So, the easiest way to visualize a four dimensional cube is to simply imagine multiple identical cubes, side by side, for as many as the range has been specified.
That's a fantastic method of imagining the space encapsulated by Nth dimensional data objects, but it in no way represents the actual *shapes* of physical Nth dimensional objects. To take this down a dimension, you are suggesting that we can achieve an accurate 2 dimensional approximation of a cube that is 3 units tall by taking 3 squares and laying them out side by side on our two dimensional plane.
This accurately describes to us that our 3 unit tall cube has 3 times the 2 dimensional storage of a single square (you have described the volume of the shape, x * y * z), yet you have done nothing to actually describe or represent what this cube looks like.
Another failing of your method, when taken into a real world context rather than one of data, is the units measured. You are effectively describing the volume of a 4th dimensional shape in cm^3. If we go back to the 2/3 dimensional comparison, laying our our 3 squares gives us an understanding that we have 3 times the storage in cm^2. It gives us no concept at all of what a cm^3 might be. So, while we appear to have 3 times the 2nd dimensional space, in reality we have an infinite amount of 2nd dimensional space, as we are now dealing with a 3rd dimensional object.
The reason that I suspect that you made this error is that data has infinite dimension. A 1 dimensional array of 10 units is 10*1*1*1*1... adding the second dimension simply adds a multiplier in the second slot (10*10*1*1*1*1...) but does not change the nature of the data being stored. We deal with "strings" not "strings squared" or "cubic strings" etc.
...as the so called "fourth" dimension they are representing exists in the same physical space as the third. This breaks the dimensional relationship.
Actually, it doesn't. Imagine the shadow of a 3 dimensional object (a 2 dimensional representation of said 3 dimensional object). As the object rotates (imagine a wireframe cube for example), the faces of the cube seem to intersect and split eachother. This is because we are merely looking at a second dimensional representation of that third dimensional object; we cannot see the third dimension that prevents those planes from intersecting.
The animations of the fourth dimensional objects, as projected on the third dimension, also suffer from the appears of intersecting planes. This is because our third dimensional display (which is, in reality, a second dimensional display that is playing some lighting tricks to fool our brains into interpreting it as third dimension) is incapable of displaying the *fourth* dimensional distance which prevents those planes from intersecting. Remember, we are dealing with *fourth* dimensional objects here.
You've a good point about buying the software and then just using the pirated (superior) version. That purchase, though, would show support of a product that carries an abusive DRM mechanism, therefore sending the message to publishers that their crippled games will sell regardless of the hoops that they make customers jump through.
I'd happily purchase the game, if the publishers would respect me as a customer. Since they choose to fear the pirates, and in so doing disrespect the legitimate customer, the legitimate customer is only left with three options: 1) Sacrifice their respect for their machine by installing an abusive DRM suite, 2) Not play the game at all, 3) Turn to pirate channels in order to play the game.
If the publishers are presenting me with these options, I'm going to choose the third one. If I'm going to have to go to pirate sites to get the game, I'm going to "vote with my money" and not pay those publishers for their work.
It sucks, I know. It's a lose-lose situation - I can only hope that the developers who do not include crazy DRM mechanisms (whom I gladly support) will flourish, therefore setting the good example for others to follow. Business, at some core levels, operates in a very Darwinian fashion; we need to make the exclusion of DRM a fitness criterion.
I'd disagree - this DRM is making this honest man pirate. If a DRM suite cripples my legitimate use of the product, then I'm going to acquire the product without the DRM.
There's your problem - a growing number of people are realising it's fine to disregard someone if they believe in supernatural nonsense. Especially if they're beliefs include doing nasty things to women, homosexuals and non-believers.
There's your problem - a growing number of people are realising it's fine to disregard someone's post if they're post has some grammatical errors. Especially if it makes the post unreadable.
The second of both of our statements is true. If someone's beliefs are violent and dangerous, they should be disregarded (or reported, if they're showing signs of acting on those beliefs); if their grammar makes their post illegible, their post can also be disregarded. Just because someone makes a few minor errors though, that doesn't invalidate their point... and even when someone believes in supernatural nonsense, please realize that everything that they have to say isn't pointless and that they may still have valuable contributions to life/the world.
