Ever read the book Lord of the Flies? Or seen the movie from about ten years back?
I've read the book and I've seen the movie. Battle Royale is different for (at least) 3 reasons. 1. BR is WAY more violent 2. In BR the kids are given no choice about being violent. They are given weapons and told to kill each other or die. 3. Lord of the Flies was released before Columbine. It shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
Battle Royale isn't better, it's just different. Lord of the Flies is an absolute classic. Watch/read both.
Interestingly enough, the two stories have very different moral outlooks and surprisingly enough, BR has the more positive one.
I guess there's a first for everything. I haven't seen the movie, but the blurb doesn't sound too bad. So what makes it morally outrageous in your opinion? I don't think there's anything wrong with the movie morally. I was making a comment about the US public. They seem to be a bit sensitive about depictions of kids killing each other, for fairly obvious reasons.
I haven't seen Battle Royale, but there's a good american take on this general idea called Series 7.
The idea is very much the same, but Series 7 lacks one thing that makes Battle Royale so disturbing and controversial: In Battle Royale it's 14-15 year old school kids killing each other, not adults.
I must say, this article does not seem much more than an excuse to get Battle Royale mentioned on slashdot's front page. For those of you not in the know, it's a Japanese movie about a class of 9th graders who have to kill each other in a government organised game show.
Unfortunately for all the American slashdotters, it has never been released in the US (not even on VHS or DVD), and probably will never be. There have been many debates on why exactly this is. I know only one thing, if I were the distributor, I would want to keep it out of the US. The profits will not be worth the moral outrage it will cause.
Bottom line is that it is a great movie, and if you have the chance, you should watch it.
When installing a Windows PC, it's a good idea to have The OpenCD handy. It includes (among other things) CDEx, Mozilla, GIMP, PuTTY, TightVNC and WinPT.
I like the idea of MySQL. It's great. But it's not ready for the big time. Not nearly.
Yes there are work arounds for the missing features. These work arounds are usually - do it in the application code. Yes I can do it in the application code, but that takes away many of the benefits of using a RDBMS in the first place.
To give you a quick idea. Our clients have complex MS SQL Server db's that hold a lot of data, all somehow related to each other. A few quick queries on my dev db gives the following results: 1061 tables 1742 stored procs 1281 triggers
The database gets accessed in a lot of different ways. This includes, but is not limited to: C++ via ODBC C++ via ADO Delphi via ODBC Delphi via ADO JSP Pages ASP Pages Java Servlets Perl Scripts Access
If something new technology comes along we can use it on our db. Why? Because the database is kept consistent through the use of triggers, stored procs and key constraints. If you have mutliple ways to access a database, you do not want your bussiness rules to sit in application code, you want it on the db.
Sorry.. very embarrased by that one. Of course it's Robert Johnson. Robert Jorden is the author of the Wheel of Time books... nothing to do with the blues
Whether you like rock, blues, jazz or R&B they all have their roots in the early part of the 20th century among the poor black population in the southern parts of America. A big part of that history is already lost for ever.
I am a big fan of early blues. My favourites are Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Jordan
Indecently, Robert Jordan is the guy who supposedly sold his soul to the devil one night at the crossroads in exchange for his guitar playing skills. This story gave rise to the whole blues, rock etc. comes from the devil story.
You can find a lot of their music on p2p networks - it's worth checking out. You'll be surprised how many songs you recognise - they have been copied and covered so many times.
No it's not. His surname was Ledbetter, but his nickname was Leadbelly. More info about his life can be found here. If you still think it's Ledbelly, look at the photo of his gravestone at the bottom of the page.
If there are any slashdotters who don't know who the hell he is, you might know at least one song he wrote : Where did you sleep last night which was sung by Nirvana on MTV Unplugged
I can only assume from this that he has never done or known anyone who has done any realtime programming. If you're going to write something
like a car engine management system performance is the ONLY critiria, hence a lot of these sorts of systems are still hand coded in assembler , never
mind C.
Do you have any references to backup these claims? I for one seriously doubt that there are many of these systems still written in assembler.
The thing that makes a system "real time" is not speed, but predictability. The program and operating system have to guarantee that a certain operation (e.g. handling an interrupt) will take no more than a specified time.
Once you have things that are predictable, it is easy to speed it up using faster hardware which has become very cheap. What is the average price of a CPU used in an engine management system compared to the price of manufacturing the whole car?
