The difference is that each race is a different independent faction in Warhammer. There's six faction (similar to WoW's two playable factions), and two of them now lack a tanking class and 4 of them lack capital cities. It's true that not all of Warhammer's factions are single race based, but most of them are.
The difference between a subject matter's presentation between genres is always different. Games are designed to give you some sort of goal element and a known but somewhat difficult way to accomplish that goal. Certainly, even the difference between game genres make it obvious that the same material can be presented in many different ways. I remember thinking, "a Warcraft MMO? God that's going to suck. You'll just be some random human footman in large battles or being zerged by orcs."
In any case, go read some of the novels, play the various games and read some of lore and you'll get a better idea of their little game world.
Plus, there's some speculation about that particular amnesiac human, that he isn't some random "level 1 noob" at all. If the rumors are true, it's nice to see that he managed to escape Alcaz Island.
I just had Comcast install new service at my apartment, and no software installation was necessary. To do all the registration, the tech (who had to come out to physically enable the leads or something) just called in to get the modem registered via MAC then had my PC registered via IP. Unfortunately I now have to spoof my PC's IP on my router's WAN, but I'm used to doing that for them.
I find that even "modern" systems over about 1 year old tend to start having issues with Suspend/Sleep functionality. Either they will fail to come back up after waking it or it will take 5+ MINUTES to figure out what the heck it's doing. In that case, it's faster to just restart. It seems to be one of those features that consistently wigs out the fastest on every machine I've ever owned.
Of course... my computer is sitting there idle all 24/7. I never play any games, do any work, surf the web, watch any TV or DVDs. It's just a great ~$20 a month space heater because I don't do anything else with it.
Depending on any given person's usage, turning a system off when not in use may save anywhere from $2 to $10 a month. For the Slashdot crowd, I'm guessing the average is on the low end of that scale.
Plus, in the winter months, it makes a nice small space heater and saves me some money on my natural gas bills!
Only yesterday I convinced my officemates to try Ubuntu as our new server's OS... We spent the day playing with it, and this morning we noticed the new release. Hand + Forehead action ensued. Thankfully the upgrade process doesn't look too difficult... once the upgrade gets released to the channel.
Well, it's not even just games and Google (though at least Google is kind enough to call it a Beta). Microsoft products for years have been known to be big giant beta releases that never quite end up in a final form.
Developers have been using the "patch it later" mentality as a crutch, but it's only because of the explosion of the Internet has allowed developers to make improvements to games for years after they've released them (like Blizzard with Diablo II). Sometimes whole new features are implemented and released along with the default bug patching. There's a delicate balance between getting the game stable enough to play so the reviews don't stink and letting the developers have a few extra weeks between going gold and the street release to patch up some hopefully minor bugs.
I suspect that it might actually be more cost efficient to have a small team of testers try to get all the showstopper bugs out and balance bugs mostly fixed then allow the market to try and find all the hard to find stuff because NO ONE can find all the strange, odd bugs that real users can uncover.
If this expansion information is indeed true, then it will just unbalance everything all over again (not that things ae balanced now. That's just so damn hard to do.) A flying epic mount? Come ON. As awesome as that'd be, their game just doesn't support 3D exploration. If anything it'd be a 2.5D freedom mount.
At least I can understand why the Blood Elves go to the Horde. The Horde is a collection of outcasts, and as such, that is where the Blood Elves would go.
Hey, I don't know. It's a static link that the ACM has been using for at least three years. Maybe ACM has just got your CS or IT department whipped... or maybe Baylor is just some front for some computer geek mafia!!!
Not really. Someone else posted further down about a few other competitions. The ICPC isn't too old, but many of the other competitions are pretty new. It's a fairly recent (last 10-15 years, but really expanding in the last 5 years) phenomina.
I learned about it only because my school's chapter of the ACM always participated. The division I'm in covers the mcuh of the west coast of the US and the west coast of Canada. There were over 100 teams last year. It really sucks to be in the same division as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and British Columbia.
