The guy wasn't executed. According to OED, that word means "carry out a sentence of death", which is not what happened. How about accident? As is, "an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury". This sounds to me a lot more like what happened. These cops didn't set out that morning to go kill this guy. Everyone involved was thrown into a stressful situation completely outside their normal range of experience, which tends to throw people into self-preservation mode. The cops didn't want to get blown up, the poor SOB didn't want to get shot. It's difficult in these situations to quickly and accurately assess everything that's going on, and cops aren't trained to do that. Cops are trained to keep the peace, which in the majority of cases is a pretty low-key, simple process. Special response units exist to deal with situations like that in London, and they are trained to act in extreme situations. What happened sucks for everyone involved, but sometimes shit happens and people get hurt or die. The only thing you can do afterwards is try to understand what happened so you can avoid making the same mistake twice; all the whining, "what if"-ing, and "should have"s in the world won't change what happened, and won't help avoid it in the future. And please don't give me any "oh, they *accidentally* shot someone in the back?" crap, either. Of course they decided to shoot. That doesn't make it not an accident.
I also have to say that if terrorist bombings don't scare you but police do, you're clueless, retarded, or just an asshole. You also have obviously never had anything remotely bad happen to you or anywhere near you in your life - and no, mommy and daddy splitting up or getting beat up in high school don't count. A bunch of complete pricks with nothing more than an idealogical bone to pick indiscriminately killed EIGHTY people, and you're afraid of some cops who made a mistake trying to save lives? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Army. I enlisted as a 19D (Cavalry Scout), but was reclassed 11B (Infantry) to go to Iraq. Enlisted for six, got involuntarily extended for another year to complete my tour.
I can answer any general or specific questions you may have about the country, the environment, the people, the culture, or the weather, but keep in mind that I've never been in anything other than combat arms, so my answers are from the viewpoint of a 10% minority.
I'm still curious as to the effects of fatigue from prolongued humping of all this gear on accuracy.
Not as bad as you'd think, though not for the reasons you'd expect. It sucks having to lug the equivalent of a 13-year old everywhere, but for the most part there isn't that much prolonged foot patrolling in Baghdad. We operated almost entirely out of HMMWVs. Most patrols are just going outside the wire, driving around, and hoping someone shoots at you so you can find them and kill them. A relatively small percentage of missions are targeted prisoner snatches or movement to contacts or cordon and searches. You generally spend most of your time in a HMMWV, doors closed, windows up, waiting for someone to shoot at you. And when that happens, more than half the time a HMMWV gunner will identify and knock down the bad guy before the platoon even stops. Life is pretty boring for the guys inside the vehicle. That said, having been a Mk-19 gunner for a few months, life can be pretty exciting in the turret; you're the guy they're shooting at.
So, most of the time you will have ridden in relative comfort to any place where you happen to be getting out of the vehicle to go kill people, which means you're not tired when the fighting starts. Once things do heat up, they're either over too quickly to exhaust your energy, or they're prolonged enough to make the adrenaline kick in. I've never felt tired or fatigued during an engagement. Adrenaline actually had the biggest effect on my accuracy - it took some time to learn to always make deliberate movements when operating my weapons with adrenaline pumping.
*After* firefights, mortar, rocket, or IED attacks is when I felt exhausted. Not just tired, but worn out completely, down to the bone. It was hard to get out of the truck once we got back to the patrol base.
These are purely my experiences; others may have completely different reactions. In fact, I know some do. But I think what I'm relating is common to most M249 gunners.
Oh, and there were missions where we had to walk long distances, clearing routes and the like. I just never came under attack on any of those missions. The bad guys over there aren't dumb, and one guy attacking a platoon of HMMWVs with dismounts out is asking to die. One guy with an AK or an RPG firing at a fast-moving convoy and then running away is more likely to live, and may get lucky and hit someone. Of course, those are the guys we didn't bother to try to capture alive, so there are risks with any endeavor.
A real-life M249 weighs around 15lbs unloaded, depending on the weapon configuration. Add to this an 800rd basic load of four 200rd boxes, each box weighing about 4lbs. You've also got a spare barrel bag with at least one extra barrel, adding roughly another 4lbs. So you've got around 35lbs just from your individual weapon and basic load. After one particularly long engagement where we had to call Bradleys forward to resupply us with ammo and grenades, our battalion commander started making us carry double basic load for our individual weapons. Tack on another 16lbs.
