I read the Wikipedia link below and that was very interesting; i had no idea there was such a thing outside of the Wrinkle in Time series. I vaguely remember in the book she said the 4th dimension was time and the 5th was a tesseract.
She explained it like an ant walking along a piece of string. If you move the ends together, the ant could step from one end to the other without travelling the entire distance. Once the string is extended again, the ant will seem to have travelled a great distance. In any case, I thought the word "tesseract" was totally fictional until today... Thanks,/.!!
(By the way, i still don't get how a cube can be anything other than three-dimensional by defintion, but apparently it can.) I read the wikipedia thing, and after I got to 'polytope', i gave up. At least I can still solve an actual rubiks cube in about 4 minutes. Pretty slow compared to some of the wizzes out there. They probably understand polytopes too... jerks.
If I remember my 4th grade physics correctly, the 5th dimension is a tesseract. I fully intend to use this "cube" to teleport around the universe!!! muhahahhhahaa
You've confused me with this term, "girlfriend." I can only assume from context that you are referring to your mother? No, the word doesn't ring a bell... and you'd think I'd have run across it sometime if it was real. I read slashdot all the time and I've never seen anyone else use it.
Have you ever been to America? Or read a/. response? Surely you're aware that the porn industry is not lacking for customers.
No, the U.S. does not have a problem with nudity, though I think we would be better off if more of our population did. (I assume you mean public or publicized nudity, since I've never heard of anyone who had a problem with nudity in and of itself.)
As far as religious fundamentalism goes, examine the book of Genesis. In the early chapters Adam & Eve started out nude, and would have remained that way had they not taken the steps that compelled them to leave the garden.
Seriously, though, inhibitions are not always bad. It is certainly unfair to say that inhibitions are a symptom of a barbaric culture. If you really examine your history, you will observe that cultures become more barbaric as they do away with their inhibitions. (Rome, for example.)
Inhibitions keep us from doing things that would otherwise get us killed, like jumping off of a building without a parachute just because the ride down will be fun. Even if you believe there is no spoon, gravity will get you if you try that little experiment. Besides the health risk of constantly exposing your privates to the elements, vulnerability to disease, etc., there are social ramifications if we normalize and accept public nudity. (That holds true for Europeans, too.) I have lived in Europe (Greece), and while there is certainly more nudity at the beaches (not to mention proudly displayed postcards and magazines), I do not know many Greek women who would be happy to walk down the street au natural.
The trend is certainly to view the human body as less special, and less private. However, (though it be from my unenlightened, barbaric viewpoint) I think this is not a change for the good. If the media be representative of the entire population, then any attempt at regulating morals is a complete hypocritical joke. Nonetheless, there are some of us who don't want to pass on to future generations that sex should be casual or that self-control is a weakness.
For those of us who claim to follow the God of the bible (and the even fewer who act like it), this is a minority stance (especially on any internet forum). I don't expect everyone to adopt it. Still, it is unfair to completely reject an idea just because someone with religious values agrees with it.
I work for the largest credit union in the world doing telephone support for loan and credit card servicing. I have a pretty standard accent, and the credit union I work for trains very well (intensively and in person). Therefore I cannot speak from the standpoint of anyone doing call center work overseas speaking to foreigners and working for a company based in another country. Personally, I have only experienced Indian outsourcing when getting permission from our dear Microsoft to use my copy of windows when i plug in my USB-powered fan or some equally drastic hardware change. (yes i must admit I keep XP on one hard drive for games...) Never once have I found it impossible to understand the person on the other end of the line. However, there are some things that need to be understood about the average American who calls in for telephone support.
1) Many Americans have come to believe that buying something or subscribing to a product is tantamount to an agreement in which the provider becomes the slave of the consumer. Therefore any inconvenience is insufferable. Dare to question the consumer or suggest an action they might take? Unacceptable. The only solution is to press the immediate "fix it" button, after which you should apologize for having wasted the consumer's (presumably) valuable time. People tend to believe their material success actually makes them superior. (You would be surprised how little wealth it takes to give people this confidence)
2) Many Americans have had very little exposure to any accent other than their own, much less ever tried to learn a 2nd language. I have had people transferred to me from other extremely capable reps simply because they could not understand the other rep's accent. "I just don't think they should hire those foreigners, i just can't understand a word they say." or even better, "You people don't need to hire someone who doesn't understand English." Of course they come off sounding incredibly ignorant and childish, but welcome to the planet. Of course, not everyone is that rude about it. I have friends (mostly older friends) who I love to death, and who are great people, but they just can't understand foreign accents.
