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Open source is really about complexity and not patenting 'nuts and bolts' kinds of things that everyone uses, not to mention it's there for learning and as a kind of backup plan against orwellian IP laws. Coders grow old and die and having code from them for new coders to learn from without having to reinvent everything is a godsend.

For instance everyone benefits over long periods of time when source is open. Questions can be asked, tools can be modified/updated as needed. Analysis on source-code can be done and better tools developed and in depth analysis of how to build better less buggy software. One of the reasons windows has been so bug infested over the years no doubt comes from the lack of open-code. It took decades for Microsoft windows to become as stable as it was under 2000 and XP and even then there were hiccups here and there.

Also lots of projects that are currently impossible under closed source become possible under open source. I wish more game companies would open source their games. Since games really are about the end product, locking down your engine/source-code will naturally hinder analysis of what can be better done to make games on smaller budgets with better tools.

Doom source
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_source_code

Freespace 2
http://scp.indiegames.us/

Ah yes, the Fallout model, I like it already.

Nonsense. Your Pip-Boy 3000 will automatically detect and tabulate all of that information.

Modern Warfare 2 has that one mission where a character is allowed to kill civilians but required to refrain from speaking Russian. Russia required that the game's CIS publisher cut that mission.

if our client is satisfied with quality level C, then stop improving your code once you hit that C level.

Comeback: "We have another possible client that wants B." Or "We have a competitor offering B."

(Not that B, or that /b/ either.)

If they looked our way today, they would have front-row seats to the rise of the Ottoman empire.

Front row seats? If I had front row tickets to a concert, and they seated me 600 light years away, I'd be pissed. Unless it was a Disaster Area concert. Or Justin Bieber.

If the Gadmeer and Sekkari are any indication, non-carbon-based life seems to have really bad luck. At least they were smart enough to send out seed ships. http://stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Gadmeer http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Gadmeer http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Sekkari

If the Gadmeer and Sekkari are any indication, non-carbon-based life seems to have really bad luck. At least they were smart enough to send out seed ships. http://stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Gadmeer http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Gadmeer http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Sekkari

Not the first with multiplayer support in general, but the Doom wiki credits Marathon as being the first with specific game modes (Capture the Flag and Oddball), as well as mouse-driven free-look with vertical aiming (in 1994, mice were probably not common enough in the DOS and Win3.1x platforms).

To clarify my own deathmatch comment (sigh...), the Doom wiki notes that it was the first FPS with specific multiplayer modes like Capture the Flag and Oddball.

As someone already noted, the Marathon series was made by Bungie.

By the time Bungie was bought by Microsoft, much of Halo's building blocks were done, a game originally designed for both Macs and PCs.

There's plenty of Marathon homages in the original Halo (haven't yet played 2 or 3 myself). First, look on Captain Keyes's uniform for the Marathon symbol at the game's starting adventure on the bridge. Just as you leave the captain, look on the bulletin board at the entrance: An ad there says "Colony Ship for Sale" (a reference to a Marathon game level). Cortana, the AI, is another name that parallels the name of another mystical sword, Durandal (Marathon's sassy AI). See http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Marathon_references_in_Halo for more.

Marathon was among the first (if not the first) FPS with multiplayer support (thanks to the Mac OS local networking) as well as establishing the convention of using the mouse for head-target movement. The concept of the Vidmaster (See http://marathon.bungie.org/vidmaster/ ) (using the weakest weapon at the game's highest difficulty to completion) was a Marathon first.

It was also done by the same guys that did Halo (after they got bought by Microsoft).

There are a lot of easter eggs for fans of Marathon.

I also remember reading on a forum some where were someone on someones theory that Marathon was a very early prequel to Halo and they exist in the same "Universe."

I recently got a tiny point-and-shoot camera, a Canon ELPH 300 HS, and I've been participating in CHDK's effort to hack it. When we got RAW support working, I learned the camera's lens actually has severe barrel distortion that gets "corrected" in software before saving a JPEG.

Images are "shopped" before they even emerge from the camera these days.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Order_66

But over reliance on users' input has its own problems. That's the reason we have designers and analysts in the first place.

I can't be the only one who watched the video and immediately thought of Manhacks?

The horse's mouth: http://twitter.com/#!/zh1nt0/status/137569596440973313

Your source is to those that follow him known as generally highly uninformed. This tweet was likely just a lying excuse for why they left the MP5 out of the game.

The MP5 was in Battlefield 2. If DICE and EA put an effort into licensing the equipment in its games, it would have licensed it at the time. So why would it not be in BF3? Some might speculate that perhaps the relationship between H&K and DICE/EA deteriorated. If that were true, then why is the M416 in there? How about the G3? How about the MP7?

