Yes I'm oversimplifying, but to state it's the hardest part is ridiculous. As for the data, I'm pretty sure that my struct covers all the data you'd actually need for the items. I genuinely ask you, can you think of anything specific that's missing there?
In fact, the more I think about this, the sillier it sounds. Excluding artwork and meshes, I could code the entire Mass Effect inventory system in a day (The hardest part about the whole thing is the animation of the avatar, the rest is fresh grad stuff). Throw in the artwork and meshes, and I could produce the entire thing by myself in a week.
There's only 8 buttons, one xy pair of input, and two different screens!
As you can imagine, the inventory-management system for a role-playing game is probably one of the biggest and most complicated systems.
Really?
struct item { Char[20] name; Char ItemType; Char Manufacturer; Char Graphic; Char Model; Char ModelSkin; Char UnlockLevel; Char Rarety; Int Stat1; Int Stat2; Int Stat3; }; item Inventory[150];
....And hand it to the content team.
Admittedly it's a little more complex than this, but not a lot; There's the GUI to add on and the characters equipped items, but that's not particularly complex either. But for nuts and bolts, the above code really will hold all the data about the characters inventory.
I liked mass effect, but really, it's not that complex to produce.
Monkey : Move Foot Forward 600ms later...
Robot : OK....Oh no, I'm falling over, quick move the other foot 600ms later...
Monkey : Move Other Foot Forward 600ms later...
Robot : I can't do that dave, I've fallen over
Although I assume in actuallity they left most of the balance control to the robot end of things; either that or the Monkey was psychic. (Or more likely they've got a nice low-latency academic link)
When you run the file system on your pc computer, it opens the quantum disk and reads to the LCD on the side for automatic update! Thank you. [Buy Now]
Hahaha. Even more humorous is the link at the bottom of the page "Next Page", which should really read, "YES! Please give my brain another good kicking". Whoever wrote this page is the internet version of a crazy old guy eating out of bins, mumbling and throwing cats at people who come too close.
I just found my favourite part. This page has details of their "NvIOpRAM 24GB-128GB" (whatever that is), however the key to the diagram states that part 2 (as indicated several times on the diagram) is an 'optical lens' when it is quite clearly the end (and third contact) of a 3.5mm audio jack (as should be obvious to anyone who has ever used any form of personal audio).
Seriously though, if their intention is to promote snake oil in the hopes of attracting investors then the least they could do is put more than an hour of effort into what is pretty much (at least in this industry) the primary corporate representation.
At least they didn't create it in Word. Now that would have really irked me....
Incidentally, I did a little digging on this, and it seems its owned by a Russin Scientist called Shimon Gendlin (based out of Long Island), who as per information here in 1997 owned two companies both pitching along a simmilar theme:
It seems many here want Wikipedia to allow all proofs. True, but remember that/. is not necessarily a good cross section of Wp users. I would argue that on average,/. users stand a significantly higher chance of needing/wanting/understanding proofs or highly scientific documents than the average Wp user (hence my suggestion about user controlled document complexity).
It's a pity we can't tag sections of Wp articles depending on their complexity, and allow the user to specify how much complexity they want to see (or even go so far as to have complexity levels for different subjects, and have a user preference page for it).
As I see it, all three are essentially the same but vary in their level of details. Given that wikipedia is electronic, and can essentially (re)represent it's data in various forms, why limit the amount if information present (assuming its factually correct)? Surely the level of detail of an article should be up to the user. Perhaps a better solution in this case would be to include the proofs but make them 'rolled up' by default - IE 'click here for details'. I know 'rolling up' is possible in wikipedia; I've done it on my page there.
As a side note, its worth noting that the article submitter engaged in the discussion about the article for deletion. They voted to delete the article.
I guess you're new here - You're not allowed to be on Microsoft's side here at/.
But seriously, if you're not joking, then what chance do you think Microsoft would have at achieving any of that?? If they said to any western government "You can't use our stuff", the government would either take it anyway, or throw enough money at it to replace it. Plus look at the business case; there's three quarters of a billion potential users in Europe - Why would Microsoft upset a government to the point where they lose that potential sales base. As for activation, a government could just give out a patch, and tell Microsoft where to go when they whine about copyright violation.
Are you saying that some random editor knows more about the Iraq invasion, or is less likely to lie about it or change things to suit a political end, than the US Government? No. I didn't even read the wikipedia article in question.