3) Like many other/.ers, people within a certain radius of me ask me to fix their computers. I have tried to help close friends over the phone with their computer problems. Half the time I know exactly what the problem is and have a clear image of their computer in my mind. Most of the time I end up having to fix the problem in person. If someone is having so much of a problem with their pre-configured dell that they have to call tech support, they probably aren't going to understand what the person is telling them to do. (That having been said, I have heard of some incompetant computer support reps; my friend had an Acer rep tell her that the power cord was the reason her laptop was freezing up, and they sent her a new one.)
most people can barely handle telephone support from their countrymen. Even if the rep speaking from India does a flawless job, sometimes the American consumer just can't handle it. randyjg2's comment above was a great example of that. Anyway there's my $0.02.
I work at a credit union (the largest in the world), and we get people calling in *all the time* complaining about AOL/TW ignoring or being hostile about cancellation.
I'll admit, i'm not going to assume much about the intelligence of AOL users, but still, if everyone is having the same problem, there's got to be something to it.
It is absolutely the #1 problem company for cancellations, even above magazine subscriptions and people calling who tried to cancel their internet pornography.
I must not have made my main point clearly enough, so I'll try to make it concise:
It is not the wrong thing for Valve to cut out the middleman and use an innovative distribution method. What is wrong is for them to make a deal and then change the terms in the middle of it. I'm not saying VU are a bunch of angels who have just been getting the short end of the stick all along, i'm just saying that when you say you will do something you should stick to it.
I really don't see the RIAA analogy; I personally think cutting out the distributing middle man is wonderful. but don't do it in the middle of a project when you've already hired the middle man.
Re: WOW. You have to be american... I'd even go as far to say you work for the RIAA or the MPAA. You sound exactly like them. You do realize that this is the 21st century?? like i said, cutting out the middleman: GOOD. cutting him out in the middle of a deal after he's been hired: BAD. and i think valve would have discounted steam purchases if VU had let them, but honestly, once again, VU would be shooting themselves in the foot if Valve was allowed to sell it below VU's costs. it's not that VU has rights to HL2 because they developed it, but they did spend lots of money so Valve would let them distribute it.
and about the boycotting thing you're right, if i were to actually do that it would be weak, but i was just giving my first gut reaction. i don't buy any MS products, not an OS, not halo, not an Xbox, not even a keyboard. would i like to have XP for games? yes, but if i did that it would be pretty weak.
My first reaction was "wow, what a bunch of jerks Vivendi U are for keeping this game out of play any longer. I said to myself: 'I'll never spend any money on them (after HL2, of course) again.' But if I were in their shoes, i might feel differently.
What I mean is, if I had a deal with Valve that I would produce and distribute hard copies of HL2, then i would not want to be shafted at the last minute. Vivendi invested a lot of money in the raw materials to produce the copies of HL2 that are being sold. I'm sure it was a shock to them (it was to me, but i hated it for other reasons, i'm sure) when Valve came out with steam and started offering their product in a mode that totally bypassed Vivendi. While it is not illegal, it is certainly a dirtbag thing to do. If that was going to be the deal, Valve should have said so up front. perhaps old habits die hard for ex-MS employees.
In any case, VU would have probably been glad to stop all the legal nonsense and allow Valve to unlock much earlier if they had agreed to share a fair portion from steam purchases (since they're not discounted, apparently) with VU. of course that won't happen. in this case, VU would be shooting themselves in the foot to let any more early releases occur, because what gets sold early is going to be their main profit before the massive remainder of hard copies go to the bargin bin.
i'm just as disappointed as the next guy that I can't play until monday, and that i still have to use steam, for that matter (although that's improved a lot), but VU is just looking out for their best interests and that of their employees.
i'll start feeling warm and fuzzy w/ valve again whenever they hire icculus-the-person to do a port.:)
The more people that use linux, the more native ports there will be.