You have to remember that many of the people that care enough about Battlefield 3 to complain about BF3 featuring this weapon or that are likely those that don't have a lot of clout in the real world -- teenagers, mostly. Matros is not going to put a lot of effort into figuring out why the MP5 wasn't included -- he likely just walked over to his PR boss and asked what a plausible excuse was and used that.

I just did a quick google on "battlefield3 equipment licenses" and turned up nothing in the first three pages, so...probably not actually licensed.

As another note, there is a little disclaimer at the bottom of the recently-released BF3 trailers (such as this one) that reads:

"The depiction of any weapon or vehicle in this game does not indicate affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by any weapon or vehicle manufacturer."

Some might suggest that statement implies that there is some contract between EA and these equipment manufacturers spelling out the terms by which DICE may use such equipment, including that there be such a license. In fact, I'm inclined to suggest that this disclaimer is intended to set up a legal shield to avoid having any relationship at all with equipment manufacturers.

You should look at CHDK and see if they come out with a version for your camera. It will probably enable raw mode, among many other features.

I'm amazed that noone has suggested this yet.

Get a Canon PowerShot. For one thing, they're great little cameras (I started out with one), but that's besides the point. We're on Slashdot here, after all.
The point is that you can make it a lot better with a firmware hack called CHDK. It is loaded into RAM from the memory card without touching your original firmware, and gives you full manual control over your camera.
In addition to getting features normally only seen on DSLRs (such as bracketing, saving in RAW, and a live histogram), you can write and run Lua and uBASIC scripts on the camera, allowing you to program it to do whatever you want (such as motion detection to trigger photo or video capture, sophisticated timelapse scripts, intervalometers, USB remote triggering, etc.). You can take exposures far longer than the factory limit (mine went from a max of 15" to 64 seconds with CHDK), or far shorter in fact, allowing you to take both very low-light or very high-speed photographs that were simply impossible with the camera as it came out of the factory.

You can even play games on the thing. It's ridiculous.

If you can really say no to all that on a simple compact, you can buy me a DSLR and I'll give you your geek card back.

Perhaps you are thinking of the Stargate SG1 episode 2010

I can second this. I've got an S95 (previous model) and love it. Full automatic to full manual mode and fits in your pocket. Has the sensor of the low-end Canon SLR's - much better than the sensor used in many point-n-shoots. The S90 was also very good, but only does standard video, not HD.

I bought it after owning a Canon S230 for 8 years. I loved that one so much (built like a tank, and got some great shots out of it) I got the S90, then upgraded to the S95 shortly after. Find one of those if you don't want to pay full price for the S100.

CHDK also works on the S90 and S95 (don't know about the S100 yet), if you want to do some advanced hacking (like writing scripts!)

Examples:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/canonpowershot_s95/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/canonpowershots100/

CHDK:
http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

The submission mentions "price versus performance", and for that reason, even though I'd like to own some SLR, I still stick with my Canon Powershot (SX100, was ranked "superzoom" when I bought it for its 10x optical zoom). And I'm still happy with it. Point-and-shoot + manual modes/settings for experienced users + CHDK firmware mod for (lots of) additional features. IMHO. if you go for CHDK support you'll definitely get a decent camera at a decent price, with the added feature that if you really get into it and need more/better/more flexible features and settings, CHDK will keep you busy for a Long, Long Time.

The submission mentions "price versus performance", and for that reason, even though I'd like to own some SLR, I still stick with my Canon Powershot (SX100, was ranked "superzoom" when I bought it for its 10x optical zoom). And I'm still happy with it. Point-and-shoot + manual modes/settings for experienced users + CHDK firmware mod for (lots of) additional features. IMHO. if you go for CHDK support you'll definitely get a decent camera at a decent price, with the added feature that if you really get into it and need more/better/more flexible features and settings, CHDK will keep you busy for a Long, Long Time.

Mm, you could be right there.

A second-hand older Ixus is cheap enough to do things like put CHDK on it and get quite a bit of that fine control.

I like this. Eye-mounted HUD, anyone? Been done though.

Sorry, dude. You mean Scourge of the Wastes. That's a lot of bad karma....

Open Arena is a small, but active community. There are always open games to play online, and some crazy mods (like Defrag to learn how to circle jump) that make it fun.

Works great in linux with old hardware as it's based off Quake III.

Open Arena is a small, but active community. There are always open games to play online, and some crazy mods (like Defrag to learn how to circle jump) that make it fun.

