No single player game is going to allow you to do what you want where you want because unfortunately the AI isn't all that advanced and won't be in the foreseeable future.
On the contrary, an increasing amount of games relies on emergent behavior, which is just a few steps away from a real AI, especially since the current trend in hardware is towards massively parallel systems which are a perfect match for AI. I think that the first real strong AIs are just around the corner.
If you want an open ended game where you can do anything, grab a bag of dice, a dungeonmasters guide and start creating some characters!
I remember reading the Dungeonmaster guides for a few games, and the one feature they all had in common was a lengthy section about how to force the players to do as the Dungeon Master wanted. Understandable, since nobody likes to see their carefully drawn plots be disrupted, but also completely undermining the "total freedom" always toted about pen and paper RPGs.
Re:Article needs a course in experimental design
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The Data-Driven Life
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Each little personal anecdote in the article makes my inner statistician scream.
No they don't. Your inner statistician just happened to cry at the same time you read these anecdotes. Correlation is not causation, and personal anecdotes prove nothing:p.
Lookie! I made a graph and it shows something! It MUST be causation, there is no other explanation.
Oh, I'm sure that there are plenty of possible explanations; however, since he has a priori knowledge that caffeine has an effect on central nervous system, it's entirely reasonable - that is to say, the simplest explanation - ro say that it's the lack of caffeine that's causing the differences in behaviour.
It just goes to say that unthinking adherence to any ideology, even the scientific method, will sometimes make you jump to really dumb conclusions. You must think, consider, ask yourself if your objection is applicable to the situation. Otherwise it is you who are committing an error, the error being that you misapplied a rule where it did not hold.
Also, I shouldn't have watched a Powerpuff Girls marathon before posting:). Which is to say, the Powerpuff Girls marathon has made me write in a not so short, concise, and to the point fashion, due to the lingering effects it has had on my central nervous system, due to causation, not mere correlation, which is to say it has caused them rather than just happening to have happened at the same time by random coincidence or some third, unknown factor that has caused both.
The wisest thing is to understand how the human mind works: We only remember differences from normal. That's even true for the programs that we write. We always seek the differences from normal. Encryption works that way.
Steganography works by disguising things as other, mundane things. Encryption simply renders the original message incomprehensible without the proper key, and is extremely noticeable, unless you think it's normal to send messages composed of white noise.
Isn't it important to consider whether the Wikipedia information, the Google routes, and the online discussions are actually adding something to your life, as opposed to merely making you feel good? The sense that I got from the comment about addiction was that the problem lay with a sense of comfort related to doing those things themselves, as opposed to a sense of comfort brought about by being better able to make their way through life through the use of those things.
What does "being better able to make your way through life" do, besides making you feel good? What does anything really do, apart from making you feel good? "Feel good" and "feel bad" are the basis of deciding whether something is good or bad for you, they are what anchors us and our abstract mental structures to the world. Yes, one must learn to delay gratification, but unless there is gratification of some sort in the end, an action is pointless.
Drinking socially while at a party may not be an addiction. Drinking in order to bring about the feeling of being drunk, repeatedly, if not constantly, as the addiction.
Actually, feeling compelled to drink is an addiction. Drinking to get drunk is not, unless you have to get drunk constantly (that is, are trying to avoid "feel bad" from not getting drunk rather than pursuing "feel good" from being drunk).
Being buzzed does not really add to your life, and can even detract from it significantly (especially as you begin to forsake more affirmative life actions in place of drinking). Using the Internet, cell phones, etc. can become disfunctional in a similar fashion.
And what do these "more affirmative" life actions do, besides make you feel good at some point in the future? Being buzzed does add to your life, that's why people do it; it's just a question of whether it adds more than some other course of action would, and if yes, whether you have the patience to wait for that other course's payoff.
