Moreover, even a cursory analysis demonstrates that despite being a comedy program The Colbert Report appears to exercise "disproportionate real world influence" -- likely due to the "elite demographic" of its audience.
I saw this news a few days ago and must confess I couldn't draw a logical conclusion from it. I find the explanation in this article to be unsatisfactory also.
Perhaps it's interesting but little can be learned from this 'study.' There's just too many factors to say... and it would take just one nutjob billionaire who loves The Colbert Report to make those donations. Or it could be like a Hollywood joke for the rich and famous to build a fund.
To expound upon the conclusion of the article, what about Democratic guests of The Daily Show which is just a half hour earlier on the same channel with (probably) the same "elite demographic"?
Maybe it's really about Democratic politicians looking really good against Colbert's over the top ultra-conservatism? Just as speculative (and easily dismissed) as the article's conclusion though. Can anyone else reason out a better explanation?
Has the study looked at shows with over the top ultra-liberal hosts interviewing Republican politicians... ah, what am I saying, there's a real lacking sense of humor on that side of the parties in my mind.
US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's for 101 Years
Uh, could you somehow spin (regardless of truth) this as related to war and/or military prowess so our administration will mindlessly throw money at it instead of mindlessly ignoring it?
Like:
US Cyber Attacking Infrastructure Embarrassingly Lags Japan's
Japanese Identify US Broadband as "Ripe for the Pickin'"
Cyber Pearl Harbor Imminent
US President's Netflix Downloads 1/10 as Fast as Japanese President's
US Administration Idles as US-Japanese Broadband Gap Widens
Come on, these things basically write themselves! Turn it into a dick measuring contest or it's meaningless.
The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs.
People, please! This is the Olympics. The Olympics--let's not bicker and argue about who's been brutally repressing who for hundreds and hundreds of years!
On a side note, I used to enjoy this band from Minnesota called The Olympic Hopefuls who are now known as The Hopefuls due to some legal business and the fact that the IOC is full of lawyers. And you're surprised a video criticizing the Olympics is taken down on the internet?
"the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week."
You can find the Nature abstract here. And if you have a subscription, you can read the full research and see the data they collected from experiments.
There seems to be a few more papers and articles on this but if you're interested you can search for optical metamaterials with negative refractive indexes.
An entire article on the development/abuse of copyright and not one mention of Walt Disney & Sonny Bono's Copyright Term Extension Act. I think the graph on that illustrate what this article talks about, the gradual extension of copyright through the years by political legislation.
Yeah the current state is bad. Even worse that the people making the calls are the people who have the most money. I don't think we should do away with it completely but I think it's well past the point of stifling innovation. Well past that point.
You want an indication of problems witch those in power continually extending it? Point me to a single proposed reduction bill. It's all about extension, reinforcement and expansion to other works like vessel hull design.
Who Cares What Language, It Reeks of Poor Design
on
Why COBOL Could Come Back
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Got that? So if California goes ahead and builds a new payroll system, within nine years -- about as much time as it has taken to get the 21st Century Project off the ground -- the cost of fixing bugs in the new code could exceed the original cost of the project.
If software is implemented correctly, it will stand the test of time.
The fact that there seems to be some hard-coded values or formulas throughout this code is a fair indication that this COBOL architecture did not have the foresight of someone ever changing minimum wage. Where I grew up, minimum wage changed yearly as it was usually necessary to adjust for inflation. Now, if this is an indication of the rest of that software, I would opt for a newer technology. On top of that, I would go to the lead system engineer with a hand written note reading:
The software shall have a management interface for changing minimum wage and cascading that change correctly through all aspects of the software and other machines.
I'll bet this software isn't modularized. I'll bet this software has some pretty low security standards. I'll bet this software requires a client app installed on any user's machine.
Pull your head out of your ass, "dollar amount one
If you're short on funds, you're short on funds but if you're saying it's cheaper I would like to see your pricing chart for usability, stability, maintainability, etc.
