Slashdot Mirror

1. 
   2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
   Creating the Art of the Game
   Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design
   Digital Texturing & Painting
   Digital Lighting & Rendering
   

1. 
   2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
   Creating the Art of the Game
   Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design
   Digital Texturing & Painting
   Digital Lighting & Rendering
   

1. 
   2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
   Creating the Art of the Game
   Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design
   Digital Texturing & Painting
   Digital Lighting & Rendering
   

1. 
   2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
   Creating the Art of the Game
   Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design
   Digital Texturing & Painting
   Digital Lighting & Rendering
   

1. 
   2D Artwork and 3D Modeling for Game Artists
   Creating the Art of the Game
   Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design
   Digital Texturing & Painting
   Digital Lighting & Rendering
   

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FBTLZ4/qid=11 45745767/sr=1-23/ref=sr_1_23/103-6532887-6437405?_ encoding=UTF8&n=3760931&s=hpc&v=glance

Now THOSE are leak proof!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068E5HU/104-52 65533-6461558?v=glance&n=3760901 She's says their the most leek proof for her.

I'm not sure what you're saying, exactly. Certainly distributing things you copy is out of the moral question - you might well give it to somebody who would go out and buy it.

And, the argument certainly doesn't work for things you depend on. Because you absolutely would go out and buy them if you couldn't copy them. Bread, for instance. But nobody depends on one-hit-wonder songs, or that Ashton Kutcher movie from three years ago that looked so horribly stupid. Furthermore, even before the invention of a CD burner, I wouldn't go out and buy a $15 CD with 11 songs, one of which I actually liked... so if I download it and put it on some CD that I want to listen to on the way to work someday, I can't honestly justify this to myself as stealing. The law applies to me, but the moral does not.

Some real examples:
I would never go out and purchase Forest for the Trees. But that "Dream" song was mildly catchy and different. When I listen to it, once every two years, it takes me back to where I was in 1998. I wouldn't waste an iTune on it today, and I wouldn't sign up for a flat-fee service to get songs like these (I don't have iTunes or a flat-fee service, I'm just saying).

The last movie I purchased was "Crash"; obviously Internet or not, I would go out and buy it despite that it's probably pirateable. Lord of The Rings is another one; I found the special features alone to be excellent (particularly about the music score) and the whole product was worth buying; although that one I bought used.

Probably, this has a lot to do with his low opinion of games in general. Since most movies based on games are in no way based on the games they are based on. Someone just buys a game's name, makes a movie and sticks the name on it. I wonder what he thought of the movie version of Super Mario Brothers for example.

I'd like to get him and explain this to him. "You know how American International Pictures would name movies after Edgar Allen Poe stories or poems and then use an H. P. Lovecraft story (see Haunted Palace for example) or some historical horror story from England (see Conqueror Worm for example, well actually in that case they just imported the movie and slapped on the name with some edits) for the actual plot? Well that's what video game movies are like."

So... it's not okay to make a movie that is only really enjoyable if you have learned the basic story and world from playing the videogame, but it is okay to make a movie that is only enjoyable if you have learned the basic story and world from reading a comic book, watching other movies or seeing some old play?

I believe you misunderstand me.

Reading a comic book (or any other book) or seeing some play? No, that's not alright. For example: I said the general plot to Hamlet, not the exact specifics of the plot. I consider this to be one of these things that people know, even if they've never read or seen the play. I mean, I can generally say "Claudius killed the king" without someone screaming at me about spoilers. Same goes for Moby Dick, the backstory of Superman, the identity of Darth Vader -- things that have achieved enough mass in the popular mindset that even people who've never read/seen the item itself know the basics of it. If you wanted to, you could consider this a form of obliteration phenomenon.

(As for why I used Hamlet as an example: it wasn't meant as snobbishness or "high art" or anything, I was merely thinking of Fifty Works of English and American Literature We Could Do Without, which is based around the idea that some works could disappear from the face of the earth, never to be read or performed again, and it wouldn't make a difference as they are so well known to the general public. At least, I think that's the book I want; I haven't had a copy of it in a while and am not certain on the title anymore.)

