More importantly, "Sorcerer's stone" has no meaning, whilst the "Philosopher's stone" is an age-old myth (and the Holy Grail of alchemists since time immemorial).
The US publishers judged the intelligence of the US public and found them wanting. I haven't seen too many comments on this issue to prove them wrong.
MIM here in Australia is currently the target of a takeover bid.
I'm not sure of the details, but from my reading it appears that every shareholder who holds more than 20 shares (approx AU$32) has exactly one vote in both the takeover bid and for the Board of Directors.
I use the proxomitron and NetCaptor to prevent seeing popups. I have therefore implemented an authorisation system - I only authorise popups from specific places.
Therefore, if I get a popup I don't want, it means someone has circumvented my authorisation measures.
I get about 50 items classified as spam per day. These have a spam probability according to my spam and ham corpuses of > 90% (usually 100%).
However, I also get 2-6 things classified as *possibly* spam each day. These are things which have a spam probability of > 15%.
These get mixed up in among 200-400 other messages each day.
Once I got things set up, I have *never* had anything classified definitely spam which wasn't.
Most of the stuff that's classified as *possibly* spam, isn't. Most of that tends to be company announcements, which (even though I've included all of them as ham) have enough spam indicators to confuse things.
I've had very few things which were spam get through... and then only at the beginning.
Anyway, my point is that by separating out the *possible* spam from the *definite* spam, you greatly reduce how much you need to look over. I barely even glance at what is in my spam folder, but I consider each piece that goes into my possible spam folder.
In addition, spambayes requires a spam corpus to be maintained. Couldn't do that if it didn't let spam through...
Spambayes isn't designed to be used for a large number of people, but there's no reason it couldn't - apart from the state reasons of computation and storage space, and that it works best on an individual or small group basis.
Fallout 1&2 have been my favourite computer games for years.
I've played each to completion over 30 times, and each game has been different. I've played smart characters, dumb chars, charismatic chars, good, evil, and just about every combination you can think of. I've played thieves, warriors, scientists, doctors... I've completed them with almost zero combat skill. I've played fast games (what's the lowest lever you can complete it? shortest time?), long games (can I find everything?). Some games have lasted over 200 hours real time.
After 30+ completions, I think I've probably found everything there is to find in the game. But I'm not sure.
I played the Fallout: Tactics demo a bit. I never bought it. I think it's about AU$20 now, so maybe I'll pick it up.
But Fallout: BOS is of no interest whatsoever. Just like most games, I doubt there will be any replayability. And the graphics suck. You'd think in 6 years they could have improved the graphics over Fallout, but they definitely appear to have gone backwards. The graphics in Fallout give a real immersive feel. The screenshots of FO:BOS have the horrible, wrong-feeling 3D that you find in games like Morrowind.
Do youself a favour. If you've never played them, get copies of Fallout 1&2.
Obviously, I can't speak for slashdotters as a whole, but I can give my experience.
When I was a child (mid-70s - 80s) I found that there were some cartoons that I really enjoyed, and some that I didn't.
Somewhat later (when Robotech came around) I discovered that nearly all the shows I had enjoyed originated in Japan - Kimba the White Lion; Astro Boy; Voltron (vehicles and lions); The Mysterious Cities of Gold; Star Blazers; Battle of the Planets; Ulysses...
OTOH, the shows I disliked were universally from the US - Scooby Doo; Flintstones; Jetsons...
As time went on I discovered that I *still* didn't like most US animation, but I did enjoy most Japanese animation I watched. There were some US shows I enjoyed (e.g. Simpsons) and some anime I detested (e.g. Debutante Detective School).
Eventually I worked out the major things I liked and disliked. I enjoy story- and character-driven shows. I dislike episodic shows with no connection between the episodes and no character development. Of slightly lesser importance is character design and the overall look of the show - I *like* most of the anime character designs (esp. Miyazaki and CLAMP designs) and anime shows tend to look better in general - more attention to background detail, etc. OTOH, I'm currently watching "The Soultaker" and I don't overly like the look...
There is a *much* greater percentage of anime which is character- and plot-driven than US animation. The Simpsons is a character-driven show - most of the episodes don't have much to do with each other (though they often refer to previous events), but the characters are well-developed - they have real (caricatured) personalities. There are others, but they're few and far between (and of course, there are shows such as "King of the Hill" that I'll never watch because the ads just turn me off).