"Feel good" and "feel bad" are our most basic senses. All of our mental contents connect to physical reality through our senses - technically speaking, they are abstractions over sensory input, or abstractions over those abstractions, or over those, and so on - so it's foolish to argue that something doesn't add to our lives besides "feeling good". That's the only thing anything can give us! The only question is how good and what's the price, in both outright "feel bad" sensation and opportunity cost over "feel good" of some other course of action.
Anyway, like I said, getting a direct connection without a need for an external device would mostly remove these costs, thus solving the problem - you can be on the Net constantly, yet function normally.
Does one need to use Apple code to write a hypervisor that supports OS X? If not, Apple wouldn't have any grounds to sue.
It doesn't matter if Apple has grounds to sue; what matters is whether they can force the victim to expend resources to defend themselves. If yes, then the actual letter of the law is meaningless, since simply being sued is punishment enough.
The Pope might want to raise the attention of idolatry: yes, the Internet can be an idol for some.
I know of no one who worships the Internet or gives it offerings. On the other hand, I've heard quite a few people acting in this way towards Catholic Church.
And, the problem with the internet from the point of the Church is that a lot of people (see around here) are tempted to think that Church equals pedophilia.
Um, what does that have to do with the Internet? It's purely CC's own doing.
True. Disregarding the abuse scandal and all that jazz, it seems to me the Pope has a point regarding more general matters. Specifically, with the line "[new media] exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves."
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." -John 8:32
Or was knowing these quotes part of the "tension" the Pope was talking about?
Does free flow of information always do more good than harm, for example?
Yes. Free flow of information lets people make informed decisions, while restricted flow makes whoever restricts it their master. Disregarding for the moment the inherent superiority of freedom over bondage, history shows such masters are rarely benevolent and often quite insanely malicious.
Not that the Pope needs to rely on my fallible human reasoning on this matter, given the quote above, and this one: "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs." Luke 12:1
Then again the Pope has bigger problems: "They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the market-places and to have men call them 'Rabbi'. But you are not to be called 'Rabbi', for you have only one Master and you are all brothers." Mat 23:4-8
I suppose this hit a little too close to home for the masses to see...
So I would say it is sticking us humans in large groups that is the culprit more than the beliefs of those in the group.
Unfortunately, we can't live in small groups. A single human can only handle a certain amount of details; consequently, a technical civilization requires a huge group, because the number of details to be divided between them is huge. Heck, the processor I'm writing this on alone has over 700 million transistors!
In small groups compassion and decency can win out, where in large groups you end up with the "We were only following orders" defense, and power corrupting the whole rotten mess. But I can't think of a little church that went around treating folks like shit, but I can sure think of a lot of big ones that do.
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
Can someone explain it in terms of Neutral Good, Lawful good, Chaotic Good?
The Pope is a Lawful Neutral high priest to a god he claims is Lawful Good. However, some of his underlings have behaved in ways that range from Neutral Evil to Chaotic Evil, and he and his other underlings have helped cover this up in order to save face. Furthermore, some argue that both the Pope and the god he follows are really Lawful Evil.
At the same time, Shai'tan, a former servant of said god, who has traditionally been portrayed as Neutral Evil, has recently been portrayed as The Hero of a number of books (sometimes unwittingly, such as in Left Behind, which was written by fundamentalists christians and still somehow managed to portray Jesus as an archetypical Dark Lord raining destruction on helpless people and opposed by the Antichrist, who achieved world peace and generally was the nicest guy in the books). Could be a fad, could be a counterreaction to the Pope's failings, could be a sign of impending Apocalypse. Stay tuned for further news as events progress!
Can I offer a 3) NO children should be exposed to religion. Wait until people are 18 years old to make important decisions.
This is impossible, unless you completely isolate the children from the real world until their 18th birthday. And even if that were possible, it would be a very bad idea for a number of reasons, not the least amongst them being learning to cope with said real world and having your parents around to protect you when you're doing so. The inability to enter into binding contracts doesn't hurt, either.