I also suspect that engine management systems these days are complex enough so that writing them in assembler is not a good idea. Assembler does not scale well for large projects. That has been known for ages. If you're interested go read up on the history of MULTICS (pure assembler) and UNIX. Guess who won.
Sombody should test how well this feature really works. E.g. Will it detect: 1. An image of half a banknote 2. An image with the colours inverted 3. The mirror image of a bank note etc. etc.
From the article: "To me it sounds like this has got to be against the law," Levinson said. "To tell people to kill a particular group of people? That has to violate some law."
In other news EA Games today announced that to prevent future lawsuits they will not ask players to "kill Germans" in the upcomming sequel to their Medal of Honour WWII first person shooter. The sequel has now been renamed to Medal of Honour, Let's all live together in peace.
can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.
RTFA. There is a button you have to "lightly touch" before the scrolling works, so no accidental scrolling because of random movements.
I do however wonder how controlable the scrolling would be in the situations you mention.
The article states : Although 47 of the 74 worldwide swallow species are found in Africa,1 only two species are named after the continent: the West African Swallow (Hirundo domicella) and the South African Swallow (Hirundo spilodera), also known as the South African Cave Swallow.
West, North and East Africa are regions of the African continent. South Africa on the other hand is a country. So the swallow is named after a country, not the continent. "South African X" always pertains to the country, if you want to talk about the region it's "Southern African X".
It would be a bit like saying "the only two American X named after the continent is the North American X and the USA X".
One of the biggest complaints that I have about todays games is the fact that they all (again a generalization) have to be in some sort of 3-D environment. What happened to side scrollers???
I agree. At the time when everyone was making either Tomb Raider clones or FPS's, Abe's Odyssee came out - a 2D side scroller. It was brilliant. Innovative game play. Very addictive.
I thought it would be the start of a revival or the genre - wrong. No matter what type of game you make these days, it seems like it's a prerequisite that it HAS to be 3D. No-one is willing to take a chance on 2D anymore, and I think we're missing out on many potentially good games because of this.
I haven't had a need for MS Office in a long time,... OpenOffice does a decent enough job...
That is fine if you work in seclusion from the rest of the world, but unfortunately MS Office has become an "industry standard". That means that people your business relies on (e.g. clients) often mail you Office documents that they want you to look at and modify. We tried to switch to OpenOffice, but it just didn't cut it - too many incompatabilies. So now we're back to spending $$$ on MS Office licenses for everyone.
In computer RPG's I almost always choose charaters who are physically weaker, but more intelligent.
Problem is most games really penalise you if you do this. Even the ones that do allow you to finish some quests without combat, usually don't award the same XP as for the violent solution.
Example : You have to find some kind of treasure, you play sweet talk a guard to let you in and sneak past all the other enemies. You finish the quest and get 1000XP. The brute force player kills the guard and everything/one else. He also gets 1000XP for the quest, but he also gets another 1000 form combat.
Hadly seems fair, and it makes the game so much more difficult for non fighting characters.
A few games have been better than the rest. Fallout I & II stand out. A big portion of quests had non/minimal fighing solutions... if you could find them.
I also liked Morrowind leveling up mechanism - instead of having on big pool of XP you develop skills individually. If you use a skill (like sneak, security of speechcraft) successfully, it improves. But at the end of the day you still had to do quite a bit of fighting.
Nowhere does the acticle say that they are the only plant suvivors from the Jurassic age. What makes them unique is the fact that they where thought to be extinct. Before they were found, only 175 million year old fossils of them were known.
There are other plant species that are older e.g. Cycads.
Back in the day (at univesity) we had lots of custom rules. We quickly threw out guided missiles and air strikes - not enough skill involved. We also usually allowed only 3 shots with the rope per turn.
We also played custom games - my favorite was just bazookas and grenades - with a 10 sec time limit. You'll be amazed how easy it is to blow yourself up if you have to rush your turn.
All said I think Worms is one of the all time best multiplayer games - even if everyone plays on the same computer. It's also a great spectator game.
From the article : The one thing we really are missing from the originals though are those enormously satisfying chain reactions, where a shotgun blast could send a worm rolling towards a mine, which could send him hurtling through the air, knocking another worm into another mine which could result in the catastrophic loss of half a team.
That's realy a pity. I can remember some real classic chain reactions.
