This is the reason I don't like the "fully dynamic lighting" craze.
That's not the cause of the problem in Doom. What happened is they simply wanted the gameplay to be based on monsters jumping out of the dark, but couldn't trust users not to cheat by cranking up gamma-curves if there was even a tiny ambient component.
Dynamic lighting is not incompatible with ambient-type effects. PCs aren't fast enough to do it properly (raycasting), but faster compromises like conics of brightness are easily possible. They will occasionally create anomalies where a surface is illuminated although it really is blocked from the light, but those can be minimzed, and the net effect will be closer to the behavior of real light in a scene.
Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the President can initiate military action
That's not a Constitutional Amendment, and any lesser law which contradicts the Constitution is invalid.
If he wanted to invade Mexico, all Shrub has to do is pull some specious bullshit excuse out of his ass based on shoddy
Arnold Swarzeneger can do the same thing. He can claim an iminent state emergency and send the state guardsmen south of the border. It'd be just as legal as when Bush does it.
The legality is the same, even though Arnold wouldn't get away with it nearly as easily, because his excuse would be more closely scrutinized.
Also responding to an AC: ago. While any reasonable person reading the Constitution would not believe it to be lawful, current law as written
No, it is specifically against law as written. Of course, many other common things, such as "plea bargaining", are completely illegal, but the government does them frequently.
There were a few attempts after Germany's surrender (which made it clear that Japan's victory was absolutely impossible), but the final and most important was on July 26th, when Japanese agents (operating from neutral Switzerland) gave their response to the Potsdam Declaration.
It isn't some big secret, so you can read more in Wikipedia or Google.
(You saw my other message re the emperor's survival vs "unconditional surrender")
This is the third article on/. in a week that totally misreads the proposed addition to 17 USC 110.
Your multiple lengthy attacks are unjustified.
No, this law doesn't specifically make it a crime to skip a commercial. But still, it means that skipping commercials will become illegal.
The clear intent here is that otherwise lawful playback devices will become criminal contraband if they have a feature to skip commercials. But laws based in honest morality should focus on the acts committed, not on whether automated tools were used. If I can legally press "FF" for 15 seconds, it shouldn't be criminal for me to load my VCR with a script to do the same.
But this is one of the only halfway decent parts of it -- as it would tend to remove any doubt as to the legality of what Clean Flicks has been doing,
There was no real doubt. Fair-Use and First-Sale are clear, and the first lawsuit would've concluded the issue just fine. This bill scores no points on that ground.
Wars movies -- and so it annoys me quite a lot to see people's outrage arising out of a misreading of the bill. Be outraged at the rest of the bill, dammit.
Giving commercial messages special immunity from the consumer's normal right to modify a legally-acquired copyrighted work IS worthy of outrage.
In fact, it's so bad that there's a fair chance of drumming up support from the broad public on this issue, and not just digital-media nerds.
Both of the expansions changed play up a bit. Opposing Force, you had teammates to back you up
No. That was in the original. They were called "Barney", and their infinite ammo made them sometimes very useful.
although the AI generally guarenteed you never had teammates for long... they had a tendency to charge
No, it was easy to keep them alive. What guarranteed they couldn't stay with you was that they can't do jumping-puzzles to traverse obstacle-course terrain.
Re:Spolier: Brief synopsis of Half-Life 1.
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
You are Gordon Freeman, at your first day on the job at the Black Mesa Research
I can hardly belive the amount of text you (& several other posters) squandered on a trivial story:
"Scientists in the sinister government base are building a teleporter when it screws up and pours out monsters that kill everyone"
Re:Steam-like online distrubtion is inevitable
on
Review: Half-Life 2
·
· Score: 1
- With Steam, they can make closer to $25-30 per copy.
That's an unjustified assertion. What gives them $25 margins isn't Steam itself, but simply digital distribution, without giving tradtional publishers a cut.
Digital game distribution could be accomplished more easiy without Steam. There was no requirement to author a new, proprietary file transfer protocol including irritating background client processes. Normal HTTP, SSL, and PK methods would've been quite sufficient.
