maybe, yes, but definitely not a troll.  There's a
significant difference there, and trust me, I have *loads* of
experience with Win-trolls.  As the matter of fact, there's another
troll thread being crossposted from comp.os.linux.advocacy to
comp.os.linux.setup again since yesterday or so, and although I haven't
been subscribed to comp.os.linux.advocacy for at least four years
anymore due to that group being Windroid-occupied territory, I still do
consider myself a GNU/Linux and FOSS advocate, and I have posted
several articles in said thread to dismantle the FUD.  Therefore, I
know what I'm talking about. ;-)

Just wanted to inform you of that. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On 11/20/2010 09:22 PM, Aragorn wrote:

<snip>
omp.os.linux.advocacy for at least four years

Yes I know who he is thank you...
I was perhaps being a bit ironic with my insult.

Anyway he's been in my killfile for a long time
but since he's infested one more group I was simply putting
him into one more killfile.

anyway, the OP has infact done something good

In comp.os.linux.x,  <x...@xix.world> wrote:

A nice effort, QIX was a favorite of mine. One thing I find noticably
different is that in your version, at least for me, the sparks are the
hard enemy to avoid while the QIX thing is very easy to avoid. That
seems to be because the original game was filling in a large box, so
there was a long perimeter and every build necessarily brought you
into the QIX's space. This game has you building outward from a very
small perimeter, so you can easily build somewhere the QIX isn't, but
it doesn't take long for the sparks to get to you.

FWIW sound didn't work for me under Linux, but I've never been much
for computers making noises anyway.

Elijah
------
hasn't seen a demon.co.uk URL in a long time

Eli the Bearded <*...@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

It's a rather fun game; I remember being impressed by the original, too.

I found I needed to run it under aoss, i.e. "aoss ./xix", in order to
get ALSA sound.

Chris

On Sun, 21 Nov 2010 04:10:48 +0000 (UTC)
Eli the Bearded <*...@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

Well I could pretend that I decided to make it different to the original
in that way but the truth is its been so long since I played the original
that I couldn't remember - I just had videos on youtube to go by.

Yes , also as you say it does tend to fall out of the mix that way.

Because I didn't use ALSA (I don't have the time or inclination to learn
the API to be honest) it uses /dev/dsp direct and it'll only work if nothing
else is using that device at the time which means probably any browser or
media player. If you run the game with nothing else running on your desktop
it should work.

NR

On Sun, 21 Nov 2010 17:46:06 +0000

I didn't actually know about aoss. Very useful. I'll have to put that in
the README if I do another release.

NR

I find it's a very useful utility  :-)

Regards,
Chris

In comp.os.linux.x,  <x...@xix.world> wrote:

How about putting a README here:

http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/zips/

So the casual bypasser can figure out what the other things there are?

Elijah
------
looked but did not download anything besides xix

On Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:09:51 +0000 (UTC)
Eli the Bearded <*...@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

Thats a very good idea. Unfortunately I'm a bit lazy when it comes to
documentation. Easier just to let people download the stuff and find out
for themselves ;)

Incidentaly I found a couple of minor bugs in XIX which would probably
never cause an issue but I fixed them anyway so I've put up a new version
1.3.2 in that directory.

http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/zips/xix132.tgz

B2003

On comp.os.linux.misc, boltar2...@boltar.world

Which makes you a crappy developer who won't last long.

A program without good documentation is like a car without
wheels.

This is hardly surprising, considering how lazy and irresponsible
you are.

<shrug> What does one expect from people who waste the most
incredible communications and learning tool ever on playing
cartoon video games?

Sid

In article <slrnieqerd.3s9.sidneyla...@3f8s2dcr5.net>,
Sidney Lambe  <sidneyla...@somewhere.invalid> bleated:
...

How to win friends and influence people...

s/wheels/owner's manual/

Seebs said it best.  Masterful combination of newbie-level knowledge
with wizard-level arrogance.

Oh.

The.

Irony.