Furthermore, when someone makes such suggestions, there's usually the underlaying assumption that children will agree with him unless they're brainwashed to think differently; in other words, anyone who disagrees with you is either stupid or evil. That's both arrogant and, frankly, bloody stupid of you. Please stop it.
Moral relativism is one that can respect the culture of indigenous tribes, and instead learn from it.
Since molesting children and helping the molesters avoid the law is obviously a part of Catholic culture, should we respect that practice and learn from it?
Not trying to troll or be snide, BTW. I'm really just curious about how a moral relativist answers when confronted with such disgusting practices: does he condemn them - and thus assert at least some amount of moral universalism - or accept them?
Just remember, its easy to judge someone's actions when looking at them from afar, but people have their breaking point; and that point can be pretty small for some.
That's nice. Is it also a viable excuse for every other criminal, or do cops get special treatment?
Spend a decade or two of YOUR life dealing with the bottom end of society and come back telling me that you haven't once wanted to bend a rule to help a person in need, or punch the crap out of some racist/child molester/rapist/mother who just spent welfare for her 3 kids on drugs....
Ah, but the racist/child molester/rapist/drug mother isn't to blame, now is s/he? I mean, the poor bastard just met his/her breaking point, right?
because it only takes one time to be labeled a dirty cop. You could have years of merit and gold stars on your record but I'm sure the media (and society) is willing to oversee that to put another cop's head on a pole.
Yes, the poor persecuted bastards. The rest of us are not held accountable for our actions, so how dare we demand the police sticks to it? To get called a criminal merely because you commit a crime is horrible, utterly horrible; and to hold it against you that you did this abusing a position of power and trust - well, that's just disgusting.
Us the people should kiss the feet of these fine upstanding corrupt cops and sing their praises for having committed only a single crime, instad of judging them!
Seriously, why is it that just policemen get this "get out of jail free" -card? I mean, ambulance drivers have to view and try to resuscitate mutilated corpses daily and firemen are expected to barge into burning buildings to search anyone not yet dead inside while wondering if the root will collapse on them, yet these two never seem to crack. It's always the police who go bad. Maybe, just maybe, it's not the stress of the job that causes that, but simply the opportunity? Or maybe the job just draws the kind of person who wants to lord it over others, while ambulance driver/firefighter draws the kind who wants to help those others?
And why, oh why do we always get someone defending criminal abuse of power, as long as its committed by the police? Nobody defends Nixon, despite his job being far more stressing, where a bad enough screwup could had been the end of the world, literally...
Normative moral relativism is the claim that there is no universally correct standard (whether known or not) of what is right or wrong, there are merely incommensurable local standards--so according to normative moral relativism, in a culture where rape is considered OK, rape really is ok
Actually, under this standard, rape is OK everywhere. Some people just have silly hangups over it. After all, as you stated, there is no such thing as right or wrong, merely commonly hold opinions.
--and as a consequence people of one culture cannot possible have justification for condemning the differences of another culture.
Of course, these people don't need a justification for condemning another culture, since it's not - can't be, for there is no such thing - wrong.
Protip: pointing this out is a good way of trolling people who's minds are so open their brains have fallen out:).
But the last thing we need is the government expanding RICO even further. It's currently been mutated and abused far beyond its original intent and boundaries.
The original intent was to fight organized crime. Catholic child abuse - and especially the cover-up - was both organized and a crime. What's this expansion you're talking about?
Using the RICO statutes to take down organized religion *really* isn't a good thing.
Why should a religious organization be immune from law? Take down the American branch of Catholic Church for their part in this sorry mess, and perhaps the future religious leaders will pay more attention to the actions of their underlings and not help cover up their crimes.
We might expect someone that recognizes a debilitating condition to take steps to curtail that condition. Sort of like someone inviting you out for a beer to tell you that they're an alcoholic.