I'm not so sure about that... Don't get me wrong, exposure is definately a good thing, but as long as people can be convinced to dual-boot, then linux has not achieved the status as an OS that will convince developers to port native or, *shudder*, even build native. I think Jesus said it best... "you cannot serve two masters" (matt. 6:24) My point is that if you use linux, but still feel the need to purchase a windows licence, your use of linux has had no impact on the market.
...because a SUBSCRIPTION service exists that runs games buggily and at a low frame rate is absurd... hey it runs at 10fps in linux with frequent bugs, lets keep on not porting our games
If that were the case, i'd have to agree with you, but the fact is that most of the games i've played in wineX have not been very buggy (any more than they were in windows) and i certainly get better than 10 fps. I run counter-strike, (now in steam because WON is dead), and i run it at highest settings in 1024x768, and consistently get 40-50 fps. this is on a 1.1ghz Duron and an old mx440 64mb card. Given, transgaming has put a lot of effort into that particular game, and it is an old one, but most of the games work at least as well in cedega as they do on old my win98 partition.
What would really be best for the industry is if we got another Loki in the business of porting games to linux. If a company sees someone else port their game and profit, they'll want that piece of the pie for themself and do their own port next time.
That is a nice thought, but that's not exactly how it works. this is from icculus.org's Linux Gamer's FAQ:
Q: Why isn't the Half-Life client ported to Linux?
A: Sierra/Valve decides who gets to touch their code, and decided against letting anyone port the client. Besides this, if it were released as a commercial boxed game, the people releasing it would probably be putting the nail in their own coffins, as the game already works at an average level in some windows emulation software.
This is from the man who probably knows more about Linux ports than anyone on the planet. Look carefully at the html address for that specific question, and i think you'll see his slant on it...
Anyway, i'm not trying to shoot down your ideas, because I think it would be great if companies ported more because of transgaming, but these are just some reasons why i think the "prevention" argument is still the strongest.
i've been mulling over this article (and other anti-winex stuff) for the last couple of days since i first saw it linked at linuxgames.com, so here's some of my conclusions/questions:
First off i've only been using linux about 6 months. The realization that win98 wasn't going to cut it anymore, combined with a growing hatred for MS drove me there. now i won't buy anything from them, not even if bill himself swore to resurrect my beloved dog smokey from the grave.
Before i made the switch, i did a lot of reading about linux. my real question was "Can it run or replace the software i use most?" Yes it can, for the most part. in the end my biggest concern (foolish, but probably true for more potential linux users than one might think) was gaming. to make a long story short, transgaming gave me the comfort to switch over because (based on their database) i knew i could run my games with them IF i couldn't find another solution.
i used linux 3-4 months and actually played all the games i wanted (read: CounterStrike, and please don't flame me for that) on openGL-enabled installs of regular old WINE. about 3 months ago, i decided to subscribe to wineX because 1) $5/month was worth the time it took me to compile WINE as often as i did. rpm=easy 2) wineX works better than reg. old wine for games. 3) "Wow, this is $15 dollars towards supporting Linux!" so imagine my surprise a few days ago when i started reading this anti-winex stuff. Transgaming was part of the reason i even tried out Linux, and now i find that i could be hurting linux gaming by supporting it?
Obviously, native ports of games are the best option. I don't even like UT but it's on my buy list now only because it runs natively. One solution i have to the 'if you buy it at walmart, it counts as a windows sale' argument is this: when you buy your copy, e-mail ID/Atari/whoever and tell them that you use this game on linux, you appreciate their efforts, and that Ryan Gordon should be king.
others have addressed most of the 10 "P" arguments against Cedega. I find that the strongest and hardest to answer is Prevention. e-mails to ID/Atari are great, but I won't lie, $ makes the strongest argument for the developer.
when i first started with linux, I e-mailed Valve a few times about porting their games. No surprise that they didn't respond, but elsewhere they've stated they have no plans for that. Knowing this, i was very surprised to see this from valve on this forum yesterday. (forums are open to public)
In an e-mail exchange with a branch of Valve Software, I recently recieved this:
We are working very closely with Transgaming to get our games to continue to run well on Cedega in the future.
Well I guess Valve knows about Transgaming. I doubt that they would consider a linux port even if WineX didn't exist, so no "prevention" is probably occuring, but it is interesting. Mostly because Valve is looking more and more like microsoft to me these days. why? 1) steam 2) said refusal to port 3)Gabe Newell used to work there. I don't know what his relationship with MS is these days, but he's an intelligent man and he has been using Outlook for his e-mail (look at info on the source code theft for HL2) so that doesn't bode well. one wonders if i should support them at all anymore...