I just finished watching "Burn Up Excess" today. It's a show with ridiculous storylines, huge breasts and unrealistic hair colours. It's also a lot of fun, with an on-going storyline that develops over the series, and characters whose stories draw me in *despite* the huge bouncing breasts. Of course, it's not a patch on shows such as "The Irresponsible Captain Tylor" or "Crest of the Stars" or "Kiki's Delivery Service" to name a few excellent shows. It's a (mostly) lightweight bit of fun, and much higher quality than most of the crud I occasionally catch on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.
My personal collection is about 300 or so DVDs, and about 400 VHS (used to be more VHS, but I've managed to sell quite a few...). All up I have about 200 complete series and movies. I tend to pick and choose my shows quite a bit (for example, I never got the El-Hazard TV series because everything I read said that it wasn't nearly as good as the OAVs) but I've got quite a few in there that I'll never watch again (fortunately, most of those are VHS). There are a number of shows though that I watch time and time again.
Fortunately, Madman is releasing lots of anime here in Australia now - importing was prohibitively expensive. Oh - and I have lots of manga as well - Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind is definitely my favourite manga. However, the US comics I've enjoyed over the years have also tended to have strong storylines and characters - I don't find *that* great a disparity although no US comic I've ever read has had the depth of "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind".
I've always had this problem as well - when concentrating on something (programming, reading, whatever) I don't notice what is going on around me, and I take quite a while to respond to interruptions - and often don't remember what was asked, etc.
I've taught myself to respond with a "give me 5 minutes to finish what I'm working on and I'll be right with you". That gives me a breather to at least put my thoughts together and type them up (just something to jog my memory when I come back to it) and then pay full attention to the person who needs me.
When interrupting my team members (I'm tech lead) I always just give them a heads-up along the line of "when you've got a moment I've got something to ask you" and they know that I mean when they've got a moment - not "right now".
Sorry - I checked up with him and it's multi-gigabyte files, not 40GB.
My bad.
As penance, I went out and did a search for photoshop limits and whilst I couldn't find anything specifically for Photoshop 7, earlier versions at least have a 30,000 pixel limit in any dimension.
However, he does often complain about how slow gigabit ethernet is...
Actually, yes. The vast majority of graphics houses use Macs. They care very much about how fast filters run.
I have a very good friend who works in a billboard production house. They are often dealing with 40GB (yes, gigabyte) photoshop files. If a single filter they used performed badly, that could well be hours (or even days) lost on the machines performing those transforms.
Every time I read about crappy US laws it's because it's some idiocy attached to an existing bill, or a rider to something... because it couldn't get passed on its own.
Why the hell is this allowed? Why should things that have nothing to do with the original bill be included in a vote to pass it into law? And why are laws often voted on without representatives even reading the bill?
It is completely ridiculous.
Here in Australia *every* proposed piece of legislation must be considered and debated *on its own* and in its entirety. Every proposed piece of legislation must receive *three* full readings out loud *in parliament* before it can be voted on and passed through to the upper house. Any amendments must go through the same process. If the senate sends it back (with or without proposed amendments) it must go through the same process before it can be passed back to the senate.
It seems to work for us. We sure get a lot fewer crappy laws passed into legislation. Sure - a government with a majority in both houses can get legislation (crappy or otherwise) passed quickly, but I can't remember the last time an Australian government held a majority in both houses... so at the very least deals have to be made with members of the senate.
Nothing to do with the compliant US ABC... the ABC in Australia does its best in most cases to report fairly and accurately.
In particular, Max Uechtritz - one of Australia's most respected war correspondents - is currently the head of news and current affairs at the ABC.
There are legitimate uses for back doors
on
Do You Write Backdoors?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A good example is a web-based app I developed for our intranet. We were having trouble debugging customers problems with it (normally PEBCAK - and we'd get useless reports back from customers, and be unable to replicate the problem since we couldn't log in as them).
So, we created a method whereby an administrator could log in as any non-administrator user by supplying the non-admin username and using their own admin password (on a page separate to the normal page). No global master password. One-way encryption of passwords.
When someone logged in this way it was logged to the database that the customer was being spoofed (and by whom) - audit trail. Once the login check had passed the admin could act as if they were that user.
This was considerably more secure for the customer than asking for the customer's password and telling them to "change it later" (which was what we'd had to do previously).
This became an official feature of the app - albeit a not-very-well-known one. To use it you had to have superuser access - which usually meant that you had direct access to the back-end database anyway.