You're also wearing body armor with two ballistic inserts (9lbs each insert, not sure what the vest weighs, but it's got to be around 10-11lbs), side, shoulder, and groin protection. Attached to the body armor you've got two grenade pouches (1lb/grenade), your Camelbak (100oz full), your mask, and a bunch of other crap (zip ties, etc.).
I also usually carried an M-4 with a full basic load (7 mags) as a backup in case the SAW was damaged or set in a fixed position. Adds roughly 15lbs more.
All in all, I was packing around 100lbs of gear - 2/3 my body weight - and on some missions, I got yelled at for packing light. Fatigue is a huge factor for M249 gunners. Fortunately, as you fight, your load gets lighter. In game, I suppose they could make the Support class run slower, change stance slower, and have a huge penalty for firing while standing or on the move. Also, even though the SAW is accurate enough to snipe with (in urban terrain), that's not what it's for, and you'd find it poorly suited to that. It takes an experienced gunner to be able to squeeze one round and a time from a SAW - it's full-auto or safe only; none of this pansy semi crap for us.;) So single-round fire is difficult, and prolonged bursts will melt your barrel, and the recoil after the first five to seven rounds will make you miss what you're shooting at, anyway. What the weapon is for is providing a high volume of suppressive fire to support and cover your squads advance. And occasionally, when you know the house you're going into is full of bad guys, to go in first and just kill everything in the room, quickly. That's what the class should be for in the game, too. Fire and maneuver should largely be left to regular infantry classes.
On another note, the Day of Defeat mod for Half-Life got the ammo supply right: other people carried *my* ammo, not the other way around. They may have bitched about the extra weight I made them carry, but that stopped the second a firefight started.
Anyway... once again, I'm not arguing for a 100% accurate simulation, or even a *simulation* at all. I just think play-balancing should take a different form than *just* nerfing weapons until everything's equal.
You guys are absolutely correct. This is a game, not a simulation, and some artistic license is allowed - is encouraged, in fact. Real war is no fun at all (most of the time), and a 100% true-to-life recreation in a game would make for a terrible game. In games like this you should have respawn, capture points, more resistance to injury than in real life. They're just games, after all.
My point overall is that too much play-balancing detracts from the fun. If a group of foot soldiers can take out a tank by throwing grenades at it, that's a good bit of balancing - allowing grenades to damage a tank without having to run up, jump on the tank, and drop one down the hatch (it'd be cool if you could do that in-game, though) . But when you take it to the point where anything can kill anything, and some things can survive waaaaay too much, you're taking away from the game. Consider: paper, rock, scissors. Paper covers rock. Rock breaks scissors. Scissors cut paper. But, wait, if you do rock twice really quickly, then you beat paper - it should be balanced after all, we don't want people who *always* play rock to be at a disadvantage to the habitual paper-players, do we? And if you do paper, but make a wavy motion with your hand, then paper beats scissors because it blows away before it can get cut. Can't let those scissors have an advantage, right?
See my point? It's a shooter, and a good one, but it's also about combined arms warfare. Wouldn't it be great for teamplay if the game actually rewarded you for operating infantry and armor together, or using coordinated air support? It doesn't damage plain old deathmatch-style play, either - yeah, your tank may be tough, and I don't want to get on the wrong end of your coax, but I can jump into a HMMWV, line you up with my ITAS, launch a TOW at you, and watch the fireworks. Tired of that Havoc blowing up your tank? Hop into a Bradley and shred his rotor blades with 20mm HEDP rounds. These weapons are *already* play-balanced through real-world use. Making them more realistic than they are currently would only make the game better.
... and I know what I'm talking about; from March '04 to March '05 I spent a year in an infantry company in Baghdad. So, here's my mini-review, with an eye towards comparing the game to its real-life equivalent.
Battlefield 2's weapon characteristics are *nothing* like their real-life counterparts. In real life, I can hit a 3-ft. plastic target at 400m with a single round from my M249. I can put five out of seven rounds into a *real* person, much bigger than the target, at the same distance. In Battlefield 2, I'll be lucky to hit a guy with 3 rounds out of an entire 200-rd. box, at about the in-game equivalent of 100m, while laying prone. Hint to DICE: squad support weapons are not innacurate. None of the weapons portrayed in the game have the poor accuracy the game displays. If they did, real militaries wouldn't use them. Please don't artificially retard weapons to balance gameplay; instead, rework the levels. Terrain is often a deciding factor in real combat. Why should your game be different? Besides, the soldiers you're portraying in-game are not truck drivers, pay clerks, or light-wheel mechanics; they are combat arms soldiers. They are trained to move, think, and fight in combat, so how about you let them do that without imposing silly constraints on their ability to fight?