Why COBOL Could Come Back
I think there will always be a niche market for every language but if you mean 'come back' like COBOL would become the average developer's language of choice I would curtly retort with a sharp 'ha.'
The similarity with Google Labs is the word "labs" this is about user requirements and suggestions rather than fully fledged products. Its about people suggesting improvements and then those moving into development. This means its at a much earlier part of the product development cycle than Google Labs (which starts with a beta or alpha product).
As long as we're talking about labs, there's also Adobe Labs and Digg Labs that I keep my eye on. (Funny, I don't actually read Digg, I just enjoy seeing how they visualize their data!)
While you're right that these sites aren't open to the public, I think it's mostly due to the nightmare of trying to credit people with ideas when you're making billions off these ideas months later. The community might not... like that.
I will point out that the 'labs' concept just seems to be an indication of how these entities see future development. A similarity between Google and Mozilla is that they offer tons of developer resources on their labs sites. I don't think those two are so different from each other.
Instead of looking at these Labs as inferior, I rather give the companies a chance to show me what they think is bleeding edge and a lot of the time it's a good indicator of innovation. However you look at it, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the labs so you know what your competitor/partner is up to and get a glimpse of the future as they see it.
The bleeding-edge browser is part of a new Mozilla Labs initiative, in which the open-source foundation is encouraging people to contribute ideas and designs for the browser of the future.
Labs is more than that. Back in ought six, Slashdot covered their first extend Firefox contest where people were bated with Alienware swag and developer conference passes to develop extensions & plug-ins for Firefox. The second year saw Shareaholic come out as a winning plug-in. The third year just finished judging and I'm excited to see what Mozilla finds as the best Firefox 3 add ons.
It's nice to see a foundation aiding, encouraging and rewarding the average developer off the street for their work. Even better than that is when Mozilla backs a plug-in or add-on it's usually solid and reliable (unlike the many WinAmp plug-ins that plagued my college machine).
I think I saw a special about black smokers on TV, I believe they were discovered in 1977 and I remember watching an interview of miniature sub (Alvin) pilot explaining that his temperature sensor melted when they came upon one of them and he decided to get a reading. If I recall the anecdote correctly, they were slowly drifting toward it as his friend explained to him that the hull of their craft was made of the same metal as the thermometer. He then very carefully began to operate the propellers in reverse.
I think it was even back then that speculation began of life starting around this geothermal energy. That these minerals only populated the sea and made for nutrient rich sea water in which life could propagate.
The only news here is that the 400 ÂC has been passed on record. I think everyone knew these could get insanely hot.
I haven't really RTFA'd, just looked at the pictures. I'm a bit torn on this story because I don't even think this designer needs to answer to people putting up screenshots that are entitled "wow gayness" when compared to their preferred screenshots. But as to whether or not he felt they had a valid point or he Blizzard just really cares for their fans, I cannot say.
While the lighting in a few of these looks like definitely done by hand, the only other major difference I see is color and tint. In example #1 the lighting is much better in the fan screenshot but I can definitely see what the designer was talking about with it being 'smart.' My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play? I think by and large with the fan shots they use borderline too much shadow. I am guessing shadow is crucial in setting the mood but dynamically generated shadow would be difficult... when would you have too much? For example in #1, the big white blob thing attacking blocks 1/4 the screen... four of those and you'd be blind. There could be an army behind him and you wouldn't know it. Something to think about.
Now, the rest of this stuff just seems to be color pallette and tint which seems to be artistic preference. I can't say which I like better but I've a feeling I'll appreciate color (and a change of that between levels) if I'm going to be staring at it for hours.
I'll be honest, when I first saw the game play I was very nonplussed, it was exactly Diablo II. But then I realized the great thing about II was that it was Diablo I with more features, levels, classes, monsters, etc. Ironically, I think that all that would make me happy in III is just more multiplayer options, more items, monsters, classes, etc. I can't want to play this one!