I'd say that you should give M64 another play through. While waiting for Galaxy, I pulled out the old 64 and spent some time with Mario and it was amazing. I was amazed that, when making series of difficult jumps, I was more challenged by manipulating the camera than by the platforms that I was jumping to. Mario is about "platforming" - not about "cameraing"
When we all played M64 for the first time, it was an amazing experience. Now, standards have risen. If a modern platformer came out that required that much camera babysitting, people would complain that it caused the game to be unplayable.
Just to play the devil's advocate here... when you buy a video game for your X-Box, do you expect to be able to play it on your PlayStation? I rip every single audio CD that I buy and only ever listen to the MP3s, but might the problem be that the record industry is simply not offering their products on a medium that people desire? To go back to the video game console comparison - if I only own a PlayStation, I know that I'm never going to play Halo. If I only have an MP3 player, are there certain songs/artists whom I have to simply give up on ever listening to?
I agree that someone was messing with you. In Eskrima (Filipino stick/knife fighting), we learned about some assassination techniques (it's a brutal system). We were told that assassins would hold the knife in a reverse grip, so that the blade would lie flat against their arm. In a busy crowd, they would then just walk by the target (going opposite directions) and stab the person as they walked by, never even slowing down. By the time the victim has made enough commotion and the crowd is aware of the misdeed, the killer is away from the scene of the crime in calmer areas.
Yeah, my grandfather had Alzheimer's and eventually died in that state. For the final year or two of his life, he could almost never recognize anyone; he thought that my grandmother (his wife of 50+ years) had kidnapped him and would regularly plead with her to let him see... her (remembering the young her, we think). Or at least let him call his wife to let her know that he is ok. I agree 100% with the plan of offing myself before going through that torment.
About 16 minutes into the 6th episode of IT Crowd, we can see the inspiration for this "news" story.
"The rioting has been going on all night. The men involved are young, angry, and almost all of them work with computers. In Tokyo, two games designers went on a rampage in a shopping center and frightened a dog. We have heard that a group of software developers has shouted at a bus. The situation is completely out of control..."
Why do they even have people working on Episode 3 when Episode 2 has been pushed back nearly a year already? I think Valve needs to set its priorities and finish one thing before starting another. (Or at least give us a TF2 standalone if thats done!)
It's also a question of what *kind* of resources are being used on each project. I'd imagine that the art assets for ep2 were done comparatively quickly (especially since they already have the large pool from HL2/ep1), whereas the level design/play testing are taking longer. If your artists are done with the current project, why wouldn't you move them on to the next one? They aren't going to be able to level design effectively (at least, for the most part), and they wouldn't even be great play-testers (well, from financial perspectives, if not ability).
Most controllers are based on the concept of making whatever you use the most be the most natural thing to touch.
Not to sound like a nintendo fanboy, but the GameCube controller was excellent in this regard. I found it very easy to access the most commonly used buttons - typically the Analogue stick and the big green "A" button for actions. The "X" and "Y" buttons were easy enough to access, as were the shoulder buttons, but they made it very easy to reach most of the important buttons and to know which one you were pressing, just based on button shape and touch.
The C nob (doesn't even deserve to be called a C Stick), on the other hand, was a royal pain to use.
I was going to rip you a new one about 1e12 = 1, but then I realized that you said everyone. Given that the world population is apparently over 6.5 billion, everyone going to see the film once would net them incredible income.
My wife and I have just begun preparations to buy our first home (we should be ready in the next 4 or so years, when prices are expected to be at their lowest). Part of that research has involved learning about our credit scores and how to improve them (if you're going to go into debt for 30 years on $300k (we live in CA), every percentage point matters). We leared a few tricks about credit cards.
This is just a guideline, but we learned that having and using a credit card can be beneficial to your credit score, so long as you pay it off regularly. It can also be hazardous to your credit score, even if you pay it off regularly. If your total used credit is less than 1/3 of your maximum credit, apparently that helps your credit rating. Inversly, if your total used credit is greater than 1/2 of your maximum credit, that hurts your credit rating. So, if you can, raise the limits on your cards, and it may just help your credit rating rise.
In-game crime => in-game punishment by in-game law enforcement.