The permanent flashlight in Doom 3, even though it is probably scientifically accurate for a Martian space station, was something of a let-down in terms of game play.
No it wasn't. All lighting in Doom, whether portable or stationary, was ludicrously underpowered. It didn't make sense scientifically, and it didn't help gameplay either.
Even BEFORE the catastrophy hit the station it was still absurdly dark... of course, the setting was a bizarre alternate-universe where photons don't rebound off solid surfaces to create the phenomena called "ambient illumination".
Please don't tell me that in addition to a bulky flashlight with a pale, narrow beam which excludes the use of weapons, you wanted it to run out of power in 10 minutes too. The eternal flashlight minorly improved the horrid gameplay.
As we've already demonstrated, there are many things wine does which are correctly classified as emulation. Ergo, claiming "there is no emulation in wine" is 100% false.
Here's two more 100% false statements, for comparison:
Many people would agree with those statements. Some people might even think they're getting useful information out of them. Nonetheless, they're untrue.
It would take a great deal of work to convert it to OpenGL so it can work natively in Linux.
That assumption is wrong, so your conclusion is wrong.
It wouldn't take a "great deal" of work. It would take 2 skilled Unix programmers a few months of hard effort. That's less than $200,000 of investment, and if it gives you 3% more sales, then it's completely worthwhile- because since HL2's sales are already huge, 3% of that is much more than $200,000.
The important part is that an OpenGL Mac port would be written in the same effort, which is where the bulk of new sales will come from.
If you make a promise that you cannot possibly meet, that's lying.
Republican presidents like Reagan, Bush, and Bush have often done this. Reagan promised to reduce the deficit, Bush promised not to raise taxes, and then Bush promised no nation-building military missions.
In each case, their Democratic opponent said truthfully that it might become necessary to do something unpleasant, and lost the election thereafter. "I told the truth, and I paid for it". That's why honest Democrats keep losing- because voters don't like to hear the hard truth.
Kennedy (or any other president) isn't an unarmed civilian though.
Technically that's wrong. The president is rarely armed, and he is a civilian.
Contrary to President Reagan's delusion, the president is not a member of the military. He is the civilian controller of the military, which doesn't make him a member.
For example, President Kennedy never had soldiers salute him as though he were an officer.
Presidents, governors, and mayors are all civilians even though they can give executive instruction to soldiers, guardsmen, and police.
Untrue. That myth was intentionally created by the USA government towards the end of WWII. There weren't just those 2 options; there were at least 2-3 more.
1. If the USA didn't invade Japan, the USSR was ready to. Although the effects on civilians would be roughly the same, it wouldn't be American troops dying.
2. The USA could pull back and completely ignore Japan, which had absolutely no capacity to wage offensive war ever again.
3. The USA could accept Japan's offer of surrender.
It's point 3 that most people today are ignorant of; the government has hidden the fact that Japan already asked to surrender weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped.
Giving you the file in no way implies permission to use it by default, see the halflife2 preloading,
You should specify if your lawyer friend is UK or USA. That comment suggests the former, because it is absolutely wrong in America.
There, if you HAVE a file, you can USE it. Copyright only controls copying and distribution; so once distribution is complete, the author has no more authority to dictate what happens to the data. (In the past few years, new laws like DMCA have threatened to abridge this right, but it's still there so far)
Which means that you are technically wrong. Just to clarify.
100% and wrote your _own_ implementation, most people would not call it an emulator, but just another implementation.
And if in that reverse engineering I found a foolish bug in your library, would I do extra work to dupliacte it in mine? An "alternative implementation" will typically try to be better than the original. But if you go for bug-for-bug compatibility, you are emulating.
VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device.
Yes.
An API is nothing more then the set of function that your program can call. What is a function? A function is just a grouping of code that does a specific task..
A CPU is nothing more than a set of opcodes a program can call. What is an opcode? An opcode is just a grouping of circuits that does a specific task.
VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device.
