I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.
Well yeah. People who play nothing but basketball and live and breathe basketball aren't generally going to find chess to be a suitable alternative. X-Com is a shooter for the turn-based folks more interested in "thinkery" than developing razor sharp reflexes and complex key macros in the (vain) hope of getting the bulge on some 10 year old who plays the game 14 hours a day.
I played X-Com just a few years ago for the first time, back when it was already a well over a decade old and yet it was nothing short of a mind blowing experience where nothing I have played more recently came close and I don't even like turn based games.
X-Com: Enemy Unknown is generally regarded as one of the best PC games ever. Last year at IGN it was voted the #1 Best Game Ever, ahead of Civilization IV at #2. For a game released in 1994, that really says something. I bought the game when it came out and could only barely play it on my 386SX16 machine. 14 years later, I still play that damn game once every few months. I still occasionally play a few old games (e.g. Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic), but none really compare to the full-bore "replayability" of the original X-Com.
-Steam has all the original X-Com games available for download. Take-Two, who owns the rights to the X-Com franchise, has even patched some of them recently.
-Rumor has it that Take-Two is working on a new installment in the X-Com series, but I'm not hopeful. All the sequels have failed to capture some key aspect of the original game.
-Some crazy russian dude actually created a freeware PocketPC/Windows Mobile version of the original X-Com. Not only is it completely true to the original game, it actually works a little better. The only drawback is that you generally are stuck playing it on a screen about the size of a business card. Still, it keeps me occupied during long, boring "all hands" meetings.
-Xenocide is an ongoing attempt to create a modern version of the original X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Like most such fan projects, it's perpetually about 30% done. (yes, FreeOrion, I am looking at YOU)
Step 1: Read theoretical physics journal
Step 2: Claim principles could be adapted to military uses in unrealistic time frames
Step 3: Profit!
No ??? even needed.
Heh. You're modded "funny", but you're right on the money (so to speak). This is typical [grant|budget|*] fishing behavior. Nobody's department ever gets funded by saying "we think we may be able to develop and field a 15% lighter combat boot in the next 5 years". No, you get money by saying "we are on the verge of being able to make our soldiers capable of three currently humanly impossible things that would have our enemies cowering before us--- if only we had the funding..."
Him being elected will not fix racism but it is a big step in the right direction.
One of my coworkers is black, and had a pretty funny cynical view of it. He said "Now we [blacks] can't complain about being lorded over by another rich old white guy, but have to just complain about him being another ass politician, like everyone else."
Look, if you can't even be bothered to google the laws your citing to see if they're applicable, don't waste our time with posts full of idle uninformed armchair speculation.
1) criminal mischief requires "damage, defacement, alteration, or destruction of property". Turning off a TV is none of those (no, not even "alteration").
2) trespassing on property open to the public (e.g. a store) requires that you be asked to leave and then refuse.
Probably because your ringtone is annoying, and they want it to stop. Why can't people just stick to normal ringtones? Every time I hear the 'laughing baby' thing I feel like strangling someone.
One of my idiot coworkers has the Spongebob Squarepants theme for his "family" ringtone, and his wife calls him 12 times a day. I want to murder him.
Re:An example of great game A.I.
on
The State of Game AI
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem there is that the two factors you mentioned (accuracy and commands-per-minute) are both things that AI can far exceed humans at, especially if you aren't careful to limit it. I think that the real solution is to make a game where learning and adapting is more important than accuracy or speed, but then someone would have to write actual AI.
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to have games like that again? I blame the original "Nintendo generation" games for the proliferation of the abominations that are RTS games. In my experience, the contrived demands of the "Real Time" aspecs so completely dominate the game that what little "Strategy" remains might as well not exist.
Given that they're the exact opposite of retail B&M store packaging (easy to open and steal, likely shippable in it's own box and thus largely unlabeled) I'd say we're not going to see the disappearance of the hand-slashing blister pack. The "features" of a retail package exist because the necessities of retail in-person sales demand them. These necessities aren't going to disappear because Amazon's mail order business isn't bound by those necessities.
On those days that we let our 7 year old play video games, he responds more angrily to requests from both of his parents. On days where we make him (heaven forbid) PLAY, he is obedient and happy.