On the flip side, we can look at LucasArts. Surely they know that you can run many of their games (i've personally run JK2 even on regular WINE) but apparently they are at least considering porting to linux. We'll see about that... either way their path here could be indicative of the truth or slander behind the 'prevention' argument.
IMHO, the best way to find out if 'prevention' is a real threat is to find Ryan "Icculus" Gordo
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you very much. That last part really helped me understand what they were talking about. Someone mod that up 'informative'!!
I read the Wikipedia link below and that was very interesting; i had no idea there was such a thing outside of the Wrinkle in Time series. I vaguely remember in the book she said the 4th dimension was time and the 5th was a tesseract.
She explained it like an ant walking along a piece of string. If you move the ends together, the ant could step from one end to the other without travelling the entire distance. Once the string is extended again, the ant will seem to have travelled a great distance. In any case, I thought the word "tesseract" was totally fictional until today... Thanks, /.!!
(By the way, i still don't get how a cube can be anything other than three-dimensional by defintion, but apparently it can.) I read the wikipedia thing, and after I got to 'polytope', i gave up. At least I can still solve an actual rubiks cube in about 4 minutes. Pretty slow compared to some of the wizzes out there. They probably understand polytopes too... jerks.
If I remember my 4th grade physics correctly, the 5th dimension is a tesseract. I fully intend to use this "cube" to teleport around the universe!!! muhahahhhahaa
You've confused me with this term, "girlfriend." I can only assume from context that you are referring to your mother? No, the word doesn't ring a bell... and you'd think I'd have run across it sometime if it was real. I read slashdot all the time and I've never seen anyone else use it.
No, the U.S. does not have a problem with nudity, though I think we would be better off if more of our population did. (I assume you mean public or publicized nudity, since I've never heard of anyone who had a problem with nudity in and of itself.)
As far as religious fundamentalism goes, examine the book of Genesis. In the early chapters Adam & Eve started out nude, and would have remained that way had they not taken the steps that compelled them to leave the garden.
Seriously, though, inhibitions are not always bad. It is certainly unfair to say that inhibitions are a symptom of a barbaric culture. If you really examine your history, you will observe that cultures become more barbaric as they do away with their inhibitions. (Rome, for example.)
Inhibitions keep us from doing things that would otherwise get us killed, like jumping off of a building without a parachute just because the ride down will be fun. Even if you believe there is no spoon, gravity will get you if you try that little experiment. Besides the health risk of constantly exposing your privates to the elements, vulnerability to disease, etc., there are social ramifications if we normalize and accept public nudity. (That holds true for Europeans, too.) I have lived in Europe (Greece), and while there is certainly more nudity at the beaches (not to mention proudly displayed postcards and magazines), I do not know many Greek women who would be happy to walk down the street au natural.
The trend is certainly to view the human body as less special, and less private. However, (though it be from my unenlightened, barbaric viewpoint) I think this is not a change for the good. If the media be representative of the entire population, then any attempt at regulating morals is a complete hypocritical joke. Nonetheless, there are some of us who don't want to pass on to future generations that sex should be casual or that self-control is a weakness. For those of us who claim to follow the God of the bible (and the even fewer who act like it), this is a minority stance (especially on any internet forum). I don't expect everyone to adopt it. Still, it is unfair to completely reject an idea just because someone with religious values agrees with it.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with heart of neutrality?
1) Many Americans have come to believe that buying something or subscribing to a product is tantamount to an agreement in which the provider becomes the slave of the consumer. Therefore any inconvenience is insufferable. Dare to question the consumer or suggest an action they might take? Unacceptable. The only solution is to press the immediate "fix it" button, after which you should apologize for having wasted the consumer's (presumably) valuable time. People tend to believe their material success actually makes them superior. (You would be surprised how little wealth it takes to give people this confidence)
2) Many Americans have had very little exposure to any accent other than their own, much less ever tried to learn a 2nd language. I have had people transferred to me from other extremely capable reps simply because they could not understand the other rep's accent. "I just don't think they should hire those foreigners, i just can't understand a word they say." or even better, "You people don't need to hire someone who doesn't understand English." Of course they come off sounding incredibly ignorant and childish, but welcome to the planet. Of course, not everyone is that rude about it. I have friends (mostly older friends) who I love to death, and who are great people, but they just can't understand foreign accents.
