Yeah I have to say (in my professional opinion as a game developer), most of those patents are wishful thinking or out and out bullshit.
For example this: "Why not take a picture of yourself with an included camera and have your features actually appear on a game character?"
Which is fine, and would be a great idea had not everyone in the industry been trying it for the past ten years, and failing miserably, because of the simple fact that nothing of that sort will *EVER* match up with the art in a game, unless specifically tailored to do so, or the capturing mechanism is something more sophisticated than camera based techniques can provide (i.e., 3D surface scanning, which isn't feasible for home users anyway).
And this: "Intelligent Audio Mixing Among Media Playback And At Least One Other Non-Playback Application."
Too bad it's been done before, so WTF? Big deal.
Not to mention, I personally find it hard to believe that many game devs would really want to invest in making a game for this thing, when the device itself could potentially fuck the user experience through no fault of the developers.
I have to disagree. Writing things right the first time almost never happens in the real world (and just leads to wasted time trying to think of the perfect method of designing a system). Typically you get 10x-100x improvements by rewriting the correct but slow parts of your code, or redesigning the system to work around the parts that are slow.
Mod parent up. People above pointing out how big their optimization-e-peens are apparently haven't learned the first thing about optimization in the real world.
Even if you're writing a game(and I'm a game dev), there is very little use in writing a sorting algorithm. In fact, I know my boss would give me a big "WTF!?" if I started writing one. The reason? It's going to be less efficient, and also a waste of time that I could use to be doing something that actually moved tasks forward.
Now, obviously it is important to understand the various uses of different sorting algorithms, their performance implications etc. But actually knowing how, from memory, to write any particular sorting algorithm is pretty pointless IMO.
Well, whether there is or isn't more public domain stuff than not is rather irrelevant. Also irrelevant are the motivations of the TPB.
The fact of the matter is that anything digital has a marginal cost of $0, and thus will be subject to copying regardless of what anyone does. Until people making such items (and I'm a game programmer myself, so I've thought about this quite a bit) learn to monetize their products in a way that accounts for the fact that bits are inherently not-scarce, and thus not based on the economics of physical objects and scarcity, we will continue to have people bitching about copyright infringement.
I mean, yeah, it sucks, and we all still need to make some cash to feed ourselves, but I'd argue that we're doing that now. If you're an independent developer and find your stuff on torrent sites, why not ask the people downloading it why they didn't pay (without being super pissed off about it:P) and make the changes necessary (aside from just giving it away for free, although that could also work, with some other means of monetization tacked on) to include those potential customers too. And if the answer is "Didn't want to pay for it" well, guess what? They wouldn't have bought it any damned way.
It isn't ducking the ethical question. For every copyrighted work that's on TPB, there are many that are public domain. So, are we going to outlaw knives now too, because you can stab a person with one as easily as you can cut a piece of twine with it? How about we start outlawing any object that can be used for ill, regardless of its legitimate purposes. Well, there goes anything blunt, anything pointy....
Do you really want the *AA setting precedent that would allow people to be prosecuted for pointing to a resource on the internet, as if they were hosting that resource themselves?
When did any of the four convicted ever host, download, or upload any copyrighted works? The answer is they didn't.
TPB only hosts torrent files, which themselves (typically) aren't copyrighted, and certainly contain no copyrighted materials owned by the corporations represented by the prosecution.
The verdict in this case is sheer stupidity and ignorance on the part of the (moron) judge, who willingly handed the prosecution exactly what they REALLY wanted. Not a conviction or settlement from the TPB guys, but a precedent that POINTING TO a resource that may infringe via a technology (torrents, URLs etc.) is itself an infringement. The *AA has been trying to set that precedent ever since they started suing their customers.