Here's a thought: if you must artificially impose limitations on accuracy, base them on a player's in-game rank. That's quite a bit more realistic - I know I was calmer, steadier, and more accurate at month six in Baghdad than I was on day three.
Here's another thought: one area where most games do not impose artificial constraints is the effect of suppression fire. This is the exception to the rule of arbitrary limits, and America's Army got it right: if someone is shooting at you, your accuracy suffers based on how close they're hitting. This is how it is in real life, and this is how it should be in game. The next time I see some lone wolf jump up and run right into a hail of.50-cal fire, kneel, and shoot the.50-cal gunner in the head, I'm going to punch my computer. Yes, this occasionally happened to great effect, in WWII, Korea, Vietname, etc., but the reason you hear about those cases is that they are extraordinary. 99999 times out of 100000, that guy is dead.
All of these bitches seem to be about weapon accuracy, but, hey, that's a core bit of the game. So, next on my list... if I am riding around in a M1 Abrams tank, see somebody hovering over a flag in a Havoc or a Hind, and land a 120mm HEAT round right below their rotor shaft, what happens in real life is this: the chopper explodes, crashes to the ground, and everyone inside dies. It does not drift a little to the side, turn, fire some rockets, and then fly away. Modern HEAT rounds are made to penetrate upwards of 800mm of RHA - they're made to defeat main battle tanks. Modern attack helicopters are made to withstand 20mm cannon fire. Do the math.
Support catastrophic kills on armored targets. If I land a round right on the turret ring of a T-80, the tank is going to explode, spectacularly. It's not going to turn, shoot at me, and then run away.
Tanks are not anti-infantry weapons. They are anti-armor weapons. The coax machine gun, and turret gun, are effective against infantry *at range*, but pretty much useless up close. The main gun on a main battle tank can be used to great effect on infantry when they're hiding in buildings, but if you land a round close to an infantryman in open terrain, you're probably just going to scrape him up or give him a few burns. Sabot rounds don't fragment enough to have a grenade-like effect on infantry, and HEAT rounds dissipate energy too quickly to cause much harm when they strike anything other than a wall, armor, or other such material. And these are likely to be the only two types of rounds a MBT will load. Of course, *hit* someone with a 120mm round, and they're done.
You CAN develop modern, well-performing games in Java. Since you already have a good Java skillset, try these: Killer Game Programming in Java from O'Reilly, and Developing Games in Java by David Brackeen, from New Riders.
Brackeen's book (Developing...) is particularly well-written, and a great place to start. Killer Game Programming in Java is an *excellent* idea source/reference in the great O'Reilly tradition, but is a little more intimidating, since you could use a copy to beat an elephant to death. "Killer" is a more recent book, and covers some aspects of Java 5.0 game development that Brackeen's book necessarily omitted. Both books also point out various commercial games, and games in development, that were written with Java. You're probably not going to end up writing a screaming, graphically stunning FPS with self-shadowing objects, etc., but since you're not EA, you can't afford to do that in your own time anyway. So why throw out your current skill with Java and learn C++ all over?
Oh, and they should get rid of the Gates borg icon. It was never funny, and it just looks so lame and childish. How come no other topic beside Microsoft gets that kind of immature treatment?
If ECS is really producing the volume of boards claimed by the article, then the percentage of boards worldwide which originated at ECS must be fairly large.
So, if you have a company (ECS) that produces 24 million mainboards a year, a different company (say ASUS) that produces 10 million mainboards a year (number pulled out of thin air), and a common burn-in period fail rate of 2% (also pulled out of the air), guess what - you're going to see more failed boards from the larger manufacturer. Because you see a larger amount of boards from them, you tend to think "Hey, these guys are crap", even though their failure rate is the same as the second, smaller, company.
Yes! However, only 21-year Balvenie Port Wood should be purged. It's dangerous, deadly stuff, and the only sure way to rid the world of its danger is to transmute it into a less dangerous substance. Like urine and scotch sweat.
