You are correct, Jesus advocated non-retaliation. His basic position on everything regarding punishment (of others) was "God will deal with it, you don't need to." As for the law, Jesus didn't invalidate it, as others have said, he made it much stricter - stating that even the thought of breaking any of the 10 commandments was a sin. The end result is that all Christians should be as pacifist as Buddhists are. There is no excuse not to be.
In other words, any time you hear a "Christian" talking about acts of extreme violence, at the very least he is a very, very bad Christian and doesn't know much at all about the Bible.
I'm sorry, I've yet to find the part in the Old Testament that says if I blow myself up on a train, I'll get 40 virgins to myself in heaven.
In the Bible, except for a few very specific instructions (generally involving attacking another nation), stoning occurs because of someone breaking the law. Period. You might not like the laws, but that's what it is: punishments internal to the Israelite nation. In the Koran, there are very specific instructions too, they just run along the lines of "kill all infidels".
Similar to the way Muhammad's later writings supersede his earlier writings, the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament. There are a lot of good lessons in it, so it is still used, but all the behavioral guidelines are found in the New Testament. It basically took the core of the old laws and made them significantly stricter. For example, in the Old Testament it was a sin to murder. Under the New Testament it's a sin to even think about murder. Under the Old Testament, the law was tit for tat - you slap me I slap you back. Under the New Testament the law is you slap me, I present my other cheek for you to slap also.
The stonings were all punishments for violating the law. You may not like the laws, and that's fine, but it was far from telling all Christians to kill all non-believers, yet that is exactly what Muhammad told Muslims to do.
There is a big difference between the two religions, and while there has been plenty of violence hidden under the guise of Christianity, there has been constant and consistent violence from Islam.
You remember the Crusades that everyone likes to beat Christians up for? Do you remember what those were about? The Crusades happened because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. The eventually did stop, just before the Crusades started, but that was because they realized the pilgrims were their cash cow, not for any realization that they weren't properly following the teachings of Muhammad. It was too little, too late, you might say.
Violence due to the teachings of Islam has been a serious problem for over a thousand years, the stuff we see today is nothing new. Christians throughout history can't be held up as a shining example for the rest of the world, but to say Islam is a non-violent religion you have to completely ignore the last thousand years and the teachings of Islam that spurred them on. It's disingenuous at best.
It's not indiscriminate, it's very discriminate. It's just the discriminating criteria is "infidel", and the definition of "infidel" is "non-believer".
They know exactly who they are supposed to kill: everyone who doesn't believe like they do.
Scholars who study the Koran say it is absolutely loaded with contradictions - later writings frequently take the exact opposite position of earlier writings. The way Muslims deal with this is by giving the later writings of Muhammad precedence over the earlier writings. So if an early writing says "Be kind to all people" and a later writing says "Kill all infidels", the later writing wins.
From what I've been told, "Kill all infidels" was in Muhammad's last set of scriptures, which means they take precedence over everything that came before. The only way to be a good Muslim and not follow this directive is to pretend that these scriptures don't exist, which isn't exactly being a good Muslim.
Basically, the non-violent Muslims are simply bad Muslims.
This is the exact opposite situation with Christianity, where God promises to bring the violence, the believers are to turn the other cheek. There are plenty of people who ignore this, but that just makes them bad Christians. As far as Buddhism goes, I don't think you're allowed to even pretend to be Buddhist if you are violent.
Seriously, I used to hunt for pixels too, but after about 1280x1024 I stopped caring.
I don't like my desktop at much higher resolution than that, it becomes uncomfortable. I know gamers and drafters really want giant screens at massive resolutions, but besides them who else really wants it? 2560x2048 resolution doesn't exactly help me see my web pages or documents any better - in fact it can make them downright hard to see, so why do I need it?
Unfortunately for Pete Brown, I think more people fall into my category than do his, or he wouldn't have anything to complain about.
No, they definitely didn't round up, they truncated a number that was never accurate to begin with. 206*2/3 takes a half second longer to punch in than 206*0.66, if that. Why were they ever using 0.66 to begin with?
They should never have been using decimals in the first place, the law says 2/3, not 66%,.66, or.66666666. 2/3 is what should have been used from the beginning. It takes a fraction of a second longer to punch that into a calculator and get an accurate result than it does to punch in.66 and get a very approximate result, so why bother? Just do it right from the start and you won't have this problem!
