Some people have pointed out that sending data back to earth would be costly, since transmission from the Dark Side is tricky.
But what about deploying a relay satelite orbiting around the moon? As another post sugested, this is possible. (Although the life expectancy may only be about 20 years...)
I'm not an astrophysisist. Don't shoot the idiot.
;)
I read the book in 1984, and still remember all the names etc. (When I still forget my best friend's name from time to time...)
What they left out, one did not miss. (You know what they took out, but it was of little impact... I'll wait for the director's cut or something...)
The beauty, fear, angst, joy, excitement is much more so in the movie than in the book. The movie replaces thousands of words with one image, and thus had the time to give the book it's due credit in story.
Casting/acting was brilliant.
Only one thing grated my nerves: "Let's hunt some Orc"
One can't have everything!
PS: 3 rows in my cinema was double booked: I carried in a lounge couch from the hall outside rather than get free movie tickets for another time... (this received a cheer from the audience...)
:))
On querying this, I got the following response:
HI Marius
I am sorry that my response seemed automated. I was more concerned with giving you a
clear reason for the move.
Nonetheless, thanks for bringing the discussion to my attention, I have tried to keep
the wording as simple as possible on our web site, and am responding to queries as they
arise.
Thanks again!
Jeanne
So, it's not an automated response, but only a re-defined one for the genre of question.
:)
I e-mailed them and got this response from Jeanne Fourie:
Dear Marius
Thank you for emailing me with regard to your concern. Due to the current
international threat of terrorism we have been advised by
our parent company VeriSign to refrain from issuing developer certs to
individuals, for the mean while.
As you will be aware, there is a need right now for companies like ourselves to be
extremely cautious in all aspects that concern
security and encryption.
Developer certs are issued to individuals based on verification of passports and
drivers licenses. These documents are however easily
forged and we have therefore had to take the executive decision of not issuing
certs where the verification process may be
questionable.
We are positive that we will be able to resume this service in the near future. I
do apologize for any inconvenience that this may have
caused you.
Regards
Jeanne
As can be seen it seems to be Verisign who requested this....
Compare this with chess, where you have 50-100 (even more?) viable starting openings. And that's just for the first 3-7 moves! Or the Go, which has an even higher branching factor.
You would be 20 for the first move alone... and the second move would be about 20 * 20 (the opponents opening) * +-200 (your second starting opening...)
The way this is going on the 3-7 moves would be about 8000 - .
-shrug-
Perhaps this is what stops people from adding too much option? Too large decision tree to test for possible unbalanced games?
Anyone interested in a cool strategy board game should have a look at RoboRally.
(It's a programming oriented out-of-print board-game...)
A friend of mine decided to contact WotC to implement this as a computer game for a final year project at his university, but they have as yet not replied to him (after about 1 year!).
Anyway, people interested looking at this, he is intending to release it as a Python application in the future, but it's currently a Beta Java application. (It was a Java course...)
Homeworld, and to a certain extent the followup Ground Control had elements that push Strategy fully to it's realistically playably limits.
It had supply lines and whatnot. Troop formations were actually vital.
With games like StarCraft there is too much micro-control involved, which leave only the best of players time to actually implement strategy. I'ts only the inexperienced players who see only the 'blitz' game, since they do not have the skill to be able to control past that.
Sure, things like morale and supply lines would be cool aspects to include in an RTS game, but there are also things like playability to be considered. Realism is not the primary concern when the genre is futuristic or fantasy. People get bored with reality.
PS: Art of War is worth a look for realism fanatics.
Another game which has the best strategy in it's niche, would be the Commandos line of games. Even though you do not control vast amounts of armies, you have specialised units which do their bit. There are many ways to infiltrate and win, some quicker than others. It kinda reminds me of the ancient game: 'Towers of Babel', and I would consider it a remake.
My point would basically be the following:
Most RTS games have elements of strategy, whether intentional or accidental; whether realistic or contrived; whether they are for inexperinced or journeyman players.
Sure languages all have limitations. But when you get to know each of them well, you have ways of working around those limitations anyway.