Video games detach you from the rest of the world
The evidence you present does not necessarily lead to the conclusion. When my job requires me to write code, to sit and stare at a monitor all day, it turns me into a cranky jerk. When my job requires me to grab a screwdriver and [build|install|repair] something, I'm much happier. It's not the programming that turns me into a dick, but rather the inactivity. Kids are especially sensitive to excessive inactivity. The fact that it's a video game doing it isn't necessarily relevant.
"hey, this memo implies the F35 can climb at over 330 meters/second."
Actually, there's plenty of that stuff around, and it's actually not necessarily classified, even if it's true. In the bad old days of the cold war, I asked the security officer in my Army unit why all this crap we were working with was classified SECRET and TOP SECRET when the same exact information was available to anyone purchasing a Jane's book by mail order. It was explained to me that it was not the raw information that was secret, but rather the positive verification that it was true that was being controlled. Most classified information falls into that category, really. Very little of it is truly secret, in that nobody without clearance knows it. I've seen quite a few pictures of "people and stuff at locations in Certain Southwest Asian Countries" that I know from personal experience would be classified SECRET or higher if they were government photos rather than casual snapshots taken by a yokel or journalist with a pocket camera. What the classification of the subject matter does is bar me (under penalty of waterboarding or whatever) from pointing out which pictures those are.
Go to a locksmith, not a paint huffing high school jackass at Wal Mart using a maladjusted machine. Quality work comes from people who do that sort of work for a living. You don't go to a gas station convenience store and complain that their grocery selection sucks, right?
Except unlike a photcopier, the errors can move back toward accuracy with multi-generational copies
It's not just a fixed +/- error, it's a combination of that, plus key wear (high spots wear faster than low, key tips wear faster than the part at the shoulder), plus inattention to key positioning (placed in jaw crooked), plus the how far off parallel the jaws are. On top of that, from what I've seen come into my shop, 90% of the misadjusted machines at [hardware stores|Home Depot|WalMart|*] are set to cut too deep. I'm not saying a second dodo has never acidentally un-screwed te first dodo's error, but I will say it's highly unlikely.
European keys are the same as US keys. You can bump a European lock, just like a US one. The technology is the same. Hell, the companies are the same. Like half the lock stuff sold in the US is made by Assa-Abloy or its subsidiaries. Most of the other half is made by Ingersoll-Rand. There are restricted keyways in the US as well, but just like in Europe nobody really cares to inconvenience themselves with a lock on their door that takes a key they can't get copied easily.
Why? They all use the same damn "drool-proof" Axxess machines (which they never adjust), and have the same high school dropouts doing the work. Take it to a locksmith and get it done right the first time.
That's likely because your "original" keys are marginal already from being copies made by the dodos at [Home Depot|the hardware store|*] who never adjust their machine, and then when you ask them to make a bad copy of a bad copy, SURPRISE, it doesn't work. Take it to a locksmith. They cost twice as much but the keys are more likely to work.
I'd like to see them try with Medeco bi-axial keys
You'd need a better picture is all. There's nothing magic about angle cuts.
Nothing magical, but there is something very 3-Dimensional about them. It certainly throws a spanner in the simple "2D measurement from a photo from any angle" this method uses. You'd need a fairly good picture with both a view of the side AND top of the key in order to correctly discern the angles. The keys they were correctly figuring from 200 feet away with a telephoto lens were crapola Kwikset 6-depth wide cut garbage, which I could decode by eye from across the room unaided.
I've had locksmiths get my key out, and they have a flat piece of metal (cops carry them too) that they can slide down where the window goes and have the door open in five seconds. No need whatever to make a key to open it.
Twenty bucks to come out to the car, a buck fifty for a new key. Yet he's going to go to that trouble to make a key?
How fucking stupid do you think we are?
I think you're extremely stupid. Not every car opens with a slim jim like yours does, Einstein. Not all cars have their locking mechanisms arranged identically inside the door. I don't know what it is you think "cops carry", but it ain't the $400 thirty piece set needed to open most lat model cars, and they sure as fuck don't have the time to practice with it such that they'd be able to use it. When the key is visible, it is indeed often easier to cut a key by code than it is to jigger the mechanism with a tool. I've been a locksmith for 20+ years, and given the choice, I will always choose to make a key over risking scratching their paint or breaking some delicate plastic part of the lock mechanism.