It's a dangerous job, but I'm willing to take one for the team. I volunteer. Once my great sacrifice is accomplished, someone make sure they name a high school after me.
I get $50 in Apple credit, and the lawyers get up to $2,768,000. I really don't know who to cheer for here. I wish my iPod's battery would have lasted a bit longer (it's 1G, holds about 3hrs worth of charge), but I also wish the legal system wasn't so screwed up that the only people really profiting from this aren't injured parties.
I don't think the interviewer has much knowledge about cryptography, or even security in general. I am judging solely based on the questions asked:
I mean TCP/IP does not use crypto, while a VPN does. Do you think that in the future we'll use crypto for every type of communication?
Which displays a fairly simplistic, and unfortunately common, grasp of security principles, which is: crypto makes things secure, and everything must be secure. The reality is that cryptography is part of a greater security process, and that not every communication *must* be secure. Do you care if someone hears you discussing the newest Family Guy episode at the office, or hears you say "Hi" to your coworkers? No. So why should you be concerned if you're transmitting SYN/ACK or a comment to Slashdot in a relatively clear manner? Secure processes should be implemented where they are needed, and nowhere else, or else security becomes a burden forcing users to find ways to circumvent it.
Should we use crypto to stop the spam problem ?
I hardly know where to begin. How should we use cryptography to prevent spam? There are ways and ways to reduce spam, and perhaps cryptography in the form of some type of message authentication will play a role in that or not, but this is like asking "Should we use hydrogen molecules to cure cancer?". Hydrogen molecules in what context or construct?
I'm no cryptographer, but (call me crazy) I expect a guy writing for SecurityFocus to know more than I do. Or at least to ask questions in an intelligent manner.
From TFA you linked to: The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.
What's funny is, you've just proven him absolutely correct. About the above quote, not the rest of his article.
I swear I've heard of people who quit their jobs and moved just so they could live in a city that had Star Trek running every day
Orson Scott Card knows someone who must know me! I feel so much closer to him now! I just have to know one thing before I can take my new friendship with OSC (I can call you OSC, right?) to the next level...
Okay, just a quick Google search came up with these:
1. TigerDirect (listed in results *before* OS X 10.4, by the way)
2. Mac OS X 10.4
3. Tiger Map Server software
4. Paper Tiger software
5. Ti TIGER boards
6. White Tiger Technologies
7. Purple Tiger Software
8. J2SE 5.0 Tiger
... and the list goes on. I find it hard to believe that the timing of this is coincidental. It seems to be nothing more than a cheap bid for a settlement. It also seems that, to this point, TigerDirect has failed to defend their trademarks, allowing them to enter into common usage regarding major technologies (Java and Mac OS X). I'm sure Xerox could give TigerDirect a quick rundown on what they can expect next.
The death of Iraqi civilians in this war roughly equals the deaths brought by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Any serious analysis of the "real reasons" for this war inevitably comes back to oil and money.
Well, if you want to make it a numbers game, we're still far behind Hussein's total count of Turks and Kurds. And when did I say it didn't amount to a war for corporate profit? It is.
we're told to shut up and let the soldiers get on with their "jobs"?
I didn't tell you to shut up. I stated our preference that you not use us as examples or martyrs. Regardless of our individual political opinions (I'm a Democrat), the circumstance of our employment - which is contractual, subject to both USC and UCMJ, and difficult to get out of - make it inappropriate for us to become involved, as a body, in politics. The armed forces exist to defend the United States, and, when given lawful orders by Congress or (in certain circumstances) the President, to make aggressive war on foreign nations. We do not exist to participate in the political processes which carry us to the point of armed conflict. Which means it's inappropriate to drag us into it.
But you, sir, you are part of the oppression, and job or not, you are responsible for your acts.
I love it when people say "sir" in an attempt to dignify baseless, crass, and cowardly slander. I'd probably insult you right back, but I'm having a hard enough time keeping a straight face right now.
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Funny story...
:)
I taught my best friend's six-year-old to say that to his mother when she tells him "no".
He gets angry calls from his ex about once a week because of something I taught the kid. I'm not her favorite person.
Stockwell (where the guy was executed)...