All I'm saying is that it's more important to design, than what language you use. Mostly the client dictates the language, so that does not matter to me.
I agree that a.setb(c) is a good(tm) thing. Implicit operators can cause a lot of trouble only for the sake of a few less keystrokes and the illusion of a powerful language.
;)
But then there is also unneeded features. Yes, sure, so some features let you implement much closer to your design, but as long as you solve the problem in an easy maintainable way, with the least amount of conceptual bugs... that all dandy!
My private views differ from these, as these are my professional client-oriented views. Privately I still think next to smalltalk, Python is the best thing.
But I'm just stupid that way...
;)
PS: One can still do an OO designed and implemented program with:
Which means that the person's username would STILL be stored in the ACCI DB as :
"John Smith"
which is valid XML data, but any hyphenated characters would have to be translated to valid XML data character sequences... which is the exception.
As far as speed is concerned, rather focus on algorythmic imporovements than linear improvements. There is hardware out that can handle XML natively already. I would not worry too much about speed.
Why not encode the data using XML... that way most of your data already maps to the real data.
This would be without the XML tags, of course. Just the encoding of the data...
Thus, you will be using UNICODE, and encoding it in XML text.
Hmm... at some places you may need an XML to unicode translator.
The fact that you are still storing and transfering your data in ASCII, does not mean it's a ASCII system... it's only your communication medium. This way systematic migration may become more possible.
Languages really don't matter... syntax is for the birds.
All that does matter is where there is propper support to back you up, and by looking at Visual Studio.NET it seems that C# is pretty well stocked. I'm sure MS is going to push it pretty hard and make it work.
As long as the language allows me to implement my OO design elegantly, or at least easily, then I'm happy.
(thus VB will always suck be default)
I'm just happy I can use my Python, and ocationally meander into C++ and C#.
should rather be:
<meeting/>
... the best kind; no meeting!
<emote>grin</emote>
But seriously...
XML may be heavy, but it has it's advantages. Wrapper tools can wrap it so that you don't even know you are using it, and you can compress it down to almost nothing anyway if it bothers you.
Re:This is good news...
on
J#
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I don't think People will use J#, not because it is MS, but because I think people will rather move to C#. (Just my opinion there...)
.NET is so far as I can tell something good... Microsoft has done something right. Don't mock it, it does happen sometimes! I just can't stop feeling nervous...
I'm a Python advocate, and I like the.NET initiative. It may not be all unique ideas, but finally someone if driving it and formalising the processes to get it to a standard.
MS is not oficially giving up on COM, but.NET will certainly downplay it a lot. (Which is also a good thing.)
Just a note, as can be seen HERE, Epox have not honoured AMD's request to display the REAL clock frequency.
You can still see the real clock.
AMD is treading a thin line, currently they are doing the only thing they can, and currently they are not overstepping the boundary. But the moment they do, people will drop them like a hot potato.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people have pointed out that sending data back to earth would be costly, since transmission from the Dark Side is tricky.
But what about deploying a relay satelite orbiting around the moon? As another post sugested, this is possible. (Although the life expectancy may only be about 20 years...)
I'm not an astrophysisist. Don't shoot the idiot.
;)
ME.
The advantages are plain too... you get an orbit of 28 days, and it passes over points of the earth roughly once a day (quite a slow orbit)
But the most important aspect would be observations during a lunar eclipse.
Not to mention the fact that transmitting data back to earth would be easier.
Look on the left-hand side... there is a blank sqare with a mine below it... the blank square should have a '1' in it.
A friend of mine (A girl who can do expert on windows in under 80s consistently!!!) found the following bug... can you spot the error?
minesweeper-error.gif
Trust Micrsoft to fuck up something as simple as Minesweeper.
Minesweeper as a game is great. The mathematical properties of it are intriguing.
I have a lot of fun with it on Linux as well...
Solitaire is a waste of time.
In my opinion, perhaps in some ways, yes.
I read the book in 1984, and still remember all the names etc. (When I still forget my best friend's name from time to time...)
What they left out, one did not miss. (You know what they took out, but it was of little impact... I'll wait for the director's cut or something...)