Well, poo to them! It was fun watching the students come in with blunt objects used... to.. er.... Well, I don't think I've ever seen any casualities. I think that guy in the corner was just taking a nap break... during the competition... and the paramedics putting that blanket over his head was just so the lights wouldn't wake him from his nap. Yeah.
In the ICPC, we were given a test problem to work on. We had an hour to complete it, and it was a chance for them to work out any bugs with the network answer submission process before the competition started. Unfortunately, anything we coded up in that hour got wiped before the start of the real competition. The practice problem was also easy. It was something like, take 10 strings from this file, reverse them, and print them to the screen.
For the ICPC sponsored by ACM, participants are allowed to bring in as many paper materials as they want. This means that some people literally come in with libraries in bookbags and totebags. It really helps if you've got the most important stuff written out on a few sheets of paper. Use the books to look up some stupid algorithm you forgot.
Don't party the night before. Being drunk usually isn't good (for most people, though a few code better while inebriated), but being hung over is much worse.
My school participated in a competition once, and we didn't do too well. One of our teams coming in hung over and running on two hours of sleep probably didn't help.
I want to start my own set of free servers only for friends and friends of friends invitation only. Should I be allowed to create a server side application that Blizzard's WoW client can connect to and invite my friends to play?
Oh... those already exist. They've existed for a while. I think the ones I saw are trying to make it different, though, by patching your client such that it's not really WoW anymore. They're creating new quests, storylines, worlds, models, etc. Of course, for a huge game like this, I'm not entirely sure why they don't just go and make their own game from scratch rather then hacking a proprietary game to work with their server and material. *shrugs*
The real challenge it having a personal server and getting enough people to play on it to make it nice without having Blizzard find you.
I'd go and look at the website give you real facts instead of those "facts" based on memory, but I'm at work, and gov't labs don't tend to like you to visit hacker sites. *ahem*
But... "It then compares images to a database of thousands of examples of swimmers in trouble. "... seems like an inefficient and error prone way to solve this problem.
This is actually pretty common. It's really one of the easiest ways to train a system. Get a bunch of data where you know what is and is not an "okay" state. Pass all the data into the system and train it that way. For systems that use sensors, there is no black or white scenario. There is always "noise" in the data, so you have to try and figure out is this really an alert scenario or am I overreacting? I can guarentee you that if you go and look at those logs, the system will not be 100% sure that something's wrong. This is just its best guess based on the data.
This is actually one of the more accurate ways of determining an alert condition. There's a lot more complicated stuff that goes into it, but that's the basics.
Obviously it worked in this case, but I would have thought the opposite approach would be safer - ie. compare images to picures of swimmers not in trouble and alert if there is no match.
Erm, I think the system actually uses both "good" and "bad" situation images to train. You have to define both sides of the context otherwise this won't work well.
With this existing system, if you drown in a way the system doesn't know about then you drown.
With the opposite system, if you swim in a way the system doesn't know about then the lifeguard gets a page, he has a quick check and presses the 'swimmer is okay' override button.
This system tends to be less error prone because this is a complex enviroment, and a programmer cannot come up with all the variables on his own. For example:
And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.
Well, distance can change the size of the person, and the bathing suit can also distort the outline. If someone is right infront of one camera, and out of view of another, then you have all sorts of it's here, it's not here, it's huge so it must be a separate object from camera #3, etc. There is no reliable way to define personsize. There can be a minimum, but what if an infant somehow gets in the pool? Or a toddler? Or an overweight person near the camera?
As for not moving, as the victim falls, they tend to tumble and move as they fall and settle. Detecting "non-movement" is really hard, but this system seems to do that.
Note, this isn't my field of specialization, but I've more than a passing knowledge of the subject as well.
I drowned my poor motor more than once with those. I loved the air bubble addons, and I kept trying to make boats. Unfortunately they were top heavy, tended to flip over, and then I had to rescue the motor from the swimming pool and hope I didn't bork up the batteries or motor too badly. (Which, of course, I did.)
