Much preferable to "Contents may settle during shipping":
ATTENTION: Despite any other listing of product contents found herein, the consumer is advised that, in actuality, this product consists of 99.9999999% empty space.
For example, installation instructions for a hard drive I purchased long ago advised me about watching for power lines while installing a television antenna. I still can't quite figure that one out...
The 3D virtual world I spend all my free time in, Second Life, lets users upload sound clips in WAV format, then the server converts it to Ogg format for streaming audio back to the nearby users whenever the sound file is requested to be played (usually by scripted objects).
I'm currently in the acquistion phase of my LEGO habit, not having built anything spectacular yet. I have accumulated about 30,000 LEGO bricks, 21,000 of which came from purchasing the 1000-piece blue "Creator" tubs which were on sale for under $15 last year at Target. I've been to Target a few times so far this holiday season and they haven't dropped below $19 yet.
$20 for 1000 is much better than the $40 for 500 price mentioned earlier. Just look for the large blue tubs in the LEGO asile at your favorite discount store.
I've got a whole tub full of Technic pieces too. I'm thinking of trying to build some kind of binary calculator or other mechanical computational device of sorts with them...
Re:Oh Well, there not the first, there not the las
on
Kazaa-lite Shut Down
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· Score: 1
I also support Shareaza. It's free, doesn't seem to have any advertising or spyware, and it's a pretty smart application.
I think it is somewhat more complex in Second Life because they also have the ability to write scripts, which can drive the behavior of many of the objects in the game.
Also, Second Live doesn't have a oversight system to approve customizations -- they happen immediately.
I personally don't see too much of a problem with in-game copyright voiolations. If you have set the permissions on your objects to be non-copyable, then it is enforced by the server.
If someone does manage to roughly duplicate your objects, then they have done so by manually reverse engineering it's appearance and behavior. In this instance, they are doing their best-guess attempt to recreate your work. They have invested their time to do their own creative work, and should own the rights to their version of the object.
This is like me making my own sketch of an Escher drawing. That sketch belongs to me, because I drew it from scratch. I should be free to copy my sketch, sell it, or do whatever I want with it.
I don't think that's what this is about though. I think the real reason why SL has decided to give copyright ownership to the creators/players is so that they have full rights to take any ideas they create within SL and implement them in the real world, such as clothing, logos, script algorithms etc. This will also encourage players to upload creative works that they already own rights to (drawings, sounds, algorithms, etc) into the game without worrying that Linden Labs will inherently claim ownership to that work.
Personally, I think LL "gets it" when it comes to a lot of things. They have some good philosophies which mesh well with much of the technical types who frequent places like Slashdot. I understand that they use linux for their servers and development, they use the Ogg format for their audio streaming, they are adopting the creative commons licensing system, they give players the option to see and adjust a lot of technical stats in the client, and they even start newbies with a free Tux T-shirt in their inventory =)
The "many programs in a virtual world" concept seems like a good way to go. In Second Life, objects are created from basic prim objects (spheres, cubes, cylinders, torii, etc). All players are free to write scripts in a custom state-based C-like language which gets compiled into a bytecode and uploaded to the server.
One or more of these scripts can be dropped into a prim. Prims can be (and usually are) physically linked into a larger shape (such as a motorcycle, house, hot air ballon, or bingo card). In this state, all the prims still continue to simultaneously run their indivudal scripts from their own context.
So essentialy, you can have dozens (or even hundreds) of programs all running at the same time within a single composite object, each doing whatever their little job is to make up the behavior of the whole object.
On top of that, you've probably got a lot of composite objects all running in the same simulator (server region of the world).
You can also put objects into the container of prims, for example, in situations where you will be spawning copies of this child object (such as in a rocket launcher).
For example, here is the basic hierarchial layout of my "snow rocket launcher":
= hollow cylinder prim |-= Script to rotate, position and spawn ammo objects `-= rocket ammo linked object . |-= rocket body cylinder prim . | |-= rocket physics script . | |-= watchdog script to derez after certian elapsed time . | |-= smoke texture . | |-= launch sound . | |-= explosion sound . | `-= snowflake texture . |-= rocket head cone prim . |-= rocket tailfin prim 1 . |-= rocket tailfin prim 2 . `-= rocket tailfin prim 3 . . |-= smoke generating script . . `-= smoke texture
This system makes a lot of sense, and makes the whole thing very modular and organized. Every object just worries about it's own little piece of the bigger puzzle.