The beauty, fear, angst, joy, excitement is much more so in the movie than in the book. The movie replaces thousands of words with one image, and thus had the time to give the book it's due credit in story.
Casting/acting was brilliant.
Only one thing grated my nerves: "Let's hunt some Orc"
One can't have everything!
PS: 3 rows in my cinema was double booked: I carried in a lounge couch from the hall outside rather than get free movie tickets for another time... (this received a cheer from the audience...)
:))
My friend wish to apologise:
---
The correct range for neutron stars is 1.2 - 3 solar masses and black holes
from 3 - billions of solar masses....
d
---
The article mentions 3 to 7 suns begin the normal size of a black hole...
;) )
This does not seem correct.
I have been told that this would rather be described as a "pulsar".
(Dr Evil made me do it!
Anyhow, this is just my 0.02 worth of destructive critisism...
:P
On querying this, I got the following response:
HI Marius
I am sorry that my response seemed automated. I was more concerned with giving you a
clear reason for the move.
Nonetheless, thanks for bringing the discussion to my attention, I have tried to keep
the wording as simple as possible on our web site, and am responding to queries as they
arise.
Thanks again!
Jeanne
So, it's not an automated response, but only a re-defined one for the genre of question.
:)
They have good PR at least.
Me.
I e-mailed them and got this response from Jeanne Fourie:
Dear Marius
Thank you for emailing me with regard to your concern. Due to the current
international threat of terrorism we have been advised by
our parent company VeriSign to refrain from issuing developer certs to
individuals, for the mean while.
As you will be aware, there is a need right now for companies like ourselves to be
extremely cautious in all aspects that concern
security and encryption.
Developer certs are issued to individuals based on verification of passports and
drivers licenses. These documents are however easily
forged and we have therefore had to take the executive decision of not issuing
certs where the verification process may be
questionable.
We are positive that we will be able to resume this service in the near future. I
do apologize for any inconvenience that this may have
caused you.
Regards
Jeanne
As can be seen it seems to be Verisign who requested this....
Hmm...
Compare this with chess, where you have 50-100 (even more?) viable starting openings. And that's just for the first 3-7 moves! Or the Go, which has an even higher branching factor.
You would be 20 for the first move alone... and the second move would be about 20 * 20 (the opponents opening) * +-200 (your second starting opening...)
The way this is going on the 3-7 moves would be about 8000 - .
-shrug-
Perhaps this is what stops people from adding too much option? Too large decision tree to test for possible unbalanced games?
Hmm...
-sigh-
Me.
Anyone interested in a cool strategy board game should have a look at RoboRally.
(It's a programming oriented out-of-print board-game...)
A friend of mine decided to contact WotC to implement this as a computer game for a final year project at his university, but they have as yet not replied to him (after about 1 year!).
Anyway, people interested looking at this, he is intending to release it as a Python application in the future, but it's currently a Beta Java application. (It was a Java course...)
You can download it HERE
Have fun, and remember: It's Beta, and comments welcome!
Me.
Homeworld, and to a certain extent the followup Ground Control had elements that push Strategy fully to it's realistically playably limits.
It had supply lines and whatnot. Troop formations were actually vital.
With games like StarCraft there is too much micro-control involved, which leave only the best of players time to actually implement strategy. I'ts only the inexperienced players who see only the 'blitz' game, since they do not have the skill to be able to control past that.
Sure, things like morale and supply lines would be cool aspects to include in an RTS game, but there are also things like playability to be considered. Realism is not the primary concern when the genre is futuristic or fantasy. People get bored with reality.
PS: Art of War is worth a look for realism fanatics.
Another game which has the best strategy in it's niche, would be the Commandos line of games. Even though you do not control vast amounts of armies, you have specialised units which do their bit. There are many ways to infiltrate and win, some quicker than others. It kinda reminds me of the ancient game: 'Towers of Babel', and I would consider it a remake.
My point would basically be the following:
Most RTS games have elements of strategy, whether intentional or accidental; whether realistic or contrived; whether they are for inexperinced or journeyman players.
Sure languages all have limitations. But when you get to know each of them well, you have ways of working around those limitations anyway.