I vaguely remember getting some of the pieces stuck together really badly from time to time. Especially those damned small connectors. "Get, *OOF!* off!" *THUCK-BANG!* "ARG!! MY HAND SLAMMED INTO THE TABLE!!!" *wimpers*
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is that each race is a different independent faction in Warhammer. There's six faction (similar to WoW's two playable factions), and two of them now lack a tanking class and 4 of them lack capital cities. It's true that not all of Warhammer's factions are single race based, but most of them are.
The difference between a subject matter's presentation between genres is always different. Games are designed to give you some sort of goal element and a known but somewhat difficult way to accomplish that goal. Certainly, even the difference between game genres make it obvious that the same material can be presented in many different ways. I remember thinking, "a Warcraft MMO? God that's going to suck. You'll just be some random human footman in large battles or being zerged by orcs."
In any case, go read some of the novels, play the various games and read some of lore and you'll get a better idea of their little game world.
Plus, there's some speculation about that particular amnesiac human, that he isn't some random "level 1 noob" at all. If the rumors are true, it's nice to see that he managed to escape Alcaz Island.
I just had Comcast install new service at my apartment, and no software installation was necessary. To do all the registration, the tech (who had to come out to physically enable the leads or something) just called in to get the modem registered via MAC then had my PC registered via IP. Unfortunately I now have to spoof my PC's IP on my router's WAN, but I'm used to doing that for them.
I find that even "modern" systems over about 1 year old tend to start having issues with Suspend/Sleep functionality. Either they will fail to come back up after waking it or it will take 5+ MINUTES to figure out what the heck it's doing. In that case, it's faster to just restart. It seems to be one of those features that consistently wigs out the fastest on every machine I've ever owned.
Well, that's the brilliance of secondary uses. It's a web server, VPN gateway, and space heater all in one!
Of course... my computer is sitting there idle all 24/7. I never play any games, do any work, surf the web, watch any TV or DVDs. It's just a great ~$20 a month space heater because I don't do anything else with it. Depending on any given person's usage, turning a system off when not in use may save anywhere from $2 to $10 a month. For the Slashdot crowd, I'm guessing the average is on the low end of that scale. Plus, in the winter months, it makes a nice small space heater and saves me some money on my natural gas bills!
Only yesterday I convinced my officemates to try Ubuntu as our new server's OS... We spent the day playing with it, and this morning we noticed the new release. Hand + Forehead action ensued. Thankfully the upgrade process doesn't look too difficult... once the upgrade gets released to the channel.
Developers have been using the "patch it later" mentality as a crutch, but it's only because of the explosion of the Internet has allowed developers to make improvements to games for years after they've released them (like Blizzard with Diablo II). Sometimes whole new features are implemented and released along with the default bug patching. There's a delicate balance between getting the game stable enough to play so the reviews don't stink and letting the developers have a few extra weeks between going gold and the street release to patch up some hopefully minor bugs.
I suspect that it might actually be more cost efficient to have a small team of testers try to get all the showstopper bugs out and balance bugs mostly fixed then allow the market to try and find all the hard to find stuff because NO ONE can find all the strange, odd bugs that real users can uncover.
At least I can understand why the Blood Elves go to the Horde. The Horde is a collection of outcasts, and as such, that is where the Blood Elves would go.
Hey, I don't know. It's a static link that the ACM has been using for at least three years. Maybe ACM has just got your CS or IT department whipped... or maybe Baylor is just some front for some computer geek mafia!!!
That, I can do. ;)
If I hit my head against this wall, that almost makes sense.
I learned about it only because my school's chapter of the ACM always participated. The division I'm in covers the mcuh of the west coast of the US and the west coast of Canada. There were over 100 teams last year. It really sucks to be in the same division as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and British Columbia.
Well, poo to them! It was fun watching the students come in with blunt objects used... to.. er.... Well, I don't think I've ever seen any casualities. I think that guy in the corner was just taking a nap break... during the competition... and the paramedics putting that blanket over his head was just so the lights wouldn't wake him from his nap. Yeah.
