Perhaps now is a good time for all the upstart talent out there to be heard before getting their work corrupted by the recording industry. Small broadcasters should set up their own organization to collectively promote new talent by sharing their newly found content with each other for broadcasting. All that would be needed is some sort of vetting system to ensure the work isn't already owned by someone other than the artist that created it.
... is a PSA that warns viewers that the content of most PSAs are rarely objective and are often funded by organizations trying to push their own agenda. (Some of which may actually be worse than the crap they're PSAing to us about.)
There really isn't much on this list that hasn't been seen elsewhere before. This is basically just a list to scare the straights on the jury... triggering the "not in my back yard!" reaction from folks too afraid to have sex on anything other than the socially pre-designated Hallmark holidays.
Hmm... wouldn't this apply to almost everything on YouTube that reaches "viral" status? (Like monkey's casually drinking their own urine fresh from the tap, etc...)
Since the summary didnt tell it: "Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable," U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
Obviously, this guy has never been to Japan. If this applies to non-real depictions of such situations, then I know a guy who has some "splainin' to do". Just check out this stash!
If you have some level of programming experience, you're already on your way. All you need is a multimedia-friendly language/IDE you're comfortable with (like Flash or a gaming IDE, such as Torque or Unity) and begin experimenting like crazy. Play around with simple stuff first... such as a Pong variant, then move on to more complicated ideas in a gaming style that interests you. If you like puzzle games, try your hand at something like Tetris or Bejeweled. If you like games where you deal with an enemy AI, try something like Pac-Man or Robotron.
All that matters is that you find something that appeals to you directly and makes you want to learn how it works, then get to work reverse engineering it piece by piece until you understand what makes it tick... then, improve upon it in some creative new way!
In any case, you probably won't learn squat unless you're willing to get your hands dirty along the way.
Also, don't let these newer 3D titles overwhelm you. Once you get past the 3D specific crap, you quickly realize that they work exactly the same as any 2D game, only with one more axis of freedom per object.
I think in most people there is a side that actually would want to do that to a real person, sick as it sounds.
Probably not. Those who actually have such desires will probably go out and do it to someone eventually, regardless of whatever games come out.
If you really want something disturbing to mull over, try getting an idea of the mindset it takes to want to be a surgeon.
For example, how do surgeons cope with the idea of having to do additional harm to another human being who's already injured? Strapping the person down to a table, inducing unconsciousness, slicing the skin open to expose the innards, moving internal tissues around in there own juices and locking them down with metal objects, cutting into bone with power tools, removing and replacing organs, etc...
While it probably starts out on the premise of helping people, the reality is probably far darker with an almost criminal fascination with the innards of the human body.
Although it ultimately benefits mankind to have people willing to do this stuff, there's probably very little that separates the world's greatest surgeons and Norman Bates, short of them being watched by others in the same room.
How about a case where someone clips parts of a picture taken 20 years ago, today, and slaps it onto a nude adult body? Since the "victim" was actually an adult at the time the "crime" took place, would there even be a crime at all? What if the "victim" here knowingly supplies the 20 year old photograph of themselves as a child to the offender in question? And does the "victim" become the "offender" by exploiting themselves at a younger age with an image that was taken for completely unrelated purposes?
Break your project into manageable steps. It's the only way to tackle large, complicated tasks when you lack motivation.
If you do enough small steps, you'll regain your enthusiasm for the project. Then you'll be back on the rails in no time.
There's a lot of truth to that. I've often found that fits of "programmer's block" are usually the result of poor planning, inevitably leaving me to become overwhelmed by a problem that has a scope much larger than expected.
You're best bet is to actually step away from the keys, turn off the monitor and crack out some paper and a pen. Then, step through the problem you're stuck on calmly until you can come up with a much more manageable outline of the process you need to create.
I can't tell you how many days or weeks of time I used to waste by staring vacantly at a blank window trying to figure out "what do I do now?"
... where exactly is the line for "launch and execution"? Under a very broad interpretation of policy, this could apply to any situation in which an app must parse any kind of 3rd party data in order to work with or display it.