If they enter with a key, there is virtually no trace from anybody entering, so you'll have a hard time getting any compensation.
Great, that explains why it would be worse. Now explain to me why a burglar would would give a crap whether your insurance would cover what he took, particularly when the procedure for doing so is both more costly (camera + computer + CNC machine) and more time consuming than prying open a window.
The real astounding thing about the Diebold key that he probably didn't realize was that he likely didn't need to duplicate the key, but rather need only look through his junk drawer. I'm a locksmith, and I can tell just from looking at the picture of the key that it's a National C415A. This is probably the most common cheap cam lock key in the US. The steel drawers in my service truck came keyed to C415A.
Nerds are retards when it comes to any of the industrial crafts, and thus are amazed when they can find some way to simulate, emulate, or just watch one being performed.
Yeah, that's what always amazes me whenever anything lock-and-key related comes up. I've been a locksmith for 20-odd years, so I read this article and thought "So what?" I can just look at someone's key and decode the thing by eye with enough accuracy to cut a working key. I've had people fax me photocopies of keys from which I've cut working keys. I've looked through the window of a locked car at 3am with a dim flashlight at a person's keys hanging in the ignition and cut a key to open the door. Amazing feats, to the unskilled, but really just the expected skillset among competent journeyman level locksmiths.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the feeling that if someone really loves FPS-style games, they're going to want the latest, because the better engines allow for more fluid play and better immersion. X-Com doesn't fit into that, I guess.
Well yeah. People who play nothing but basketball and live and breathe basketball aren't generally going to find chess to be a suitable alternative. X-Com is a shooter for the turn-based folks more interested in "thinkery" than developing razor sharp reflexes and complex key macros in the (vain) hope of getting the bulge on some 10 year old who plays the game 14 hours a day.
I played X-Com just a few years ago for the first time, back when it was already a well over a decade old and yet it was nothing short of a mind blowing experience where nothing I have played more recently came close and I don't even like turn based games.
X-Com: Enemy Unknown is generally regarded as one of the best PC games ever. Last year at IGN it was voted the #1 Best Game Ever, ahead of Civilization IV at #2. For a game released in 1994, that really says something. I bought the game when it came out and could only barely play it on my 386SX16 machine. 14 years later, I still play that damn game once every few months. I still occasionally play a few old games (e.g. Master of Orion 2 and Master of Magic), but none really compare to the full-bore "replayability" of the original X-Com.
-Steam has all the original X-Com games available for download. Take-Two, who owns the rights to the X-Com franchise, has even patched some of them recently.
-Rumor has it that Take-Two is working on a new installment in the X-Com series, but I'm not hopeful. All the sequels have failed to capture some key aspect of the original game.
-Some crazy russian dude actually created a freeware PocketPC/Windows Mobile version of the original X-Com. Not only is it completely true to the original game, it actually works a little better. The only drawback is that you generally are stuck playing it on a screen about the size of a business card. Still, it keeps me occupied during long, boring "all hands" meetings.
- Xenocide is an ongoing attempt to create a modern version of the original X-Com: Enemy Unknown. Like most such fan projects, it's perpetually about 30% done. (yes, FreeOrion, I am looking at YOU)
This gives me an idea for a new set of yard signs: "Single? Bored? www.slashdot.org"
I've seen one that said:
SINGLE?
Pills + Booze = Eternal Sleep
Step 1: Read theoretical physics journal Step 2: Claim principles could be adapted to military uses in unrealistic time frames Step 3: Profit! No ??? even needed.
Heh. You're modded "funny", but you're right on the money (so to speak). This is typical [grant|budget|*] fishing behavior. Nobody's department ever gets funded by saying "we think we may be able to develop and field a 15% lighter combat boot in the next 5 years". No, you get money by saying "we are on the verge of being able to make our soldiers capable of three currently humanly impossible things that would have our enemies cowering before us--- if only we had the funding..."