I said "most" in my original comment. I also noted there is overlap. Many many many people that play WoW do so almost entirely for the social aspect: because their friends play. They tend not to be gamers in general. I don't think you fall into that category, and are instead just a regular gamer that happens to play WoW, and thus you're likely to buy and play Fallout 3. Also, even regular gamers may not play it for the other reason I stated (assuming they're hardcore lifesucked into WoW), which is that they allot all of their gaming time to WoW (raid groups etc.).
Fallout 3 doesn't really compete with World of Warcraft. The latter isn't even really an RPG, but more of a 3D chat room/social gathering area sort of thing with a lackluster game component tacked on. The group of people that plays single player RPGs and the group that plays MMOs are very different, though of course there is overlap. Most WoW players probably won't even pick up Fallout 3 simply because they spend most of their gaming time playing WoW.
Ahah, makes sense. I merely wasn't thinking of it as a set.
The company I work for is a small independent house, we've been doing mainly contract work. The biggest "game" project we've done is a simulation for museums (first person dinosaur game) called BeTheDinosaur.
Personally, I would steer clear of Java and look at something like SDL in order to get cross platform support (assuming you're doing games...Java is fine for some things, but at least IMO, games aren't it).
As far as event/listener systems go, I don't know of any books myself, but I'm sure you can find some on Amazon in either one of the "Event-Driven Programming" or "Design Patterns" type books. A co-worker also suggested checking out C#'s implementation for ideas (since you don't use Windows, Mono would be your best bet there).
Wait, the black screen that says "Please go here for more info on advertising with Hulu" is *NOT* the normal form of advertising on Hulu? I honestly didn't even realize that adblock was affecting it.
Awesome, thanks:) Pretty much as I figured (I was putting it into layman's terms for my own sake, since I would, without a doubt, botch the maths terminology).
OT/for curiosity's sake: Is the typical maths terminology "in a/the plane", as you have it with my usage in parentheses? I always think of things as lying "on" a plane (i.e., a point on a plane in a 3-space) simply because that's the case I'm used to dealing with (I'm a game programmer) and it makes sense from the point of view of the numbers one sees when debugging (that is, if the plane is defined by a point and a normal, then a point lying "on" the plane to me would end up having the same values for x/y (in the case where the plane is defined by a point and a normal in either x or y)).
Does the proof in Guillemin's treat the case of dimensions greater than 2? It seems like most places that deal with it do so by putting things in terms of the plane that the loop and the point lie on. If you had a closed loop in 2d in a 3d space, and the point wasn't coplanar with the loop, it could potentially be both "inside" and "outside" the loop, depending on the position it was viewed from (though, I have a feeling that this really doesn't matter, since in the 3d case you're either going to have it be a 3d loop of some sort, or require the point to be coplanar).
I'm not a mathematician, so I'm sure I'm just mucking everything up here:)
You managed to completely miss the point. The point is that they're essentially requiring users to generate all of their content. To facilitate this, they announced some time ago that they would release a *free* (fully featured) creature editor. Today they announced that it will not in fact be free, and cost $10. The point of contention lies in that they're having users *pay* to generate content for their game, when they previously announced this would be free.
How exactly can you "use up" villains in WoW? They respawn forever, indefinitely. Nothing ever changes in the game world, unless it's another static update of new (shitty/boring/poorly written) quests or a PvP item or some such garbage.
Yeah the supply chain of the US military is already so crappy that it'd essentially absorb any sort of attacks, from what I've seen. Most of the time, you have none of the stuff you need, and much of the stuff you don't need. Usually, you rig the miscellany to get what you want, which sucks.
That's a perfectly valid question. Unfortunately, at least Provigil doesn't really meet any of those requirements for being prescription only, IMO. I mean, look at the listed percentage occurrence of side effects compared to placebo. The worst of them and the most common is nausea, at 2% compared to placebo.