I'm not saying this is true but Newsweek/MSNBC ran a story on pagan relics stored beneath the Vatican. I've also read and heard that many Native American (both North & South) relics and documents were shipped back to the Vatican to be stored under it so they could study heathenism and combat it. This was after their owners were either converted or burned/shot.
I would think that the Catholic church could at least (as a sign of good faith) return these to their descendants or at the very least release them to a museum with all the information they have on it so that the rest of us can gain insight to their culture & religion. Of course, if this were true, I don't think the museum donations would be worth the black eye.
"the Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France..."
The funny thing is that the Vatican probably has billions in capital at its disposal. I always got a kick out of the pope ruling a small nation-state in Europe (with its own currency, mind you) telling me to be more like Jesus. The same Jesus who said in Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Or what Luke said (12:23)
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Or John 3:17
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
The funny thing is I could go on all day finding quotes from most major religions... Like Buddha or Gandhi, I'm a huge fan of this Jesus guy. It's 99% of the people who purport to follow him that manage to genuinely fuck up the world.
First of all, a single anecdote does not prove anything. If you included eBay's Skype deal or Google's YouTube deal... wait, scratch that last one. See, there's constantly non-prudent business deals and every now and then you see a real whopper.
Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbecue, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.
Do you think that this is what caused the dot com bubble? Do you think the vast majority of people were living like this when it burst? I'm no economist but I thought that the problem wasn't with how the IT and Web Site companies were spending their money but rather what the customers they found were giving them money for--basically nothing. A few HTML pages? Not even worth my time to read?
$25 million in venture capital is nothing these days. Let them burn it. Yeah, we'll all be laughing a couple months from now when they're busting their asses to find some income--or maybe they are correct in thinking they are the next Google. Hell, Slashdot ran a story reporting them to index more than Google. With the kind of press they achieved, maybe they're right to live like royalty for a bit?
Does anyone look back on Google and say "They hired a massage artist? Proof the bubble is back!" No, because they thought they were going to be big and they were.
You want to prevent another bubble? Don't take a job where you're not sure how you or any of your coworkers draw revenue from real customers who in turn receive some service or product that makes complete sense. That's how you prevent a bubble. And unless you're part of the 1% calling the shots on how to spend money, you needn't worry about how other companies spend their money. This frivolous spending should just make it easier for Google to beat their bottom line and steal customers back. And if they can't, well then let Cuil rake large piles of capital together and set them afire to their heart's content.
You could take a very interesting approach to this and employ Piet which is a type of programming language that results in writing programs utilizing colors and blocks and traverses them as the program runs, resulting in some nice looking 'modern' art. The neat thing about this is you could open up a contest to your developers to come up with beautiful ways to write simple programs and procedures and then vote on the most beautiful ones. To me, something coded to be both beautiful and functional would be highly desirable. The fact that it would come from within your developers would probably add to the effect among your staff.
M. C. Escher
There's the famous well known M. C. Escher famous for placing strange loops in his work thus making his tessellations and peculiar drawings centered on curious near mathematical conundrums (Mobius Strips, infinite limits, undefined boundaries, etc). For the most part, I believe he did woodcuts so if you're thinking about originals... well, woodcuts are an odd market.
Fractal Art
There are several variants of this and you could buy some or create it yourself (not hard to find scripts that do this). It ranges from in your face to subtle. This is common and widely created.
"They try to obfuscate things in the code, and don't leave clear directions for people using it later." Excuse me? "Try to?" Like, it's on purpose?
I've seen all genders write obfuscated code--but it worked. And every single time it was because we were under the gun for a deadline or there was simply no other way to do it. It's preposterous to even try to sound like you have empirical data supporting this blanket assessment.
There's a big need to fix testosterone-fueled code at Ingres... Even in my state of extreme naivete about what is going on at Ingres, I would suggest you first dump efforts into your supporting teams to help your developers out... like your systems engineers, test teams, database teams, etc. What McGrattan is accusing men of is just bad documentation. Anyone can suffer from this and anyone can do it expertly.