3) Like many other /.ers, people within a certain radius of me ask me to fix their computers. I have tried to help close friends over the phone with their computer problems. Half the time I know exactly what the problem is and have a clear image of their computer in my mind. Most of the time I end up having to fix the problem in person. If someone is having so much of a problem with their pre-configured dell that they have to call tech support, they probably aren't going to understand what the person is telling them to do. (That having been said, I have heard of some incompetant computer support reps; my friend had an Acer rep tell her that the power cord was the reason her laptop was freezing up, and they sent her a new one.)
most people can barely handle telephone support from their countrymen. Even if the rep speaking from India does a flawless job, sometimes the American consumer just can't handle it. randyjg2's comment above was a great example of that. Anyway there's my $0.02.
so he can educate everyone on how Walmart doesn't care about black people.
I work at a credit union (the largest in the world), and we get people calling in *all the time* complaining about AOL/TW ignoring or being hostile about cancellation. I'll admit, i'm not going to assume much about the intelligence of AOL users, but still, if everyone is having the same problem, there's got to be something to it. It is absolutely the #1 problem company for cancellations, even above magazine subscriptions and people calling who tried to cancel their internet pornography.
I guess these guys have a problem with subluminal messages.
It is not the wrong thing for Valve to cut out the middleman and use an innovative distribution method. What is wrong is for them to make a deal and then change the terms in the middle of it. I'm not saying VU are a bunch of angels who have just been getting the short end of the stick all along, i'm just saying that when you say you will do something you should stick to it.
I really don't see the RIAA analogy; I personally think cutting out the distributing middle man is wonderful. but don't do it in the middle of a project when you've already hired the middle man.
Re: WOW. You have to be american... I'd even go as far to say you work for the RIAA or the MPAA. You sound exactly like them. You do realize that this is the 21st century?? like i said, cutting out the middleman: GOOD. cutting him out in the middle of a deal after he's been hired: BAD. and i think valve would have discounted steam purchases if VU had let them, but honestly, once again, VU would be shooting themselves in the foot if Valve was allowed to sell it below VU's costs. it's not that VU has rights to HL2 because they developed it, but they did spend lots of money so Valve would let them distribute it.
and about the boycotting thing you're right, if i were to actually do that it would be weak, but i was just giving my first gut reaction. i don't buy any MS products, not an OS, not halo, not an Xbox, not even a keyboard. would i like to have XP for games? yes, but if i did that it would be pretty weak.
yeah, i noticed that too but it was too late for me to go back and edit... sorry.
My first reaction was "wow, what a bunch of jerks Vivendi U are for keeping this game out of play any longer. I said to myself: 'I'll never spend any money on them (after HL2, of course) again.' But if I were in their shoes, i might feel differently.
What I mean is, if I had a deal with Valve that I would produce and distribute hard copies of HL2, then i would not want to be shafted at the last minute. Vivendi invested a lot of money in the raw materials to produce the copies of HL2 that are being sold. I'm sure it was a shock to them (it was to me, but i hated it for other reasons, i'm sure) when Valve came out with steam and started offering their product in a mode that totally bypassed Vivendi. While it is not illegal, it is certainly a dirtbag thing to do. If that was going to be the deal, Valve should have said so up front. perhaps old habits die hard for ex-MS employees.
In any case, VU would have probably been glad to stop all the legal nonsense and allow Valve to unlock much earlier if they had agreed to share a fair portion from steam purchases (since they're not discounted, apparently) with VU. of course that won't happen. in this case, VU would be shooting themselves in the foot to let any more early releases occur, because what gets sold early is going to be their main profit before the massive remainder of hard copies go to the bargin bin.
i'm just as disappointed as the next guy that I can't play until monday, and that i still have to use steam, for that matter (although that's improved a lot), but VU is just looking out for their best interests and that of their employees.
i'll start feeling warm and fuzzy w/ valve again whenever they hire icculus-the-person to do a port. :)
This reminds me of a piece of literature i picked up back in high school chem lab... Is your boss named Johny? does he like water? this is perfect:
Johny had a stomachache
He hasn't anymore
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4
I'm not so sure about that... Don't get me wrong, exposure is definately a good thing, but as long as people can be convinced to dual-boot, then linux has not achieved the status as an OS that will convince developers to port native or, *shudder*, even build native. I think Jesus said it best... "you cannot serve two masters" (matt. 6:24) My point is that if you use linux, but still feel the need to purchase a windows licence, your use of linux has had no impact on the market.