You people crying this is like sports are delusional in the extreme, and perhaps should actually try one of these "horrible unfair drugs!" before spouting off about them. Anyone that's actually taken Provigil for instance, knows for a fact that there's not going to be any performance gain in terms of the ability to complete one's work (especially in academia) over someone that instead took energy drinks for a late night of studying/experiments etc. It's not fucking magic people, stop acting like fucking children already. Provigil is practically the equivalent of caffeine, except it's got a slightly longer lasting/more beneficial effect of the same type.
What you're claiming is that these drugs are functionally equivalent in terms of brain enhancement when compared to steroids. This is simply the most delusional, retarded, pathetic argument from ignorance I've ever heard. For one thing, the increase in performance is extremely negligible compared to that of their physical counterparts (taking Provigil doesn't grow your brain size by 50%, or by even >0%), and the effects are not even close to semi-permanent like with steroids. Not to mention, you selectively apply your fallacious argument to only those drugs you consider to be "bad", while ignoring socially acceptable drugs like caffeine.
That's completely absurd. This situation is NOTHING even remotely like that of professional sports. The cognitive enhancers listed have *very* mild effects, and are often used as a stronger form of the effects of caffeine. If you argue that poor little you must use these to compete, or be at a disadvantage because others are using these drugs, you should also whine about being "forced" to drink coffee or energy drinks to "compete". You wouldn't argue that, since caffeine is socially acceptable, but it's the same argument. Your position is inherently invalid, because you apply it to only "drugs" that are not socially acceptable.
Also, steroids give a noticeable baseline performance enhancement. Cognitive enhancers don't, especially in science.
Not to mention that the Bush admin. have been engaged in domestic terrorism since 9/11 (terrorism being defined as the use of fear for political gain). Anyone that supports them, supports the terrorists.
Wow, you must be almost as delusional as Bush and his cronies to believe that they've done anything to make this country safer from supposed "terrorists" when they've been practicing terrorism themselves for seven years straight (terrorist is the use of fear for political gain, i.e., the exact strategy of the Bush WH). You are a sad person, and you support terrorists(Bush & co.), the very people you hate.
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LOL @ using model/view/controller for game development. Sorry, but that's just laughable.
Yeah I have to say (in my professional opinion as a game developer), most of those patents are wishful thinking or out and out bullshit.
For example this: "Why not take a picture of yourself with an included camera and have your features actually appear on a game character?"
Which is fine, and would be a great idea had not everyone in the industry been trying it for the past ten years, and failing miserably, because of the simple fact that nothing of that sort will *EVER* match up with the art in a game, unless specifically tailored to do so, or the capturing mechanism is something more sophisticated than camera based techniques can provide (i.e., 3D surface scanning, which isn't feasible for home users anyway).
And this: "Intelligent Audio Mixing Among Media Playback And At Least One Other Non-Playback Application."
Too bad it's been done before, so WTF? Big deal.
Not to mention, I personally find it hard to believe that many game devs would really want to invest in making a game for this thing, when the device itself could potentially fuck the user experience through no fault of the developers.
I have to disagree. Writing things right the first time almost never happens in the real world (and just leads to wasted time trying to think of the perfect method of designing a system). Typically you get 10x-100x improvements by rewriting the correct but slow parts of your code, or redesigning the system to work around the parts that are slow.
Mod parent up. People above pointing out how big their optimization-e-peens are apparently haven't learned the first thing about optimization in the real world.
Even if you're writing a game(and I'm a game dev), there is very little use in writing a sorting algorithm. In fact, I know my boss would give me a big "WTF!?" if I started writing one. The reason? It's going to be less efficient, and also a waste of time that I could use to be doing something that actually moved tasks forward. Now, obviously it is important to understand the various uses of different sorting algorithms, their performance implications etc. But actually knowing how, from memory, to write any particular sorting algorithm is pretty pointless IMO.
Too bad the DMCA isn't a Swedish law.
Well, whether there is or isn't more public domain stuff than not is rather irrelevant. Also irrelevant are the motivations of the TPB.
