As I learned in this discussion, apparently it's cheaper to do a game with 3d models than to actually do it in 2d with decent animation and artwork (at least for a graphic adventure.. but I guess It'd be the same for a platform game).
A Shame, really. When Street Fighter 3 came out I was really happy to see it wasn't some 3d-shit like virtua fighter (which I dislike.. a lot), and the animations clearly take advantage of the updated hardware.
Private education would permit the poor the send their kids to much better schools
I've been re-reading that for about 10 minutes and I still can't figure out if you come from another planet or you just have a very weird sense of humour.
Usually these kind of devices only take 2 fingers's images (both indexes), analyze the image and only keep the position and relation of the minutiae in a vector-ish format, which can't be used to reproduce the original print and can't be used to compare to latent prints lifted from a crime scene. It is only used to identify or authenticate a person's identity. Here they use them in a different way. Each week or so, a list of wanted criminals (that is, with a search order released by a judge), is updated, and the prints of those persons is loaded into the mobile devices (they can hold up to about 50k print typically). The police then uses the devices on the road, as an additional check when they stop someone. They ask the person to place their finger over the reader, the device scans the image, translates the minutiae and compares them against those in the database. If there's a hit, it means there's a 99,98% chance the person is on the wanted list, and the police take the person in custody to perform a more exhaustive identification process at the local police station. It may not be perfect, but it's better than police officers pointing fingers at citizens authoritatively, and taking them for identification just because they 'look suspicious' (yes, that used to happen here)
Lots of scary games, but I particularly remember playing Alone in the Dark, well... in the dark, and the music and ambiance was excellent despite the old graphics. More recently, doom3 is scary in a different, monster-suddenly-jumps-out-of-the-shadows-when-you -least-expect-it kinda way.
Alien vs. predator also comes to mind.. when the motion sensor starts beeping faster and faster and you can't see a thing and before you know some aliens are kickin' the hell out of you.. just like in the movies (first two I mean.. the good ones).
Well, to someone not familiar with the concept, it could look like it's set of general guidelines for lawmakers, that could be bent or changed by new laws as time passes and society changes. Sadly, that is what one of our former presidents thought, apparently (or something in that vein), as he changed the constitution to allow his reelection.
He got away with it, so it seems that a constitution's purpose is not always so obvious =P
Just as laws can't contradict the constitution (I'm talking about how it works here in Argentina, and I believe also in the US), contracts can't be upheld over contradicting laws. That is, theoretically, if you put something on a contract that goes against a law (like say, we sign a contract according to which you become my slave), the contract can't be enforced and may be declared void in court (as it contradicts the law declaring slavery illegal).
Since this involves UK and maybe other laws, it'd be nice if someone who knows about that could explain how it goes? (preferably a lawyer:))
or maybe I can finally go around carrying tons of cash (if I had any), a saint-bernard, 3 drinks, a fishing pole, a monkey, a shovel, and loads of pirate-wannabe stuff? excellent!
Well I know this is not the ideal solution to the problem, but in the case of the tun drivers for openvpn, maybe a company with interests in open-source software who already is a PIC (example: IBM) could compile the latest version and sign it. As I said, it's far from ideal, but it'd be a way to keep the driver working in windows in the worst case scenario.
I didn't read the article, but It wasn't such a brilliant idea anyway.. If I could think of it 2 seconds after reading a summary on/. I guess it's normal that Sharp engineers would have come up with it long time ago before the thing was even implemented =P
Depending on the relative price of the thing, you could also use it to have 3 monitors by placing 2 mirrors instead of actually buying 3 monitors. Assuming one of these could be cheaper than 3 normal monitors, you place it in front of you, then place an attacheable mirror at each side, and bang! 3-head fraging!!;)
Then again, if you buy them, it'll get noticed, publicized, and game companies will make more games for it, thus helping sony make a profit. If you DON'T buy it, sony would have sold the first console to stores, but as these see the units gathering dust, and not selling, they're not likely to buy any more ( at least until they sell those ), and maybe game publishers will take notice too of how poor the unit is selling... So I think NOT buying one is actually better if you want to hurt sony.
what.. you seriously thought FTAs were about trade and import barriers? They've been trying this on south america for decades. Some countries have aligned themselves with the US (chile, mexico), others refuse to accept such kind of conditions though I don't know for how long they'll be able to resist. International and Internal pressure from investment groups and the like on the governments is huge.