--

Some of the more common characteristics of Asperger syndrome include:

* Inability to think in abstract ways (eg: puns, jokes, sarcasm, etc)
* Difficulties in empathising with others
* Problems with understanding another person's point of view
* Hampered conversational ability
* Problems with controlling feelings such as anger, depression
    and anxiety
* Adherence to routines and schedules, and stress if expected routine
    is disrupted
* Inability to manage appropriate social conduct
* Delayed understanding of sexual codes of conduct
* A narrow field of interests. For example a person with Asperger
    syndrome may focus on learning all there is to know about
    baseball statistics, politics or television shows.
* Anger and aggression when things do not happen as they want
* Sensitivity to criticism
* Eccentricity
* Behaviour varies from mildly unusual to quite aggressive
    and difficult

On 24 Nov 2010 17:47:54 +0100

You seem to be under the misguided impression that I'm straight out of
college. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried my friend. You ever stopped
to wonder how many teens or early 20 somethings would be resurrecting
obscure 1980s video games? No, didn't think so.

If you need lots of documentation to play a simple video game then
perhaps you should get an IQ test as a matter of urgency. But then if you'd
actually bothered to follow the thread - which you obviously didn't as
no doubt you were too busy wiping spittle off you face from shouting at
the pigeons - you'd know the thing being talked about was aoss, not my
game.

Irresponsible developers don't bother fixing bugs. But then you don't bother
thinking so each to their own.

Ah the irony. ;) Still, I doubt you would see it if it was on a billboard
with a big flashing arrow pointing at it.

You're a pretty pathetic troll - you really need to go to other newsgroups
where you could pick up some tips. Hopefully you won't be evicted from under
your bridge for breaking the terms of your lease just yet...

Do try a bit harder old chap.

On Thursday 25 November 2010 10:48 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody

As a FYI only, "Sidney Lambe" - also known as "Alan Connor", "Bruce
Burhans", "Evergreen" and a bunch of other pseudonyms - is the resident
netkook of most (if not all) UNIX-related newsgroups.  Most of us have
him killfiled because of his abrasive, rude and delusional personality.

Sidney is a commandline elitist, and he will rather write a couple
hundred lines of - in his case, poorly coded - shell script than to
have to use a mouse and - $DEITY forbid! - an icon on a panel.  While
it is probably far more rewarding to do it that way as the user will
then actually learn something - and that is what I advocate in my own
advice to newbies - sometimes efficiency is more important, and that
too deserves being acknowledged.

Sidney regularly expresses an idolatry regarding experienced shell users
so as to work himself into their favor and be "part of the elite",
while ironically, most of the people whose favor he seeks actually have
him killfiled.

In addition to all of the above, he also has this delusional idea that
each and every person on Usenet who does not agree with him would all
be pseudonyms of one and the same person.  He therefore also maintains
(and liberally applies) what he calls "a gagging filter", which allows
him to see who has replied to him without that he sees the message
body.  I presume it strokes his ego to learn that someone has actually
bothered to reply to him, and that he can then discard that reply from
within his ivory tower.

For convenience, he also labels every one of those people who do not
agree with him as a troll - with the often outspoken question "Why does
<insert_poster> hate me?" - and automatically killfiles all posts
coming through valid free news servers like Eternal September because
in his opinion, those would be gateways for trolls.  This is however
only a recent development, because up until a few months ago, he was
still unable to interpret the headers of the replies to his posts, from
which he would have been able to ascertain that those people were in
fact all very real and very distinct, and that they were replying from
different countries, even.

That, in a nutshell, is "Sidney Lambe" for you.  And he probably had you
fooled because he initially posted a "thank you" for the work you've
done, but as you have now seen for yourself, his friendly demeanor can
and will very rapidly flip over into hostility and verbal abuse.