:P) and make the changes necessary (aside from just giving it away for free, although that could also work, with some other means of monetization tacked on) to include those potential customers too. And if the answer is "Didn't want to pay for it" well, guess what? They wouldn't have bought it any damned way.
The fact of the matter is that anything digital has a marginal cost of $0, and thus will be subject to copying regardless of what anyone does. Until people making such items (and I'm a game programmer myself, so I've thought about this quite a bit) learn to monetize their products in a way that accounts for the fact that bits are inherently not-scarce, and thus not based on the economics of physical objects and scarcity, we will continue to have people bitching about copyright infringement.
I mean, yeah, it sucks, and we all still need to make some cash to feed ourselves, but I'd argue that we're doing that now. If you're an independent developer and find your stuff on torrent sites, why not ask the people downloading it why they didn't pay (without being super pissed off about it
It isn't ducking the ethical question. For every copyrighted work that's on TPB, there are many that are public domain. So, are we going to outlaw knives now too, because you can stab a person with one as easily as you can cut a piece of twine with it? How about we start outlawing any object that can be used for ill, regardless of its legitimate purposes. Well, there goes anything blunt, anything pointy....
Do you really want the *AA setting precedent that would allow people to be prosecuted for pointing to a resource on the internet, as if they were hosting that resource themselves?
When did any of the four convicted ever host, download, or upload any copyrighted works? The answer is they didn't. TPB only hosts torrent files, which themselves (typically) aren't copyrighted, and certainly contain no copyrighted materials owned by the corporations represented by the prosecution. The verdict in this case is sheer stupidity and ignorance on the part of the (moron) judge, who willingly handed the prosecution exactly what they REALLY wanted. Not a conviction or settlement from the TPB guys, but a precedent that POINTING TO a resource that may infringe via a technology (torrents, URLs etc.) is itself an infringement. The *AA has been trying to set that precedent ever since they started suing their customers.
I said "most" in my original comment. I also noted there is overlap. Many many many people that play WoW do so almost entirely for the social aspect: because their friends play. They tend not to be gamers in general. I don't think you fall into that category, and are instead just a regular gamer that happens to play WoW, and thus you're likely to buy and play Fallout 3. Also, even regular gamers may not play it for the other reason I stated (assuming they're hardcore lifesucked into WoW), which is that they allot all of their gaming time to WoW (raid groups etc.).
Fallout 3 doesn't really compete with World of Warcraft. The latter isn't even really an RPG, but more of a 3D chat room/social gathering area sort of thing with a lackluster game component tacked on. The group of people that plays single player RPGs and the group that plays MMOs are very different, though of course there is overlap. Most WoW players probably won't even pick up Fallout 3 simply because they spend most of their gaming time playing WoW.
Ahah, makes sense. I merely wasn't thinking of it as a set.
The company I work for is a small independent house, we've been doing mainly contract work. The biggest "game" project we've done is a simulation for museums (first person dinosaur game) called BeTheDinosaur.
Personally, I would steer clear of Java and look at something like SDL in order to get cross platform support (assuming you're doing games...Java is fine for some things, but at least IMO, games aren't it). As far as event/listener systems go, I don't know of any books myself, but I'm sure you can find some on Amazon in either one of the "Event-Driven Programming" or "Design Patterns" type books. A co-worker also suggested checking out C#'s implementation for ideas (since you don't use Windows, Mono would be your best bet there).
Wait, the black screen that says "Please go here for more info on advertising with Hulu" is *NOT* the normal form of advertising on Hulu? I honestly didn't even realize that adblock was affecting it.
Awesome, thanks :) Pretty much as I figured (I was putting it into layman's terms for my own sake, since I would, without a doubt, botch the maths terminology).
OT/for curiosity's sake: Is the typical maths terminology "in a/the plane", as you have it with my usage in parentheses? I always think of things as lying "on" a plane (i.e., a point on a plane in a 3-space) simply because that's the case I'm used to dealing with (I'm a game programmer) and it makes sense from the point of view of the numbers one sees when debugging (that is, if the plane is defined by a point and a normal, then a point lying "on" the plane to me would end up having the same values for x/y (in the case where the plane is defined by a point and a normal in either x or y)).