Personally, I have no issue anyone making edits to wikipedia. I was objecting to the sensationalist headline. If the US government (or my government:UK) or any other government wants to edit wikipedia; fine by me. I would object to subversive edits made to appear from a neutral source, as this artificially increases the credibility of the information (though I'm not saying this is occurring).
You seem quite passionate about this, some might say 'troll-ish' and not to be fed, but... giving you the benefit of the doubt; My statement was that the entire US government is unlikely to be a shadowy cabal. It's clearly apparent (or at least I hope it is) to the majority of readers here that backroom deals do occur in the US government as in any organization, however to include everyone in 'the government' would be impractical.
What is a board of directors? Why don't they publish their minutes? Because their competitors would know what their plans are. There are many good reasons for keeping things 'secret' in certain situations. Honesty and transparency do not always work in every situation.
My assumption is based the presence of the 'history' tab for all articles, which lists IPs for unregistered users. I agree that the ability to use wikipedia does not equal technical ability, however I think that if the user is only 1 button click away from a list of user changes, and IPs then you have to be really daft not to figure that one one.
I agree that shadowy cabals are unlikely, however you don't need a shadowy cabal to conceal a secret. It would be as simple as whichever department wanted to make such changes doing it from home instead of the office. I would assume that anyone with enough skill to edit a wikipedia page would also know what IPs are and that they're traceable.
I know "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia" is a cool title, but seriously, does anyone think the US government, the CIA or the Vatican would be stupid enough to get caught if they actually wanted to influence a wikipedia article?
They'd probably at the very least get their 'operatives' to go home, get one of those free AOL CDs (etc), and do it from a public IP range.
What's more likely is that this is someone who got bored at work (at the Vatican etc), and decided to put their personal opinions in. The nature of their work usually implies their beliefs are coincident with that of their employers.
As for TFA, it states "One has to wonder how reliable an encyclopaedia is when it
peddles government propaganda in an almost Orwellian manner"; Seems a bit like FUD
to me. The whole point of wikipedia is that it is constantly peer reviewed. If things
are incorrect, people will eventually correct them - I fail to see how that's Orwellian.
If anything, changing pages in this manner actually brings MORE attention to the issue.
According the material on the companies web site (auxetix) one of the applications is for a fabric that changes colour as it's stretched (specifically for cargo webbing). But one application which would be much cooler (and useful for a fair portion of the slashdot crowd) is pants made out of this stuff - They'd change colour to tell you when you've eaten too many pies.
With regard to being 'worth it'. It's also worth noting that despite the article title, this isn't a complete sequence. 23andMe will scan ~550,000 Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) out of the (roughly) 10 million SNPs humans have, which is again quite different from a complete sequencing of the 3 billion base pairs in human DNA.
Surely the mechanics of the device would be significantly different on the moon vs. on Earth? Surely the enormous difference in atmospheric pressure and gravity mean the only thing that's reasonably useful is the guidance mechanism?
Any rocket scientists out there have any idea what the real benefit of the challenge is?
Although it does make me think... If Apple only get a cash for subscribed phones, then theres only a few reasons I can think of why Apple would try to close the loopholes;
Apple want to force people with unlocked phones onto AT&T (assuming that will unbrick them)
Apple want to discourage people from buying phones with the intention of unlocking them
Apple want to punish people who have unlocked them....
Personally I think if people are intent on unlocking their phones patching them isn't going to help; Workarounds WILL be found. It's an all too easily forgotten fundamental of all access control systems (be that this, or game copy protection or DRM etc..) that physical access is the ultimate security breach.
As far as I'm aware the first hack involved soldering on to the JTAG interface on one of the chips on the inside of the phone. I'm not aware of any malicious websites or programs that are able to open up a phone and solder it. I'll grant you that later hacks are done in software, but still require the phone user to connect it to a pc and a follow a specific sequence of steps.
I won't be buying an iPhone (hacked or otherwise), and I have no strong opinions either way about Apple or Cingular. I just find it marginally interesting that Cingular figures the revenue generated from new customers will offset the payments they'll have to make to Apple as part of deal, which given that Apple are losing a significant number of sales because of the lock must be quite a hefty sum.
I guess I'm one of many people that would be interested to see the numbers on the whole 'exclusive cingular deal' thing.
I'm guessing there must be quite a hefty payment per unit by cingular to apple. Looking at these figures, apple were expecting 1 million sales at the end of Q4, and ended up with 25% more sales as a result of sales to unlockers, if they were expecting this then I'm guessing the payment per unit must be at least a third of the unit price.