I could combat her anecdotal subjective statements (probably describing herself) with my own anecdotes or go on a rant about how many of the great programmers are men (like Donald Knuth and his 'literate programming') but what's the point? Men can be just as meticulous as women can at providing good documentation and women can be just as sloppy.
It's good to have a healthy mix of diversity and I wish that programmers were 50/50 split on gender (trust me, I really really do) but it's not because women are better than men at coding. Prime example of American sexism in one of the few forms it exists today.
Oh, and I would recommend reading 'Why People Believe Weird Things' by Michael Shermer. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is another good one. Agreed. If I remember correctly, the opening of that particular book starts out with a dragon in my garage. You might be incredulous at first, but I assure you, the dragon is there. You open the door to my garage but you don't see anything. Of course not, I say... because the dragon is invisible.
And so it goes to smell, touch, heat from breath, all these things are what you rely on to detect the dragon. But I have convenient mechanisms implemented to thwart your attempts at detecting my dragon.
This leads to a great quote:
"Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?" And from that point on, I kind of recognized similar mechanisms in most religions... designed to require no scientific or even empirical evidence of a higher being.
But I digress on religion, it applies to so much more than that. This book did instill an advanced "see it to believe it" mentality on me and I thank Sagan for that. What's even more shocking is how much I remember of the book since I read it when it came out around 1998.
Really though, I'd just teach people to question everything internally. Be smart about it and seek more information or data if there's any doubt. And really question those who get upset when you question them.
You guys have GOT to stop reading my journal! Next thing you know slahdot will be have stories about hookers... ... or blackjack. In fact, forget the slahdot!
Study Links Storm Botnet's Growth To Illegal Drugs When I'm hepped up on goofballs I will install anything on my computer. "MsBlastWorm32BotNetMegaD.exe" attachment from my bro out in Cali? Let's fire 'er up!
And you don't even want to see my home directory when I'm freebasing Wormwood. Let's just say it's a good thing it's on a totally separate hard drive when I'm riding the green worm.
So while you may dismiss this as the painfully obvious, at least I'll have something to shut down the baseless claims that a lot of good useful tools today "make us stupid." It's still possible for something to make us both more productive and stupid but at least there's some evidence supporting instant messaging in the workplace.
Waste of money because the sample size was too small? Maybe. Blatantly obvious? Not even close. I personally know several people at my company that still view it as a waste of time instead of a useful tool. It's sad that so many great software tools get bad reputations because there are fringe cases of abuse.
Science: Relics of Science History For Sale At Christie's
... There is the 1543 copy of 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' by Copernicus, which you can have for $900,000 to $1.2 million. If you have some cash left over, maybe you can pick up an original work by Galileo, Darwin, Descartes, Newton, Freud, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or Malthus. Objection. Sigmund Freud may have been a psychologist but he was a far cry from a scientist. Tell me where he applied the scientific process in his work. Show me the universal laws he established.
He may have had a degree as a physician but I don't recall anything scientific about his work or any contributions to our understanding of the relationship between our psyche and flesh.
I haven't seen a post from Zonk since April 17th and now I see that this blog at Massively is by none other than Michael "Zonk" Zenke.
Is there a reason why this wasn't hosted at games.slashdot.org? Is it a sign of Zonk moving on like other editors/authors or is he merely helping other sites out?
Either way, an unparalleled score of information on Warhammer Online by EA Mythic! Well done, Zonk!
I wish there was word on how stable and balanced the game is currently at. I remember playing some MMOs back in the day that were more than a bit glitchy.
Wish I had access to the original Atlantic Monthly article, although all I could get at was the blog. Anyone else find a link to the original source?
The internet (and to a lesser extent, Google) could be making us stupid... or perhaps it's merely a desire to have access to information just in time?
There is so much information out there, it's rapidly becoming impossible for me to read "all the classics" in my leisure time. So the answer is to make a machine do it and just access the information just in time.
I don't know if it's making us stupider or merely more boring or even, perhaps, more effective at a specialized skill while lacking breadth?