You would be best off to either simply killfile him.  He may not be a
bad person - he's not a troll, because that's an entirely different
thing, and as it just so happens to be, there are a couple of
(Win-droid) troll threads going on again in certain GNU/Linux
newsgroups - but "Sidney" has severe psychological and social issues,
and I for one have already been killfiled by other regulars over my
having naively tried to talk some sense into him.  

Even if I say so myself, I'm a very patient, understanding and forgiving
man, but getting killfiled by other regulars over my - granted - naive
and futile attempts at reasoning with "Sidney" was a loud enough
wake-up call to realize that it was better to killfile him and move on.
I suggest you do the same, for your own peace of mind.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:23:47 +0100

Well, he's not the first of the type I've come across and he probably
won't be the last. They all seem to work to the same general script.

Good chance for a spot of fun then. >:o)

To be honest I actually rather enjoy prodding losers like him. The more of
a lather they get themselves into the more amusing I find it. Perhaps I
just have a sadistic streak. Its a bit like going to the zoo and chucking
peanuts covered in chilli powder to the chimps ;)

    I don't think so. There are too many discrepancies for them all to
    be the same person.

--
   Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>
   Author:
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)

On Thursday 25 November 2010 14:25 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as Chris F.A. Johnson wrote...

Well, he has already stated that he posts under the
pseudonym "Evergreen" in a newsgroup related to what he
calls "magick" - with a "k" in the end.  And he has on occasion also
used this "Evergreen" pseudonym when posting to GNU/Linux- and
UNIX-related newsgroups.

As for the pseudonym "Alan Connor", I'm pretty convinced that this too
is the same person, because of a great number of similarities in both
conviction and writing style, which cannot be explained otherwise.

With regard to the other pseudonyms, I'm not sure myself, but "Sidney"
has at one point admitted to having previously used all of them, in a
post he wrote to alt.os.linux.slackware.  This was brought to my
attention by Dan C in - I believe - alt.os.linux.mandriva, when Sidney
Lambe was being discussed there, and I have clicked the Google Groups
link to said post, and indeed, "Sidney" did said article confess to all
of those pseudonyms being him.

Now, it doesn't bother me much that he did in the past use other
pseudonyms, as long as he doesn't nymshift so as to avoid killfiles.
Everyone may over time choose to change his posting nym over valid
considerations, and I too have at one stage had to do that.  

For many years already, I have been posting as Aragorn, but during my
first year or so on Usenet, I was posting as "[BeoWulf]", and my first
two or three posts were made using my real name, and - stupidly
enough - a working e-mail address, which rewarded me with loads of
spam. ;-)

I post under this pseudonym because it is also my nickname on IRC -
which was also the case at the time when I was posting as "[BeoWulf]" -
and because of the many similarities between my own personality and
background and that of Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" character.  

And in addition to that, many different and unrelated people - among
whom my brother's three children - have also started calling
me "Aragorn" when the first LOTR movie came out due to my (to them
apparent) physical likeness to Viggo Mortensen in the LOTR movies -
he's taller than I am, though.  

I even think that my two nephews and single niece had a poster of
Aragorn in their room, and at the time I was their favorite uncle. [*]
So I think I'll just stick with this name. ;-)

[*] Things do change over time, of course, and due to the soured
    relationship between myself on the one hand and my brother and his
    spouse on the other hand, I have sadly enough more or less lost
    contact with their children, and - through backtalking from their
    parents - also their respect, I'm afraid.  But that's another
    story, of course.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

So one minute you're commending him for writing software, now you're
trashing him for not including good documentation.

He could have just kept the game on his own computer, he didn't have
to let it loose.

No, it sets things up for other people to write documentation.  They
can either do so and then contact the owner of the software, or release
the documentation separately.

I can remember disassemblying commercial software in order to fix
something or change it to what I wanted, and it wasn't even allowed
under the license agreement.  Given that, it wasn't worth the effort
to pass along what I found or changed, expecially given the methods
of distribution at the time.

With open source, it's a whole different game.

    Michael

You are a fine troll, sir. I salute you.

You attract the replys like shit the flies.

And that is a skill, a craft and an art.