The problem with this thought is that there is no meaningful punishment for this crime in game. Apparently, the black market value of those isk is something like $170k - more than enough to open a few accounts. They may be able to get this guy by banning his account - and therefore his access to the money... but just as the real world has scams to help "theives" generate high amounts of revenue, they also have laundering techniques to hide that money. I suspect that the next time this happens, the money would just be shunted around to a few shill accounts (and that's assuming that it didn't happen in this case). Then, when the main account is shut down... the player just shifts over to backup account A and gets away with it.
The reason this laundering would work is that there needs to be no account details tieing the two accounts together. He could get a family member to register the second account for example, and in the system they'd be two completely seperate people (or even a guild-member accomplice). The only connection would be software related (such as IP Address), and I'm not sure that's enough evidence to ban an account (what if he had uninvolved roommates and they were all playing behind NAT?).
In all honesty, I don't think that anything can or should happen. It's all a game and the theft was within the rules of the game so the victims have to deal. It's just a setback in the game like any other. Granted, it's a massive setback... but it all comes down to risk vs. reward. These guys risked a lot in the hopes of gaining major rewards, and in this case, they lost.
Are you sure about that? I thought that market share was determined by [# of product A]/[# of customer], rather than [# of product A]/[total # of competing products]. In the first scenario, it would be possible to have a total of 300% when you add products A, B, and C together, since in theory every customer could buy one of every product.
I am a VMware consultant and work with virtualization every day. There are two reasons why I don't believe that this is much of a threat.
Virtualization presents static virtual hardware - whatever virtualization method that they utilize would present the same hardware to every vrtual machine (unless they coded it with a huge library of different virtual devices, which involves recoding the drivers for each device). From the device manager, you could check to see if the hardware in your system matches the hardware in your computer. It would be possible to run a tool that scans the hardware that the system sees and compares it to lists of known virtual hardware, then reports to the user what kind of virtualization is being utilized to run the system (with VMware virtualization, for example, about 8 of the devices listed are labeled with VMware as the hardware vendor - making it very obvious to people in the know that they are using a VM). Then, if there isn't supposed to be any virtualization going on, you could hopefully get your system into safe mode and fix the problem (reboot the system in some mode where it doesn't start the VM).
The second reason why I don't believe that this is much of a threat is because P2V Migrations - that is, migrating a physical machine into a virtual machine - are pretty tough to do seemlessly. They typically require downtime of the system that we are migrating, while we employ an imaging program (like Ghost) to capture an image, and we then restore that image into the target VM, before stripping out the physical driver information so that the OS can cleanly detect the new virtual hardware. If anyone has much experience with imaging software, you know that it doesn't work too well if the system is still running while you capture the image (I know that there are several programs that do it, but my experience is that those images don't have a perfect success ratio and will often be unusable). The first time a P2Ved system boots, you have to reinstall the all new virtual hardware into it, including setting up the network adapter with IP information (since Windows binds IP information to the adapter, and the physical adapter is no longer present it loses your IP info). This experience would also hopefully alert the user that something is happening, especially since the hacker's virtualizaton platform would probably not have signed drivers, which would harass the user when they install on their non-hardware.
It actually strikes me as a stab at getting people who would purchase a popular title from a popular genre to take a look at an innovative product in a less popular genre. Also, Valve is tracking play-time through Steam, so if you buy both and log 15 hours in Portals and 0 hours in HL2:e2 and TF2... Valve will know and get the appropriate demographic information from your purchase. Remember, the Thought Police are everywere...;)
Good point.. If humans start to de-evolve then we will be giving birth to monkeys.. not humans dieing off and monkeys having big orgy's and move babies..
That, good sir, is the nature of evolution. "Survival of the fittest" means that those species most fit will survive (and if that is monkeys, then there will be monkeys). In a slower evolution, a single specie (is there a singular of species?) may evolve by way of "survival of the fittest" in that those fit members of a species will reproduce, thus passing on their fitness. In an appropriately catostrophic scenario though, evolution of a population would be accomplished as the weaker species within that population die.
The stealth sections would have done the game in for me as well, except that I found a trick. You can kill the guards and run away if you get spotted. Therefore, hit and run tactics work great and it becomes a stealth asassination game. The easiest way to kill the guards is to sneak up behind them, then you can actually kick them in the back. This swift kick will mess up their breathing systems, and they'll run around blind until another guard can come and fix his equipment. While he's blind, you can get behind him and kick him again to cause it to explode.