I guess we'll know when it goes on sale in France (where due to law it must be sold unlocked). I assume they'll be whacking on the appropriate additional cost.
I also wonder why Apple really care? I mean they already signed the deal, and they're making 'reasonable' efforts to uphold their end of it, so why do they care enough about unlockers to bother with a patch aimed at preventing it? Esp. since they're getting more sales out of it....
"Umm, If you live in the northern hemisphere the sun is closer during the winter than during the summer." In reply to the last four or five comments, do you not see it as implicit that I'm using the northern hemisphere as my frame of reference for naming the seasons given the quote which I started my post with?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes I'm oversimplifying, but to state it's the hardest part is ridiculous. As for the data, I'm pretty sure that my struct covers all the data you'd actually need for the items. I genuinely ask you, can you think of anything specific that's missing there?
In fact, the more I think about this, the sillier it sounds. Excluding artwork and meshes, I could code the entire Mass Effect inventory system in a day (The hardest part about the whole thing is the animation of the avatar, the rest is fresh grad stuff). Throw in the artwork and meshes, and I could produce the entire thing by myself in a week.
There's only 8 buttons, one xy pair of input, and two different screens!
Really? ....And hand it to the content team.
Admittedly it's a little more complex than this, but not a lot; There's the GUI to add on and the characters equipped items, but that's not particularly complex either. But for nuts and bolts, the above code really will hold all the data about the characters inventory.
I liked mass effect, but really, it's not that complex to produce.
...but the feedback was lousy.
Monkey : Move Foot Forward
600ms later...
Robot : OK....Oh no, I'm falling over, quick move the other foot
600ms later...
Monkey : Move Other Foot Forward
600ms later...
Robot : I can't do that dave, I've fallen over
Although I assume in actuallity they left most of the balance control to the robot end of things; either that or the Monkey was psychic.
(Or more likely they've got a nice low-latency academic link)
It's not file system aware.
When you run the file system on your pc computer, it opens the quantum disk and reads to the LCD on the side for automatic update! Thank you. [Buy Now]
Hahaha. Even more humorous is the link at the bottom of the page "Next Page", which should really read, "YES! Please give my brain another good kicking". Whoever wrote this page is the internet version of a crazy old guy eating out of bins, mumbling and throwing cats at people who come too close.
Argggg! That nearly made my eyes bleed.
I just found my favourite part. This page has details of their "NvIOpRAM 24GB-128GB" (whatever that is), however the key to the diagram states that part 2 (as indicated several times on the diagram) is an 'optical lens' when it is quite clearly the end (and third contact) of a 3.5mm audio jack (as should be obvious to anyone who has ever used any form of personal audio).
Seriously though, if their intention is to promote snake oil in the hopes of attracting investors then the least they could do is put more than an hour of effort into what is pretty much (at least in this industry) the primary corporate representation.
At least they didn't create it in Word. Now that would have really irked me....
Incidentally, I did a little digging on this, and it seems its owned by a Russin Scientist called Shimon Gendlin (based out of Long Island), who as per information here in 1997 owned two companies both pitching along a simmilar theme
It's a pity we can't tag sections of Wp articles depending on their complexity, and allow the user to specify how much complexity they want to see (or even go so far as to have complexity levels for different subjects, and have a user preference page for it).
As I see it, all three are essentially the same but vary in their level of details. Given that wikipedia is electronic, and can essentially (re)represent it's data in various forms, why limit the amount if information present (assuming its factually correct)? Surely the level of detail of an article should be up to the user. Perhaps a better solution in this case would be to include the proofs but make them 'rolled up' by default - IE 'click here for details'. I know 'rolling up' is possible in wikipedia; I've done it on my page there.
As a side note, its worth noting that the article submitter engaged in the discussion about the article for deletion. They voted to delete the article.
Hahahaha.....
/.
Hahaha.....*gasps for breath*....hahahaha
I guess you're new here - You're not allowed to be on Microsoft's side here at
But seriously, if you're not joking, then what chance do you think Microsoft would have at achieving any of that?? If they said to any western government "You can't use our stuff", the government would either take it anyway, or throw enough money at it to replace it. Plus look at the business case; there's three quarters of a billion potential users in Europe - Why would Microsoft upset a government to the point where they lose that potential sales base. As for activation, a government could just give out a patch, and tell Microsoft where to go when they whine about copyright violation.