This reduced the time required to deal with problems by a massive amount.
That does depend somewhat on the sequel. Buying Fallout 2 because you enjoyed Fallout so much is not being part of the problem for example. Fallout 2 was an improvement in some ways (interface), and a regression in others (primarily storyline), but it was quality, just like the original. Most importantly though, it bucked the trends that were starting towards realtime play (Baldur's Gate came out at around the same time).
OTOH, buying Fallout Tactics without trying the demo is being part of the problem. FOT probably sold more than Fallout 1&2 combined (in particular, it sold more at full price) but from all I've read and from my playing of the demo it's really got nothing to do with the ideas behind Fallout. It's just an isometric tactical shooter which happens to use the SPECIAL system and hence capitalised on brand recognition. People buying FOT promoted the idea to publishers that real-time combat variants were "it" and turn-based should be abandoned.
Yes, but there were incredible archives of documents from before the time there were computers that are now gone.
I can only hope that when they get into the ruins they find that most were in a fire-proof safe - but I doubt it. It sounds like the backup and archival policies were not up to scratch.
People have always copied and imitated the style of those artists they admire while learning their own style.
It is (or at least has been) common for art students to copy great works (such as the Mona Lisa) in order to learn the techniques they require to develop for themselves.
This is exactly the same thing. Doujinshi is simply fans copying the styles of their favourite artists - the medium just happens to be a comic.
Yu Watase (for example) states quite clearly that she would not have got her start in drawing manga if she had not copied other artists - she drew doujinshi.
People have to learn, and in a visual medium you learn by copying and hopefully improving on the works of others. It is the rare person who can be completely original right off the bat without being completely wanky.
Slashdot Mirror
Floating Point Arithmetic: Issues and Limitations.
More importantly, "Sorcerer's stone" has no meaning, whilst the "Philosopher's stone" is an age-old myth (and the Holy Grail of alchemists since time immemorial).
The US publishers judged the intelligence of the US public and found them wanting. I haven't seen too many comments on this issue to prove them wrong.
I'd give a link to the correct Dilbert strip, but don't have time to find it before I go to work.
MIM here in Australia is currently the target of a takeover bid.
I'm not sure of the details, but from my reading it appears that every shareholder who holds more than 20 shares (approx AU$32) has exactly one vote in both the takeover bid and for the Board of Directors.
If that's correct, there's an example for you.
Actually, not correct.
I use the proxomitron and NetCaptor to prevent seeing popups. I have therefore implemented an authorisation system - I only authorise popups from specific places.
Therefore, if I get a popup I don't want, it means someone has circumvented my authorisation measures.
I would disagree strongly here.
... and then only at the beginning.
...
I use spambayes for my spam filtering.
I get about 50 items classified as spam per day. These have a spam probability according to my spam and ham corpuses of > 90% (usually 100%).
However, I also get 2-6 things classified as *possibly* spam each day. These are things which have a spam probability of > 15%.
These get mixed up in among 200-400 other messages each day.
Once I got things set up, I have *never* had anything classified definitely spam which wasn't.
Most of the stuff that's classified as *possibly* spam, isn't. Most of that tends to be company announcements, which (even though I've included all of them as ham) have enough spam indicators to confuse things.
I've had very few things which were spam get through
Anyway, my point is that by separating out the *possible* spam from the *definite* spam, you greatly reduce how much you need to look over. I barely even glance at what is in my spam folder, but I consider each piece that goes into my possible spam folder.
In addition, spambayes requires a spam corpus to be maintained. Couldn't do that if it didn't let spam through
Spambayes isn't designed to be used for a large number of people, but there's no reason it couldn't - apart from the state reasons of computation and storage space, and that it works best on an individual or small group basis.
Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil.
Lots of gaming goodness coming from Troika!
Well, I suppose you could call it a rip-off if you *really* wanted ...
But check out Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika. Designed to be a faithful adaption of the original module to the computer and 3.5 edition D&D rules.
These are the guys who made Arcanum, and includes many of the principal designers and developers of Fallout and Fallout 2.
*Not* Fallout Tactics - Fallout:BOS which is the new PS2/XBox game.
Fallout 1&2 have been my favourite computer games for years.
... I've completed them with almost zero combat skill. I've played fast games (what's the lowest lever you can complete it? shortest time?), long games (can I find everything?). Some games have lasted over 200 hours real time.