An accountant, which is who came up with the number. And a calculator does not preclude you from doing fractions, fractions are easy on calculators and are extremely accurate without any effort.
206*2/3 = 137.3~ on a calculator. A touch more insight on how fractions and divisions work will let you realize that that's 137 1/3 without ever having to put pen to paper. Using a calculator is no excuse for fucking this up, either this pair were deliberately trying to manipulate the vote, or these are the types of accountants you don't want doing your books (or maybe you do?). Either way, it's incredibly scary that these guy's are doing the government's books.
None of that matters, because.66666666 anything is not the correct number. The correct number is 2/3. Use it. You can't accurately calculate non-terminating numbers, and you don't need them in this case, so why fucking bother? Lazy ass sons of bitches.
206 * 2/3 is 137 1/3, ergo, 136 is two votes short of being a 2/3 majority.
The law says they need 2/3 or more, so they need greater than 137 1/3 votes, 137 does not cutting it. Truncating the number violates the letter of the law.
137 is less than 137 1/3, so 137 is not a 2/3 majority. 138 is greater than 137 1/3, so 138 is a 2/3 majority.
Done. You can keep the 138 figure on hand to remind yourself, but it isn't necessary, just do 206 * 2/3 to get the minimum number of votes needed. It isn't hard.
This story and some of the posts have really been pretty sad, half the people on slashdot are perpetuating the same error the clerk made, they are simply doing it more accurately. The other half have come up with convoluted ways to check whether a number meets the criteria.
Christ, just multiply by 2/3 and be done with it, it's not hard.
pft, clearly you've been taught wrong. 2/3 is really.666666. Duh.
You're both wrong, 2/3 is two divided by three. To make 2/3 of any number, you multiply it by two and divide it by three. It's not hard, and no decimal will ever be as accurate.
You would think any dumbass would know how to multiply fractions on a calculator - it doesn't take any fancy functions, just a very very basic understanding of what a fraction is.
When it says 2/3, you use 2/3, not a decimal of anything. (206*2)/3, that's it. Done. The answer is 137.3~, and it's as accurate as is humanly possible. The only number of voters that satisfies the 2/3 majority requirement is 138.
It's not even a long division problem, it's a basic math problem.
It's trivial to multiply 206 by 2/3 on a calculater, and it in no way involves any decimal figure until the result is shown.
206 * 2 = 412. 412/3 = 137.3~, or 137r1 via long division.
It's pretty clear, the law requires a 2/3 majority, and 137 is not even a 2/3 majority, let alone 136. This is maybe third or fourth grade level math here people, and it's kinda sad that there is even any confusion about it..66 is not 2/3, it's a little less than 2/3 and it does not count if the law says 2/3.
I suppose that's why he's not making money in the middle of this gaming boom, eh?
Oh, wait, it's reality we live in, not some imagined fairy tale where nobody will buy your game if don't license the latest and greatest game engine, for which you'll have to create bundles of new art and seriously cut into your profits. He seems to be making money hand over fist in the middle of the worst gaming depression in recent history by doing the exact opposite of what you suggest.
I wonder who really knows what they are talking about here?
He wasn't talking about engines, he was talking about everything.
He mentions that they sort of do it with engines, but even then not really. There are still dozens of engines that all do the same thing out there, when the first one was good enough to do the job.
What Vogel does is reuse art, icons, tiles, menus, everything. If he has already designed something that fits the needs of the game, he re-uses it. The only stuff he creates from scratch are things that he does not already have to use, or things that he is not happy with. Even his engine is 10 years old, which is unheard of. If he needs new features, he simply updates the engine. If something isn't working quite right, he fixes it. His contention is that there are a great many parts of game development that are not re-used but could be, and frankly, I think he is right. It's also worth noting that his profits have been steadily growing, only showing a small dip at the height of the recession, while the big game studios have been tanking and hard. He's obviously on to something.
For example, if Vogel had created the Quake engine, there would never have been a Quake 2 engine - he would have simply updated the Quake 1 engine. There was certainly a lot of overlap between the two, so a full re-write was not necessary. When Quake 3 came along, it would have simply meant re-writing the portions that needed re-writing, and adding new features. There are a lot of parts of game engines that are applicable no matter what the base technology is. The development savings of this model are astronomical compared to what companies are spending now.