Does the proof in Guillemin's treat the case of dimensions greater than 2? It seems like most places that deal with it do so by putting things in terms of the plane that the loop and the point lie on. If you had a closed loop in 2d in a 3d space, and the point wasn't coplanar with the loop, it could potentially be both "inside" and "outside" the loop, depending on the position it was viewed from (though, I have a feeling that this really doesn't matter, since in the 3d case you're either going to have it be a 3d loop of some sort, or require the point to be coplanar). I'm not a mathematician, so I'm sure I'm just mucking everything up here :)
You managed to completely miss the point. The point is that they're essentially requiring users to generate all of their content. To facilitate this, they announced some time ago that they would release a *free* (fully featured) creature editor. Today they announced that it will not in fact be free, and cost $10. The point of contention lies in that they're having users *pay* to generate content for their game, when they previously announced this would be free.
How exactly can you "use up" villains in WoW? They respawn forever, indefinitely. Nothing ever changes in the game world, unless it's another static update of new (shitty/boring/poorly written) quests or a PvP item or some such garbage.
Yeah the supply chain of the US military is already so crappy that it'd essentially absorb any sort of attacks, from what I've seen. Most of the time, you have none of the stuff you need, and much of the stuff you don't need. Usually, you rig the miscellany to get what you want, which sucks.
That's a perfectly valid question. Unfortunately, at least Provigil doesn't really meet any of those requirements for being prescription only, IMO. I mean, look at the listed percentage occurrence of side effects compared to placebo. The worst of them and the most common is nausea, at 2% compared to placebo.
You people crying this is like sports are delusional in the extreme, and perhaps should actually try one of these "horrible unfair drugs!" before spouting off about them. Anyone that's actually taken Provigil for instance, knows for a fact that there's not going to be any performance gain in terms of the ability to complete one's work (especially in academia) over someone that instead took energy drinks for a late night of studying/experiments etc. It's not fucking magic people, stop acting like fucking children already. Provigil is practically the equivalent of caffeine, except it's got a slightly longer lasting/more beneficial effect of the same type. What you're claiming is that these drugs are functionally equivalent in terms of brain enhancement when compared to steroids. This is simply the most delusional, retarded, pathetic argument from ignorance I've ever heard. For one thing, the increase in performance is extremely negligible compared to that of their physical counterparts (taking Provigil doesn't grow your brain size by 50%, or by even >0%), and the effects are not even close to semi-permanent like with steroids. Not to mention, you selectively apply your fallacious argument to only those drugs you consider to be "bad", while ignoring socially acceptable drugs like caffeine.
That's completely absurd. This situation is NOTHING even remotely like that of professional sports. The cognitive enhancers listed have *very* mild effects, and are often used as a stronger form of the effects of caffeine. If you argue that poor little you must use these to compete, or be at a disadvantage because others are using these drugs, you should also whine about being "forced" to drink coffee or energy drinks to "compete". You wouldn't argue that, since caffeine is socially acceptable, but it's the same argument. Your position is inherently invalid, because you apply it to only "drugs" that are not socially acceptable. Also, steroids give a noticeable baseline performance enhancement. Cognitive enhancers don't, especially in science.
Pretty sure he's just ignorant, period.
Not to mention that the Bush admin. have been engaged in domestic terrorism since 9/11 (terrorism being defined as the use of fear for political gain). Anyone that supports them, supports the terrorists.
Wow, you must be almost as delusional as Bush and his cronies to believe that they've done anything to make this country safer from supposed "terrorists" when they've been practicing terrorism themselves for seven years straight (terrorist is the use of fear for political gain, i.e., the exact strategy of the Bush WH). You are a sad person, and you support terrorists(Bush & co.), the very people you hate.