Forgot to mention, 'white votes' are different to void votes in that 'white' are just a piece of blank paper, or no paper at all, while void votes are invalid votes (more ballots than allowed in the envelope, an invalid ballot you brought in, etc). The difference is that 'white votes' are used to express discomformity with ALL parties represented, while void votes may be due to mistakes. After election results, the press tends to show clearly the percentage of white votes, to show the level of (dis)comformity with the election process and the candidates in general. If the percentage is high, politicians tend to recognize that people are not happy, and that even if he got elected, some changes are needed (which doesn't mean he WILL make them, of course, politicians are still the same as everywhere after all).
Exactly. Besides, the idea behind mandatory voting is among other things, that people can't be coerced NOT to vote, so for example it becomes difficult for an unscrupulous polititian to stop a certain region or demographic group from voting in case he knew that group would likely vote against him. Everyone has to vote, so any atempt to dissuade anyone from voting shows that the polititians intentions are at best suspicious.
If you don't show up, I think you have to pay a fine, or something like that. It's not very hardly punished, but it might prevent you from taking a job at the government or official positions and stuff like that (having shown civil irresponsibility).
The way we do it here is in a "dark room". Schools, universities and some official buildings prepare "dark rooms" which are for example classrooms with all windows and doors covered with cardboard so no one can see inside. Outside each room there's a table with the urn, and different parties witnesses (say 2 or 3), a table president and a table.. ehm.. 'fiscal' (I don't know the translation in english.. it's a guy responsible for overseeing what the president does.. in fact everyone at the table is supposed to check on the other ones).
You show up to the 'dark room' assigned to you (usually the nearest to where you live for convinience), you give your ID to the table president, he gives you a signed and stamped envelope. You enter the room, alone (I think there are exceptions if you really need assistance), and on the tables there are piles of papers with the names of the candidates and parties. You take the paper for the party/candidate you want to vote, put it in the envelope, close the envelope. You get out, show the envelope to the table president (he verifies the stamp and signature, so it's the same envelope he gave you), and you insert the envelope in the urn. The table president gives you your ID with a stamp on it and a signature stating that you have voted on that day.
If when you enter the 'dark room', there are no papers for you party (for example, someone took all of them). You get out and say to the table president 'there are ballots missing' without saying which ones (otherwise the vote is called a 'singed vote' and is declared void at the table). The table president or one of the witnesses then has to go inside the room alone, with some ballots of each kind put them on the tables, and then you can vote when he's done.
If you don't like any party or candidate, or any reason of the kind, you can cast a 'white vote'. That is, you don't put any ballot in the envelope, or you put in a blank paper, or anything else. If you put more than one ballot or cast an otherwise ambiguous or invalid vote (the specifics are made very clear in the newspapers and tv the days prior to every important election), the vote is declared void at the counting site and not counted.
The witnesses and table presidents and 'fiscal's are appointed randomly. You get a telegram some days before the election, there's a course to prepare you for the task, then you must show up on the election day to perform your civil duty, unless you have a valid excuse (health, you're travelling, etc).
Everyone is in some way involved in the election process, so any irregularity passing by is less probable.
It's not perfect, no system is 100% hack-proof, but it tends to work pretty well.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds fun! I'll see if I can get it at WM, or at least torrent it =P
As for the bad-guys-can't-win part, well, we'll have to do like Ender did.. heh
As I learned in this discussion, apparently it's cheaper to do a game with 3d models than to actually do it in 2d with decent animation and artwork (at least for a graphic adventure.. but I guess It'd be the same for a platform game).
A Shame, really. When Street Fighter 3 came out I was really happy to see it wasn't some 3d-shit like virtua fighter (which I dislike.. a lot), and the animations clearly take advantage of the updated hardware.
Can any game developers confirm this?