Watching another movie? Only if it's part of a series. For example: someone who jumped in to The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the King, or something like that and then complained that they didn't understand what was going on? They have no right to complain.

Video games in general may have reached a high level of awareness in popular culture, but it's arguable whether individual video games have achieved that same level of awareness. For example, I can refer to the XBox and expect people to understand what I mean. However, to refer to even a general plot point of, say, Halo, and expect the general public to understand it is a different matter, as outside of gamer culture the game hasn't quite acheived the same degree of penetration into the awareness of the general public.

Does that make any sense?

Amazon Linky Apparently, it's coming out on DVD in June! Put it in your queue!

The Quiet Earth DVD
Amazon says: "This title will be released on June 13, 2006. "
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZ908Y/qid=11 45646188/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4912561-5467248?s=d vd&v=glance&n=130

Rather than trying to have every website in the world say "WARNING: PR0N!" -- which would likely lead to massive censorship of content, Lessig proposed that the agent making the request submit what it didn't want to receive at the time of the request. Or in technical terms, send an http header like:

X-Content-Filter: no-pron;

Status: 441 Filtered

In typical Bush administration fashion, this Gonzales proposal is ass-backwards. The proposal has this fantasy land idea that somehow every site on the web is going to comply and open itself up to mass censorship by announcing they have porn. It also wants to throw in the tough guy approach of threatening jail time -- for exercising free speech, no less!

The Lessig proposal, like most of his ideas, is a practical, workable, real-world solution. The client proposes what s/he does and doesn't want to see, and the server makes the decision. Even though the whole system is voluntary -- I can see many porn sites complying with this idea because it (a) allows them to say they are helping filter content from children and (b) gives them control over the process.

"Look away, nothing to see here."

Funny. I feel the same way about your post. It contributes nothing towards the discussion, neither pro nor con. Basically it's "I don't like it, and you shouldn't too".

Here's my contributionto the discussion. I recommend you read the latter chapters were he gives a hypothetical example of how future software development could be. And "collaboration" plays an important role.

Okay

Character creation is the most important part of the game for me, I don't know why people do not understand this.

A slightly different take on the issue, but if this topic grabs you, I'd recommend:

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375727019/

A provocative book. Make sure you read it all the way through to the epilogue.

One of the books I had as a kid was Dougal Dixon's illustrated book Man After Man. It focused around an ecosystem composed entirely of genetically engineered humans who evolved in response to environmental pressures. Unfortunately, it's not in print anymore.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 EFXG1G/sr=8-2/qid=1145548065/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-0162 339-5039018?_encoding=UTF8&v=glance ...and in the UK...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007SV72 A/qid=1145547963/sr=8-2/ref=pd_ka_2/026-7513276-18 86055

It would have been even more nice if they could've made a simuation where they illustrate how the light is bent around the merging black holes, by showing how the position of stars behind would have shifted, perhaps including a possibly exeggerated view of the red/blueshift to demonstrate the spacial anomaly. The waves we see in the simulations are not real eg. we talk about a change in the curvature of space here, which is one dimenstion above what we can really can imagine. So ordinary waves will not truly demonstrate the shifting of the curvature of space, other than as an analogy. Anyway, the space 'brane' we exist in, is very 'stiff' that is - the curving and bending is extremely small, not like what you could imagine from any 'Star Trek'-episode, so regarding to this, our Universe is very "boring" with most probably no wormholes, or timeloops and so on. This would demand a more 'elastic' brane, however it is not clear wether life could excist in such an Universe. A less stiff brane would possibly have meant a much lower speed of light, though much easier warp travel, but these will remain wild speculation inspired by the 'Wheel Chair' guy...

Amazon (!) has a "simple storage service".
http://aws.amazon.com/s3

Reminds me of Ulnar Blutman's Moving and Transport, which became Tambu.

Someone want to send her a copy of this CD?

Here's an idea that struck me and I wanted to see what you all thought. Reading these series of books. I thought that they could be translated into a true 3D form via the Unreal engine for education purposes (complete with narration). Note that my idea works not with just the aformentioned books, but any subject matter that would be helped by visualization. So what do you all think?