Instead of waiting 5 minutes for the rotations to bring up one opening and then bolting for it, you wait 30 seconds to get behind the first guard and swiftly finish him off, then run and hide while the reinforcements come to look for you. Once they've returned to their posts, you move forward and figure out how to kill the next one.
Slashdot Mirror
So, the easiest way to visualize a four dimensional cube is to simply imagine multiple identical cubes, side by side, for as many as the range has been specified.
That's a fantastic method of imagining the space encapsulated by Nth dimensional data objects, but it in no way represents the actual *shapes* of physical Nth dimensional objects. To take this down a dimension, you are suggesting that we can achieve an accurate 2 dimensional approximation of a cube that is 3 units tall by taking 3 squares and laying them out side by side on our two dimensional plane.
This accurately describes to us that our 3 unit tall cube has 3 times the 2 dimensional storage of a single square (you have described the volume of the shape, x * y * z), yet you have done nothing to actually describe or represent what this cube looks like.
Another failing of your method, when taken into a real world context rather than one of data, is the units measured. You are effectively describing the volume of a 4th dimensional shape in cm^3. If we go back to the 2/3 dimensional comparison, laying our our 3 squares gives us an understanding that we have 3 times the storage in cm^2. It gives us no concept at all of what a cm^3 might be. So, while we appear to have 3 times the 2nd dimensional space, in reality we have an infinite amount of 2nd dimensional space, as we are now dealing with a 3rd dimensional object.
The reason that I suspect that you made this error is that data has infinite dimension. A 1 dimensional array of 10 units is 10*1*1*1*1... adding the second dimension simply adds a multiplier in the second slot (10*10*1*1*1*1...) but does not change the nature of the data being stored. We deal with "strings" not "strings squared" or "cubic strings" etc.
...as the so called "fourth" dimension they are representing exists in the same physical space as the third. This breaks the dimensional relationship.
Actually, it doesn't. Imagine the shadow of a 3 dimensional object (a 2 dimensional representation of said 3 dimensional object). As the object rotates (imagine a wireframe cube for example), the faces of the cube seem to intersect and split eachother. This is because we are merely looking at a second dimensional representation of that third dimensional object; we cannot see the third dimension that prevents those planes from intersecting.
The animations of the fourth dimensional objects, as projected on the third dimension, also suffer from the appears of intersecting planes. This is because our third dimensional display (which is, in reality, a second dimensional display that is playing some lighting tricks to fool our brains into interpreting it as third dimension) is incapable of displaying the *fourth* dimensional distance which prevents those planes from intersecting. Remember, we are dealing with *fourth* dimensional objects here.
You've a good point about buying the software and then just using the pirated (superior) version. That purchase, though, would show support of a product that carries an abusive DRM mechanism, therefore sending the message to publishers that their crippled games will sell regardless of the hoops that they make customers jump through.
I'd happily purchase the game, if the publishers would respect me as a customer. Since they choose to fear the pirates, and in so doing disrespect the legitimate customer, the legitimate customer is only left with three options: 1) Sacrifice their respect for their machine by installing an abusive DRM suite, 2) Not play the game at all, 3) Turn to pirate channels in order to play the game.
If the publishers are presenting me with these options, I'm going to choose the third one. If I'm going to have to go to pirate sites to get the game, I'm going to "vote with my money" and not pay those publishers for their work.
It sucks, I know. It's a lose-lose situation - I can only hope that the developers who do not include crazy DRM mechanisms (whom I gladly support) will flourish, therefore setting the good example for others to follow. Business, at some core levels, operates in a very Darwinian fashion; we need to make the exclusion of DRM a fitness criterion.
I'd disagree - this DRM is making this honest man pirate. If a DRM suite cripples my legitimate use of the product, then I'm going to acquire the product without the DRM.
There's your problem - a growing number of people are realising it's fine to disregard someone's post if they're post has some grammatical errors. Especially if it makes the post unreadable.
The second of both of our statements is true. If someone's beliefs are violent and dangerous, they should be disregarded (or reported, if they're showing signs of acting on those beliefs); if their grammar makes their post illegible, their post can also be disregarded. Just because someone makes a few minor errors though, that doesn't invalidate their point... and even when someone believes in supernatural nonsense, please realize that everything that they have to say isn't pointless and that they may still have valuable contributions to life/the world.