The problem here is that Internet "addiction" is not a debilitating condition. I feel uncomfortable when I'm offline: I can't look things up in Wikipedia, I can't discuss with other people, I can't look up routes in Google Maps... I feel crippled. I can't wait the day when I can get a wireless Net connection and computer connected directly to my brains, so I can access all that information even when I'm jogging or whatever.
The irony is they haven't realized the extent of their dependence at all.
Or they have realized it and decided it's worth the cost, that being mainly time.
Yeah, we believe in freedom of expression on the Internet. But "your freedom ends where the next one's start". This freedom do not gives you the right to offend others. You have the freedom to say whatever you want, as long as you don't use this freedom to clearly offend someone.
So basically, you have the freedom of expression as long as you don't inconvenience anyone more powerful than you. Got it. You're really free down there, now aren't you?
Also, I find your ideas offensive and wish you to cease and desist from spreadind such noxious nonsense. This world is already bad enough without such shit spreading.
Can you name a single country in the world that does?
No, that's why I run Freenet and Tor and will also do everything else in my power to undermine their authority to control anyone's access to information. A government, a corporation or a cult; they all want to control you and own you, body and soul.
What I do wonder about, really, is that after your headlong demonstration of the inferiority of Soviet material, you come to the next conclusion: "One lesson is that the technological capabilities of Chinese weaponry today shouldn't be underestimated." Underestimated?
Well, China is manufacturing most of the electronics used in the West nowadays, is it not? If shit hits the fan and international trade stops, it's us who'll be without, not them.
I guess that makes offshoring a form of treason...
In the case of first person shooters and online gaming, people often gravitate to a select few maps.
When you're starting, you don't know any maps and will simply play what everyone else is playing. And once you've become familiar with these maps, you prefer them, because playing an unfamiliar one would put you at a disadvantage compared to playing a familiar one.
Switching up levels on the fly can be interesting for certain situations but disruptive in games that have high replay value with select few and well known maps.
Making every play happen in a different level is a great idea precisely because it disrupts tactics that take advantage of level bugs, such as camping next to respawn points. It also adds new gameplay elements, such as exploration, which in turn makes a fast but weak scout a viable character, and ambushes, because you can't just memorize every possible location.
Besides, changing the focus from route learning a coreography into quickly adapting to new situations is hardly going to make the game have less replay value. And, for that matter, why do you think that games like Mario have so many different levels, rather than just repeat a few with more enemies? It's precisely because it's fun to encounter something you haven't before. It's the premise such small franchises as Fallout, GTA and Elder Scrolls are built on. Seems to be working just fine for them.
I speak as someone whose returning flight to U.S. was canceled after nearly 2 month's overseas travel. It was a definite over-reaction; if the law is that even 1 ppm of volcanic ash is enough to ground planes, then the law should be changed.
Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on whether the 1 ppm is safe or not, not on whether you're spent 2 months somewhere.
At the very least, there should be an option for desperate travelers (like myself, who was stuck in Europe for over a week after planning to be in that miserable continent for less than 3 hours, i.e. the layover at Frankfurt) to fly, after fully being informed of the risk and signing appropriate waivers.
You poor bastard. Will you also pay your share of the reward to get some pilot to take the risk? For that matter, will you also pay your share of the insurance costs to get the insurance company to take the risk? Or do you figure that if the insurance company refuses to insure the plane in such conditions, and it falls, we the European taxpayers/other airline passengers should pay for your risktaking, and the pilot should just grin and bear the extra risks?
There's some uncertainty over the level of ash that poses a significant threat, though. What's known is that zero ash is fine, and a lot of ash causes significant damage, but not too much seems to be known about the concentration/response curve beyond that.
If the grandparent's model is correct, then concentration shouldn't really matter, as long as it's over zero. Glass will accumulate on turbine blades untilt the engine stalls.