What would be an interesting view is to use the first set of 16 bits as an X axis, and the second set of 16 bits as the Y axis. Then connect the points with lines in a huge 64kx64k image, then scale it down to something more reasonable, like 4096x4096 with anti-aliasing.
You won't be able to see the individual lines with that much scaling down, but it would probably at least show some interesting and recognizable patterns.
It's a good thing some of the earliest 3d texturemapped games (wolfenstein, doom, etc) didn't get patents, or there would probably be a lot fewer 3D games today.
If we start accepting patents on new gaming styles, it will squash the possibility of opening up new genres altogether.
I'm still amazed at how they were able to parse some things. I used to throw all kinds of stuff at it to try to make it look dumb, but more often than I expected it handled things quite well.
Does anyone have any insight into the algorithm they used?
This may be the case, but swing is very slow in comparison to AWT. When running a fairly complex Swing UI application, it is obvious that it's not native code being executed.
When using an AWT app, it's snappy. You probably would not know it's running on Java if you had never before heard of AWT.
I think AWT is the right way to go. Swing may be going down the path of idealism, but AWT is going down the path of practacality.
No, but a government who levies taxes for social services creates jobs here at home. Leaving it up to private industry means some of the money for jobs will go to overseas contracts.
It may cost a little more to do some social services in the public sector, but it creates more of a re-investment in our country than the private sector would accomplish.
Most conservatives argue that we need everything to be private becuase it is more cost-effective. But I ask you, when you're shopping for something, do you always buy the absolute cheapest generic product, or do you spend an extra few cents for better quality?
If you do buy the generic, it's probably because you're unemployed.
I wonder, though, are you averse to massive government spending in general, or only when it is implemented by Republicans?
"Tax and Spend" is better than "Spend and Spend".
You have to get the money from somewhere. You don't cut taxes and increase spending unless you want the system to fail.
Pushing the cost off to your descendents is not showing a whole lot of personal responsibility (which the Republicans trumpet as one of their primary doctrines).
It's kind of like believing in god I suppose, maybe you don't need evidence, you believe what you choose to believe.
This is what's wrong.
We elect people to high positions in office who suffer from mental illness in believing in 2000-year old fairy tales and fictional omnipotent characters. Then we wonder why they act so irrationally.
The word "pioneer" in my SL signature was not a casually-chosen word. SL has only been out for six months, and may not be a comfortable place for people who can't stand rough edges. But I guarantee you, it is evolving quickly, and the people behind it are very bright and the developers have true geek talent and spirit.
Land is expanded as a world-wide grid, one server (called a "sim") at a time. Each "sim" is a 256m x 256m plot of land. The system is very modular; you can move seamlessly between sims.
There is still a lot of land available on the "PG" sim, but most people prefer the "M" (mature) sims since they have the freedom to put adult content on their property (yes even nekkid pics).
A linux client is coming soon. They just released the first Mac alpha client a day or two ago.
To be on topic, a lot of the concepts people are bringing up about Intellecutal Property rights of physical objects are addressed in SL (though they are easy to enforce in a virutal world).
There is an extensive system to grant permissions to modify, copy, sell or give away objects. These permissions are always granted to the original creator, but the creator can then restrict these permissions on copies given to other people. I'm currently lobbying the developers for a "allow free use if derivative use is free" style permission.
In that regard, it would be interesting to see how a GPL-like license would work in a nano-builder type of world.
Slashdot Mirror
36,000 shelf-feet per academic year
So what does this work out to in Libraries of Congress per kilofortnight?
This is why we have strange warnings on products.
For example, installation instructions for a hard drive I purchased long ago advised me about watching for power lines while installing a television antenna. I still can't quite figure that one out...
