I can confirm this. I recall one game with a friend years ago when we were both young teenagers. Early in the game we found that we were rather balanced as far as the map went. Since my friend had a triple set of armies, we simply built up our armies until we had used up all of the spare pieces. Both sides were perfectly balanced, but I attacked first.
It took a lot of dice rolling, but I wiped out his entire force in one turn suffering only 1/3 losses or thereabouts.
I was interested, so I did a calculation of the odds. Yeah, they're stacked for the attacker.
It was bad on both sides. Bush could have done much better than he did. The entire campaign reminded me of two 80-year-old men boxing.
Bush's campaign was slighly more technically competant, I'd say, but neither side had any showmanship whatsoever.
You know those people in a company who owe their position to the ability to verbally tow the lie despite no real skills on their part? You ever see what happens when they get any sort of large project or responsibility handed to them? That's what the 2000 campaign felt like.
Welcome to the new European super-state. Enjoy your anti-American jokes while you can. In a couple decades you'll be living in the world's most repressive sprawling bureaurecratic dystopia. (Ever seen the movie Brazil?)
Okay, since this is obviously going to turn into one big beowulf love fest, can anybody do the back of the envelope calculation to find out just how powerful a beowulf cluster of 17,000 PlayStations would be?
For extra credit you can express the answer in terms of Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Ring movies rendered per week.
Your memory about G-force is incorrect. The mass would have to be of the entire earth (or so) because nearly all of that mass would be fuel. That would be what's required to accelerate a modern rocket to near light speeds. Of course, then it would have to decelerate.
Anyone who has done work on computer vision would have guessed this to be so. What would interest me is in how it would be possible to exploit the algorithms, i.e., how bad of a picture can you get away with? Certain images that might not look anything like a face to you or me will quite possibly be able to fool the system.
The passport angle is probably a red herring though. The unreliability of photo identification is already known. Identity theft is simple and easy. Hell, here in New Mexico, we've already been the first state to accept 'Matricula Consular' cards as valid ID for driver's licenses. Matricula Consular cards, of course, are given out by Mexican embassies to undocumented Mexicans living in the US. By 'undocumented,' I mean illegal, of course. Check out the immigration reform site www.vdare.com for some more information on the subject.
Late Tuesday evening, little things suddenly started to go very wrong in the virtual world of Shadowbane, a popular online multiplayer game.
Some players noticed that their money and weapons had suddenly vanished. A few whispered that tonight the monsters somehow seemed slightly bigger and meaner.
And then all hell broke loose.
Shadowbane had been hacked by several of its players. But unlike standard game hacks, where players gift themselves with super strength, health or wealth, these hackers managed to completely alter the rules of Shadowbane -- turning a suddenly wrathful game loose on its players.
"At first, players started speculating that there was a really bad bug in the game code," player Tim Wheating said. "Then we realized that somehow an insane god had taken control of our world and was out to kill us all."
In a statement posted on the Shadowbane website shortly after the hack, Wolfpack Studios and Ubi Soft Entertainment (the developers of Shadowbane) acknowledged that a "serious attack" had occurred and assured players the companies were "working with law enforcement and we promise all of you that these individuals will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
The population of an entire Shadowbane town was forcibly moved to the bottom of the sea, where they drowned. City guards turned feral and attacked town residents. Mobs of never-before-seen superpowerful creatures, seemingly spontaneously spawned from the ether, began to prowl the streets unchecked, killing characters in the most painful way possible.
That's still not legal. The author doesn't own the copyright, the publishing company does (usually). You'd have to give them the money, and get them to agree to allow you to make a copy of the fansubbers work. Not likely.
It is illegal. But it won't ever be enforced. If there is no company selling the stuff in America, then there is no company who cares enough to enforce their rights. Moreover, there is no actual legal way to obtain the material in English.