Simply seeking out identifiable markers in any data source and reacting to it accordingly could be defined as an execution of externally issued instruction.
In a sense, any time you open a file in an app that didn't create it, that app is operating on the data in emulation.
I just wanted to take a moment to remember MindRover, a great game that never really got to see it's full potential.
For the uninformed, MindRover was a game where you'd build autonomous robots and program them for a wide range of events, ranging from races to combat. The programming was done through a process called "wiring", where you'd link your robot's physical components (sensors, motors, weapons, etc...) to logic circuits of varying complexity through flow charts.
(It sounds tedious, but it gets to be fun once you figure out how it works.)
The game originally started out on Windows and was later ported to linux and Mac OS X.
If you can still find it, it's worth a look.
In the mean time, has anyone found some other robotics apps like MindRover? I found one called WebBots a few months ago, but it carries a $3,200 price tag. (Not exactly ideal for "playing around"...)
Perhaps there will be some element to this that if the feature is used within a save game profile, the game itself "marks" you as something less than perfect, like prevent you from ever reaching 100% completion. You'll still be able to see the ending, etc... but you'll be forever denied the bragging rights of being a perfect player.
"But why can't he be an evil genius? The world needs more evil geniuses so that we can get more super heroes."
He'll get there, just be patient. This is someone who has yet to hit puberty, but every one of his peers will easily be 2-4x his age. That makes it kind of tricky to get laid when you have no one to gain experience with accessible to help sort out all those awkward emotions... particularly the stuff you can't just explain in words alone.
This kid will probably become something like that "Syndrome" guy from "The Incredibles", only fueled by sexual ambiguity and frustration.
Even if this kid is smart enough to decide not to skip out on playtime with kids his own age, he'll still be seen as a freak for being "different".
"Let's go back to the old NES days. The only thing that ever made people do was eat mushrooms and beat the shit outta turtles. Those were the days, young prepubescent CGI girls could safely wander the streets."
You must've missed the game "Custer's Revenge", a game where you specifically went around raping native american women tied to a stake.
It's interesting how much of a cultural inversion Germany is from the United States. Here in the U.S. we practically cherish violence in our culture, while the Germans seem opposed to most violence we'd often consider "tame" by our standards. Yet, it's exactly opposite when it comes to sexually "explicit" content. We fear it so much, we actually fight among ourselves over whether or not we can safely discuss sex with our children outside of telling them "don't do it." In the meanwhile, you could practically go up to any magazine rack in Germany and find magazines for children featuring pictures of topless women that would only pass as pornography here in the U.S.
An interesting case in how differently we view violence as acceptable would be some past games like "Carmageddon", a title that was loosely based on the 70's movie "Death Race 2000". In the U.S., you could kill regular people in the streets with your car in the game. In the U.K., this was switched to zombies with green "blood". In Germany, this was replaced with robots.
Keep in mind that even if they do agree to your offer for the domain name, you might not actually be purchasing it from them.
In many instances, squatters like these will often "sublet" a domain name, rather than actually sell it to you outright. If you aren't thorough, you might not notice the issue until after it needs to be renewed a year or two down the road. The idea is that once a person has operated under a domain name long enough for it to have value to them, they'll be so desperate to keep the name that they'll pay just about any price to continue using it.
Once they know they've got you hooked, it'll be just one more reason to justify doing it to others.
"They also said that while this can be abused by giving other students the phone, they are much less likely to do this due to the personal information, such as email, a phone generally contains."
Sure, assuming they're dumb enough to store such information on a device owned by a third party...
Given how relevant Flash and the web are in this day and age, how can you overlook HyperCard? It was the first program of it's kind to grant nearly anyone the ability to create their own full-fledged GUI-based applications within minutes. You'd simply swap stacks with other hypercard users to get at more apps.
(If I recall correctly, Hypercard's closest living relative is now a product called "Runtime Revolution"...)
Oh, and I'd also like to give an honorable mention to "ResEdit". I must've spent close to a decade exploiting it's features.