The 3D virtual world I spend all my free time in, Second Life, lets users upload sound clips in WAV format, then the server converts it to Ogg format for streaming audio back to the nearby users whenever the sound file is requested to be played (usually by scripted objects).
bash$ acrodict -add SSI "SSI Security and Investigations"
acrodict: "SSI" entry added successfully.
bash$ acrodict -R SSI
Stack overflow: pid 51764, proc kr, addr 0x11f7ffff0, pc 0x120001118
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
bash$
I'm currently in the acquistion phase of my LEGO habit, not having built anything spectacular yet. I have accumulated about 30,000 LEGO bricks, 21,000 of which came from purchasing the 1000-piece blue "Creator" tubs which were on sale for under $15 last year at Target. I've been to Target a few times so far this holiday season and they haven't dropped below $19 yet.
$20 for 1000 is much better than the $40 for 500 price mentioned earlier. Just look for the large blue tubs in the LEGO asile at your favorite discount store.
I've got a whole tub full of Technic pieces too. I'm thinking of trying to build some kind of binary calculator or other mechanical computational device of sorts with them...
I also support Shareaza. It's free, doesn't seem to have any advertising or spyware, and it's a pretty smart application.
Excuse my ignorance, but how do you keep from blinding everything in a mile radius from even just the reflections created from a megawatt laser?
I think it is somewhat more complex in Second Life because they also have the ability to write scripts, which can drive the behavior of many of the objects in the game.
Also, Second Live doesn't have a oversight system to approve customizations -- they happen immediately.
I personally don't see too much of a problem with in-game copyright voiolations. If you have set the permissions on your objects to be non-copyable, then it is enforced by the server.
If someone does manage to roughly duplicate your objects, then they have done so by manually reverse engineering it's appearance and behavior. In this instance, they are doing their best-guess attempt to recreate your work. They have invested their time to do their own creative work, and should own the rights to their version of the object.
This is like me making my own sketch of an Escher drawing. That sketch belongs to me, because I drew it from scratch. I should be free to copy my sketch, sell it, or do whatever I want with it.
I don't think that's what this is about though. I think the real reason why SL has decided to give copyright ownership to the creators/players is so that they have full rights to take any ideas they create within SL and implement them in the real world, such as clothing, logos, script algorithms etc. This will also encourage players to upload creative works that they already own rights to (drawings, sounds, algorithms, etc) into the game without worrying that Linden Labs will inherently claim ownership to that work.
Personally, I think LL "gets it" when it comes to a lot of things. They have some good philosophies which mesh well with much of the technical types who frequent places like Slashdot. I understand that they use linux for their servers and development, they use the Ogg format for their audio streaming, they are adopting the creative commons licensing system, they give players the option to see and adjust a lot of technical stats in the client, and they even start newbies with a free Tux T-shirt in their inventory =)
You forgot to end with "yet".
It's attitudes like this that got us all in the Matrix to begin with =P
Apologies to those who haven't seen Animatrix...
One or more of these scripts can be dropped into a prim. Prims can be (and usually are) physically linked into a larger shape (such as a motorcycle, house, hot air ballon, or bingo card). In this state, all the prims still continue to simultaneously run their indivudal scripts from their own context.
So essentialy, you can have dozens (or even hundreds) of programs all running at the same time within a single composite object, each doing whatever their little job is to make up the behavior of the whole object.
On top of that, you've probably got a lot of composite objects all running in the same simulator (server region of the world).
You can also put objects into the container of prims, for example, in situations where you will be spawning copies of this child object (such as in a rocket launcher).
For example, here is the basic hierarchial layout of my "snow rocket launcher":
= hollow cylinder prim
|-= Script to rotate, position and spawn ammo objects
`-= rocket ammo linked object
. |-= rocket body cylinder prim
. | |-= rocket physics script
. | |-= watchdog script to derez after certian elapsed time
. | |-= smoke texture
. | |-= launch sound
. | |-= explosion sound
. | `-= snowflake texture
. |-= rocket head cone prim
. |-= rocket tailfin prim 1
. |-= rocket tailfin prim 2
. `-= rocket tailfin prim 3
. . |-= smoke generating script
. . `-= smoke texture
This system makes a lot of sense, and makes the whole thing very modular and organized. Every object just worries about it's own little piece of the bigger puzzle.