This is not, of course, an argument against actually downloading the stuff. I suppose that some people believe in obeying a law simply because it's there. They still believe that the Leviathan state is the root of all morality. 'Religion is obviously a hoax, but going against the state is evil' type people. You shouldn't pay attention to them, it's all just evidence of a propaganda shift that has occurred since the Medieval age. Obeying a law because it's there is simply evidence that you have surrendered morality to some agent that claims to be just only because it is powerful.
Heh. That's a great idea. I'm going to mail about 50 petty dictators around the world from president@whitehouse.gov with: "How are you gentlemen??? Make your time." Let the geopolitical chips fall where they may, I say.
Don't create a new object each time through the loop. Reuse the object to sidestep allocation/deallocation. In a tight-loop where performance matters this will help. In a situation where performance doesn't matter, then this doesn't matter at all.
Zero-time is nicer than constant time any day. Depending on the scope of the loops, your solution is about the equivalent of declaring everything globally.
Java 1.5 will have generics.
You missed note 2 in the text.
Your statements on 3 seem to be based on simple ignorance. I find it hard to believe that you've never taken a look at the amount of memory your Java programs are consuming and compared it with non-Java programs. This is the least objectionable of Jelovic's points.
Your comments on 4 ignore what Jelovic wrote: "For example, in C++ one can implement schemes that improve the locality of reference. Or allocate and free many objects at once. Or play pointer tricks to make member access faster. Etc.
None of these schemes are available in Java. "
And finally, about 5, I've seen some neat things done with template meta-programming. You don't like it because it's not elegant. And that's fair. But it still doesn't make Java faster.
One thing to remember is that Java is a 'marketed' language. Hence, be aware of inevitable corporate propaganda. That's not to say that Java is bad, but it is heavily pushed.
As Jeeves says, "consider the psychology of the individual." There is no technological fix. So is there a social fix? I think so. There are certainly a small minority of hardcore cheaters who will cheat no matter what, but there is a larger number of casual cheaters.
The current generation of multiplayer games are highly anonymous, like the web itself. For casual cheaters, this anonymity lets them abstract the other players as non-entities. They don't interact together in a socially meaningful way, and therefore things like empathy and reputation which inhibit destructive behavior in group settings don't function correctly. They are willing to hurt people online in ways they would never think of at a real life social get-together
While anonymous multiplayer games will always have their place, I think that less anonymous, more locally social games will alleviate many of the current problems. They will even provide new possibilities for games. Imagine a Quake III dating server, for example (with custom skins, of course). To allow for more realistic social interaction, this new generation of games will require people to give up anonymity in certain ways and probably interact with far smaller groups. The groups don't have to be geographically local, necessarily, but will have to be at least somewhat consistent over time.
The pitiful things that pass for modern 'online communities' can and will be vastly improved upon.
Yes, not having a gap is the best of all -- but circles are still better than cracks. Take a piece of paper. Put an incision through one of the sides. Pull the edges apart -- note how it tears. Now, intead of a straight line, cut out a semi-circle from one of the sides. Pull the edges apart. You will notice that it is somewhat stronger.
Griffith's is good. Really, Griffith's is the book you'll need for quantum physics from a more 'modern' perspective -- being able to understand the notation of QFT and QCD. (Bohm doesn't use Dirac notation -- a strength -- though he does present both the matrix formulation and the wave formulation. Feynman's integration, of course, is also missing.) Griffith's is indespensible for a student of physics, but for understanding the whats, whys, and wherefores, I'd have to recommend Bohm.
Quantum Theory This is Bohm's book. This is simply the best QM book ever written. You'll need Fourier analysis. If you are really interested in learning QM, that requirement will give you more confidence in this book, not less.
I'm sure you've heard of the EPR (sometimes called EPR-Bohm) experiments. The last chapters (and best chapters) of the book are where Bohm lays out his idea for an experiment to actually test EPR -- which is more or less the method used today. (written around 1952, I believe. The experiments weren't conducted until the 1980's.)
Although Bohm's book is one of the best defenses of orthodox quantum mechanics, Bohm went on to propose a non-local, hidden variable version of QM several years after writing the textbook. This theory turned out to have been mathematically identical to de Broglie's pilot wave formulation, which he had thrown out because he thought that non-local EPR effects were obviously impossible. Here is a page with introductions: Intros. Learn the orthodox theory first.