You are completely wrong. Twice. VMWare is not an emulator. It's a virtualizer; it cannot run x86 programs without using a genuine x86 chip to do it.
Wine, on the other hand, is an emulator, because it emulates the behavior of Microsoft Windows, just as VirtualPC emulates an x86 chip.
There is NO definition of "emulator" that Wine doesn't meet! "Hardware emulator" is a subcategory of emulator, not something implied by the word "emulator" alone.
The WINE acryonym is a lie. (So is the GNU acroynym, by the way)
What sort of selection bias did you have? I.e., if you served in the Green Zone, you're not exactly going to be encountering those hostile to you very much,
Moreover, if he's a USMC highly-capable professional killer- the kind of guy who brags about having a plan to kill everyone he meets- exactly why would any marginally sane Iraqi approach this guy to say hostile things towards him?
The ones who hate you aren't gonna be talking to you...
There was not a *single* postwar killing of a US soldier in Germany. Not a one.
That's not quite true- there were a few fratricidal deaths when one occupation soldier murdered another. Of course, that just supports your position that there was no insurgency of any meaningful threat in postwar Europe.
(There have already been some intentional murders between USA soldiers in Iraq, but they are of course overshadowed)
Slashdot Mirror
This is the reason I don't like the "fully dynamic lighting" craze.
That's not the cause of the problem in Doom. What happened is they simply wanted the gameplay to be based on monsters jumping out of the dark, but couldn't trust users not to cheat by cranking up gamma-curves if there was even a tiny ambient component.
Dynamic lighting is not incompatible with ambient-type effects. PCs aren't fast enough to do it properly (raycasting), but faster compromises like conics of brightness are easily possible. They will occasionally create anomalies where a surface is illuminated although it really is blocked from the light, but those can be minimzed, and the net effect will be closer to the behavior of real light in a scene.
Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the President can initiate military action
That's not a Constitutional Amendment, and any lesser law which contradicts the Constitution is invalid.
If he wanted to invade Mexico, all Shrub has to do is pull some specious bullshit excuse out of his ass based on shoddy
Arnold Swarzeneger can do the same thing. He can claim an iminent state emergency and send the state guardsmen south of the border. It'd be just as legal as when Bush does it.
The legality is the same, even though Arnold wouldn't get away with it nearly as easily, because his excuse would be more closely scrutinized.
Also responding to an AC:
ago. While any reasonable person reading the Constitution would not believe it to be lawful, current law as written
No, it is specifically against law as written. Of course, many other common things, such as "plea bargaining", are completely illegal, but the government does them frequently.
at least the approximate date it happened
There were a few attempts after Germany's surrender (which made it clear that Japan's victory was absolutely impossible), but the final and most important was on July 26th, when Japanese agents (operating from neutral Switzerland) gave their response to the Potsdam Declaration.
It isn't some big secret, so you can read more in Wikipedia or Google.
(You saw my other message re the emperor's survival vs "unconditional surrender")
I install anything I happen to come across on the web
How's that Mac Half-Life 2 working out for you? Is it as good as they say?
This is the third article on /. in a week that totally misreads the proposed addition to 17 USC 110.
Your multiple lengthy attacks are unjustified.
No, this law doesn't specifically make it a crime to skip a commercial. But still, it means that skipping commercials will become illegal.
The clear intent here is that otherwise lawful playback devices will become criminal contraband if they have a feature to skip commercials. But laws based in honest morality should focus on the acts committed, not on whether automated tools were used. If I can legally press "FF" for 15 seconds, it shouldn't be criminal for me to load my VCR with a script to do the same.
But this is one of the only halfway decent parts of it -- as it would tend to remove any doubt as to the legality of what Clean Flicks has been doing,
There was no real doubt. Fair-Use and First-Sale are clear, and the first lawsuit would've concluded the issue just fine. This bill scores no points on that ground.
Wars movies -- and so it annoys me quite a lot to see people's outrage arising out of a misreading of the bill. Be outraged at the rest of the bill, dammit.