I've played each to completion over 30 times, and each game has been different. I've played smart characters, dumb chars, charismatic chars, good, evil, and just about every combination you can think of. I've played thieves, warriors, scientists, doctors
After 30+ completions, I think I've probably found everything there is to find in the game. But I'm not sure.
I played the Fallout: Tactics demo a bit. I never bought it. I think it's about AU$20 now, so maybe I'll pick it up.
But Fallout: BOS is of no interest whatsoever. Just like most games, I doubt there will be any replayability. And the graphics suck. You'd think in 6 years they could have improved the graphics over Fallout, but they definitely appear to have gone backwards. The graphics in Fallout give a real immersive feel. The screenshots of FO:BOS have the horrible, wrong-feeling 3D that you find in games like Morrowind.
Do youself a favour. If you've never played them, get copies of Fallout 1&2.
Obviously, I can't speak for slashdotters as a whole, but I can give my experience.
...
...
...
...). All up I have about 200 complete series and movies. I tend to pick and choose my shows quite a bit (for example, I never got the El-Hazard TV series because everything I read said that it wasn't nearly as good as the OAVs) but I've got quite a few in there that I'll never watch again (fortunately, most of those are VHS). There are a number of shows though that I watch time and time again.
When I was a child (mid-70s - 80s) I found that there were some cartoons that I really enjoyed, and some that I didn't.
Somewhat later (when Robotech came around) I discovered that nearly all the shows I had enjoyed originated in Japan - Kimba the White Lion; Astro Boy; Voltron (vehicles and lions); The Mysterious Cities of Gold; Star Blazers; Battle of the Planets; Ulysses
OTOH, the shows I disliked were universally from the US - Scooby Doo; Flintstones; Jetsons
As time went on I discovered that I *still* didn't like most US animation, but I did enjoy most Japanese animation I watched. There were some US shows I enjoyed (e.g. Simpsons) and some anime I detested (e.g. Debutante Detective School).
Eventually I worked out the major things I liked and disliked. I enjoy story- and character-driven shows. I dislike episodic shows with no connection between the episodes and no character development. Of slightly lesser importance is character design and the overall look of the show - I *like* most of the anime character designs (esp. Miyazaki and CLAMP designs) and anime shows tend to look better in general - more attention to background detail, etc. OTOH, I'm currently watching "The Soultaker" and I don't overly like the look
There is a *much* greater percentage of anime which is character- and plot-driven than US animation. The Simpsons is a character-driven show - most of the episodes don't have much to do with each other (though they often refer to previous events), but the characters are well-developed - they have real (caricatured) personalities. There are others, but they're few and far between (and of course, there are shows such as "King of the Hill" that I'll never watch because the ads just turn me off).
I just finished watching "Burn Up Excess" today. It's a show with ridiculous storylines, huge breasts and unrealistic hair colours. It's also a lot of fun, with an on-going storyline that develops over the series, and characters whose stories draw me in *despite* the huge bouncing breasts. Of course, it's not a patch on shows such as "The Irresponsible Captain Tylor" or "Crest of the Stars" or "Kiki's Delivery Service" to name a few excellent shows. It's a (mostly) lightweight bit of fun, and much higher quality than most of the crud I occasionally catch on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.
My personal collection is about 300 or so DVDs, and about 400 VHS (used to be more VHS, but I've managed to sell quite a few
Fortunately, Madman is releasing lots of anime here in Australia now - importing was prohibitively expensive. Oh - and I have lots of manga as well - Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind is definitely my favourite manga. However, the US comics I've enjoyed over the years have also tended to have strong storylines and characters - I don't find *that* great a disparity although no US comic I've ever read has had the depth of "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind".
I've always had this problem as well - when concentrating on something (programming, reading, whatever) I don't notice what is going on around me, and I take quite a while to respond to interruptions - and often don't remember what was asked, etc.
I've taught myself to respond with a "give me 5 minutes to finish what I'm working on and I'll be right with you". That gives me a breather to at least put my thoughts together and type them up (just something to jog my memory when I come back to it) and then pay full attention to the person who needs me.
When interrupting my team members (I'm tech lead) I always just give them a heads-up along the line of "when you've got a moment I've got something to ask you" and they know that I mean when they've got a moment - not "right now".
Sorry - I checked up with him and it's multi-gigabyte files, not 40GB.
...
My bad.
As penance, I went out and did a search for photoshop limits and whilst I couldn't find anything specifically for Photoshop 7, earlier versions at least have a 30,000 pixel limit in any dimension.