If it's making us stupid you should at least be able to provide evidence that we are worse at academics than we have been prior to the internet. I'm sorry but claiming the youth are no longer interested in the media that mattered to prior generations just doesn't cut it.
I'm sure I'll bitch that my son doesn't read every Philip K. Dick book or Ray Bradbury short story when I'm long in the tooth. I think it would be unfair to claim that makes him stupid, however.
Slashdot Mirror
Moreover, even a cursory analysis demonstrates that despite being a comedy program The Colbert Report appears to exercise "disproportionate real world influence" -- likely due to the "elite demographic" of its audience.
I saw this news a few days ago and must confess I couldn't draw a logical conclusion from it. I find the explanation in this article to be unsatisfactory also.
... and it would take just one nutjob billionaire who loves The Colbert Report to make those donations. Or it could be like a Hollywood joke for the rich and famous to build a fund.
... ah, what am I saying, there's a real lacking sense of humor on that side of the parties in my mind.
Perhaps it's interesting but little can be learned from this 'study.' There's just too many factors to say
To expound upon the conclusion of the article, what about Democratic guests of The Daily Show which is just a half hour earlier on the same channel with (probably) the same "elite demographic"?
Maybe it's really about Democratic politicians looking really good against Colbert's over the top ultra-conservatism? Just as speculative (and easily dismissed) as the article's conclusion though. Can anyone else reason out a better explanation?
Has the study looked at shows with over the top ultra-liberal hosts interviewing Republican politicians
US Broadband Won't Catch Up With Japan's for 101 Years
Uh, could you somehow spin (regardless of truth) this as related to war and/or military prowess so our administration will mindlessly throw money at it instead of mindlessly ignoring it?
Like:
US Cyber Attacking Infrastructure Embarrassingly Lags Japan's
Japanese Identify US Broadband as "Ripe for the Pickin'"
Cyber Pearl Harbor Imminent
US President's Netflix Downloads 1/10 as Fast as Japanese President's
US Administration Idles as US-Japanese Broadband Gap Widens
Come on, these things basically write themselves! Turn it into a dick measuring contest or it's meaningless.
The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs.
People, please! This is the Olympics. The Olympics--let's not bicker and argue about who's been brutally repressing who for hundreds and hundreds of years!
On a side note, I used to enjoy this band from Minnesota called The Olympic Hopefuls who are now known as The Hopefuls due to some legal business and the fact that the IOC is full of lawyers. And you're surprised a video criticizing the Olympics is taken down on the internet?
"the world's two leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, are expected to report the results this week."
You can find the Nature abstract here. And if you have a subscription, you can read the full research and see the data they collected from experiments.
According to the Ars Technica article on this, the Science link will be here.
There seems to be a few more papers and articles on this but if you're interested you can search for optical metamaterials with negative refractive indexes.
An entire article on the development/abuse of copyright and not one mention of Walt Disney & Sonny Bono's Copyright Term Extension Act. I think the graph on that illustrate what this article talks about, the gradual extension of copyright through the years by political legislation.
Yeah the current state is bad. Even worse that the people making the calls are the people who have the most money. I don't think we should do away with it completely but I think it's well past the point of stifling innovation. Well past that point.
You want an indication of problems witch those in power continually extending it? Point me to a single proposed reduction bill. It's all about extension, reinforcement and expansion to other works like vessel hull design.
Got that? So if California goes ahead and builds a new payroll system, within nine years -- about as much time as it has taken to get the 21st Century Project off the ground -- the cost of fixing bugs in the new code could exceed the original cost of the project.
If software is implemented correctly, it will stand the test of time.
The fact that there seems to be some hard-coded values or formulas throughout this code is a fair indication that this COBOL architecture did not have the foresight of someone ever changing minimum wage. Where I grew up, minimum wage changed yearly as it was usually necessary to adjust for inflation. Now, if this is an indication of the rest of that software, I would opt for a newer technology. On top of that, I would go to the lead system engineer with a hand written note reading:
The software shall have a management interface for changing minimum wage and cascading that change correctly through all aspects of the software and other machines.
