It sounds like you know about as much about guns and gun clubs as the kinds of people who want to ban games do about video games.
The same mentality that leads to "ban guns", "ban assault weapons", "make gunowners register" is that of those who want to ban games, abortions, public internet access, etc. because they believe these things are the root of all society's problems.
That is, many people express a strong opinion, vote, and lobby on issues that they haven't bothered to evaluate and research impartially.
Some tidbits on the two issues related to the slashback article (maybe it will inspire some people to learn more about these topics). Violent video games are currently rated under a system stricter than movies. "M" mature games aren't sold to people under 18.
Most guns *are* illegal in the US (including assault weapons, like those in CounterStrike). Many states have strict licensing policies. Shooting ranges are like golf ranges, only safer. Each has shooting range has different facilities, so it makes sense to belong to more than one.
And neither guns nor games seems to be the root cause of violence-- if you're looking for a problem, look to poverty and bad parenting.
Page 10 shows actual experimental results. You couldn't read code or e-mail very easily (although this is just a simple test system), but he demonstrates that it is really possible to read PowerPoint-size text just from the splashed light.
There's some really nice signal processing going on in the paper; it isn't like he just feeds the raw signal into pixels or anything.
"We have the technology, knowledge, and will to create the ultimate gaming service--we just can't afford to give it away for free to the millions of people who visit GameSpot each month."
Sure. I'd pay the same for an equivalently good gaming magazine, why not pay for GameSpot? GameSpot is even cool enough to give away their content for 7 days. I don't expect them to run their business as a public service; I don't run mine that way. Vince Broady's [GameSpot co-founder] announcement is well phrased and perfectly reasonable. And, unlike a game magazine I buy or cable TV I pay for, it won't be 50% ads... they're removing ads from the pay site.
If I can't download something immediately, that's a big black mark against the product I'm evaluating. Let me download it right away, without telling you my e-mail address. "Don't call me-- I'll call you."
Halfway through the first book I thought, "this is crap" because it seemed like he was just randomly making up wierd stuff rather than putting together a coherent world.
By the end of the book I thought it was brilliant-- in the second one I realized just how much stuff he had set up and in the third it came together perfectly.
This is kind of Good Omens meets Lord of the Rings meets Narnia; they're really fantastic books and have child characters you will actually like. The boy, Will, is someone Lyra is obviously going to fall for but is a dark, twisted, dangerous kid. Pullman doesn't set him up as a psycho, but neither does it make Will ignorant, naive, or picture perfect. Will and Lyra are very smart but also endowed with emotions and motivations that come off as real, not just superbly crafted.
The third book feels like Rendevouz with Rama (at least, before the Rama series started to suck!) You explore alien worlds and wonder how they got to be that way. Everything fits well into the plot, the theme, and the universe that he has created-- Pullman rocks.
For a movie based on a comic book, I thought they did a great job. The director, screenwriter, and cinematographer clearly love comic books and captured the over-the top symbolic essence of the art form.
A battered Blade falling through a rain of bullets into a swiming pool of blood-- a vampire commando with automatic weapons in each hand running down a sewer pipe lined with super-vampires-- a hero with a Katana, pump shotgun, bioweapons, vampire fangs, and leather trenchcoat-- this really captures the essence of "what the hell, it looks cool."
I thought the level of gross-out, horror movie violence/video game was a little insane. There are scenes where people open up with automatic weapons in night clubs, characters heads cut in half (I mean, you see inside the brain), and the super-vampire bad guys gave me nightmares. "It's ok to kill everyone in the movie because they're all just vampires" was a little too easy. You can't just weasel out of the ethics of showing hundreds of people eviscerated by saying that they were vampires so it's ok. There are a few scenes where actors seem to stand around in a fight waiting for someone to hit them-- this isn't Jackie Chan action but a string of one-on-one battles even in mass fight scenes.
If you liked Blade I and the Matrix, I think you'll like Blade II. It gets more stylish in some places than the original and has relatively good writing for its genre. The actors all pull off their respective characters well. The Whistler plot-line is a little poorly thought out and it is not clear why all of the super-vampires hunt vampires instead of humans. Mordoc's revenge motivation shouldn't extend to his progeny. I think the star-crossed lover bit and the "do you trust Whistler" could have been emphasized a lot more and actually made this a really good movie plot-wise if they were pulled off.
-m
Re:algorithm example: long division
on
Deep Algorithms?
·
· Score: 2
I believe algorithms are also guaranteed to terminate in finite time.
I'd be more excited to see how many miles I can get for a flight like this. I mean, if you take a real orbital flight do you get 24,000 miles every time you go around the earth?