Slashdot Mirror
I can confirm this. I recall one game with a friend years ago when we were both young teenagers. Early in the game we found that we were rather balanced as far as the map went. Since my friend had a triple set of armies, we simply built up our armies until we had used up all of the spare pieces. Both sides were perfectly balanced, but I attacked first.
It took a lot of dice rolling, but I wiped out his entire force in one turn suffering only 1/3 losses or thereabouts.
I was interested, so I did a calculation of the odds. Yeah, they're stacked for the attacker.
It was bad on both sides. Bush could have done much better than he did. The entire campaign reminded me of two 80-year-old men boxing.
Bush's campaign was slighly more technically competant, I'd say, but neither side had any showmanship whatsoever.
You know those people in a company who owe their position to the ability to verbally tow the lie despite no real skills on their part? You ever see what happens when they get any sort of large project or responsibility handed to them? That's what the 2000 campaign felt like.
Welcome to the new European super-state. Enjoy your anti-American jokes while you can. In a couple decades you'll be living in the world's most repressive sprawling bureaurecratic dystopia. (Ever seen the movie Brazil?)
Okay, since this is obviously going to turn into one big beowulf love fest, can anybody do the back of the envelope calculation to find out just how powerful a beowulf cluster of 17,000 PlayStations would be?
For extra credit you can express the answer in terms of Lord of the Rings:Fellowship of the Ring movies rendered per week.
Your memory about G-force is incorrect. The mass would have to be of the entire earth (or so) because nearly all of that mass would be fuel. That would be what's required to accelerate a modern rocket to near light speeds. Of course, then it would have to decelerate.
Anyone who has done work on computer vision would have guessed this to be so. What would interest me is in how it would be possible to exploit the algorithms, i.e., how bad of a picture can you get away with? Certain images that might not look anything like a face to you or me will quite possibly be able to fool the system.
The passport angle is probably a red herring though. The unreliability of photo identification is already known. Identity theft is simple and easy. Hell, here in New Mexico, we've already been the first state to accept 'Matricula Consular' cards as valid ID for driver's licenses. Matricula Consular cards, of course, are given out by Mexican embassies to undocumented Mexicans living in the US. By 'undocumented,' I mean illegal, of course. Check out the immigration reform site www.vdare.com for some more information on the subject.
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ Real Iraqi blogger. He's had some stuff to say about the ISPs before.
Yes, I agree it will be a vehicle for natural selection. However, I don't think it will work like you think it will.
yamauchikazunori in romanji. Awesome. I'll have to try this out.
Never, never, never, carry scissors into the MRI room.
The best thing about this technology, of course, is that we will be able to wear pace-makers into the qwikee-mart again.
That's still not legal. The author doesn't own the copyright, the publishing company does (usually). You'd have to give them the money, and get them to agree to allow you to make a copy of the fansubbers work. Not likely.
You could also hire a private translator.
It is illegal. But it won't ever be enforced. If there is no company selling the stuff in America, then there is no company who cares enough to enforce their rights. Moreover, there is no actual legal way to obtain the material in English.
This is not, of course, an argument against actually downloading the stuff. I suppose that some people believe in obeying a law simply because it's there. They still believe that the Leviathan state is the root of all morality. 'Religion is obviously a hoax, but going against the state is evil' type people. You shouldn't pay attention to them, it's all just evidence of a propaganda shift that has occurred since the Medieval age. Obeying a law because it's there is simply evidence that you have surrendered morality to some agent that claims to be just only because it is powerful.
Heh. That's a great idea. I'm going to mail about 50 petty dictators around the world from president@whitehouse.gov with: "How are you gentlemen??? Make your time." Let the geopolitical chips fall where they may, I say.
D'oh!
Sounds like a soul mate. Well, except for the virus and attachment part. But you gotta expect that from a chick. Get her phone number for me.