The real question is: could the hot part of the engine be shielded? From what I've understood, most of the air that's sucked into the jet engine bypasses the burn chamber entirely, so would it be possible to filter the part that actually gets in? Naturally you'd need to arrange things so that bypass air sweeps the filter clean - perhaps some kind of cone with bypass air passing on its side?
Other possibility would be to somehow keep the glass from sticking - perhaps some kind of coating, maybe a duct in the engine blade coating it with water or something...
I'd go so far as to say randomly generated levels don't work for *most* games. The problem with no level being human-crafted, and there being infinite variation is that, ironically, all the levels start feeling same-y. The big "watch it work" example is usually Diablo I/II. I admit, I probably played those for hundreds of hours *each.* But in doing so, basically developed a sixth sense in the basics of how levels were created.
Diablo has a very limited set of features that are randomly pasted together to make a level. This does indeed lead to lots of similar levels, wich is in fact a feature, not a bug:). After all, the theme, difficulty and general "feel" of each level is already decided by the designer, and the computer is simply randomizing the location of some features.
It's also possible to make a generator that creates very different levels. Such a generator is hierarchical: the higher AI makes general decisions about the level and hands them to lower AI which handles details and, optionally, passes them through a chain of n AIs, until you get to the one which actually puts in the individual level elements.
Consider this Mario challenge. Is the level about climbing? Descending? Swimming? Normal horizontal gameplay? Some combination of these? Then, when you know that, it's time to decide what gives the main challenge - acrobacy, enemies, timing? Then you start laying out the individual level elements, then test the difficulty level, add enemies, test again, add powerups, test again, and continue refinement until you approach a steady state.
That's a very basic algorithm, and should be refined to add secrets and occasional monotony-breaker, but it gets the basic idea. Hmm... Maybe I should take part in this competition.
The brain doesn't use a bus, its connections are parallell yet serial. Nothing man has devised is anywhere near as complex.
True, but that's true of life in general. Also, modern microchips are getting close.
We know vastly more about the brain than we did fifty years ago, and we still know next to nothing about it.
We know, in general terms, how it works. We know how neural networks work, we know what areas of brain do what. We don't have a complete model of it yet, but that's mainly a question of sheer amount of data to be inputted.
Most importantly, we know that brain is extremely flexible and will, in general, adapt to make sense of pretty much anything that gets inputted there.
If this were as advanced as some of you guys are making it out to be, blindness, deafness, and paralysis would be a thing of the past.
We're still a long way from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
Yes, I'm certain you'll have to wait a long time for a fictional future to come true. The real future, however, has already began. Please ignore the ominous music and the grinding sound of the wheel of time coming towards you from behind:).
Slashdot Mirror
What a coincidence. I want a browser that doesn't freeze when I open the Frozen Bubble website - or any website, for that matter - in another tab.
On the contrary, an increasing amount of games relies on emergent behavior, which is just a few steps away from a real AI, especially since the current trend in hardware is towards massively parallel systems which are a perfect match for AI. I think that the first real strong AIs are just around the corner.
I remember reading the Dungeonmaster guides for a few games, and the one feature they all had in common was a lengthy section about how to force the players to do as the Dungeon Master wanted. Understandable, since nobody likes to see their carefully drawn plots be disrupted, but also completely undermining the "total freedom" always toted about pen and paper RPGs.
No they don't. Your inner statistician just happened to cry at the same time you read these anecdotes. Correlation is not causation, and personal anecdotes prove nothing :p.
Oh, I'm sure that there are plenty of possible explanations; however, since he has a priori knowledge that caffeine has an effect on central nervous system, it's entirely reasonable - that is to say, the simplest explanation - ro say that it's the lack of caffeine that's causing the differences in behaviour.
It just goes to say that unthinking adherence to any ideology, even the scientific method, will sometimes make you jump to really dumb conclusions. You must think, consider, ask yourself if your objection is applicable to the situation. Otherwise it is you who are committing an error, the error being that you misapplied a rule where it did not hold.