Why is it that the better his special effects get, the worse the acting and plot become? The total lack of Jar Jar isn't really enough-- it looked like scenes from a cut rate sci-fi movie and not something that should be part of Star Wars.:(
One of the saddest moments in my life was when I accidentally hit F4 follwed by F5 in BASIC, which causes it to execute
SAVE "TRON
Which, though bizarre (because of the lack of a close quote), was legal in BASIC and caused it to overwrite my first 3D game (Tron, of course) with an empty file. Fortunately, I didn't decide to throw in the towel on 3D, but I did can the Tron project because it was too emotionally painful to rewrite after the loss.
Note (not to ruin the joke) that plagarism is not a crime. It doesn't refer to copyright violation (which is a crime) but to dishonesty. Plagarism occurs when an author implicitly asserts that something is new and original work and it is not. It is even possible to self-plagarize (this happens a lot in scientific circles) by claiming the same work is new in two different places. Students who insert sections of a highschool report they wrote into their freshman college paper are guilty of this.
Nobody is going to arrest you for plagarism, it just weakens the structure of intellectual society and is therefore a good way to get blacklisted (or kicked out of school). Unethical-- but not illegal.
I work in computer graphics, which is a rapidly changing and very competitive field.
When interviewing candidates, I want to see one major project that they've worked on to which my immediate reaction is, "cool." If they want to write games, saying "I worked on Unreal2" is pretty cool. As a student, you probably can't say that. But a final or independent project you worked on that blows me away is going to get you a job where a 4.0 (5.0 for the MIT crowd) average, good letters of recommendation, and knowing 200 digits of PI will still get you dumped out the door if I don't think you have coding experience.
OSS is appealing to some people, and I support open software development in cases where it has a chance of being superior. But if I'm interviewing you, I don't care what your ethical standing is toward OSS-- I care if you worked on something cool and will help make our product cool, too. So if the choice is making a patch to the Linux kernal, a new GIMP filter, or working on something closed-source (or a personal project) but relevant to what you want to do professionally, ignore the OSS/closed distinction. It matters to you, not your employer, and they're the one making the decision.
Java is open source, at least for practical purposes. Sun has released the source to the entire Java standard library. IBM's Jikes is one of the best Java compilers available (it is more reliable and faster than javac), and is available with full source.
Open source doesn't just mean the GPL! The GPL trouble more often than not because most companies won't get within miles of it for fear of legally contaminating their sources. The important thing is getting provided source code to be seen as a standard, not a wierd alternative. With Java, the source is provided and is really useful.
I wouldn't put Java and C# in the same boat as far as "proprietary". You can't fork the Java code base directly, but Sun is really responsive to the community. Most new libraries are incorporated from user built packages, and all new features go through a community review. The bug database is open to the public. Sun provides open source repositories like jxta.org to help the community. Sun is the good guy... C# is Java Microsoftified and is evil (although a decent language) because it won't have this kind of community interaction and open source.
I built an AMD system for gaming only to discover that the chipset for my motherboard was fundamentally incompatible with AGP. After screwing around with AGP paging size, PCI latency, 4-in-1 drivers, and all the rest, I gave up and bought a (slower) P4 system.
I recommend Asus motherboards if you go AMD-- my research indicated that they have the fewest problems, but expect to upgrade your drivers immediately after installing your OS, or things will crash.
Slashdot Mirror
The same mentality that leads to "ban guns", "ban assault weapons", "make gunowners register" is that of those who want to ban games, abortions, public internet access, etc. because they believe these things are the root of all society's problems.
That is, many people express a strong opinion, vote, and lobby on issues that they haven't bothered to evaluate and research impartially.
Some tidbits on the two issues related to the slashback article (maybe it will inspire some people to learn more about these topics). Violent video games are currently rated under a system stricter than movies. "M" mature games aren't sold to people under 18.
Most guns *are* illegal in the US (including assault weapons, like those in CounterStrike). Many states have strict licensing policies. Shooting ranges are like golf ranges, only safer. Each has shooting range has different facilities, so it makes sense to belong to more than one.
And neither guns nor games seems to be the root cause of violence-- if you're looking for a problem, look to poverty and bad parenting.
-m
LOL. That is a hysterical comment! Thanks for making my evening (after just having spent the evening playing counterstrike).
-m
There's some really nice signal processing going on in the paper; it isn't like he just feeds the raw signal into pixels or anything.
-m
-m
Sure. I'd pay the same for an equivalently good gaming magazine, why not pay for GameSpot? GameSpot is even cool enough to give away their content for 7 days. I don't expect them to run their business as a public service; I don't run mine that way. Vince Broady's [GameSpot co-founder] announcement is well phrased and perfectly reasonable. And, unlike a game magazine I buy or cable TV I pay for, it won't be 50% ads... they're removing ads from the pay site.
I look forward to the new GameSpot.
-m
-m
By the end of the book I thought it was brilliant-- in the second one I realized just how much stuff he had set up and in the third it came together perfectly.