If you're in college still, ICPC = "International Collegiate Programming Contest." The site seems down at the moment, but it's usually at http://acm.baylor.edu/acmicpc or http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/
In the ICPC, we were given a test problem to work on. We had an hour to complete it, and it was a chance for them to work out any bugs with the network answer submission process before the competition started. Unfortunately, anything we coded up in that hour got wiped before the start of the real competition. The practice problem was also easy. It was something like, take 10 strings from this file, reverse them, and print them to the screen.
For the ICPC sponsored by ACM, participants are allowed to bring in as many paper materials as they want. This means that some people literally come in with libraries in bookbags and totebags. It really helps if you've got the most important stuff written out on a few sheets of paper. Use the books to look up some stupid algorithm you forgot.
My school participated in a competition once, and we didn't do too well. One of our teams coming in hung over and running on two hours of sleep probably didn't help.
Perhaps if you didn't sniff crack three times a day with a mechanical spork, you wouldn't be quite so confused....
Oh... those already exist. They've existed for a while. I think the ones I saw are trying to make it different, though, by patching your client such that it's not really WoW anymore. They're creating new quests, storylines, worlds, models, etc. Of course, for a huge game like this, I'm not entirely sure why they don't just go and make their own game from scratch rather then hacking a proprietary game to work with their server and material. *shrugs*
The real challenge it having a personal server and getting enough people to play on it to make it nice without having Blizzard find you.
I'd go and look at the website give you real facts instead of those "facts" based on memory, but I'm at work, and gov't labs don't tend to like you to visit hacker sites. *ahem*
Same essential algorithm, yeah. More complicated system, same idea.
Heh, now that you mention it... I do remember some tooth marks. Grab the bubble in your hand, and hold the connector with your mouth and pull!!!
The funny part was that the supervisor didn't notice anything wrong until he got finished reading the sports page and came out.
Somehow I doubt that. *shrugs*
This is actually pretty common. It's really one of the easiest ways to train a system. Get a bunch of data where you know what is and is not an "okay" state. Pass all the data into the system and train it that way. For systems that use sensors, there is no black or white scenario. There is always "noise" in the data, so you have to try and figure out is this really an alert scenario or am I overreacting? I can guarentee you that if you go and look at those logs, the system will not be 100% sure that something's wrong. This is just its best guess based on the data.
This is actually one of the more accurate ways of determining an alert condition. There's a lot more complicated stuff that goes into it, but that's the basics.
Obviously it worked in this case, but I would have thought the opposite approach would be safer - ie. compare images to picures of swimmers not in trouble and alert if there is no match.
Erm, I think the system actually uses both "good" and "bad" situation images to train. You have to define both sides of the context otherwise this won't work well.
With this existing system, if you drown in a way the system doesn't know about then you drown. With the opposite system, if you swim in a way the system doesn't know about then the lifeguard gets a page, he has a quick check and presses the 'swimmer is okay' override button.This system tends to be less error prone because this is a complex enviroment, and a programmer cannot come up with all the variables on his own. For example:
And why is image comparision even needed in this case? If an object of person size is on the bottom and not moving for more than X seconds (where X is some small number) then something is wrong.
Well, distance can change the size of the person, and the bathing suit can also distort the outline. If someone is right infront of one camera, and out of view of another, then you have all sorts of it's here, it's not here, it's huge so it must be a separate object from camera #3, etc. There is no reliable way to define personsize. There can be a minimum, but what if an infant somehow gets in the pool? Or a toddler? Or an overweight person near the camera?
As for not moving, as the victim falls, they tend to tumble and move as they fall and settle. Detecting "non-movement" is really hard, but this system seems to do that.
Note, this isn't my field of specialization, but I've more than a passing knowledge of the subject as well.
I vaguely remember getting some of the pieces stuck together really badly from time to time. Especially those damned small connectors. "Get, *OOF!* off!" *THUCK-BANG!* "ARG!! MY HAND SLAMMED INTO THE TABLE!!!" *wimpers*