Well, if Star Trek: The Next Generation was any indication of such issues being relevant in our world, you might want to look at some of these upcoming games and toys coming out that you play using brain waves... such as Mattel's upcoming MindFlex toy and the Emotiv Epoc headset controller for PC gaming applications.
As for addictive properties, there still needs to be some sort of "reward" system to act as feedback, like a strategic TENS unit shock into certain areas of the body that would be desirable, such as what you keep hearing stories about regarding lab animals becoming "wired" and externally controlled.
The "addiction" of games like WoW is a bit different and tends to be based almost entirely on participating as part of a "group", not unlike the awkward life of school children jockeying for recognition. If you have to question this from an ethics standpoint, then just about any situation where you are forced to compete against others to gain something would need to be questioned as well.
Which brings us to an interesting question... is the desire to live the product of addiction?
Networks are mostly just a complex program operating across a number of different machines. So, why not just create a flowchart of the network to describe its features and the create sub-flowcharts for machines connected to it?
Once you have a complete picture, documenting it should be easy.
DVDs are a pain to store, use and purchase, when compared with a network solution. But the studios stubbornly continue to tie their own hands with their arcane marketing and distribution 'rules'.
I'm actually starting to run into that problem myself. I've already resorted to bulk CD storage cases (1,000+ discs in plastic filing sleeves), which are bulky, inconvenient and damaging to the discs themselves the more I use them. Before long, I'll literally have no choice but to rip them all onto a mass storage solution to keep the content itself intact.
Considering that most "ripping" tools are outlawed now thanks to the industry, it's like they're forcing the obsolescence of my legitimately purchased content by blocking off any (technically) legal paths to shift my content over to another medium for my own use.
Simply put, without chaos, you have no metric to define what "order" is.
Further more, chaos, is a necessary component of innovation and creativity. Without chaos, there's no motivation or desire to improve one's self in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps now is a good time for all the upstart talent out there to be heard before getting their work corrupted by the recording industry. Small broadcasters should set up their own organization to collectively promote new talent by sharing their newly found content with each other for broadcasting. All that would be needed is some sort of vetting system to ensure the work isn't already owned by someone other than the artist that created it.
... is a PSA that warns viewers that the content of most PSAs are rarely objective and are often funded by organizations trying to push their own agenda. (Some of which may actually be worse than the crap they're PSAing to us about.)
There really isn't much on this list that hasn't been seen elsewhere before. This is basically just a list to scare the straights on the jury... triggering the "not in my back yard!" reaction from folks too afraid to have sex on anything other than the socially pre-designated Hallmark holidays.
Hmm... wouldn't this apply to almost everything on YouTube that reaches "viral" status? (Like monkey's casually drinking their own urine fresh from the tap, etc...)
Since the summary didnt tell it: "Extreme Associates produced and distributed sexually degrading material that portrayed women in the most vile and depraved manner imaginable," U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, of the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
Obviously, this guy has never been to Japan. If this applies to non-real depictions of such situations, then I know a guy who has some "splainin' to do". Just check out this stash!
If you have some level of programming experience, you're already on your way. All you need is a multimedia-friendly language/IDE you're comfortable with (like Flash or a gaming IDE, such as Torque or Unity) and begin experimenting like crazy. Play around with simple stuff first... such as a Pong variant, then move on to more complicated ideas in a gaming style that interests you. If you like puzzle games, try your hand at something like Tetris or Bejeweled. If you like games where you deal with an enemy AI, try something like Pac-Man or Robotron.
All that matters is that you find something that appeals to you directly and makes you want to learn how it works, then get to work reverse engineering it piece by piece until you understand what makes it tick... then, improve upon it in some creative new way!
In any case, you probably won't learn squat unless you're willing to get your hands dirty along the way.
Also, don't let these newer 3D titles overwhelm you. Once you get past the 3D specific crap, you quickly realize that they work exactly the same as any 2D game, only with one more axis of freedom per object.
I think in most people there is a side that actually would want to do that to a real person, sick as it sounds.
Probably not. Those who actually have such desires will probably go out and do it to someone eventually, regardless of whatever games come out.