Works great in linux with old hardware as it's based off Quake III.

Not true. Google's business model is collecting users and selling some advertising

Google collects users? Do they encase them in lucite?

Parent funny? Maybe. But definitely insightful or informative.

I wouldn't want to get attention that is about my sex/gender. Especially not while being seen as a minority in the particular setting/context/culture and especially with the attention being of a sexual nature (whether it would be about me being fine or ugly).

I think the site geek feminism might probably have lots of great resources about being a woman on the internet and/or in geek culture. Too lazy to find a specific article about that, but from the 101, one can probably get an idea of what they're about...

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Feminism_101

"Diets high in calcium have been shown to reduce the risk of osteosaurus."

Did you perhaps mean osteoporosis?
I love the imagery though: a vengeful dinosaur attacking you because you haven't been drinking your milk!
In fact, there seems to be a critter with that name: Osteosaurus icenicus.

Wrong Rufus.
http://kimpossible.wikia.com/wiki/Rufus

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Swedish_meatballs

"Swedish meatballs, an Earth ground meat delicacy that is something of an interstellar mystery. Every spacefaring race is known to have a food identical to Swedish meatballs, be it Narn Breen or Centauri Prime's Roopo balls. Even races as diverse as the Abbai, Drazi and even the Gaim all have an equivalent dish, though the Centauri are the only ones with the audacity to claim they are the ones who invented it."

The universe is made from block transfer computations?

.

Some have exhaust ports as well!

Use the force, anonymous Air Force pilot...

Bump this up :-)

Sawfish was one of my absolute favorite window managers of all time! I fought with the gnome desktop env to get sawfish back in place on my box for years after they made the metacity switch, and only recently gave up (was just starting up a gnome-panel on login, and considering that my desktop env - no desktop icon manager thing either). Now with gnome 3 sprouting up everywhere, it's looking like LXDE, XFCE, or going back to sawfish.

If you haven't mucked with customizing sawfish (which is super easy to do via the gui), I'd suggest giving it a try. My favorite thing was being able to change the window decorations based on numerous window attribute matches - like all xterms get one style/color of border, and other stuff gets something else, etc... made it very easy to visually spot classes of apps, and allowed me to put thicker window borders on stuff I'd regularly resize (ex. gimp windows; easier to mouse grab) and minimal borders on things I don't need to muck with (ex. IM windows).

Keybindings and configurable actions were very sweet too, and could be set to specific scenarios (when mouse is over desktop, do this thing, but when mouse is over window, do something else, etc, including basing that on window classes so shortcuts could be app-specific).

Looks like it's still actively developed too. If interested: http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

I'm looking at the licensed themes and all I can see there that's inappropriate for 7-10 year olds is SpongeBob.

All I can think when thinking of non-holographic telepresence is the large slabs used by Seele in Evangelion.

It's intimidating.

This rendition?

http://images.wikia.com/iceage/images/3/39/65.jpg

All this talk about lasers, death stars, sharks...

And no one wondered if this will open up an Untempered Schism?

They did!

It's like every fucking corporation has turned into Weyland-Yutani Corp. overnight or something, complete with hordes of Carter Burke's running around leaving slime trails on everything they get close too...

I picture a declaration of war against the UN playing out like an attack on the Neutral Planet

What I don't understand is why these people are trying to break out one paradigm by imitating it - badly. Why would I trade my Eco-Drive watch (solar) which requires 0 maintenance, and my Galaxy S (next week it will be an S2) for a device that tries to imitate both and delivers less.

If you're going to replace a watch with something more smart phone like, why not replace it with something that will actually deliver more than is currently available? Something like a gauntlet, which can pack much more technology than a tiny wristwatch sized package, could deliver more than the average smartphone. If you think about it, bigger can mean a lot of things. More battery life (plenty of space for batteries), more storage (again, plenty of space), bigger screen (how big is your arm...)

You know, something like Turanga Leela wears.

So you're saying it has fat mines vs fat ranches?

Exactly. According to my people's cultural Canon:

The Fremen rule was that one's water belongs to the tribe. Thus when a Fremen died or was killed in combat, rather than being buried or cremated, he or she was rendered down into water.

E.g., will we have colonies on other planets? Other star systems? Will we have robots/AI/cyborgs? Will we have a high tech world? Low tech? Nox tech?

What we really need are some Jawas.

Yep, it was Andromeda, and the ship was the Bellerophon. One of the few sci-fi episodes (or series, for that matter) that actually addressed relativity without some sort of magic "warp drive" to get around it.