I don't know if I'll buy Worms 3D, but one thing the article has done was convince me that it's about time to dig up that old copy of Worms I have lying around somewhere and invite a few friends over for some beer and Worms
Slashdot Mirror
Ever read the book Lord of the Flies? Or seen the movie from about ten years back?
I've read the book and I've seen the movie. Battle Royale is different for (at least) 3 reasons.
1. BR is WAY more violent
2. In BR the kids are given no choice about being violent. They are given weapons and told to kill each other or die.
3. Lord of the Flies was released before Columbine. It shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
Battle Royale isn't better, it's just different. Lord of the Flies is an absolute classic. Watch/read both.
Interestingly enough, the two stories have very different moral outlooks and surprisingly enough, BR has the more positive one.
I guess there's a first for everything. I haven't seen the movie, but the blurb doesn't sound too bad. So what makes it morally outrageous in your opinion?
I don't think there's anything wrong with the movie morally. I was making a comment about the US public. They seem to be a bit sensitive about depictions of kids killing each other, for fairly obvious reasons.
The idea is very much the same, but Series 7 lacks one thing that makes Battle Royale so disturbing and controversial: In Battle Royale it's 14-15 year old school kids killing each other, not adults.
Unfortunately for all the American slashdotters, it has never been released in the US (not even on VHS or DVD), and probably will never be. There have been many debates on why exactly this is. I know only one thing, if I were the distributor, I would want to keep it out of the US. The profits will not be worth the moral outrage it will cause.
Bottom line is that it is a great movie, and if you have the chance, you should watch it.
When installing a Windows PC, it's a good idea to have The OpenCD handy. It includes (among other things) CDEx, Mozilla, GIMP, PuTTY, TightVNC and WinPT.
I like the idea of MySQL. It's great. But it's not ready for the big time. Not nearly.
:
:
Yes there are work arounds for the missing features. These work arounds are usually - do it in the application code. Yes I can do it in the application code, but that takes away many of the benefits of using a RDBMS in the first place.
To give you a quick idea. Our clients have complex MS SQL Server db's that hold a lot of data, all somehow related to each other. A few quick queries on my dev db gives the following results
1061 tables
1742 stored procs
1281 triggers
The database gets accessed in a lot of different ways. This includes, but is not limited to
C++ via ODBC
C++ via ADO
Delphi via ODBC
Delphi via ADO
JSP Pages
ASP Pages
Java Servlets
Perl Scripts
Access
If something new technology comes along we can use it on our db. Why? Because the database is kept consistent through the use of triggers, stored procs and key constraints. If you have mutliple ways to access a database, you do not want your bussiness rules to sit in application code, you want it on the db.
Thanks for pointing it out. Slight brain fade there on my part
Sorry .. very embarrased by that one. Of course it's Robert Johnson. Robert Jorden is the author of the Wheel of Time books ... nothing to do with the blues
Whether you like rock, blues, jazz or R&B they all have their roots in the early part of the 20th century among the poor black population in the southern parts of America. A big part of that history is already lost for ever.
I am a big fan of early blues. My favourites are Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Jordan
Indecently, Robert Jordan is the guy who supposedly sold his soul to the devil one night at the crossroads in exchange for his guitar playing skills. This story gave rise to the whole blues, rock etc. comes from the devil story.
You can find a lot of their music on p2p networks - it's worth checking out. You'll be surprised how many songs you recognise - they have been copied and covered so many times.
1). It's "Ledbelly"
No it's not. His surname was Ledbetter, but his nickname was Leadbelly. More info about his life can be found here. If you still think it's Ledbelly, look at the photo of his gravestone at the bottom of the page.
If there are any slashdotters who don't know who the hell he is, you might know at least one song he wrote : Where did you sleep last night which was sung by Nirvana on MTV Unplugged
Do you have any references to backup these claims? I for one seriously doubt that there are many of these systems still written in assembler.
The thing that makes a system "real time" is not speed, but predictability. The program and operating system have to guarantee that a certain operation (e.g. handling an interrupt) will take no more than a specified time.
Once you have things that are predictable, it is easy to speed it up using faster hardware which has become very cheap. What is the average price of a CPU used in an engine management system compared to the price of manufacturing the whole car?
I also suspect that engine management systems these days are complex enough so that writing them in assembler is not a good idea. Assembler does not scale well for large projects. That has been known for ages. If you're interested go read up on the history of MULTICS (pure assembler) and UNIX. Guess who won.