Here's an idea that struck me and I wanted to see what you all thought. Reading these series of books. I thought that they could be translated into a true 3D form via the Unreal engine for education purposes (complete with narration). Note that my idea works not with just the aformentioned books, but any subject matter that would be helped by visualization. So what do you all think?

After seeing this book, Beginning Ubuntu Linux featured on /. a few weeks ago, I ordered it and read through it and it sounds like what you're looking for: it gives a pretty good overview of Ubuntu from a Windows user POV. It even makes comparisons between different common and "critical" Windows apps and their Linux counterparts. Having used Ubuntu for a few months prior to getting this book and playing around with it, I was still able to learn a few neat tricks with this. For someone that's just starting out from scratch with Ubuntu, I think this book is a pretty good resource.

something like..this ??
haven't read it, I moved to linux on FM's alone :P

ah, but the thing is, the discomfort's there from the moment I sit down. It started 7.5 years ago, in my first semester at college. I learned to ignore it, and while it does get worse if I don't take a break, the difference between taking a break and not is nearly imperceptible. Your suggestions might have done something for me then, but based on what I've learned since I started with the Osteopathic treatment program, what I've been through these last few years was inevitable.

But I'm getting better now. The difference between tonight & 4.5 years ago (when I was still in College) is amazing. Before I was miserable after 30 minutes, now it takes 6 hours to really screw me up. Which is why I pimp Osteopathic care every chance I get.

It seems like your fiance would benefit from a consult with a capable Cranial Osteopath, or "biodynamic" cranio-sacral therapist. At least pick up a copy of Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing and read chapter 2. :)

I was wondering if it's time to trade Jython--which seems to be falling further behind the Python release cycle...

Who cares if Jython is a little behind CPython if it already has all the features you need at this point? When I do work with CPython, I work from a relatively old edition of O'Reilly's Python in a Nutshell as reference, and find that the language at version 2.0 already does everything I need it to. While features added at 2.2 and 2.4 are undoubtedly useful for certain audiences, the language itself was complete for most purposes some time ago, and Jython should serve most people fine.

It would be similar to the Game Boy Player that sits underneath the GameCube to use the bottom connector. The hard part would be the touch screen and PDA functionality. You might have two virtual screens on the TV and a touch screen pad that connects to the player device to interact with.

Part of this system will be eye-instruments similar to the ones used in A Clockwork Orange that keep the lids of your eyes fully open and staring directly into the screen.

If I recall correctly, all of those devices to keep young Alex strapped down were part of Kubrick's film version of A Clockwork Orange , but not part of Burgess' original novel, vastly superior to the film.

Part of this system will be eye-instruments similar to the ones used in A Clockwork Orange that keep the lids of your eyes fully open and staring directly into the screen.

If I recall correctly, all of those devices to keep young Alex strapped down were part of Kubrick's film version of A Clockwork Orange , but not part of Burgess' original novel, vastly superior to the film.

It's sad, but this focus on "OpenStep with a bit of Cocoa, and maybe some of our own stuff if it's better" is why nobody uses GNUStep. If their mission was "100% compatibility with Cocoa" instead, then it would be a lot more popular.

Compatibility with Cocoa is important, and the project has been pretty good with adding new Cocoa functions when there's developer demand, but it's hard to keep up with a moving target.

In any event, Cocoa and GNUstep are so close to each other for the average Free Software developer that there's little real problem with interoperability. You can even use the same docs. When I was first starting out with Cocoa, I used O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa with Objective C book, and when I wrote my "Charmap" character map application with GNUstep, my reference was O'Reilly's Cocoa in a Nutshell . There are some differences in the way developers access the APIs, but the APIs themselves are still very much in sync.

It's sad, but this focus on "OpenStep with a bit of Cocoa, and maybe some of our own stuff if it's better" is why nobody uses GNUStep. If their mission was "100% compatibility with Cocoa" instead, then it would be a lot more popular.

Compatibility with Cocoa is important, and the project has been pretty good with adding new Cocoa functions when there's developer demand, but it's hard to keep up with a moving target.

In any event, Cocoa and GNUstep are so close to each other for the average Free Software developer that there's little real problem with interoperability. You can even use the same docs. When I was first starting out with Cocoa, I used O'Reilly's Learning Cocoa with Objective C book, and when I wrote my "Charmap" character map application with GNUstep, my reference was O'Reilly's Cocoa in a Nutshell . There are some differences in the way developers access the APIs, but the APIs themselves are still very much in sync.