The only time a complete re-write would be necessary would be if your engine was not well-written enough to allow for replaceable parts.
Valve seems to be the best about re-using game parts, and they also happen to be one of the most successful game companies. A lot of companies continue trying to re-invent the wheel with little or nothing to show for it.
It may seem cheap, but if a game is fun to play, who friggin cares?
It's probably the reason the Game industry is seriously tanking right now. Thus they try to find every conceivable method of bringing in more cash while remaining completely oblivious to the areas where they are obviously hemorrhaging cash.
I see this in my industry as well, the company is desperate to save $200,000 a year on coffee costs, yet completely ignore the tens of millions of dollars wasted every year on inefficient projects - case and point, one project that was originally budgeted for about $300k is now pushing $2 million, and the work originally planned hasn't even been started yet.
The guy has a point - he takes it to extremes, but why not? If you spent 300 man hours creating that gorgeous dragon model, why not use it in another game? Why make a new one, when what you need is a dragon and you've already got this killer dragon all made up? Just change the color, maybe slap on a few new horns, and away you go.
That's what this guy does, he has used the same engine for the last 10 years, with minor updates as needed with each new game. Any character models he finishes he re-uses if he's happy with them and they fit the needs of the game. He has sequels, but they aren't all sequels, if it fits he uses it. Doing these things probably cuts his technical costs and time down by 2/3 or more, and he can focus almost entirely on story and gameplay.
The most important thing for any game, no matter what type, is that it is fun. Fun is different for a lot of people, but eye candy is rarely - if ever - the most important factor in a game. Yet, that's what everyone spends all their money on. It makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct, Jesus advocated non-retaliation. His basic position on everything regarding punishment (of others) was "God will deal with it, you don't need to." As for the law, Jesus didn't invalidate it, as others have said, he made it much stricter - stating that even the thought of breaking any of the 10 commandments was a sin. The end result is that all Christians should be as pacifist as Buddhists are. There is no excuse not to be.
In other words, any time you hear a "Christian" talking about acts of extreme violence, at the very least he is a very, very bad Christian and doesn't know much at all about the Bible.
I'm sorry, I've yet to find the part in the Old Testament that says if I blow myself up on a train, I'll get 40 virgins to myself in heaven.
In the Bible, except for a few very specific instructions (generally involving attacking another nation), stoning occurs because of someone breaking the law. Period. You might not like the laws, but that's what it is: punishments internal to the Israelite nation. In the Koran, there are very specific instructions too, they just run along the lines of "kill all infidels".
Similar to the way Muhammad's later writings supersede his earlier writings, the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament. There are a lot of good lessons in it, so it is still used, but all the behavioral guidelines are found in the New Testament. It basically took the core of the old laws and made them significantly stricter. For example, in the Old Testament it was a sin to murder. Under the New Testament it's a sin to even think about murder. Under the Old Testament, the law was tit for tat - you slap me I slap you back. Under the New Testament the law is you slap me, I present my other cheek for you to slap also.
The stonings were all punishments for violating the law. You may not like the laws, and that's fine, but it was far from telling all Christians to kill all non-believers, yet that is exactly what Muhammad told Muslims to do.
There is a big difference between the two religions, and while there has been plenty of violence hidden under the guise of Christianity, there has been constant and consistent violence from Islam.
You remember the Crusades that everyone likes to beat Christians up for? Do you remember what those were about? The Crusades happened because Muslims were slaughtering Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem. The eventually did stop, just before the Crusades started, but that was because they realized the pilgrims were their cash cow, not for any realization that they weren't properly following the teachings of Muhammad. It was too little, too late, you might say.
Violence due to the teachings of Islam has been a serious problem for over a thousand years, the stuff we see today is nothing new. Christians throughout history can't be held up as a shining example for the rest of the world, but to say Islam is a non-violent religion you have to completely ignore the last thousand years and the teachings of Islam that spurred them on. It's disingenuous at best.
It's not indiscriminate, it's very discriminate. It's just the discriminating criteria is "infidel", and the definition of "infidel" is "non-believer".
They know exactly who they are supposed to kill: everyone who doesn't believe like they do.
Scholars who study the Koran say it is absolutely loaded with contradictions - later writings frequently take the exact opposite position of earlier writings. The way Muslims deal with this is by giving the later writings of Muhammad precedence over the earlier writings. So if an early writing says "Be kind to all people" and a later writing says "Kill all infidels", the later writing wins.