Also, I shouldn't have watched a Powerpuff Girls marathon before posting :). Which is to say, the Powerpuff Girls marathon has made me write in a not so short, concise, and to the point fashion, due to the lingering effects it has had on my central nervous system, due to causation, not mere correlation, which is to say it has caused them rather than just happening to have happened at the same time by random coincidence or some third, unknown factor that has caused both.
Steganography works by disguising things as other, mundane things. Encryption simply renders the original message incomprehensible without the proper key, and is extremely noticeable, unless you think it's normal to send messages composed of white noise.
What does "being better able to make your way through life" do, besides making you feel good? What does anything really do, apart from making you feel good? "Feel good" and "feel bad" are the basis of deciding whether something is good or bad for you, they are what anchors us and our abstract mental structures to the world. Yes, one must learn to delay gratification, but unless there is gratification of some sort in the end, an action is pointless.
Actually, feeling compelled to drink is an addiction. Drinking to get drunk is not, unless you have to get drunk constantly (that is, are trying to avoid "feel bad" from not getting drunk rather than pursuing "feel good" from being drunk).
And what do these "more affirmative" life actions do, besides make you feel good at some point in the future? Being buzzed does add to your life, that's why people do it; it's just a question of whether it adds more than some other course of action would, and if yes, whether you have the patience to wait for that other course's payoff.
"Feel good" and "feel bad" are our most basic senses. All of our mental contents connect to physical reality through our senses - technically speaking, they are abstractions over sensory input, or abstractions over those abstractions, or over those, and so on - so it's foolish to argue that something doesn't add to our lives besides "feeling good". That's the only thing anything can give us! The only question is how good and what's the price, in both outright "feel bad" sensation and opportunity cost over "feel good" of some other course of action.
Anyway, like I said, getting a direct connection without a need for an external device would mostly remove these costs, thus solving the problem - you can be on the Net constantly, yet function normally.
It doesn't matter if Apple has grounds to sue; what matters is whether they can force the victim to expend resources to defend themselves. If yes, then the actual letter of the law is meaningless, since simply being sued is punishment enough.
I know of no one who worships the Internet or gives it offerings. On the other hand, I've heard quite a few people acting in this way towards Catholic Church.
Um, what does that have to do with the Internet? It's purely CC's own doing.
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." -John 8:32
Or was knowing these quotes part of the "tension" the Pope was talking about?
Yes. Free flow of information lets people make informed decisions, while restricted flow makes whoever restricts it their master. Disregarding for the moment the inherent superiority of freedom over bondage, history shows such masters are rarely benevolent and often quite insanely malicious.
Not that the Pope needs to rely on my fallible human reasoning on this matter, given the quote above, and this one: "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs." Luke 12:1
Then again the Pope has bigger problems: "They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted in the market-places and to have men call them 'Rabbi'. But you are not to be called 'Rabbi', for you have only one Master and you are all brothers." Mat 23:4-8
I suppose this hit a little too close to home for the masses to see...
Unfortunately, we can't live in small groups. A single human can only handle a certain amount of details; consequently, a technical civilization requires a huge group, because the number of details to be divided between them is huge. Heck, the processor I'm writing this on alone has over 700 million transistors!
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
Sometimes, it takes a monster to say the truth.
The Pope is a Lawful Neutral high priest to a god he claims is Lawful Good. However, some of his underlings have behaved in ways that range from Neutral Evil to Chaotic Evil, and he and his other underlings have helped cover this up in order to save face. Furthermore, some argue that both the Pope and the god he follows are really Lawful Evil.
At the same time, Shai'tan, a former servant of said god, who has traditionally been portrayed as Neutral Evil, has recently been portrayed as The Hero of a number of books (sometimes unwittingly, such as in Left Behind, which was written by fundamentalists christians and still somehow managed to portray Jesus as an archetypical Dark Lord raining destruction on helpless people and opposed by the Antichrist, who achieved world peace and generally was the nicest guy in the books). Could be a fad, could be a counterreaction to the Pope's failings, could be a sign of impending Apocalypse. Stay tuned for further news as events progress!