No, he's just not afraid of being caught because he is on Comcast.
When we all played M64 for the first time, it was an amazing experience. Now, standards have risen. If a modern platformer came out that required that much camera babysitting, people would complain that it caused the game to be unplayable.
I bet that you're one of those people who insists on acknowledging Highlander 2...
Just to play the devil's advocate here... when you buy a video game for your X-Box, do you expect to be able to play it on your PlayStation? I rip every single audio CD that I buy and only ever listen to the MP3s, but might the problem be that the record industry is simply not offering their products on a medium that people desire? To go back to the video game console comparison - if I only own a PlayStation, I know that I'm never going to play Halo. If I only have an MP3 player, are there certain songs/artists whom I have to simply give up on ever listening to?
I agree that someone was messing with you. In Eskrima (Filipino stick/knife fighting), we learned about some assassination techniques (it's a brutal system). We were told that assassins would hold the knife in a reverse grip, so that the blade would lie flat against their arm. In a busy crowd, they would then just walk by the target (going opposite directions) and stab the person as they walked by, never even slowing down. By the time the victim has made enough commotion and the crowd is aware of the misdeed, the killer is away from the scene of the crime in calmer areas.
Yeah, my grandfather had Alzheimer's and eventually died in that state. For the final year or two of his life, he could almost never recognize anyone; he thought that my grandmother (his wife of 50+ years) had kidnapped him and would regularly plead with her to let him see... her (remembering the young her, we think). Or at least let him call his wife to let her know that he is ok. I agree 100% with the plan of offing myself before going through that torment.
So, will we all need guides for survival in the near future?
"The rioting has been going on all night. The men involved are young, angry, and almost all of them work with computers. In Tokyo, two games designers went on a rampage in a shopping center and frightened a dog. We have heard that a group of software developers has shouted at a bus. The situation is completely out of control..."
It's also a question of what *kind* of resources are being used on each project. I'd imagine that the art assets for ep2 were done comparatively quickly (especially since they already have the large pool from HL2/ep1), whereas the level design/play testing are taking longer. If your artists are done with the current project, why wouldn't you move them on to the next one? They aren't going to be able to level design effectively (at least, for the most part), and they wouldn't even be great play-testers (well, from financial perspectives, if not ability).
It's worth pointing out that "Fires" or "Does not Fire" is not only digital, but a binary digital system.
Most controllers are based on the concept of making whatever you use the most be the most natural thing to touch.
Not to sound like a nintendo fanboy, but the GameCube controller was excellent in this regard. I found it very easy to access the most commonly used buttons - typically the Analogue stick and the big green "A" button for actions. The "X" and "Y" buttons were easy enough to access, as were the shoulder buttons, but they made it very easy to reach most of the important buttons and to know which one you were pressing, just based on button shape and touch.
The C nob (doesn't even deserve to be called a C Stick), on the other hand, was a royal pain to use.
I was going to rip you a new one about 1e12 = 1, but then I realized that you said everyone. Given that the world population is apparently over 6.5 billion, everyone going to see the film once would net them incredible income.
My wife and I have just begun preparations to buy our first home (we should be ready in the next 4 or so years, when prices are expected to be at their lowest). Part of that research has involved learning about our credit scores and how to improve them (if you're going to go into debt for 30 years on $300k (we live in CA), every percentage point matters). We leared a few tricks about credit cards.
This is just a guideline, but we learned that having and using a credit card can be beneficial to your credit score, so long as you pay it off regularly. It can also be hazardous to your credit score, even if you pay it off regularly. If your total used credit is less than 1/3 of your maximum credit, apparently that helps your credit rating. Inversly, if your total used credit is greater than 1/2 of your maximum credit, that hurts your credit rating. So, if you can, raise the limits on your cards, and it may just help your credit rating rise.
In-game crime => in-game punishment by in-game law enforcement.
The problem with this thought is that there is no meaningful punishment for this crime in game. Apparently, the black market value of those isk is something like $170k - more than enough to open a few accounts. They may be able to get this guy by banning his account - and therefore his access to the money... but just as the real world has scams to help "theives" generate high amounts of revenue, they also have laundering techniques to hide that money. I suspect that the next time this happens, the money would just be shunted around to a few shill accounts (and that's assuming that it didn't happen in this case). Then, when the main account is shut down... the player just shifts over to backup account A and gets away with it.