Don't create a new object each time through the loop. Reuse the object to sidestep allocation/deallocation. In a tight-loop where performance matters this will help. In a situation where performance doesn't matter, then this doesn't matter at all.
Zero-time is nicer than constant time any day. Depending on the scope of the loops, your solution is about the equivalent of declaring everything globally.
Java 1.5 will have generics.
You missed note 2 in the text.
Your statements on 3 seem to be based on simple ignorance. I find it hard to believe that you've never taken a look at the amount of memory your Java programs are consuming and compared it with non-Java programs. This is the least objectionable of Jelovic's points.
Your comments on 4 ignore what Jelovic wrote: "For example, in C++ one can implement schemes that improve the locality of reference. Or allocate and free many objects at once. Or play pointer tricks to make member access faster. Etc. None of these schemes are available in Java. "
And finally, about 5, I've seen some neat things done with template meta-programming. You don't like it because it's not elegant. And that's fair. But it still doesn't make Java faster.
If I reply to this, you are going to YHBT me, aren't you?
One thing to remember is that Java is a 'marketed' language. Hence, be aware of inevitable corporate propaganda. That's not to say that Java is bad, but it is heavily pushed.
Here's a bit of an antidote: Why Java will always be slower than C++
As Jeeves says, "consider the psychology of the individual." There is no technological fix. So is there a social fix? I think so. There are certainly a small minority of hardcore cheaters who will cheat no matter what, but there is a larger number of casual cheaters.
The current generation of multiplayer games are highly anonymous, like the web itself. For casual cheaters, this anonymity lets them abstract the other players as non-entities. They don't interact together in a socially meaningful way, and therefore things like empathy and reputation which inhibit destructive behavior in group settings don't function correctly. They are willing to hurt people online in ways they would never think of at a real life social get-together
While anonymous multiplayer games will always have their place, I think that less anonymous, more locally social games will alleviate many of the current problems. They will even provide new possibilities for games. Imagine a Quake III dating server, for example (with custom skins, of course). To allow for more realistic social interaction, this new generation of games will require people to give up anonymity in certain ways and probably interact with far smaller groups. The groups don't have to be geographically local, necessarily, but will have to be at least somewhat consistent over time.
The pitiful things that pass for modern 'online communities' can and will be vastly improved upon.
Yes, not having a gap is the best of all -- but circles are still better than cracks. Take a piece of paper. Put an incision through one of the sides. Pull the edges apart -- note how it tears. Now, intead of a straight line, cut out a semi-circle from one of the sides. Pull the edges apart. You will notice that it is somewhat stronger.
Griffith's is good. Really, Griffith's is the book you'll need for quantum physics from a more 'modern' perspective -- being able to understand the notation of QFT and QCD. (Bohm doesn't use Dirac notation -- a strength -- though he does present both the matrix formulation and the wave formulation. Feynman's integration, of course, is also missing.) Griffith's is indespensible for a student of physics, but for understanding the whats, whys, and wherefores, I'd have to recommend Bohm.
Quantum Theory This is Bohm's book. This is simply the best QM book ever written. You'll need Fourier analysis. If you are really interested in learning QM, that requirement will give you more confidence in this book, not less.
I'm sure you've heard of the EPR (sometimes called EPR-Bohm) experiments. The last chapters (and best chapters) of the book are where Bohm lays out his idea for an experiment to actually test EPR -- which is more or less the method used today. (written around 1952, I believe. The experiments weren't conducted until the 1980's.)
Although Bohm's book is one of the best defenses of orthodox quantum mechanics, Bohm went on to propose a non-local, hidden variable version of QM several years after writing the textbook. This theory turned out to have been mathematically identical to de Broglie's pilot wave formulation, which he had thrown out because he thought that non-local EPR effects were obviously impossible. Here is a page with introductions: Intros. Learn the orthodox theory first.
Where is the weakest area in a crack? The endpoints. So any force directed on the endpoints can lead to catastrophic failure (makes the crack wider).
Now what's the weakest part of a circle?
36GB of date -- that sounds like my blind date with the boss's daughter, that whale.