Giving commercial messages special immunity from the consumer's normal right to modify a legally-acquired copyrighted work IS worthy of outrage.
In fact, it's so bad that there's a fair chance of drumming up support from the broad public on this issue, and not just digital-media nerds.
Bush didn't push for renewal of the assault weapons ban. We got more of the 2nd amendment back with Bush.
Bush SAID he supported the assault weapon ban. So you're praising him for something that happened against his wishes.
Both of the expansions changed play up a bit. Opposing Force, you had teammates to back you up
No. That was in the original. They were called "Barney", and their infinite ammo made them sometimes very useful.
although the AI generally guarenteed you never had teammates for long... they had a tendency to charge
No, it was easy to keep them alive. What guarranteed they couldn't stay with you was that they can't do jumping-puzzles to traverse obstacle-course terrain.
You are Gordon Freeman, at your first day on the job at the Black Mesa Research
I can hardly belive the amount of text you (& several other posters) squandered on a trivial story:
"Scientists in the sinister government base are building a teleporter when it screws up and pours out monsters that kill everyone"
- With Steam, they can make closer to $25-30 per copy.
That's an unjustified assertion. What gives them $25 margins isn't Steam itself, but simply digital distribution, without giving tradtional publishers a cut.
Digital game distribution could be accomplished more easiy without Steam. There was no requirement to author a new, proprietary file transfer protocol including irritating background client processes. Normal HTTP, SSL, and PK methods would've been quite sufficient.
The permanent flashlight in Doom 3, even though it is probably scientifically accurate for a Martian space station, was something of a let-down in terms of game play.
No it wasn't. All lighting in Doom, whether portable or stationary, was ludicrously underpowered. It didn't make sense scientifically, and it didn't help gameplay either.
Even BEFORE the catastrophy hit the station it was still absurdly dark... of course, the setting was a bizarre alternate-universe where photons don't rebound off solid surfaces to create the phenomena called "ambient illumination".
Please don't tell me that in addition to a bulky flashlight with a pale, narrow beam which excludes the use of weapons, you wanted it to run out of power in 10 minutes too. The eternal flashlight minorly improved the horrid gameplay.
The Governers' authority is much more limited -- Governer Arnhuld can't lawfully order the California National Guard to invade Mexico.
It would be similarly unlawful for President Bush to order a Mexican invasion.
Wasn't the surrender offer conditional in some unacceptable way or something?
It had one condition: the Emperor would be allowed to continue his position as ceremonial head of state.
That condition was entirely acceptable to the USA, as in fact they did leave the emeperor alone during their eventual occupation.
Bzzt. You are the one trying to make it sound black and white:
As we've already demonstrated, there are many things wine does which are correctly classified as emulation. Ergo, claiming "there is no emulation in wine" is 100% false.
Here's two more 100% false statements, for comparison:
Many people would agree with those statements. Some people might even think they're getting useful information out of them. Nonetheless, they're untrue.
It would take a great deal of work to convert it to OpenGL so it can work natively in Linux.
That assumption is wrong, so your conclusion is wrong.
It wouldn't take a "great deal" of work. It would take 2 skilled Unix programmers a few months of hard effort. That's less than $200,000 of investment, and if it gives you 3% more sales, then it's completely worthwhile- because since HL2's sales are already huge, 3% of that is much more than $200,000.
The important part is that an OpenGL Mac port would be written in the same effort, which is where the bulk of new sales will come from.
Bush did not lie, he broke his promise.
If you make a promise that you cannot possibly meet, that's lying.
Republican presidents like Reagan, Bush, and Bush have often done this. Reagan promised to reduce the deficit, Bush promised not to raise taxes, and then Bush promised no nation-building military missions.
In each case, their Democratic opponent said truthfully that it might become necessary to do something unpleasant, and lost the election thereafter. "I told the truth, and I paid for it". That's why honest Democrats keep losing- because voters don't like to hear the hard truth.
Kennedy (or any other president) isn't an unarmed civilian though.