This is kind of Good Omens meets Lord of the Rings meets Narnia; they're really fantastic books and have child characters you will actually like. The boy, Will, is someone Lyra is obviously going to fall for but is a dark, twisted, dangerous kid. Pullman doesn't set him up as a psycho, but neither does it make Will ignorant, naive, or picture perfect. Will and Lyra are very smart but also endowed with emotions and motivations that come off as real, not just superbly crafted.
The third book feels like Rendevouz with Rama (at least, before the Rama series started to suck!) You explore alien worlds and wonder how they got to be that way. Everything fits well into the plot, the theme, and the universe that he has created-- Pullman rocks.
-magic
A battered Blade falling through a rain of bullets into a swiming pool of blood-- a vampire commando with automatic weapons in each hand running down a sewer pipe lined with super-vampires-- a hero with a Katana, pump shotgun, bioweapons, vampire fangs, and leather trenchcoat-- this really captures the essence of "what the hell, it looks cool."
I thought the level of gross-out, horror movie violence/video game was a little insane. There are scenes where people open up with automatic weapons in night clubs, characters heads cut in half (I mean, you see inside the brain), and the super-vampire bad guys gave me nightmares. "It's ok to kill everyone in the movie because they're all just vampires" was a little too easy. You can't just weasel out of the ethics of showing hundreds of people eviscerated by saying that they were vampires so it's ok. There are a few scenes where actors seem to stand around in a fight waiting for someone to hit them-- this isn't Jackie Chan action but a string of one-on-one battles even in mass fight scenes.
If you liked Blade I and the Matrix, I think you'll like Blade II. It gets more stylish in some places than the original and has relatively good writing for its genre. The actors all pull off their respective characters well. The Whistler plot-line is a little poorly thought out and it is not clear why all of the super-vampires hunt vampires instead of humans. Mordoc's revenge motivation shouldn't extend to his progeny. I think the star-crossed lover bit and the "do you trust Whistler" could have been emphasized a lot more and actually made this a really good movie plot-wise if they were pulled off.
-m
-m
-m
Why is it that the better his special effects get, the worse the acting and plot become? The total lack of Jar Jar isn't really enough-- it looked like scenes from a cut rate sci-fi movie and not something that should be part of Star Wars.
-m
/. is better than e-bay, I guess.
-m
-m
SAVE "TRON
Which, though bizarre (because of the lack of a close quote), was legal in BASIC and caused it to overwrite my first 3D game (Tron, of course) with an empty file. Fortunately, I didn't decide to throw in the towel on 3D, but I did can the Tron project because it was too emotionally painful to rewrite after the loss.
-m
-m
Maybe I have the wrong IM friends. Hey... I wonder if those UCLA students are still for hire!
-magic
Nobody is going to arrest you for plagarism, it just weakens the structure of intellectual society and is therefore a good way to get blacklisted (or kicked out of school). Unethical-- but not illegal.
-m
When interviewing candidates, I want to see one major project that they've worked on to which my immediate reaction is, "cool." If they want to write games, saying "I worked on Unreal2" is pretty cool. As a student, you probably can't say that. But a final or independent project you worked on that blows me away is going to get you a job where a 4.0 (5.0 for the MIT crowd) average, good letters of recommendation, and knowing 200 digits of PI will still get you dumped out the door if I don't think you have coding experience.
OSS is appealing to some people, and I support open software development in cases where it has a chance of being superior. But if I'm interviewing you, I don't care what your ethical standing is toward OSS-- I care if you worked on something cool and will help make our product cool, too. So if the choice is making a patch to the Linux kernal, a new GIMP filter, or working on something closed-source (or a personal project) but relevant to what you want to do professionally, ignore the OSS/closed distinction. It matters to you, not your employer, and they're the one making the decision.
-m
Wow.
-m
-m
A lot of game developers use this; not open source, if that is an issue for you, though.
-m
Java is open source, at least for practical purposes. Sun has released the source to the entire Java standard library. IBM's Jikes is one of the best Java compilers available (it is more reliable and faster than javac), and is available with full source.
Open source doesn't just mean the GPL! The GPL trouble more often than not because most companies won't get within miles of it for fear of legally contaminating their sources. The important thing is getting provided source code to be seen as a standard, not a wierd alternative. With Java, the source is provided and is really useful.
I wouldn't put Java and C# in the same boat as far as "proprietary". You can't fork the Java code base directly, but Sun is really responsive to the community. Most new libraries are incorporated from user built packages, and all new features go through a community review. The bug database is open to the public. Sun provides open source repositories like jxta.org to help the community. Sun is the good guy... C# is Java Microsoftified and is evil (although a decent language) because it won't have this kind of community interaction and open source.
-m
-m
-m
I recommend Asus motherboards if you go AMD-- my research indicated that they have the fewest problems, but expect to upgrade your drivers immediately after installing your OS, or things will crash.
-m