/dev/tty > /bin/project && chmod a+x /bin/project
All I'm saying is that it's more important to design, than what language you use. Mostly the client dictates the language, so that does not matter to me.
I agree that a.setb(c) is a good(tm) thing. Implicit operators can cause a lot of trouble only for the sake of a few less keystrokes and the illusion of a powerful language.
;)
But then there is also unneeded features. Yes, sure, so some features let you implement much closer to your design, but as long as you solve the problem in an easy maintainable way, with the least amount of conceptual bugs... that all dandy!
My private views differ from these, as these are my professional client-oriented views. Privately I still think next to smalltalk, Python is the best thing.
But I'm just stupid that way...
;)
PS: One can still do an OO designed and implemented program with:
~> cat
... but then one would need an infinite troop of monkeys.
That's a common myth.
Besides... as my initial post said:
without tags
Which means that the person's username would STILL be stored in the ACCI DB as :
"John Smith"
which is valid XML data, but any hyphenated characters would have to be translated to valid XML data character sequences... which is the exception.
As far as speed is concerned, rather focus on algorythmic imporovements than linear improvements. There is hardware out that can handle XML natively already. I would not worry too much about speed.
How do you know you were the first post?
Also, can't someone else post quickly while you were typing away?
Just curious...
Hehe... seems like someone else had the same idea already.
And, I must also insist that more domain specific information be given to aid in giving a solution.
PS: By no mean do I think XML is the begin and end of all things... just that it may actually be useful here...
;)
Why not encode the data using XML... that way most of your data already maps to the real data.
This would be without the XML tags, of course. Just the encoding of the data...
Thus, you will be using UNICODE, and encoding it in XML text.
Hmm... at some places you may need an XML to unicode translator.
The fact that you are still storing and transfering your data in ASCII, does not mean it's a ASCII system... it's only your communication medium. This way systematic migration may become more possible.
Languages really don't matter... syntax is for the birds.
.NET it seems that C# is pretty well stocked. I'm sure MS is going to push it pretty hard and make it work.
All that does matter is where there is propper support to back you up, and by looking at Visual Studio
As long as the language allows me to implement my OO design elegantly, or at least easily, then I'm happy.
(thus VB will always suck be default)
I'm just happy I can use my Python, and ocationally meander into C++ and C#.
should rather be: />
... the best kind; no meeting!
<meeting
<emote>grin</emote>
But seriously...
XML may be heavy, but it has it's advantages. Wrapper tools can wrap it so that you don't even know you are using it, and you can compress it down to almost nothing anyway if it bothers you.
I don't think People will use J#, not because it is MS, but because I think people will rather move to C#. (Just my opinion there...)
.NET initiative. It may not be all unique ideas, but finally someone if driving it and formalising the processes to get it to a standard.
.NET will certainly downplay it a lot. (Which is also a good thing.)
.NET is so far as I can tell something good... Microsoft has done something right. Don't mock it, it does happen sometimes! I just can't stop feeling nervous...
I'm a Python advocate, and I like the
MS is not oficially giving up on COM, but
Just a note, as can be seen HERE, Epox have not honoured AMD's request to display the REAL clock frequency.
You can still see the real clock.
AMD is treading a thin line, currently they are doing the only thing they can, and currently they are not overstepping the boundary. But the moment they do, people will drop them like a hot potato.
My 0.02...
BUT they are hoping to convince people by using their ignorance
Should Read:
BUT they are hoping to convince people in spite of their ignorance
I just don't seem to get the speeds they get.
I've got a 1.4 GHz Athlon TB running at 266 with 266 DR ram.
I get about 15 fps. (Flask is an anoying program... too many crashes and obscure tedious options.)
-sigh-
As another poster said:
;)
They are trying to trick people into evaluating the chip fairly. Bad,.. BAD AMD!
Even so... since this chip is equivalent to the 2.0 GHz Intel, they are not really lying.
It's a bad thing, yes, but it will have good repurcussions.
It will make people start looking at benchmarks rather than Hz rating.
(The only reason I may ever still go for Intel, is for the Flask encoding speeds... but then it's still pricy)