I'll bet this software isn't modularized. I'll bet this software has some pretty low security standards. I'll bet this software requires a client app installed on any user's machine.
Pull your head out of your ass, "dollar amount one
If you're short on funds, you're short on funds but if you're saying it's cheaper I would like to see your pricing chart for usability, stability, maintainability, etc.
Why COBOL Could Come Back
I think there will always be a niche market for every language but if you mean 'come back' like COBOL would become the average developer's language of choice I would curtly retort with a sharp 'ha.'
The similarity with Google Labs is the word "labs" this is about user requirements and suggestions rather than fully fledged products. Its about people suggesting improvements and then those moving into development. This means its at a much earlier part of the product development cycle than Google Labs (which starts with a beta or alpha product).
As long as we're talking about labs, there's also Adobe Labs and Digg Labs that I keep my eye on. (Funny, I don't actually read Digg, I just enjoy seeing how they visualize their data!)
... like that.
While you're right that these sites aren't open to the public, I think it's mostly due to the nightmare of trying to credit people with ideas when you're making billions off these ideas months later. The community might not
I will point out that the 'labs' concept just seems to be an indication of how these entities see future development. A similarity between Google and Mozilla is that they offer tons of developer resources on their labs sites. I don't think those two are so different from each other.
Instead of looking at these Labs as inferior, I rather give the companies a chance to show me what they think is bleeding edge and a lot of the time it's a good indicator of innovation. However you look at it, it's a good idea to keep an eye on the labs so you know what your competitor/partner is up to and get a glimpse of the future as they see it.
The bleeding-edge browser is part of a new Mozilla Labs initiative, in which the open-source foundation is encouraging people to contribute ideas and designs for the browser of the future.
Labs is more than that. Back in ought six, Slashdot covered their first extend Firefox contest where people were bated with Alienware swag and developer conference passes to develop extensions & plug-ins for Firefox. The second year saw Shareaholic come out as a winning plug-in. The third year just finished judging and I'm excited to see what Mozilla finds as the best Firefox 3 add ons.
It's nice to see a foundation aiding, encouraging and rewarding the average developer off the street for their work. Even better than that is when Mozilla backs a plug-in or add-on it's usually solid and reliable (unlike the many WinAmp plug-ins that plagued my college machine).
I think I saw a special about black smokers on TV, I believe they were discovered in 1977 and I remember watching an interview of miniature sub (Alvin) pilot explaining that his temperature sensor melted when they came upon one of them and he decided to get a reading. If I recall the anecdote correctly, they were slowly drifting toward it as his friend explained to him that the hull of their craft was made of the same metal as the thermometer. He then very carefully began to operate the propellers in reverse.
I think it was even back then that speculation began of life starting around this geothermal energy. That these minerals only populated the sea and made for nutrient rich sea water in which life could propagate.
The only news here is that the 400 ÂC has been passed on record. I think everyone knew these could get insanely hot.
All they have to do, take all that green, all that distanced lighting shit, and make it black. Pitch as fuck black.
You're one of those monochromatic artists, aren't you?
Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel
I haven't really RTFA'd, just looked at the pictures. I'm a bit torn on this story because I don't even think this designer needs to answer to people putting up screenshots that are entitled "wow gayness" when compared to their preferred screenshots. But as to whether or not he felt they had a valid point or he Blizzard just really cares for their fans, I cannot say.
... when would you have too much? For example in #1, the big white blob thing attacking blocks 1/4 the screen ... four of those and you'd be blind. There could be an army behind him and you wouldn't know it. Something to think about.
While the lighting in a few of these looks like definitely done by hand, the only other major difference I see is color and tint. In example #1 the lighting is much better in the fan screenshot but I can definitely see what the designer was talking about with it being 'smart.' My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play? I think by and large with the fan shots they use borderline too much shadow. I am guessing shadow is crucial in setting the mood but dynamically generated shadow would be difficult
Now, the rest of this stuff just seems to be color pallette and tint which seems to be artistic preference. I can't say which I like better but I've a feeling I'll appreciate color (and a change of that between levels) if I'm going to be staring at it for hours.