Personally, I have no issue anyone making edits to wikipedia. I was objecting to the sensationalist headline. If the US government (or my government:UK) or any other government wants to edit wikipedia; fine by me. I would object to subversive edits made to appear from a neutral source, as this artificially increases the credibility of the information (though I'm not saying this is occurring).
I suppose you're right. Once again, I'm doing that thing where I incorrectly give people the benefit of the doubt.
My assumption is based the presence of the 'history' tab for all articles, which lists IPs for unregistered users. I agree that the ability to use wikipedia does not equal technical ability, however I think that if the user is only 1 button click away from a list of user changes, and IPs then you have to be really daft not to figure that one one.
I agree that shadowy cabals are unlikely, however you don't need a shadowy cabal to conceal a secret. It would be as simple as whichever department wanted to make such changes doing it from home instead of the office. I would assume that anyone with enough skill to edit a wikipedia page would also know what IPs are and that they're traceable.
I know "US Government Caught Manipulating Wikipedia" is a cool title, but seriously, does anyone think the US government, the CIA or the Vatican would be stupid enough to get caught if they actually wanted to influence a wikipedia article?
They'd probably at the very least get their 'operatives' to go home, get one of those free AOL CDs (etc), and do it from a public IP range.
What's more likely is that this is someone who got bored at work (at the Vatican etc), and decided to put their personal opinions in. The nature of their work usually implies their beliefs are coincident with that of their employers.
As for TFA, it states "One has to wonder how reliable an encyclopaedia is when it peddles government propaganda in an almost Orwellian manner"; Seems a bit like FUD to me. The whole point of wikipedia is that it is constantly peer reviewed. If things are incorrect, people will eventually correct them - I fail to see how that's Orwellian. If anything, changing pages in this manner actually brings MORE attention to the issue.
According the material on the companies web site (auxetix) one of the applications is for a fabric that changes colour as it's stretched (specifically for cargo webbing). But one application which would be much cooler (and useful for a fair portion of the slashdot crowd) is pants made out of this stuff - They'd change colour to tell you when you've eaten too many pies.
With regard to being 'worth it'. It's also worth noting that despite the article title, this isn't a complete sequence. 23andMe will scan ~550,000 Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) out of the (roughly) 10 million SNPs humans have, which is again quite different from a complete sequencing of the 3 billion base pairs in human DNA.
Surely the mechanics of the device would be significantly different on the moon vs. on Earth?
Surely the enormous difference in atmospheric pressure and gravity mean the only thing that's reasonably useful is the guidance mechanism?
Any rocket scientists out there have any idea what the real benefit of the challenge is?
Although it does make me think... If Apple only get a cash for subscribed phones, then theres only a few reasons I can think of why Apple would try to close the loopholes;
- Apple want to force people with unlocked phones onto AT&T (assuming that will unbrick them)
- Apple want to discourage people from buying phones with the intention of unlocking them
- Apple want to punish people who have unlocked them....
Personally I think if people are intent on unlocking their phones patching them isn't going to help; Workarounds WILL be found. It's an all too easily forgotten fundamental of all access control systems (be that this, or game copy protection or DRM etc..) that physical access is the ultimate security breach.As far as I'm aware the first hack involved soldering on to the JTAG interface on one of the chips on the inside of the phone. I'm not aware of any malicious websites or programs that are able to open up a phone and solder it. I'll grant you that later hacks are done in software, but still require the phone user to connect it to a pc and a follow a specific sequence of steps.
I won't be buying an iPhone (hacked or otherwise), and I have no strong opinions either way about Apple or Cingular. I just find it marginally interesting that Cingular figures the revenue generated from new customers will offset the payments they'll have to make to Apple as part of deal, which given that Apple are losing a significant number of sales because of the lock must be quite a hefty sum.
I guess I'm one of many people that would be interested to see the numbers on the whole 'exclusive cingular deal' thing. I'm guessing there must be quite a hefty payment per unit by cingular to apple. Looking at these figures, apple were expecting 1 million sales at the end of Q4, and ended up with 25% more sales as a result of sales to unlockers, if they were expecting this then I'm guessing the payment per unit must be at least a third of the unit price.
I guess we'll know when it goes on sale in France (where due to law it must be sold unlocked). I assume they'll be whacking on the appropriate additional cost.
I also wonder why Apple really care? I mean they already signed the deal, and they're making 'reasonable' efforts to uphold their end of it, so why do they care enough about unlockers to bother with a patch aimed at preventing it? Esp. since they're getting more sales out of it....