Sombody should test how well this feature really works. E.g. Will it detect :
1. An image of half a banknote
2. An image with the colours inverted
3. The mirror image of a bank note
etc. etc.
"To me it sounds like this has got to be against the law," Levinson said. "To tell people to kill a particular group of people? That has to violate some law."
In other news EA Games today announced that to prevent future lawsuits they will not ask players to "kill Germans" in the upcomming sequel to their Medal of Honour WWII first person shooter. The sequel has now been renamed to Medal of Honour, Let's all live together in peace.
RTFA. There is a button you have to "lightly touch" before the scrolling works, so no accidental scrolling because of random movements.
I do however wonder how controlable the scrolling would be in the situations you mention.
Although 47 of the 74 worldwide swallow species are found in Africa,1 only two species are named after the continent: the West African Swallow (Hirundo domicella) and the South African Swallow (Hirundo spilodera), also known as the South African Cave Swallow.
West, North and East Africa are regions of the African continent. South Africa on the other hand is a country. So the swallow is named after a country, not the continent. "South African X" always pertains to the country, if you want to talk about the region it's "Southern African X".
It would be a bit like saying "the only two American X named after the continent is the North American X and the USA X".
The relevant pieces in the script :
A swallow carrying a coconut? and The Bridge of Death
It looks a lot like Long Bets, which has been around for quite some time. It was launched as a spin-off of Danny Hillis's Long Now Foundation. Other interesting projects of theirs include the Rosetta Project and the 10,000 year clock.
More like 200,000.
I agree. At the time when everyone was making either Tomb Raider clones or FPS's, Abe's Odyssee came out - a 2D side scroller. It was brilliant. Innovative game play. Very addictive.
I thought it would be the start of a revival or the genre - wrong. No matter what type of game you make these days, it seems like it's a prerequisite that it HAS to be 3D. No-one is willing to take a chance on 2D anymore, and I think we're missing out on many potentially good games because of this.
That is fine if you work in seclusion from the rest of the world, but unfortunately MS Office has become an "industry standard". That means that people your business relies on (e.g. clients) often mail you Office documents that they want you to look at and modify. We tried to switch to OpenOffice, but it just didn't cut it - too many incompatabilies. So now we're back to spending $$$ on MS Office licenses for everyone.
That said, I see no reason to upgrade to 2003
In computer RPG's I almost always choose charaters who are physically weaker, but more intelligent.
... if you could find them.
Problem is most games really penalise you if you do this. Even the ones that do allow you to finish some quests without combat, usually don't award the same XP as for the violent solution.
Example : You have to find some kind of treasure, you play sweet talk a guard to let you in and sneak past all the other enemies. You finish the quest and get 1000XP. The brute force player kills the guard and everything/one else. He also gets 1000XP for the quest, but he also gets another 1000 form combat.
Hadly seems fair, and it makes the game so much more difficult for non fighting characters.
A few games have been better than the rest. Fallout I & II stand out. A big portion of quests had non/minimal fighing solutions
I also liked Morrowind leveling up mechanism - instead of having on big pool of XP you develop skills individually. If you use a skill (like sneak, security of speechcraft) successfully, it improves. But at the end of the day you still had to do quite a bit of fighting.
I can find no reference about him ever doing work for Microsoft. I also doubt that he would - he has always been a very strong apponent of bloatware.
Is the parent post a troll, or just badly mistaken?
There are other plant species that are older e.g. Cycads.
Back in the day (at univesity) we had lots of custom rules. We quickly threw out guided missiles and air strikes - not enough skill involved. We also usually allowed only 3 shots with the rope per turn.
We also played custom games - my favorite was just bazookas and grenades - with a 10 sec time limit. You'll be amazed how easy it is to blow yourself up if you have to rush your turn.
All said I think Worms is one of the all time best multiplayer games - even if everyone plays on the same computer. It's also a great spectator game.
The one thing we really are missing from the originals though are those enormously satisfying chain reactions, where a shotgun blast could send a worm rolling towards a mine, which could send him hurtling through the air, knocking another worm into another mine which could result in the catastrophic loss of half a team.
That's realy a pity. I can remember some real classic chain reactions.
I don't know if I'll buy Worms 3D, but one thing the article has done was convince me that it's about time to dig up that old copy of Worms I have lying around somewhere and invite a few friends over for some beer and Worms