From what I've been told, "Kill all infidels" was in Muhammad's last set of scriptures, which means they take precedence over everything that came before. The only way to be a good Muslim and not follow this directive is to pretend that these scriptures don't exist, which isn't exactly being a good Muslim.
Basically, the non-violent Muslims are simply bad Muslims.
This is the exact opposite situation with Christianity, where God promises to bring the violence, the believers are to turn the other cheek. There are plenty of people who ignore this, but that just makes them bad Christians. As far as Buddhism goes, I don't think you're allowed to even pretend to be Buddhist if you are violent.
They all have their own thing, but the Middle East is the only one that comes across as 13-year-old AOL users.
How do you think they learned english?
Most would just get another display, or several - particularly if it's multiple applications. I could see it for a single complicated app though.
Seriously, I used to hunt for pixels too, but after about 1280x1024 I stopped caring.
I don't like my desktop at much higher resolution than that, it becomes uncomfortable. I know gamers and drafters really want giant screens at massive resolutions, but besides them who else really wants it? 2560x2048 resolution doesn't exactly help me see my web pages or documents any better - in fact it can make them downright hard to see, so why do I need it?
Unfortunately for Pete Brown, I think more people fall into my category than do his, or he wouldn't have anything to complain about.
No, they definitely didn't round up, they truncated a number that was never accurate to begin with. 206*2/3 takes a half second longer to punch in than 206*0.66, if that. Why were they ever using 0.66 to begin with?
The law says 2/3, use 2/3. It's not hard.
They should never have been using decimals in the first place, the law says 2/3, not 66%, .66, or .66666666. 2/3 is what should have been used from the beginning. It takes a fraction of a second longer to punch that into a calculator and get an accurate result than it does to punch in .66 and get a very approximate result, so why bother? Just do it right from the start and you won't have this problem!
But .66?? who thinks like that.
An accountant, which is who came up with the number. And a calculator does not preclude you from doing fractions, fractions are easy on calculators and are extremely accurate without any effort.
206*2/3 = 137.3~ on a calculator. A touch more insight on how fractions and divisions work will let you realize that that's 137 1/3 without ever having to put pen to paper. Using a calculator is no excuse for fucking this up, either this pair were deliberately trying to manipulate the vote, or these are the types of accountants you don't want doing your books (or maybe you do?). Either way, it's incredibly scary that these guy's are doing the government's books.
Just keep it in fractions, then you don't have to be inaccurate. 2/3*206 = 137 1/3. You have to have 137 1/3 or more votes, which means you need 138.
None of that matters, because .66666666 anything is not the correct number. The correct number is 2/3. Use it. You can't accurately calculate non-terminating numbers, and you don't need them in this case, so why fucking bother? Lazy ass sons of bitches.
206 * 2/3 is 137 1/3, ergo, 136 is two votes short of being a 2/3 majority.
The law says they need 2/3 or more, so they need greater than 137 1/3 votes, 137 does not cutting it. Truncating the number violates the letter of the law.
Holy shit, it's not that complicated!
The law requires a majority of 2/3 or more.
(206*2)/3 = 137 1/3
137 is less than 137 1/3, so 137 is not a 2/3 majority.
138 is greater than 137 1/3, so 138 is a 2/3 majority.
Done. You can keep the 138 figure on hand to remind yourself, but it isn't necessary, just do 206 * 2/3 to get the minimum number of votes needed. It isn't hard.
This story and some of the posts have really been pretty sad, half the people on slashdot are perpetuating the same error the clerk made, they are simply doing it more accurately. The other half have come up with convoluted ways to check whether a number meets the criteria.
Christ, just multiply by 2/3 and be done with it, it's not hard.
Writing skills, his number is right, he's just dyslexic.
So this dyslexic guy walks into a bra...
Only if she had twins, you need 138 to pass.
It's easier to avoid decimals completely.
2/3 of 206 is 137 1/3. The lowest whole number that is greater than 2/3 of 206 is 138.
138 is the minimum number of votes needed to pass.
Decimals just suck, they encourage too much laziness, and you end up with problems like TFA.
pft, clearly you've been taught wrong. 2/3 is really .666666. Duh.
You're both wrong, 2/3 is two divided by three. To make 2/3 of any number, you multiply it by two and divide it by three. It's not hard, and no decimal will ever be as accurate.