I've been re-reading that for about 10 minutes and I still can't figure out if you come from another planet or you just have a very weird sense of humour.
Right. Plus if they keep hitting idkfa every 20 seconds, some people in the armament industry are bound to get very very rich.
Usually these kind of devices only take 2 fingers's images (both indexes), analyze the image and only keep the position and relation of the minutiae in a vector-ish format, which can't be used to reproduce the original print and can't be used to compare to latent prints lifted from a crime scene. It is only used to identify or authenticate a person's identity.
Here they use them in a different way. Each week or so, a list of wanted criminals (that is, with a search order released by a judge), is updated, and the prints of those persons is loaded into the mobile devices (they can hold up to about 50k print typically).
The police then uses the devices on the road, as an additional check when they stop someone. They ask the person to place their finger over the reader, the device scans the image, translates the minutiae and compares them against those in the database. If there's a hit, it means there's a 99,98% chance the person is on the wanted list, and the police take the person in custody to perform a more exhaustive identification process at the local police station.
It may not be perfect, but it's better than police officers pointing fingers at citizens authoritatively, and taking them for identification just because they 'look suspicious' (yes, that used to happen here)
Lots of scary games, but I particularly remember playing Alone in the Dark, well... in the dark, and the music and ambiance was excellent despite the old graphics. More recently, doom3 is scary in a different, monster-suddenly-jumps-out-of-the-shadows-when-you -least-expect-it kinda way.
Alien vs. predator also comes to mind.. when the motion sensor starts beeping faster and faster and you can't see a thing and before you know some aliens are kickin' the hell out of you.. just like in the movies (first two I mean.. the good ones).
Is it just me or is that completely contradictory?
Well, to someone not familiar with the concept, it could look like it's set of general guidelines for lawmakers, that could be bent or changed by new laws as time passes and society changes. Sadly, that is what one of our former presidents thought, apparently (or something in that vein), as he changed the constitution to allow his reelection.
He got away with it, so it seems that a constitution's purpose is not always so obvious =P
Depends on the relevant legislation.
Just as laws can't contradict the constitution (I'm talking about how it works here in Argentina, and I believe also in the US), contracts can't be upheld over contradicting laws. That is, theoretically, if you put something on a contract that goes against a law (like say, we sign a contract according to which you become my slave), the contract can't be enforced and may be declared void in court (as it contradicts the law declaring slavery illegal).
Since this involves UK and maybe other laws, it'd be nice if someone who knows about that could explain how it goes? (preferably a lawyer:))
"Live"??
Yay! magical bag of holding!
or maybe I can finally go around carrying tons of cash (if I had any), a saint-bernard, 3 drinks, a fishing pole, a monkey, a shovel, and loads of pirate-wannabe stuff? excellent!
How low.. I mean, wallhacks, aiming bots.. I hate them but I can almost understand them..
But cheating on ascii-tic-tac-toe.. c'mon...
X|_|O
...this has 'long day' written all over it :)
O|O|X
_|_|X
X|_|_
O|O|_
_|_|X
Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
How about a nice game of chess?
p.s.: I hope they don't program it with an option to play global thermonuclear war! =P
Well I know this is not the ideal solution to the problem, but in the case of the tun drivers for openvpn, maybe a company with interests in open-source software who already is a PIC (example: IBM) could compile the latest version and sign it.
As I said, it's far from ideal, but it'd be a way to keep the driver working in windows in the worst case scenario.
Yay! gotta get some of that stuff, re-bottle it and sell it to thinkgeek as "Potion of Healing Serious Wounds" =P
I didn't read the article, but It wasn't such a brilliant idea anyway.. If I could think of it 2 seconds after reading a summary on /. I guess it's normal that Sharp engineers would have come up with it long time ago before the thing was even implemented =P
:) )
(see? this is why patents suck!