The guy wasn't executed. According to OED, that word means "carry out a sentence of death", which is not what happened. How about accident? As is, "an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury". This sounds to me a lot more like what happened. These cops didn't set out that morning to go kill this guy. Everyone involved was thrown into a stressful situation completely outside their normal range of experience, which tends to throw people into self-preservation mode. The cops didn't want to get blown up, the poor SOB didn't want to get shot. It's difficult in these situations to quickly and accurately assess everything that's going on, and cops aren't trained to do that. Cops are trained to keep the peace, which in the majority of cases is a pretty low-key, simple process. Special response units exist to deal with situations like that in London, and they are trained to act in extreme situations. What happened sucks for everyone involved, but sometimes shit happens and people get hurt or die. The only thing you can do afterwards is try to understand what happened so you can avoid making the same mistake twice; all the whining, "what if"-ing, and "should have"s in the world won't change what happened, and won't help avoid it in the future. And please don't give me any "oh, they *accidentally* shot someone in the back?" crap, either. Of course they decided to shoot. That doesn't make it not an accident.
I also have to say that if terrorist bombings don't scare you but police do, you're clueless, retarded, or just an asshole. You also have obviously never had anything remotely bad happen to you or anywhere near you in your life - and no, mommy and daddy splitting up or getting beat up in high school don't count. A bunch of complete pricks with nothing more than an idealogical bone to pick indiscriminately killed EIGHTY people, and you're afraid of some cops who made a mistake trying to save lives? What the fuck is wrong with you?
Army. I enlisted as a 19D (Cavalry Scout), but was reclassed 11B (Infantry) to go to Iraq. Enlisted for six, got involuntarily extended for another year to complete my tour.
I can answer any general or specific questions you may have about the country, the environment, the people, the culture, or the weather, but keep in mind that I've never been in anything other than combat arms, so my answers are from the viewpoint of a 10% minority.
I'm still curious as to the effects of fatigue from prolongued humping of all this gear on accuracy.
;)
Not as bad as you'd think, though not for the reasons you'd expect. It sucks having to lug the equivalent of a 13-year old everywhere, but for the most part there isn't that much prolonged foot patrolling in Baghdad. We operated almost entirely out of HMMWVs. Most patrols are just going outside the wire, driving around, and hoping someone shoots at you so you can find them and kill them. A relatively small percentage of missions are targeted prisoner snatches or movement to contacts or cordon and searches. You generally spend most of your time in a HMMWV, doors closed, windows up, waiting for someone to shoot at you. And when that happens, more than half the time a HMMWV gunner will identify and knock down the bad guy before the platoon even stops. Life is pretty boring for the guys inside the vehicle. That said, having been a Mk-19 gunner for a few months, life can be pretty exciting in the turret; you're the guy they're shooting at.
So, most of the time you will have ridden in relative comfort to any place where you happen to be getting out of the vehicle to go kill people, which means you're not tired when the fighting starts. Once things do heat up, they're either over too quickly to exhaust your energy, or they're prolonged enough to make the adrenaline kick in. I've never felt tired or fatigued during an engagement. Adrenaline actually had the biggest effect on my accuracy - it took some time to learn to always make deliberate movements when operating my weapons with adrenaline pumping.
*After* firefights, mortar, rocket, or IED attacks is when I felt exhausted. Not just tired, but worn out completely, down to the bone. It was hard to get out of the truck once we got back to the patrol base.
These are purely my experiences; others may have completely different reactions. In fact, I know some do. But I think what I'm relating is common to most M249 gunners.
Oh, and there were missions where we had to walk long distances, clearing routes and the like. I just never came under attack on any of those missions. The bad guys over there aren't dumb, and one guy attacking a platoon of HMMWVs with dismounts out is asking to die. One guy with an AK or an RPG firing at a fast-moving convoy and then running away is more likely to live, and may get lucky and hit someone. Of course, those are the guys we didn't bother to try to capture alive, so there are risks with any endeavor.
Anyway... I'm making my PTSD act up again.
A real-life M249 weighs around 15lbs unloaded, depending on the weapon configuration. Add to this an 800rd basic load of four 200rd boxes, each box weighing about 4lbs. You've also got a spare barrel bag with at least one extra barrel, adding roughly another 4lbs. So you've got around 35lbs just from your individual weapon and basic load. After one particularly long engagement where we had to call Bradleys forward to resupply us with ammo and grenades, our battalion commander started making us carry double basic load for our individual weapons. Tack on another 16lbs.