Him being elected will not fix racism but it is a big step in the right direction.
One of my coworkers is black, and had a pretty funny cynical view of it. He said "Now we [blacks] can't complain about being lorded over by another rich old white guy, but have to just complain about him being another ass politician, like everyone else."
Look, if you can't even be bothered to google the laws your citing to see if they're applicable, don't waste our time with posts full of idle uninformed armchair speculation.
1) criminal mischief requires "damage, defacement, alteration, or destruction of property". Turning off a TV is none of those (no, not even "alteration").
2) trespassing on property open to the public (e.g. a store) requires that you be asked to leave and then refuse.
Probably because your ringtone is annoying, and they want it to stop. Why can't people just stick to normal ringtones? Every time I hear the 'laughing baby' thing I feel like strangling someone.
One of my idiot coworkers has the Spongebob Squarepants theme for his "family" ringtone, and his wife calls him 12 times a day. I want to murder him.
The problem there is that the two factors you mentioned (accuracy and commands-per-minute) are both things that AI can far exceed humans at, especially if you aren't careful to limit it. I think that the real solution is to make a game where learning and adapting is more important than accuracy or speed, but then someone would have to write actual AI.
Yeah, wouldn't it be nice to have games like that again? I blame the original "Nintendo generation" games for the proliferation of the abominations that are RTS games. In my experience, the contrived demands of the "Real Time" aspecs so completely dominate the game that what little "Strategy" remains might as well not exist.
Given that they're the exact opposite of retail B&M store packaging (easy to open and steal, likely shippable in it's own box and thus largely unlabeled) I'd say we're not going to see the disappearance of the hand-slashing blister pack. The "features" of a retail package exist because the necessities of retail in-person sales demand them. These necessities aren't going to disappear because Amazon's mail order business isn't bound by those necessities.
On those days that we let our 7 year old play video games, he responds more angrily to requests from both of his parents. On days where we make him (heaven forbid) PLAY, he is obedient and happy.
Video games detach you from the rest of the world
The evidence you present does not necessarily lead to the conclusion. When my job requires me to write code, to sit and stare at a monitor all day, it turns me into a cranky jerk. When my job requires me to grab a screwdriver and [build|install|repair] something, I'm much happier. It's not the programming that turns me into a dick, but rather the inactivity. Kids are especially sensitive to excessive inactivity. The fact that it's a video game doing it isn't necessarily relevant.
"hey, this memo implies the F35 can climb at over 330 meters/second."
Actually, there's plenty of that stuff around, and it's actually not necessarily classified, even if it's true. In the bad old days of the cold war, I asked the security officer in my Army unit why all this crap we were working with was classified SECRET and TOP SECRET when the same exact information was available to anyone purchasing a Jane's book by mail order. It was explained to me that it was not the raw information that was secret, but rather the positive verification that it was true that was being controlled. Most classified information falls into that category, really. Very little of it is truly secret, in that nobody without clearance knows it. I've seen quite a few pictures of "people and stuff at locations in Certain Southwest Asian Countries" that I know from personal experience would be classified SECRET or higher if they were government photos rather than casual snapshots taken by a yokel or journalist with a pocket camera. What the classification of the subject matter does is bar me (under penalty of waterboarding or whatever) from pointing out which pictures those are.
...they could try to them to turn states evidence if they had any info that would lead back up the chain.
You think that the guys who came up with this MBR virus might possibly be clever enough to not sell the CC#'s from their personal email account?
Go to a locksmith, not a paint huffing high school jackass at Wal Mart using a maladjusted machine. Quality work comes from people who do that sort of work for a living. You don't go to a gas station convenience store and complain that their grocery selection sucks, right?
Except unlike a photcopier, the errors can move back toward accuracy with multi-generational copies
It's not just a fixed +/- error, it's a combination of that, plus key wear (high spots wear faster than low, key tips wear faster than the part at the shoulder), plus inattention to key positioning (placed in jaw crooked), plus the how far off parallel the jaws are. On top of that, from what I've seen come into my shop, 90% of the misadjusted machines at [hardware stores|Home Depot|WalMart|*] are set to cut too deep. I'm not saying a second dodo has never acidentally un-screwed te first dodo's error, but I will say it's highly unlikely.