I'll be honest, when I first saw the game play I was very nonplussed, it was exactly Diablo II. But then I realized the great thing about II was that it was Diablo I with more features, levels, classes, monsters, etc. Ironically, I think that all that would make me happy in III is just more multiplayer options, more items, monsters, classes, etc. I can't want to play this one!
(see sig)
I wonder what a holy grail goes for with 700 years of compound interest.
I'm much more interested in how you make up for the lives & civilizations your organization destroyed.
I'm not saying this is true but Newsweek/MSNBC ran a story on pagan relics stored beneath the Vatican. I've also read and heard that many Native American (both North & South) relics and documents were shipped back to the Vatican to be stored under it so they could study heathenism and combat it. This was after their owners were either converted or burned/shot.
I would think that the Catholic church could at least (as a sign of good faith) return these to their descendants or at the very least release them to a museum with all the information they have on it so that the rest of us can gain insight to their culture & religion. Of course, if this were true, I don't think the museum donations would be worth the black eye.
"the Knights Templar are demanding that the Vatican give them back their good name and, possibly, billions in assets into the bargain, 700 years after the order was brutally suppressed by a joint venture between the Pope and the King of France..."
The funny thing is that the Vatican probably has billions in capital at its disposal. I always got a kick out of the pope ruling a small nation-state in Europe (with its own currency, mind you) telling me to be more like Jesus. The same Jesus who said in Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Or what Luke said (12:23)
Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Or John 3:17
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
The funny thing is I could go on all day finding quotes from most major religions ... Like Buddha or Gandhi, I'm a huge fan of this Jesus guy. It's 99% of the people who purport to follow him that manage to genuinely fuck up the world.
Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back
First of all, a single anecdote does not prove anything. If you included eBay's Skype deal or Google's YouTube deal ... wait, scratch that last one. See, there's constantly non-prudent business deals and every now and then you see a real whopper.
Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbecue, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.
Do you think that this is what caused the dot com bubble? Do you think the vast majority of people were living like this when it burst? I'm no economist but I thought that the problem wasn't with how the IT and Web Site companies were spending their money but rather what the customers they found were giving them money for--basically nothing. A few HTML pages? Not even worth my time to read?
$25 million in venture capital is nothing these days. Let them burn it. Yeah, we'll all be laughing a couple months from now when they're busting their asses to find some income--or maybe they are correct in thinking they are the next Google. Hell, Slashdot ran a story reporting them to index more than Google. With the kind of press they achieved, maybe they're right to live like royalty for a bit?
Does anyone look back on Google and say "They hired a massage artist? Proof the bubble is back!" No, because they thought they were going to be big and they were.
You want to prevent another bubble? Don't take a job where you're not sure how you or any of your coworkers draw revenue from real customers who in turn receive some service or product that makes complete sense. That's how you prevent a bubble. And unless you're part of the 1% calling the shots on how to spend money, you needn't worry about how other companies spend their money. This frivolous spending should just make it easier for Google to beat their bottom line and steal customers back. And if they can't, well then let Cuil rake large piles of capital together and set them afire to their heart's content.
You could take a very interesting approach to this and employ Piet which is a type of programming language that results in writing programs utilizing colors and blocks and traverses them as the program runs, resulting in some nice looking 'modern' art. The neat thing about this is you could open up a contest to your developers to come up with beautiful ways to write simple programs and procedures and then vote on the most beautiful ones. To me, something coded to be both beautiful and functional would be highly desirable. The fact that it would come from within your developers would probably add to the effect among your staff.
Plus, it'd be super cheap!
M. C. Escher ... well, woodcuts are an odd market.
There's the famous well known M. C. Escher famous for placing strange loops in his work thus making his tessellations and peculiar drawings centered on curious near mathematical conundrums (Mobius Strips, infinite limits, undefined boundaries, etc). For the most part, I believe he did woodcuts so if you're thinking about originals
Fractal Art
There are several variants of this and you could buy some or create it yourself (not hard to find scripts that do this). It ranges from in your face to subtle. This is common and widely created.