If that were the case, i'd have to agree with you, but the fact is that most of the games i've played in wineX have not been very buggy (any more than they were in windows) and i certainly get better than 10 fps. I run counter-strike, (now in steam because WON is dead), and i run it at highest settings in 1024x768, and consistently get 40-50 fps. this is on a 1.1ghz Duron and an old mx440 64mb card. Given, transgaming has put a lot of effort into that particular game, and it is an old one, but most of the games work at least as well in cedega as they do on old my win98 partition.
What would really be best for the industry is if we got another Loki in the business of porting games to linux. If a company sees someone else port their game and profit, they'll want that piece of the pie for themself and do their own port next time.
That is a nice thought, but that's not exactly how it works. this is from icculus.org's Linux Gamer's FAQ:
This is from the man who probably knows more about Linux ports than anyone on the planet. Look carefully at the html address for that specific question, and i think you'll see his slant on it...
Anyway, i'm not trying to shoot down your ideas, because I think it would be great if companies ported more because of transgaming, but these are just some reasons why i think the "prevention" argument is still the strongest.
First off i've only been using linux about 6 months. The realization that win98 wasn't going to cut it anymore, combined with a growing hatred for MS drove me there. now i won't buy anything from them, not even if bill himself swore to resurrect my beloved dog smokey from the grave.
Before i made the switch, i did a lot of reading about linux. my real question was "Can it run or replace the software i use most?" Yes it can, for the most part. in the end my biggest concern (foolish, but probably true for more potential linux users than one might think) was gaming. to make a long story short, transgaming gave me the comfort to switch over because (based on their database) i knew i could run my games with them IF i couldn't find another solution.
i used linux 3-4 months and actually played all the games i wanted (read: CounterStrike, and please don't flame me for that) on openGL-enabled installs of regular old WINE. about 3 months ago, i decided to subscribe to wineX because 1) $5/month was worth the time it took me to compile WINE as often as i did. rpm=easy 2) wineX works better than reg. old wine for games. 3) "Wow, this is $15 dollars towards supporting Linux!" so imagine my surprise a few days ago when i started reading this anti-winex stuff. Transgaming was part of the reason i even tried out Linux, and now i find that i could be hurting linux gaming by supporting it?
Obviously, native ports of games are the best option. I don't even like UT but it's on my buy list now only because it runs natively. One solution i have to the 'if you buy it at walmart, it counts as a windows sale' argument is this: when you buy your copy, e-mail ID/Atari/whoever and tell them that you use this game on linux, you appreciate their efforts, and that Ryan Gordon should be king.
others have addressed most of the 10 "P" arguments against Cedega. I find that the strongest and hardest to answer is Prevention. e-mails to ID/Atari are great, but I won't lie, $ makes the strongest argument for the developer.
when i first started with linux, I e-mailed Valve a few times about porting their games. No surprise that they didn't respond, but elsewhere they've stated they have no plans for that. Knowing this, i was very surprised to see this from valve on this forum yesterday. (forums are open to public)
Well I guess Valve knows about Transgaming. I doubt that they would consider a linux port even if WineX didn't exist, so no "prevention" is probably occuring, but it is interesting. Mostly because Valve is looking more and more like microsoft to me these days. why? 1) steam 2) said refusal to port 3)Gabe Newell used to work there. I don't know what his relationship with MS is these days, but he's an intelligent man and he has been using Outlook for his e-mail (look at info on the source code theft for HL2) so that doesn't bode well. one wonders if i should support them at all anymore...
On the flip side, we can look at LucasArts. Surely they know that you can run many of their games (i've personally run JK2 even on regular WINE) but apparently they are at least considering porting to linux. We'll see about that... either way their path here could be indicative of the truth or slander behind the 'prevention' argument.
IMHO, the best way to find out if 'prevention' is a real threat is to find Ryan "Icculus" Gordo