Technically that's wrong. The president is rarely armed, and he is a civilian.
Contrary to President Reagan's delusion, the president is not a member of the military. He is the civilian controller of the military, which doesn't make him a member.
For example, President Kennedy never had soldiers salute him as though he were an officer.
Presidents, governors, and mayors are all civilians even though they can give executive instruction to soldiers, guardsmen, and police.
It was that or march on Tokyo;
Untrue. That myth was intentionally created by the USA government towards the end of WWII. There weren't just those 2 options; there were at least 2-3 more.
1. If the USA didn't invade Japan, the USSR was ready to. Although the effects on civilians would be roughly the same, it wouldn't be American troops dying.
2. The USA could pull back and completely ignore Japan, which had absolutely no capacity to wage offensive war ever again.
3. The USA could accept Japan's offer of surrender.
It's point 3 that most people today are ignorant of; the government has hidden the fact that Japan already asked to surrender weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped.
games like movies are trying to expand the meme that wars are heroic actions
As you know, that's not true at all.
the public has been programmed by the govt to want wars.
That's not true either. If anything, you're backwards: the government wants (victorious) war because that's what makes the public happy.
This is because the public are humans, and humans are a product of Darwinian revolution, where competitively destroying opponents is rewarded.
Giving you the file in no way implies permission to use it by default, see the halflife2 preloading,
You should specify if your lawyer friend is UK or USA. That comment suggests the former, because it is absolutely wrong in America.
There, if you HAVE a file, you can USE it. Copyright only controls copying and distribution; so once distribution is complete, the author has no more authority to dictate what happens to the data. (In the past few years, new laws like DMCA have threatened to abridge this right, but it's still there so far)
quite apt give that in OF, you are a soldier, teaming up with other members of your 'force' to fight the alien invasion.
No, the OPFOR name of the expansion pack means that you are playing the role of someone who was an opponent in the original game.
AC: In CS, an emulator is almost always taken to be a program that translates between two different sets of machine code.
If that weren't a lie, you might have a point. But "emulator" means NOTHING in CS. In CE, it has a meaning...
While you are technically correct,
Which means that you are technically wrong. Just to clarify.
100% and wrote your _own_ implementation, most people would not call it an emulator, but just another implementation.
And if in that reverse engineering I found a foolish bug in your library, would I do extra work to dupliacte it in mine? An "alternative implementation" will typically try to be better than the original. But if you go for bug-for-bug compatibility, you are emulating.
VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device.
Yes.
An API is nothing more then the set of function that your program can call. What is a function? A function is just a grouping of code that does a specific task..
A CPU is nothing more than a set of opcodes a program can call. What is an opcode? An opcode is just a grouping of circuits that does a specific task.
VMWare and MS Virtual PC are emulators and emulate, in software, a hardware device.
You are completely wrong. Twice. VMWare is not an emulator. It's a virtualizer; it cannot run x86 programs without using a genuine x86 chip to do it.
Wine, on the other hand, is an emulator, because it emulates the behavior of Microsoft Windows, just as VirtualPC emulates an x86 chip.
There is NO definition of "emulator" that Wine doesn't meet! "Hardware emulator" is a subcategory of emulator, not something implied by the word "emulator" alone.
The WINE acryonym is a lie. (So is the GNU acroynym, by the way)
What sort of selection bias did you have? I.e., if you served in the Green Zone, you're not exactly going to be encountering those hostile to you very much,
Moreover, if he's a USMC highly-capable professional killer- the kind of guy who brags about having a plan to kill everyone he meets- exactly why would any marginally sane Iraqi approach this guy to say hostile things towards him?
The ones who hate you aren't gonna be talking to you...
There was not a *single* postwar killing of a US soldier in Germany. Not a one.
That's not quite true- there were a few fratricidal deaths when one occupation soldier murdered another. Of course, that just supports your position that there was no insurgency of any meaningful threat in postwar Europe.
(There have already been some intentional murders between USA soldiers in Iraq, but they are of course overshadowed)