This is why researchers from Germany and Sweden have developed a new VR environment where the participants believe they're moving while being seated. This approach, which relies on visual and auditory illusions, could lead to commercial low-cost VR simulators in the near future.

Unless this approach can cause that odd sensation in one's stomach that one feels while falling, then one can't really claim that one feels full movement. What I especially admire about Stephenson's description of the Metaverse in his novel Snow Crash is that it's got a futuristic way of logging on--a beam of light focused right on the eye makes the user feel that he's immersed in a different world--but at the same time recognises that the experience is still very much virtual due to limitations of sensation.

I found this book helpful: Linux Desktop Pocket Guide
It covers Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Gentoo, SuSe, and Madriva. It should have enough information to get what you need done.

Have you tried searching the Ubuntu forums?

1) The term rootkit stems from the fact that the concept comes from a UNIX environment
2) Most "rootkits" today target M$ proprietary products
3) Rootkits have always been "Open Source", unless you count ...
4) The biggest rootkit vendor is Sony, who works closely with M$

>>But the thing is, it does not matter what the cause is. If the cycle continues it will
>>certainly, without a doubt, lead to the death of us as a civilization, whether we were
>> the cause or not.

Wait... when a cycle continues, doesn't that mean we end up back where we started? =)

I highly doubt it will lead to the death of us as a civilization. Human beings are quite adaptable creatures. A rise of 1 degree celcius and a 1M rise of sea levels by 2100 won't collapse civilization. It will cause problems. But humans are good at solving problems. Venice and Denmark have dealt with sinking buildings and high ocean levels.

Things that could collapse civilization and lead to untold misery and suffering include such things as banning all non-renewable energy production. We should just invest in fusion research (essentially unlimited energy) and then keep using non-renewable energy (oil and uranium) in the meantime until science brings fusion online.

What I have the most issue with are not the scientific debates, but how people frame the data. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Warming_ Predictions_Map.jpg

Presents the results of a common climate prediction model. This I have no issue with. What I have an issue with is the color choice: the yellows and reds imply that the earth will be a giant sahara-style desert within 100 years.

I recommend everyone read "How to Lie With Statistics":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393310728/104-62 62100-2753503?v=glance&n=283155

As it helps you spot bad science, or bad presentations of science.

If anyone wants a good read about the environmental movement, check out Paul Driessen's Eco-Imperialism . It changed my mind. He lays out how environmental movements are holding back development in the third world (keeping poor people's living standards low) with their misguided policies.

I'm collecting engines and of course it depends on what kind of games you're interested in.

Farcry, Doom 3,* UT2K4,* Earth 2160. All come with editors. F.E.A.R uses the Jupiter engine (a later version of the one in Tron 2.0) but I can't say if it comes with an editor. Even the Sims or SimCity are moddable and have editors. And yes I believe Halo has as well. Others will chime in with their favourite genre. e.g. C&C for example.

*Derivatives have a related editor. e.g. Tribe: Vengance uses the TribeEd editor.

"Which ones do you develop for any why?"

All of them, but then I do serious games as well as regular ones.

But we'll kill a finished Sam & Max game in a second! They would do better to stop just releasing Star Wars games and little else if they want to change that perception. It's too bad most of their adventure gaming people have moved on to places like Telltale.

I agree. I'm very bitter at them for canceling the sequel to Full Throttle , one of the most original and badass computer games I've ever played.

You can get an overview of the general principles here. This books is pretty old but it's still good and in some ways it's better than modern texts because it doesn't take anything for granted. This is a good modern popular account of the kinds of processes involved. By time you've read all three of these you should be in a pretty good position to think about how feet might develop. None of this tells you anything about how feet actually did develop - it just removes roadblocks that make such development seem impossible. If you actually want to find out more about how feet develop a good starting point might be here though I haven't read that.

Most of the nabbed wrongdoers have been victims of their own hubris, like the two boys who uploaded video of themselves firebombing an abandoned airplane hangar earlier this month.