This is impossible, unless you completely isolate the children from the real world until their 18th birthday. And even if that were possible, it would be a very bad idea for a number of reasons, not the least amongst them being learning to cope with said real world and having your parents around to protect you when you're doing so. The inability to enter into binding contracts doesn't hurt, either.
Furthermore, when someone makes such suggestions, there's usually the underlaying assumption that children will agree with him unless they're brainwashed to think differently; in other words, anyone who disagrees with you is either stupid or evil. That's both arrogant and, frankly, bloody stupid of you. Please stop it.
Since molesting children and helping the molesters avoid the law is obviously a part of Catholic culture, should we respect that practice and learn from it?
Not trying to troll or be snide, BTW. I'm really just curious about how a moral relativist answers when confronted with such disgusting practices: does he condemn them - and thus assert at least some amount of moral universalism - or accept them?
That's nice. Is it also a viable excuse for every other criminal, or do cops get special treatment?
Ah, but the racist/child molester/rapist/drug mother isn't to blame, now is s/he? I mean, the poor bastard just met his/her breaking point, right?
Yes, the poor persecuted bastards. The rest of us are not held accountable for our actions, so how dare we demand the police sticks to it? To get called a criminal merely because you commit a crime is horrible, utterly horrible; and to hold it against you that you did this abusing a position of power and trust - well, that's just disgusting.
Us the people should kiss the feet of these fine upstanding corrupt cops and sing their praises for having committed only a single crime, instad of judging them!
Seriously, why is it that just policemen get this "get out of jail free" -card? I mean, ambulance drivers have to view and try to resuscitate mutilated corpses daily and firemen are expected to barge into burning buildings to search anyone not yet dead inside while wondering if the root will collapse on them, yet these two never seem to crack. It's always the police who go bad. Maybe, just maybe, it's not the stress of the job that causes that, but simply the opportunity? Or maybe the job just draws the kind of person who wants to lord it over others, while ambulance driver/firefighter draws the kind who wants to help those others?
And why, oh why do we always get someone defending criminal abuse of power, as long as its committed by the police? Nobody defends Nixon, despite his job being far more stressing, where a bad enough screwup could had been the end of the world, literally...
Actually, under this standard, rape is OK everywhere. Some people just have silly hangups over it. After all, as you stated, there is no such thing as right or wrong, merely commonly hold opinions.
Of course, these people don't need a justification for condemning another culture, since it's not - can't be, for there is no such thing - wrong.
Protip: pointing this out is a good way of trolling people who's minds are so open their brains have fallen out :).
The original intent was to fight organized crime. Catholic child abuse - and especially the cover-up - was both organized and a crime. What's this expansion you're talking about?
Why should a religious organization be immune from law? Take down the American branch of Catholic Church for their part in this sorry mess, and perhaps the future religious leaders will pay more attention to the actions of their underlings and not help cover up their crimes.
The problem here is that Internet "addiction" is not a debilitating condition. I feel uncomfortable when I'm offline: I can't look things up in Wikipedia, I can't discuss with other people, I can't look up routes in Google Maps... I feel crippled. I can't wait the day when I can get a wireless Net connection and computer connected directly to my brains, so I can access all that information even when I'm jogging or whatever.
Or they have realized it and decided it's worth the cost, that being mainly time.
So basically, you have the freedom of expression as long as you don't inconvenience anyone more powerful than you. Got it. You're really free down there, now aren't you?
Also, I find your ideas offensive and wish you to cease and desist from spreadind such noxious nonsense. This world is already bad enough without such shit spreading.
No, that's why I run Freenet and Tor and will also do everything else in my power to undermine their authority to control anyone's access to information. A government, a corporation or a cult; they all want to control you and own you, body and soul.