The 100% accurate answer is 137 and 1/3.
You would think any dumbass would know how to multiply fractions on a calculator - it doesn't take any fancy functions, just a very very basic understanding of what a fraction is.
When it says 2/3, you use 2/3, not a decimal of anything. (206*2)/3, that's it. Done. The answer is 137.3~, and it's as accurate as is humanly possible. The only number of voters that satisfies the 2/3 majority requirement is 138.
It's not even a long division problem, it's a basic math problem.
It's trivial to multiply 206 by 2/3 on a calculater, and it in no way involves any decimal figure until the result is shown.
206 * 2 = 412. 412/3 = 137.3~, or 137r1 via long division.
It's pretty clear, the law requires a 2/3 majority, and 137 is not even a 2/3 majority, let alone 136. This is maybe third or fourth grade level math here people, and it's kinda sad that there is even any confusion about it. .66 is not 2/3, it's a little less than 2/3 and it does not count if the law says 2/3.
I suppose that's why he's not making money in the middle of this gaming boom, eh?
Oh, wait, it's reality we live in, not some imagined fairy tale where nobody will buy your game if don't license the latest and greatest game engine, for which you'll have to create bundles of new art and seriously cut into your profits. He seems to be making money hand over fist in the middle of the worst gaming depression in recent history by doing the exact opposite of what you suggest.
I wonder who really knows what they are talking about here?
He wasn't talking about engines, he was talking about everything.
He mentions that they sort of do it with engines, but even then not really. There are still dozens of engines that all do the same thing out there, when the first one was good enough to do the job.
What Vogel does is reuse art, icons, tiles, menus, everything. If he has already designed something that fits the needs of the game, he re-uses it. The only stuff he creates from scratch are things that he does not already have to use, or things that he is not happy with. Even his engine is 10 years old, which is unheard of. If he needs new features, he simply updates the engine. If something isn't working quite right, he fixes it. His contention is that there are a great many parts of game development that are not re-used but could be, and frankly, I think he is right. It's also worth noting that his profits have been steadily growing, only showing a small dip at the height of the recession, while the big game studios have been tanking and hard. He's obviously on to something.
For example, if Vogel had created the Quake engine, there would never have been a Quake 2 engine - he would have simply updated the Quake 1 engine. There was certainly a lot of overlap between the two, so a full re-write was not necessary. When Quake 3 came along, it would have simply meant re-writing the portions that needed re-writing, and adding new features. There are a lot of parts of game engines that are applicable no matter what the base technology is. The development savings of this model are astronomical compared to what companies are spending now.
The only time a complete re-write would be necessary would be if your engine was not well-written enough to allow for replaceable parts.
Valve seems to be the best about re-using game parts, and they also happen to be one of the most successful game companies. A lot of companies continue trying to re-invent the wheel with little or nothing to show for it.
It may seem cheap, but if a game is fun to play, who friggin cares?
It's probably the reason the Game industry is seriously tanking right now. Thus they try to find every conceivable method of bringing in more cash while remaining completely oblivious to the areas where they are obviously hemorrhaging cash.
I see this in my industry as well, the company is desperate to save $200,000 a year on coffee costs, yet completely ignore the tens of millions of dollars wasted every year on inefficient projects - case and point, one project that was originally budgeted for about $300k is now pushing $2 million, and the work originally planned hasn't even been started yet.
The guy has a point - he takes it to extremes, but why not? If you spent 300 man hours creating that gorgeous dragon model, why not use it in another game? Why make a new one, when what you need is a dragon and you've already got this killer dragon all made up? Just change the color, maybe slap on a few new horns, and away you go.
That's what this guy does, he has used the same engine for the last 10 years, with minor updates as needed with each new game. Any character models he finishes he re-uses if he's happy with them and they fit the needs of the game. He has sequels, but they aren't all sequels, if it fits he uses it. Doing these things probably cuts his technical costs and time down by 2/3 or more, and he can focus almost entirely on story and gameplay.
The most important thing for any game, no matter what type, is that it is fun. Fun is different for a lot of people, but eye candy is rarely - if ever - the most important factor in a game. Yet, that's what everyone spends all their money on. It makes no sense.
I don't get it, could you rephrase it as a car analogy?
He wasn't talking about EA, he was talking about John Vogal's Indy company.
You know, the one in TFS? The one who said he saved the game industry?