However, he does often complain about how slow gigabit ethernet is
Actually, yes. The vast majority of graphics houses use Macs. They care very much about how fast filters run.
I have a very good friend who works in a billboard production house. They are often dealing with 40GB (yes, gigabyte) photoshop files. If a single filter they used performed badly, that could well be hours (or even days) lost on the machines performing those transforms.
Well, technically you only need one, so long as the congressmen are capable of listening ... :)
Every time I read about crappy US laws it's because it's some idiocy attached to an existing bill, or a rider to something ... because it couldn't get passed on its own.
... so at the very least deals have to be made with members of the senate.
Why the hell is this allowed? Why should things that have nothing to do with the original bill be included in a vote to pass it into law? And why are laws often voted on without representatives even reading the bill?
It is completely ridiculous.
Here in Australia *every* proposed piece of legislation must be considered and debated *on its own* and in its entirety. Every proposed piece of legislation must receive *three* full readings out loud *in parliament* before it can be voted on and passed through to the upper house. Any amendments must go through the same process. If the senate sends it back (with or without proposed amendments) it must go through the same process before it can be passed back to the senate.
It seems to work for us. We sure get a lot fewer crappy laws passed into legislation. Sure - a government with a majority in both houses can get legislation (crappy or otherwise) passed quickly, but I can't remember the last time an Australian government held a majority in both houses
Go to Dan's Data.
ABC News.
... the ABC in Australia does its best in most cases to report fairly and accurately.
Nothing to do with the compliant US ABC
In particular, Max Uechtritz - one of Australia's most respected war correspondents - is currently the head of news and current affairs at the ABC.
A good example is a web-based app I developed for our intranet. We were having trouble debugging customers problems with it (normally PEBCAK - and we'd get useless reports back from customers, and be unable to replicate the problem since we couldn't log in as them).
So, we created a method whereby an administrator could log in as any non-administrator user by supplying the non-admin username and using their own admin password (on a page separate to the normal page). No global master password. One-way encryption of passwords.
When someone logged in this way it was logged to the database that the customer was being spoofed (and by whom) - audit trail. Once the login check had passed the admin could act as if they were that user.
This was considerably more secure for the customer than asking for the customer's password and telling them to "change it later" (which was what we'd had to do previously).
This became an official feature of the app - albeit a not-very-well-known one. To use it you had to have superuser access - which usually meant that you had direct access to the back-end database anyway.
This reduced the time required to deal with problems by a massive amount.
That does depend somewhat on the sequel. Buying Fallout 2 because you enjoyed Fallout so much is not being part of the problem for example. Fallout 2 was an improvement in some ways (interface), and a regression in others (primarily storyline), but it was quality, just like the original. Most importantly though, it bucked the trends that were starting towards realtime play (Baldur's Gate came out at around the same time).
...
OTOH, buying Fallout Tactics without trying the demo is being part of the problem. FOT probably sold more than Fallout 1&2 combined (in particular, it sold more at full price) but from all I've read and from my playing of the demo it's really got nothing to do with the ideas behind Fallout. It's just an isometric tactical shooter which happens to use the SPECIAL system and hence capitalised on brand recognition. People buying FOT promoted the idea to publishers that real-time combat variants were "it" and turn-based should be abandoned.
Thank goodness for Troika. Can't wait for Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil
Of course it is. Not to say that they spelling in that post was correct, but spelling in Australia is very different than in the US.
In the main we follow British spelling.
Colour
Maximise
Gaol
Yes, but there were incredible archives of documents from before the time there were computers that are now gone.
I can only hope that when they get into the ruins they find that most were in a fire-proof safe - but I doubt it. It sounds like the backup and archival policies were not up to scratch.
People have always copied and imitated the style of those artists they admire while learning their own style.
It is (or at least has been) common for art students to copy great works (such as the Mona Lisa) in order to learn the techniques they require to develop for themselves.
This is exactly the same thing. Doujinshi is simply fans copying the styles of their favourite artists - the medium just happens to be a comic.
Yu Watase (for example) states quite clearly that she would not have got her start in drawing manga if she had not copied other artists - she drew doujinshi.
People have to learn, and in a visual medium you learn by copying and hopefully improving on the works of others. It is the rare person who can be completely original right off the bat without being completely wanky.
In terms of gaming innovations ...
Tim Cain
http://www.troikagames.com/team.htm
Fallout was without a doubt the most innovative game of its time, reviving the CRPG genre single-handedly.