The reason this laundering would work is that there needs to be no account details tieing the two accounts together. He could get a family member to register the second account for example, and in the system they'd be two completely seperate people (or even a guild-member accomplice). The only connection would be software related (such as IP Address), and I'm not sure that's enough evidence to ban an account (what if he had uninvolved roommates and they were all playing behind NAT?).
In all honesty, I don't think that anything can or should happen. It's all a game and the theft was within the rules of the game so the victims have to deal. It's just a setback in the game like any other. Granted, it's a massive setback... but it all comes down to risk vs. reward. These guys risked a lot in the hopes of gaining major rewards, and in this case, they lost.
Are you sure about that? I thought that market share was determined by [# of product A]/[# of customer], rather than [# of product A]/[total # of competing products]. In the first scenario, it would be possible to have a total of 300% when you add products A, B, and C together, since in theory every customer could buy one of every product.
I am a VMware consultant and work with virtualization every day. There are two reasons why I don't believe that this is much of a threat.
Virtualization presents static virtual hardware - whatever virtualization method that they utilize would present the same hardware to every vrtual machine (unless they coded it with a huge library of different virtual devices, which involves recoding the drivers for each device). From the device manager, you could check to see if the hardware in your system matches the hardware in your computer. It would be possible to run a tool that scans the hardware that the system sees and compares it to lists of known virtual hardware, then reports to the user what kind of virtualization is being utilized to run the system (with VMware virtualization, for example, about 8 of the devices listed are labeled with VMware as the hardware vendor - making it very obvious to people in the know that they are using a VM). Then, if there isn't supposed to be any virtualization going on, you could hopefully get your system into safe mode and fix the problem (reboot the system in some mode where it doesn't start the VM).
The second reason why I don't believe that this is much of a threat is because P2V Migrations - that is, migrating a physical machine into a virtual machine - are pretty tough to do seemlessly. They typically require downtime of the system that we are migrating, while we employ an imaging program (like Ghost) to capture an image, and we then restore that image into the target VM, before stripping out the physical driver information so that the OS can cleanly detect the new virtual hardware. If anyone has much experience with imaging software, you know that it doesn't work too well if the system is still running while you capture the image (I know that there are several programs that do it, but my experience is that those images don't have a perfect success ratio and will often be unusable). The first time a P2Ved system boots, you have to reinstall the all new virtual hardware into it, including setting up the network adapter with IP information (since Windows binds IP information to the adapter, and the physical adapter is no longer present it loses your IP info). This experience would also hopefully alert the user that something is happening, especially since the hacker's virtualizaton platform would probably not have signed drivers, which would harass the user when they install on their non-hardware.
It actually strikes me as a stab at getting people who would purchase a popular title from a popular genre to take a look at an innovative product in a less popular genre. Also, Valve is tracking play-time through Steam, so if you buy both and log 15 hours in Portals and 0 hours in HL2:e2 and TF2... Valve will know and get the appropriate demographic information from your purchase. Remember, the Thought Police are everywere... ;)
Where are the mod points when I need them! That's fantastic advice.
That, good sir, is the nature of evolution. "Survival of the fittest" means that those species most fit will survive (and if that is monkeys, then there will be monkeys). In a slower evolution, a single specie (is there a singular of species?) may evolve by way of "survival of the fittest" in that those fit members of a species will reproduce, thus passing on their fitness. In an appropriately catostrophic scenario though, evolution of a population would be accomplished as the weaker species within that population die.
The stealth sections would have done the game in for me as well, except that I found a trick. You can kill the guards and run away if you get spotted. Therefore, hit and run tactics work great and it becomes a stealth asassination game. The easiest way to kill the guards is to sneak up behind them, then you can actually kick them in the back. This swift kick will mess up their breathing systems, and they'll run around blind until another guard can come and fix his equipment. While he's blind, you can get behind him and kick him again to cause it to explode.
Instead of waiting 5 minutes for the rotations to bring up one opening and then bolting for it, you wait 30 seconds to get behind the first guard and swiftly finish him off, then run and hide while the reinforcements come to look for you. Once they've returned to their posts, you move forward and figure out how to kill the next one.