;) So single-round fire is difficult, and prolonged bursts will melt your barrel, and the recoil after the first five to seven rounds will make you miss what you're shooting at, anyway. What the weapon is for is providing a high volume of suppressive fire to support and cover your squads advance. And occasionally, when you know the house you're going into is full of bad guys, to go in first and just kill everything in the room, quickly. That's what the class should be for in the game, too. Fire and maneuver should largely be left to regular infantry classes.
You're also wearing body armor with two ballistic inserts (9lbs each insert, not sure what the vest weighs, but it's got to be around 10-11lbs), side, shoulder, and groin protection. Attached to the body armor you've got two grenade pouches (1lb/grenade), your Camelbak (100oz full), your mask, and a bunch of other crap (zip ties, etc.).
I also usually carried an M-4 with a full basic load (7 mags) as a backup in case the SAW was damaged or set in a fixed position. Adds roughly 15lbs more.
All in all, I was packing around 100lbs of gear - 2/3 my body weight - and on some missions, I got yelled at for packing light. Fatigue is a huge factor for M249 gunners. Fortunately, as you fight, your load gets lighter. In game, I suppose they could make the Support class run slower, change stance slower, and have a huge penalty for firing while standing or on the move. Also, even though the SAW is accurate enough to snipe with (in urban terrain), that's not what it's for, and you'd find it poorly suited to that. It takes an experienced gunner to be able to squeeze one round and a time from a SAW - it's full-auto or safe only; none of this pansy semi crap for us.
On another note, the Day of Defeat mod for Half-Life got the ammo supply right: other people carried *my* ammo, not the other way around. They may have bitched about the extra weight I made them carry, but that stopped the second a firefight started.
Anyway... once again, I'm not arguing for a 100% accurate simulation, or even a *simulation* at all. I just think play-balancing should take a different form than *just* nerfing weapons until everything's equal.
This will be a blanket response.
You guys are absolutely correct. This is a game, not a simulation, and some artistic license is allowed - is encouraged, in fact. Real war is no fun at all (most of the time), and a 100% true-to-life recreation in a game would make for a terrible game. In games like this you should have respawn, capture points, more resistance to injury than in real life. They're just games, after all.
My point overall is that too much play-balancing detracts from the fun. If a group of foot soldiers can take out a tank by throwing grenades at it, that's a good bit of balancing - allowing grenades to damage a tank without having to run up, jump on the tank, and drop one down the hatch (it'd be cool if you could do that in-game, though) . But when you take it to the point where anything can kill anything, and some things can survive waaaaay too much, you're taking away from the game. Consider: paper, rock, scissors. Paper covers rock. Rock breaks scissors. Scissors cut paper. But, wait, if you do rock twice really quickly, then you beat paper - it should be balanced after all, we don't want people who *always* play rock to be at a disadvantage to the habitual paper-players, do we? And if you do paper, but make a wavy motion with your hand, then paper beats scissors because it blows away before it can get cut. Can't let those scissors have an advantage, right?
See my point? It's a shooter, and a good one, but it's also about combined arms warfare. Wouldn't it be great for teamplay if the game actually rewarded you for operating infantry and armor together, or using coordinated air support? It doesn't damage plain old deathmatch-style play, either - yeah, your tank may be tough, and I don't want to get on the wrong end of your coax, but I can jump into a HMMWV, line you up with my ITAS, launch a TOW at you, and watch the fireworks. Tired of that Havoc blowing up your tank? Hop into a Bradley and shred his rotor blades with 20mm HEDP rounds. These weapons are *already* play-balanced through real-world use. Making them more realistic than they are currently would only make the game better.
... and I know what I'm talking about; from March '04 to March '05 I spent a year in an infantry company in Baghdad. So, here's my mini-review, with an eye towards comparing the game to its real-life equivalent.
.50-cal fire, kneel, and shoot the .50-cal gunner in the head, I'm going to punch my computer. Yes, this occasionally happened to great effect, in WWII, Korea, Vietname, etc., but the reason you hear about those cases is that they are extraordinary. 99999 times out of 100000, that guy is dead.