What would be an interesting view is to use the first set of 16 bits as an X axis, and the second set of 16 bits as the Y axis. Then connect the points with lines in a huge 64kx64k image, then scale it down to something more reasonable, like 4096x4096 with anti-aliasing.
You won't be able to see the individual lines with that much scaling down, but it would probably at least show some interesting and recognizable patterns.
There has to be some irony in there somewhere...
Patents like this are bad, mmkay?
It's a good thing some of the earliest 3d texturemapped games (wolfenstein, doom, etc) didn't get patents, or there would probably be a lot fewer 3D games today.
If we start accepting patents on new gaming styles, it will squash the possibility of opening up new genres altogether.
Probably the same reason there are no extraterrestrials.
Civilization itself is probably inherently doomed.
I'm still amazed at how they were able to parse some things. I used to throw all kinds of stuff at it to try to make it look dumb, but more often than I expected it handled things quite well.
Does anyone have any insight into the algorithm they used?
This may be the case, but swing is very slow in comparison to AWT. When running a fairly complex Swing UI application, it is obvious that it's not native code being executed.
When using an AWT app, it's snappy. You probably would not know it's running on Java if you had never before heard of AWT.
I think AWT is the right way to go. Swing may be going down the path of idealism, but AWT is going down the path of practacality.
No, but a government who levies taxes for social services creates jobs here at home. Leaving it up to private industry means some of the money for jobs will go to overseas contracts.
It may cost a little more to do some social services in the public sector, but it creates more of a re-investment in our country than the private sector would accomplish.
Most conservatives argue that we need everything to be private becuase it is more cost-effective. But I ask you, when you're shopping for something, do you always buy the absolute cheapest generic product, or do you spend an extra few cents for better quality?
If you do buy the generic, it's probably because you're unemployed.
I wonder, though, are you averse to massive government spending in general, or only when it is implemented by Republicans?
"Tax and Spend" is better than "Spend and Spend".
You have to get the money from somewhere. You don't cut taxes and increase spending unless you want the system to fail.
Pushing the cost off to your descendents is not showing a whole lot of personal responsibility (which the Republicans trumpet as one of their primary doctrines).
It's kind of like believing in god I suppose, maybe you don't need evidence, you believe what you choose to believe.
This is what's wrong.
We elect people to high positions in office who suffer from mental illness in believing in 2000-year old fairy tales and fictional omnipotent characters. Then we wonder why they act so irrationally.
I love how you defend the current administration's self-indulgent behavior, then quote the Declaration of Independence of all things...
Have you actually read what it says?
For real fun, watch the pennies of your own PERSONAL share of the national debt accumulate alongside the full debt.
How about some real numbers?
I think you mistyped "500%" as "10%".
However, I'd much rather have seen $80B spent on space development than on Bush's Iraq fiasco.
The word "pioneer" in my SL signature was not a casually-chosen word. SL has only been out for six months, and may not be a comfortable place for people who can't stand rough edges. But I guarantee you, it is evolving quickly, and the people behind it are very bright and the developers have true geek talent and spirit.
Land is expanded as a world-wide grid, one server (called a "sim") at a time. Each "sim" is a 256m x 256m plot of land. The system is very modular; you can move seamlessly between sims.
There is still a lot of land available on the "PG" sim, but most people prefer the "M" (mature) sims since they have the freedom to put adult content on their property (yes even nekkid pics).
A linux client is coming soon. They just released the first Mac alpha client a day or two ago.
To be on topic, a lot of the concepts people are bringing up about Intellecutal Property rights of physical objects are addressed in SL (though they are easy to enforce in a virutal world).
There is an extensive system to grant permissions to modify, copy, sell or give away objects. These permissions are always granted to the original creator, but the creator can then restrict these permissions on copies given to other people. I'm currently lobbying the developers for a "allow free use if derivative use is free" style permission.
In that regard, it would be interesting to see how a GPL-like license would work in a nano-builder type of world.