Slashdot Story Art
A while back, there was a story on some humorous computer science-y art you could ask the original artist for permission to use.
Or you can just look at various collections for your own tastes.
I've seen all genders write obfuscated code--but it worked. And every single time it was because we were under the gun for a deadline or there was simply no other way to do it. It's preposterous to even try to sound like you have empirical data supporting this blanket assessment. There's a big need to fix testosterone-fueled code at Ingres
I could combat her anecdotal subjective statements (probably describing herself) with my own anecdotes or go on a rant about how many of the great programmers are men (like Donald Knuth and his 'literate programming') but what's the point? Men can be just as meticulous as women can at providing good documentation and women can be just as sloppy.
It's good to have a healthy mix of diversity and I wish that programmers were 50/50 split on gender (trust me, I really really do) but it's not because women are better than men at coding. Prime example of American sexism in one of the few forms it exists today.
And so it goes to smell, touch, heat from breath, all these things are what you rely on to detect the dragon. But I have convenient mechanisms implemented to thwart your attempts at detecting my dragon.
This leads to a great quote: "Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?" And from that point on, I kind of recognized similar mechanisms in most religions
But I digress on religion, it applies to so much more than that. This book did instill an advanced "see it to believe it" mentality on me and I thank Sagan for that. What's even more shocking is how much I remember of the book since I read it when it came out around 1998.
Really though, I'd just teach people to question everything internally. Be smart about it and seek more information or data if there's any doubt. And really question those who get upset when you question them.
And you don't even want to see my home directory when I'm freebasing Wormwood. Let's just say it's a good thing it's on a totally separate hard drive when I'm riding the green worm.
So while you may dismiss this as the painfully obvious, at least I'll have something to shut down the baseless claims that a lot of good useful tools today "make us stupid." It's still possible for something to make us both more productive and stupid but at least there's some evidence supporting instant messaging in the workplace.
Waste of money because the sample size was too small? Maybe. Blatantly obvious? Not even close. I personally know several people at my company that still view it as a waste of time instead of a useful tool. It's sad that so many great software tools get bad reputations because there are fringe cases of abuse.
Why not? Seemed to work out alright for The Beatles.In a lot of respects, the man was nothing more than a cokehead with a penchant for strange sexually oriented neurosis.
He may have had a degree as a physician but I don't recall anything scientific about his work or any contributions to our understanding of the relationship between our psyche and flesh.
I haven't seen a post from Zonk since April 17th and now I see that this blog at Massively is by none other than Michael "Zonk" Zenke.
Is there a reason why this wasn't hosted at games.slashdot.org? Is it a sign of Zonk moving on like other editors/authors or is he merely helping other sites out?
Either way, an unparalleled score of information on Warhammer Online by EA Mythic! Well done, Zonk!
I wish there was word on how stable and balanced the game is currently at. I remember playing some MMOs back in the day that were more than a bit glitchy.
Wish I had access to the original Atlantic Monthly article, although all I could get at was the blog. Anyone else find a link to the original source?
... or perhaps it's merely a desire to have access to information just in time?
The internet (and to a lesser extent, Google) could be making us stupid
There is so much information out there, it's rapidly becoming impossible for me to read "all the classics" in my leisure time. So the answer is to make a machine do it and just access the information just in time.
I don't know if it's making us stupider or merely more boring or even, perhaps, more effective at a specialized skill while lacking breadth?
If it's making us stupid you should at least be able to provide evidence that we are worse at academics than we have been prior to the internet. I'm sorry but claiming the youth are no longer interested in the media that mattered to prior generations just doesn't cut it.
I'm sure I'll bitch that my son doesn't read every Philip K. Dick book or Ray Bradbury short story when I'm long in the tooth. I think it would be unfair to claim that makes him stupid, however.