Battlefield 2's weapon characteristics are *nothing* like their real-life counterparts. In real life, I can hit a 3-ft. plastic target at 400m with a single round from my M249. I can put five out of seven rounds into a *real* person, much bigger than the target, at the same distance. In Battlefield 2, I'll be lucky to hit a guy with 3 rounds out of an entire 200-rd. box, at about the in-game equivalent of 100m, while laying prone. Hint to DICE: squad support weapons are not innacurate. None of the weapons portrayed in the game have the poor accuracy the game displays. If they did, real militaries wouldn't use them. Please don't artificially retard weapons to balance gameplay; instead, rework the levels. Terrain is often a deciding factor in real combat. Why should your game be different? Besides, the soldiers you're portraying in-game are not truck drivers, pay clerks, or light-wheel mechanics; they are combat arms soldiers. They are trained to move, think, and fight in combat, so how about you let them do that without imposing silly constraints on their ability to fight?
Here's a thought: if you must artificially impose limitations on accuracy, base them on a player's in-game rank. That's quite a bit more realistic - I know I was calmer, steadier, and more accurate at month six in Baghdad than I was on day three.
Here's another thought: one area where most games do not impose artificial constraints is the effect of suppression fire. This is the exception to the rule of arbitrary limits, and America's Army got it right: if someone is shooting at you, your accuracy suffers based on how close they're hitting. This is how it is in real life, and this is how it should be in game. The next time I see some lone wolf jump up and run right into a hail of
All of these bitches seem to be about weapon accuracy, but, hey, that's a core bit of the game. So, next on my list... if I am riding around in a M1 Abrams tank, see somebody hovering over a flag in a Havoc or a Hind, and land a 120mm HEAT round right below their rotor shaft, what happens in real life is this: the chopper explodes, crashes to the ground, and everyone inside dies. It does not drift a little to the side, turn, fire some rockets, and then fly away. Modern HEAT rounds are made to penetrate upwards of 800mm of RHA - they're made to defeat main battle tanks. Modern attack helicopters are made to withstand 20mm cannon fire. Do the math.
Support catastrophic kills on armored targets. If I land a round right on the turret ring of a T-80, the tank is going to explode, spectacularly. It's not going to turn, shoot at me, and then run away.
Tanks are not anti-infantry weapons. They are anti-armor weapons. The coax machine gun, and turret gun, are effective against infantry *at range*, but pretty much useless up close. The main gun on a main battle tank can be used to great effect on infantry when they're hiding in buildings, but if you land a round close to an infantryman in open terrain, you're probably just going to scrape him up or give him a few burns. Sabot rounds don't fragment enough to have a grenade-like effect on infantry, and HEAT rounds dissipate energy too quickly to cause much harm when they strike anything other than a wall, armor, or other such material. And these are likely to be the only two types of rounds a MBT will load. Of course, *hit* someone with a 120mm round, and they're done.
AT-4s, SMAWs, SRAWs, etc. etc. etc. probably w
You CAN develop modern, well-performing games in Java. Since you already have a good Java skillset, try these:
Killer Game Programming in Java from O'Reilly, and Developing Games in Java by David Brackeen, from New Riders.
Brackeen's book (Developing...) is particularly well-written, and a great place to start. Killer Game Programming in Java is an *excellent* idea source/reference in the great O'Reilly tradition, but is a little more intimidating, since you could use a copy to beat an elephant to death. "Killer" is a more recent book, and covers some aspects of Java 5.0 game development that Brackeen's book necessarily omitted. Both books also point out various commercial games, and games in development, that were written with Java. You're probably not going to end up writing a screaming, graphically stunning FPS with self-shadowing objects, etc., but since you're not EA, you can't afford to do that in your own time anyway. So why throw out your current skill with Java and learn C++ all over?
Oh, and they should get rid of the Gates borg icon. It was never funny, and it just looks so lame and childish. How come no other topic beside Microsoft gets that kind of immature treatment?
You must be new here.
If ECS is really producing the volume of boards claimed by the article, then the percentage of boards worldwide which originated at ECS must be fairly large.
So, if you have a company (ECS) that produces 24 million mainboards a year, a different company (say ASUS) that produces 10 million mainboards a year (number pulled out of thin air), and a common burn-in period fail rate of 2% (also pulled out of the air), guess what - you're going to see more failed boards from the larger manufacturer. Because you see a larger amount of boards from them, you tend to think "Hey, these guys are crap", even though their failure rate is the same as the second, smaller, company.