If you really want something disturbing to mull over, try getting an idea of the mindset it takes to want to be a surgeon.
For example, how do surgeons cope with the idea of having to do additional harm to another human being who's already injured? Strapping the person down to a table, inducing unconsciousness, slicing the skin open to expose the innards, moving internal tissues around in there own juices and locking them down with metal objects, cutting into bone with power tools, removing and replacing organs, etc...
While it probably starts out on the premise of helping people, the reality is probably far darker with an almost criminal fascination with the innards of the human body.
Although it ultimately benefits mankind to have people willing to do this stuff, there's probably very little that separates the world's greatest surgeons and Norman Bates, short of them being watched by others in the same room.
How about a case where someone clips parts of a picture taken 20 years ago, today, and slaps it onto a nude adult body? Since the "victim" was actually an adult at the time the "crime" took place, would there even be a crime at all? What if the "victim" here knowingly supplies the 20 year old photograph of themselves as a child to the offender in question? And does the "victim" become the "offender" by exploiting themselves at a younger age with an image that was taken for completely unrelated purposes?
Break your project into manageable steps. It's the only way to tackle large, complicated tasks when you lack motivation.
If you do enough small steps, you'll regain your enthusiasm for the project. Then you'll be back on the rails in no time.
There's a lot of truth to that. I've often found that fits of "programmer's block" are usually the result of poor planning, inevitably leaving me to become overwhelmed by a problem that has a scope much larger than expected.
You're best bet is to actually step away from the keys, turn off the monitor and crack out some paper and a pen. Then, step through the problem you're stuck on calmly until you can come up with a much more manageable outline of the process you need to create.
I can't tell you how many days or weeks of time I used to waste by staring vacantly at a blank window trying to figure out "what do I do now?"
SciFi channel is supposed to start running "Mobile Suit Gundam 00" season 2 next monday night.
... where exactly is the line for "launch and execution"? Under a very broad interpretation of policy, this could apply to any situation in which an app must parse any kind of 3rd party data in order to work with or display it.
Simply seeking out identifiable markers in any data source and reacting to it accordingly could be defined as an execution of externally issued instruction.
In a sense, any time you open a file in an app that didn't create it, that app is operating on the data in emulation.
StarCraft was also a type of van manufactured by GM.
I just wanted to take a moment to remember MindRover, a great game that never really got to see it's full potential.
For the uninformed, MindRover was a game where you'd build autonomous robots and program them for a wide range of events, ranging from races to combat. The programming was done through a process called "wiring", where you'd link your robot's physical components (sensors, motors, weapons, etc...) to logic circuits of varying complexity through flow charts.
(It sounds tedious, but it gets to be fun once you figure out how it works.)
The game originally started out on Windows and was later ported to linux and Mac OS X.
If you can still find it, it's worth a look.
In the mean time, has anyone found some other robotics apps like MindRover? I found one called WebBots a few months ago, but it carries a $3,200 price tag. (Not exactly ideal for "playing around"...)
Perhaps there will be some element to this that if the feature is used within a save game profile, the game itself "marks" you as something less than perfect, like prevent you from ever reaching 100% completion. You'll still be able to see the ending, etc... but you'll be forever denied the bragging rights of being a perfect player.
"But why can't he be an evil genius? The world needs more evil geniuses so that we can get more super heroes."
He'll get there, just be patient. This is someone who has yet to hit puberty, but every one of his peers will easily be 2-4x his age. That makes it kind of tricky to get laid when you have no one to gain experience with accessible to help sort out all those awkward emotions... particularly the stuff you can't just explain in words alone.
This kid will probably become something like that "Syndrome" guy from "The Incredibles", only fueled by sexual ambiguity and frustration.
Even if this kid is smart enough to decide not to skip out on playtime with kids his own age, he'll still be seen as a freak for being "different".
"Let's go back to the old NES days. The only thing that ever made people do was eat mushrooms and beat the shit outta turtles. Those were the days, young prepubescent CGI girls could safely wander the streets."