Which they never will. There's this pesky little thing called "the speed of light" that signals can't exceed.
So they're going to be paying for a beefy computer per customer to play the game, rather than having me do that? And still turn a profit?
Well, China is manufacturing most of the electronics used in the West nowadays, is it not? If shit hits the fan and international trade stops, it's us who'll be without, not them.
I guess that makes offshoring a form of treason...
When you're starting, you don't know any maps and will simply play what everyone else is playing. And once you've become familiar with these maps, you prefer them, because playing an unfamiliar one would put you at a disadvantage compared to playing a familiar one.
Making every play happen in a different level is a great idea precisely because it disrupts tactics that take advantage of level bugs, such as camping next to respawn points. It also adds new gameplay elements, such as exploration, which in turn makes a fast but weak scout a viable character, and ambushes, because you can't just memorize every possible location.
Besides, changing the focus from route learning a coreography into quickly adapting to new situations is hardly going to make the game have less replay value. And, for that matter, why do you think that games like Mario have so many different levels, rather than just repeat a few with more enemies? It's precisely because it's fun to encounter something you haven't before. It's the premise such small franchises as Fallout, GTA and Elder Scrolls are built on. Seems to be working just fine for them.
Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on whether the 1 ppm is safe or not, not on whether you're spent 2 months somewhere.
You poor bastard. Will you also pay your share of the reward to get some pilot to take the risk? For that matter, will you also pay your share of the insurance costs to get the insurance company to take the risk? Or do you figure that if the insurance company refuses to insure the plane in such conditions, and it falls, we the European taxpayers/other airline passengers should pay for your risktaking, and the pilot should just grin and bear the extra risks?
Do you work at Wall Street, by any chance?
If the grandparent's model is correct, then concentration shouldn't really matter, as long as it's over zero. Glass will accumulate on turbine blades untilt the engine stalls.
The real question is: could the hot part of the engine be shielded? From what I've understood, most of the air that's sucked into the jet engine bypasses the burn chamber entirely, so would it be possible to filter the part that actually gets in? Naturally you'd need to arrange things so that bypass air sweeps the filter clean - perhaps some kind of cone with bypass air passing on its side?
Other possibility would be to somehow keep the glass from sticking - perhaps some kind of coating, maybe a duct in the engine blade coating it with water or something...
Diablo has a very limited set of features that are randomly pasted together to make a level. This does indeed lead to lots of similar levels, wich is in fact a feature, not a bug :). After all, the theme, difficulty and general "feel" of each level is already decided by the designer, and the computer is simply randomizing the location of some features.
It's also possible to make a generator that creates very different levels. Such a generator is hierarchical: the higher AI makes general decisions about the level and hands them to lower AI which handles details and, optionally, passes them through a chain of n AIs, until you get to the one which actually puts in the individual level elements.
Consider this Mario challenge. Is the level about climbing? Descending? Swimming? Normal horizontal gameplay? Some combination of these? Then, when you know that, it's time to decide what gives the main challenge - acrobacy, enemies, timing? Then you start laying out the individual level elements, then test the difficulty level, add enemies, test again, add powerups, test again, and continue refinement until you approach a steady state.
That's a very basic algorithm, and should be refined to add secrets and occasional monotony-breaker, but it gets the basic idea. Hmm... Maybe I should take part in this competition.
True, but that's true of life in general. Also, modern microchips are getting close.
We know, in general terms, how it works. We know how neural networks work, we know what areas of brain do what. We don't have a complete model of it yet, but that's mainly a question of sheer amount of data to be inputted.
Most importantly, we know that brain is extremely flexible and will, in general, adapt to make sense of pretty much anything that gets inputted there.
We're working on that.
Yes, I'm certain you'll have to wait a long time for a fictional future to come true. The real future, however, has already began. Please ignore the ominous music and the grinding sound of the wheel of time coming towards you from behind :).