Yes! However, only 21-year Balvenie Port Wood should be purged. It's dangerous, deadly stuff, and the only sure way to rid the world of its danger is to transmute it into a less dangerous substance. Like urine and scotch sweat.
It's a dangerous job, but I'm willing to take one for the team. I volunteer. Once my great sacrifice is accomplished, someone make sure they name a high school after me.
I get $50 in Apple credit, and the lawyers get up to $2,768,000. I really don't know who to cheer for here. I wish my iPod's battery would have lasted a bit longer (it's 1G, holds about 3hrs worth of charge), but I also wish the legal system wasn't so screwed up that the only people really profiting from this aren't injured parties.
Only in America...
I should have known someone would beat me to it, shouldn't I? Just begging for -1 Redundant...
I must be new here.
You really think people will read TFA before posting asinine comments or wild speculation?
You must be new here.
I don't think the interviewer has much knowledge about cryptography, or even security in general. I am judging solely based on the questions asked:
I mean TCP/IP does not use crypto, while a VPN does. Do you think that in the future we'll use crypto for every type of communication?
Which displays a fairly simplistic, and unfortunately common, grasp of security principles, which is: crypto makes things secure, and everything must be secure. The reality is that cryptography is part of a greater security process, and that not every communication *must* be secure. Do you care if someone hears you discussing the newest Family Guy episode at the office, or hears you say "Hi" to your coworkers? No. So why should you be concerned if you're transmitting SYN/ACK or a comment to Slashdot in a relatively clear manner? Secure processes should be implemented where they are needed, and nowhere else, or else security becomes a burden forcing users to find ways to circumvent it.
Should we use crypto to stop the spam problem ?
I hardly know where to begin. How should we use cryptography to prevent spam? There are ways and ways to reduce spam, and perhaps cryptography in the form of some type of message authentication will play a role in that or not, but this is like asking "Should we use hydrogen molecules to cure cancer?". Hydrogen molecules in what context or construct?
I'm no cryptographer, but (call me crazy) I expect a guy writing for SecurityFocus to know more than I do. Or at least to ask questions in an intelligent manner.
NC-17. You can't join the military before then.
"find another plain of existence"
Ahhh! No, I read sci-fi to escape from this plain existence!
From TFA you linked to: The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.
What's funny is, you've just proven him absolutely correct. About the above quote, not the rest of his article.
I swear I've heard of people who quit their jobs and moved just so they could live in a city that had Star Trek running every day
Orson Scott Card knows someone who must know me! I feel so much closer to him now! I just have to know one thing before I can take my new friendship with OSC (I can call you OSC, right?) to the next level...
Kirk or Picard?
Okay, just a quick Google search came up with these:
... and the list goes on. I find it hard to believe that the timing of this is coincidental. It seems to be nothing more than a cheap bid for a settlement. It also seems that, to this point, TigerDirect has failed to defend their trademarks, allowing them to enter into common usage regarding major technologies (Java and Mac OS X). I'm sure Xerox could give TigerDirect a quick rundown on what they can expect next.
1. TigerDirect (listed in results *before* OS X 10.4, by the way)
2. Mac OS X 10.4
3. Tiger Map Server software
4. Paper Tiger software
5. Ti TIGER boards
6. White Tiger Technologies
7. Purple Tiger Software
8. J2SE 5.0 Tiger
Nobody at Doubleclick will understand your (justified) incredulity unless you call it "flashvertising". Duh, get with the times...
;)
Those screenshots look HOT!
;)
Wow. You really need to spend more time away from your computer.
I'd love to have taken over Iraq with bouquets of flowers and heart-shaped greeting cards, but they just lack real stopping power.
I didn't tell you to shut up. I stated our preference that you not use us as examples or martyrs. Regardless of our individual political opinions (I'm a Democrat), the circumstance of our employment - which is contractual, subject to both USC and UCMJ, and difficult to get out of - make it inappropriate for us to become involved, as a body, in politics. The armed forces exist to defend the United States, and, when given lawful orders by Congress or (in certain circumstances) the President, to make aggressive war on foreign nations. We do not exist to participate in the political processes which carry us to the point of armed conflict. Which means it's inappropriate to drag us into it.
I love it when people say "sir" in an attempt to dignify baseless, crass, and cowardly slander. I'd probably insult you right back, but I'm having a hard enough time keeping a straight face right now.