Depending on the relative price of the thing, you could also use it to have 3 monitors by placing 2 mirrors instead of actually buying 3 monitors. Assuming one of these could be cheaper than 3 normal monitors, you place it in front of you, then place an attacheable mirror at each side, and bang! 3-head fraging!! ;)
Then again, if you buy them, it'll get noticed, publicized, and game companies will make more games for it, thus helping sony make a profit. If you DON'T buy it, sony would have sold the first console to stores, but as these see the units gathering dust, and not selling, they're not likely to buy any more ( at least until they sell those ), and maybe game publishers will take notice too of how poor the unit is selling...
So I think NOT buying one is actually better if you want to hurt sony.
what.. you seriously thought FTAs were about trade and import barriers?
They've been trying this on south america for decades. Some countries have aligned themselves with the US (chile, mexico), others refuse to accept such kind of conditions though I don't know for how long they'll be able to resist. International and Internal pressure from investment groups and the like on the governments is huge.
I can read, you know.. it was supposed to be funny ;)
But if you are serious about modchips for the wii, they will eventually come out, i'm quite sure. It's just a matter of time.
Don't worry, looks like help is on the way :)
Forgot to mention, 'white votes' are different to void votes in that 'white' are just a piece of blank paper, or no paper at all, while void votes are invalid votes (more ballots than allowed in the envelope, an invalid ballot you brought in, etc). The difference is that 'white votes' are used to express discomformity with ALL parties represented, while void votes may be due to mistakes.
After election results, the press tends to show clearly the percentage of white votes, to show the level of (dis)comformity with the election process and the candidates in general. If the percentage is high, politicians tend to recognize that people are not happy, and that even if he got elected, some changes are needed (which doesn't mean he WILL make them, of course, politicians are still the same as everywhere after all).
Exactly. Besides, the idea behind mandatory voting is among other things, that people can't be coerced NOT to vote, so for example it becomes difficult for an unscrupulous polititian to stop a certain region or demographic group from voting in case he knew that group would likely vote against him. Everyone has to vote, so any atempt to dissuade anyone from voting shows that the polititians intentions are at best suspicious.
.. ehm.. 'fiscal' (I don't know the translation in english.. it's a guy responsible for overseeing what the president does.. in fact everyone at the table is supposed to check on the other ones).
If you don't show up, I think you have to pay a fine, or something like that. It's not very hardly punished, but it might prevent you from taking a job at the government or official positions and stuff like that (having shown civil irresponsibility).
The way we do it here is in a "dark room". Schools, universities and some official buildings prepare "dark rooms" which are for example classrooms with all windows and doors covered with cardboard so no one can see inside. Outside each room there's a table with the urn, and different parties witnesses (say 2 or 3), a table president and a table
You show up to the 'dark room' assigned to you (usually the nearest to where you live for convinience), you give your ID to the table president, he gives you a signed and stamped envelope. You enter the room, alone (I think there are exceptions if you really need assistance), and on the tables there are piles of papers with the names of the candidates and parties. You take the paper for the party/candidate you want to vote, put it in the envelope, close the envelope. You get out, show the envelope to the table president (he verifies the stamp and signature, so it's the same envelope he gave you), and you insert the envelope in the urn. The table president gives you your ID with a stamp on it and a signature stating that you have voted on that day.
If when you enter the 'dark room', there are no papers for you party (for example, someone took all of them). You get out and say to the table president 'there are ballots missing' without saying which ones (otherwise the vote is called a 'singed vote' and is declared void at the table). The table president or one of the witnesses then has to go inside the room alone, with some ballots of each kind put them on the tables, and then you can vote when he's done.
If you don't like any party or candidate, or any reason of the kind, you can cast a 'white vote'. That is, you don't put any ballot in the envelope, or you put in a blank paper, or anything else. If you put more than one ballot or cast an otherwise ambiguous or invalid vote (the specifics are made very clear in the newspapers and tv the days prior to every important election), the vote is declared void at the counting site and not counted.
The witnesses and table presidents and 'fiscal's are appointed randomly. You get a telegram some days before the election, there's a course to prepare you for the task, then you must show up on the election day to perform your civil duty, unless you have a valid excuse (health, you're travelling, etc).
Everyone is in some way involved in the election process, so any irregularity passing by is less probable.
It's not perfect, no system is 100% hack-proof, but it tends to work pretty well.