Seems like MySpace will not only help cops, but give fodder to Jay Leno's idiot criminals skit or people producing books like The World's Dumbest Criminals .

Really? You should check out Myths of Free Trade . It's actually very good, and has a nice big section under Myth 4 or 5 talking about how the Chinese government lobbies Congress via former US officials who now make money working for China...

Whether your libertarian or liberal, you should check this book out. It's by Sherrod Brown, a US Congressman.

Kudos, you wrote the most useful, relevant, important post in this whole thread.

Related to that, everyone, and I mean everyone - liberal & conservative alike (including libertarians ;) ...should read Myths of Free Trade and learn something real about our relationship with China and the rest of the world.

...was compliments of Tantek Çelik, standards evangelist, and main designer of the Tasman rendering engine which drove IE for Mac. In digging for his history with the project, I note a few things:

• Daring Fireball's archived recap of the history of IE for Mac leading up to its cancellation,
• A blog entry describing how after Tantek was finished with IE for Mac, Microsoft moved him over to ...WebTV (?!),
• An entry on the IE Blog where it looks like Microsoft is advertising for various open positions, and many people are responding with mixed emotions.

As for TFA... gah. Don't get me started on TFA. It doesn't mention IE for Mac at all (perhaps the Publications Coordinator who wrote TFA never heard of it?) and makes some innocent and half-assed assumptions about Web Standards—mostly their lack of existence.

And the marginalization of other browsers? Her argument basically runs that other browsers don't stand a chance against IE's installed base, while conveniently overlooking the fact that IE itself was once an "other" browser and citing ways that IE got the leg-up on Netscape without ever noting that those other browsers are doing the same things to IE. The argument basically runs "Yes, things changed in the past, but things will remain as they are now because they're the way they are now." Buh?

• Ahem?
• I said, "ahem?" (look at this page in IE, then in Firefox.)
• I said "AHEM," damnit! (note what computer the man in the hammock is using.)

I knew that it would only be a few minutes before the appearance of a Flying Spaghetti Monster joke. But I fear that now that there's a mass-market book on the FSM, the humour will soon seem passé to the Slashdot crowd, used to more obscure and nerdy chuckles.

Well, if you ask the publishers/authors of The Linux+ Guide to Linux Certification (Second Edition), you should be running EVERYTHING as root. Doing ls? Root. Writing a little shell script that prints "HELLO WORLD" on the terminal? Root. Using X? Root. Surfing the web? Root.

Seriously, the authors of this book need to be shot. And so does CompTIA for endorsing it, but CompTIA sucks at everything anyway.

Jonathan Brewster: Tonight, we are taking care of Mortimer. And just for him we'll have something special. I plan on using the Melbourne method.

Dr. Einstein: Not the Melbourne Method!! Please!! Chonny--no--not dat. Two hours! And ven it was all over, vat? Da fellow in London vas chust as dead as da fellow in Melbourne.

---- Raymond Massey, Peter Lorrey, Arsenic and Old Lace

Yeah, well, the guy in Hitman is more like Don Corleone. In the game I played, he was living the life of a pauper in a Catholic monastary until the bad guys kidnap his friend, a priest. It's a "just when I though I was out, they pull me back in." kind of moment... (see desc) Besides, he's a member of some fictional crime organization (think S.P.E.C.T.R.E), rather than one of the 5 families or other Mafia's that exist in the real world.

Oh, and as to the type of killing, more like that movie Layer Cake (yes, I know its by Sony... too bad about the kitten). Very cold blooded and to the point. Or the scene in, Godfather II(?), where Corleone, in the old days, kills that one mob boss while the fireworks go off...

Apple is pretty unique in that they don't have to pay, but you'll notice that rarely is the Apple logo shown on TV shows that place Apple products. Apple knows that their industrial design is enough to get them placed in shows that want to show progressive, forward-thinking office environments or creative, flip characters.

In the first season of Seinfeld Jerry's apartment had a Macintosh SE in the corner. If I recall, it was later upgraded to a Mac TV. Too far away to notice a logo, but everyone knew Jerry was a Mac guy 'cause only Apple made something as peculiar as the Mac Plus/Mac SE case.