That only works if the key is slightly too high, and if it's not a working key after your initial "best guess", you got nuthin.
I've seen more than one "unbreakable" lock bypassed swiftly and easily by firemen armed with a K-12 rescue saw.
European keys are the same as US keys. You can bump a European lock, just like a US one. The technology is the same. Hell, the companies are the same. Like half the lock stuff sold in the US is made by Assa-Abloy or its subsidiaries. Most of the other half is made by Ingersoll-Rand. There are restricted keyways in the US as well, but just like in Europe nobody really cares to inconvenience themselves with a lock on their door that takes a key they can't get copied easily.
Why? They all use the same damn "drool-proof" Axxess machines (which they never adjust), and have the same high school dropouts doing the work. Take it to a locksmith and get it done right the first time.
That's likely because your "original" keys are marginal already from being copies made by the dodos at [Home Depot|the hardware store|*] who never adjust their machine, and then when you ask them to make a bad copy of a bad copy, SURPRISE, it doesn't work. Take it to a locksmith. They cost twice as much but the keys are more likely to work.
You'd need a better picture is all. There's nothing magic about angle cuts.
Nothing magical, but there is something very 3-Dimensional about them. It certainly throws a spanner in the simple "2D measurement from a photo from any angle" this method uses. You'd need a fairly good picture with both a view of the side AND top of the key in order to correctly discern the angles. The keys they were correctly figuring from 200 feet away with a telephoto lens were crapola Kwikset 6-depth wide cut garbage, which I could decode by eye from across the room unaided.
I call bullshit.
I've had locksmiths get my key out, and they have a flat piece of metal (cops carry them too) that they can slide down where the window goes and have the door open in five seconds. No need whatever to make a key to open it.
Twenty bucks to come out to the car, a buck fifty for a new key. Yet he's going to go to that trouble to make a key?
How fucking stupid do you think we are?
I think you're extremely stupid. Not every car opens with a slim jim like yours does, Einstein. Not all cars have their locking mechanisms arranged identically inside the door. I don't know what it is you think "cops carry", but it ain't the $400 thirty piece set needed to open most lat model cars, and they sure as fuck don't have the time to practice with it such that they'd be able to use it. When the key is visible, it is indeed often easier to cut a key by code than it is to jigger the mechanism with a tool. I've been a locksmith for 20+ years, and given the choice, I will always choose to make a key over risking scratching their paint or breaking some delicate plastic part of the lock mechanism.
If they enter with a key, there is virtually no trace from anybody entering, so you'll have a hard time getting any compensation.
Great, that explains why it would be worse. Now explain to me why a burglar would would give a crap whether your insurance would cover what he took, particularly when the procedure for doing so is both more costly (camera + computer + CNC machine) and more time consuming than prying open a window.
Doesn't anyone remember this one?:
Diebold key reproduced from key: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/06/1627220
The real astounding thing about the Diebold key that he probably didn't realize was that he likely didn't need to duplicate the key, but rather need only look through his junk drawer. I'm a locksmith, and I can tell just from looking at the picture of the key that it's a National C415A. This is probably the most common cheap cam lock key in the US. The steel drawers in my service truck came keyed to C415A.
there has to be a pretty impresive reason why any of the other less complicated and faster ways of breaking in wouldn't be useful.
#1 - making it look like an inside job
Unless you're a spy, you don't give a crap what it looks like.
Nerds are retards when it comes to any of the industrial crafts, and thus are amazed when they can find some way to simulate, emulate, or just watch one being performed.
Yeah, that's what always amazes me whenever anything lock-and-key related comes up. I've been a locksmith for 20-odd years, so I read this article and thought "So what?" I can just look at someone's key and decode the thing by eye with enough accuracy to cut a working key. I've had people fax me photocopies of keys from which I've cut working keys. I've looked through the window of a locked car at 3am with a dim flashlight at a person's keys hanging in the ignition and cut a key to open the door. Amazing feats, to the unskilled, but really just the expected skillset among competent journeyman level locksmiths.