You must've missed the game "Custer's Revenge", a game where you specifically went around raping native american women tied to a stake.
- Custer's Revenge game play clip
Disturbing stuff...
It's interesting how much of a cultural inversion Germany is from the United States. Here in the U.S. we practically cherish violence in our culture, while the Germans seem opposed to most violence we'd often consider "tame" by our standards. Yet, it's exactly opposite when it comes to sexually "explicit" content. We fear it so much, we actually fight among ourselves over whether or not we can safely discuss sex with our children outside of telling them "don't do it." In the meanwhile, you could practically go up to any magazine rack in Germany and find magazines for children featuring pictures of topless women that would only pass as pornography here in the U.S.
An interesting case in how differently we view violence as acceptable would be some past games like "Carmageddon", a title that was loosely based on the 70's movie "Death Race 2000". In the U.S., you could kill regular people in the streets with your car in the game. In the U.K., this was switched to zombies with green "blood". In Germany, this was replaced with robots.
Keep in mind that even if they do agree to your offer for the domain name, you might not actually be purchasing it from them.
In many instances, squatters like these will often "sublet" a domain name, rather than actually sell it to you outright. If you aren't thorough, you might not notice the issue until after it needs to be renewed a year or two down the road. The idea is that once a person has operated under a domain name long enough for it to have value to them, they'll be so desperate to keep the name that they'll pay just about any price to continue using it.
Once they know they've got you hooked, it'll be just one more reason to justify doing it to others.
"They also said that while this can be abused by giving other students the phone, they are much less likely to do this due to the personal information, such as email, a phone generally contains."
Sure, assuming they're dumb enough to store such information on a device owned by a third party...
Given how relevant Flash and the web are in this day and age, how can you overlook HyperCard? It was the first program of it's kind to grant nearly anyone the ability to create their own full-fledged GUI-based applications within minutes. You'd simply swap stacks with other hypercard users to get at more apps.
(If I recall correctly, Hypercard's closest living relative is now a product called "Runtime Revolution"...)
Oh, and I'd also like to give an honorable mention to "ResEdit". I must've spent close to a decade exploiting it's features.
Well, if Star Trek: The Next Generation was any indication of such issues being relevant in our world, you might want to look at some of these upcoming games and toys coming out that you play using brain waves... such as Mattel's upcoming MindFlex toy and the Emotiv Epoc headset controller for PC gaming applications.
As for addictive properties, there still needs to be some sort of "reward" system to act as feedback, like a strategic TENS unit shock into certain areas of the body that would be desirable, such as what you keep hearing stories about regarding lab animals becoming "wired" and externally controlled.
The "addiction" of games like WoW is a bit different and tends to be based almost entirely on participating as part of a "group", not unlike the awkward life of school children jockeying for recognition. If you have to question this from an ethics standpoint, then just about any situation where you are forced to compete against others to gain something would need to be questioned as well.
Which brings us to an interesting question... is the desire to live the product of addiction?
Networks are mostly just a complex program operating across a number of different machines. So, why not just create a flowchart of the network to describe its features and the create sub-flowcharts for machines connected to it?
Once you have a complete picture, documenting it should be easy.
DVDs are a pain to store, use and purchase, when compared with a network solution. But the studios stubbornly continue to tie their own hands with their arcane marketing and distribution 'rules'.
I'm actually starting to run into that problem myself. I've already resorted to bulk CD storage cases (1,000+ discs in plastic filing sleeves), which are bulky, inconvenient and damaging to the discs themselves the more I use them. Before long, I'll literally have no choice but to rip them all onto a mass storage solution to keep the content itself intact.
Considering that most "ripping" tools are outlawed now thanks to the industry, it's like they're forcing the obsolescence of my legitimately purchased content by blocking off any (technically) legal paths to shift my content over to another medium for my own use.
Simply put, without chaos, you have no metric to define what "order" is.
Further more, chaos, is a necessary component of innovation and creativity. Without chaos, there's no motivation or desire to improve one's self in any way.
Order at it's most extreme is stagnation.
What kind of symptoms would someone experience or exhibit if poisoned by this?