I'm on the other boat - I'm almost certain it will pass because congress has proven time and again that they are technologically ignorant and completely out of touch with how this is blatantly unconstitutional and will do it citing "the greater good," even though the law basically allows the entertainment industry to block any site and ISPs have to comply, which will never hold up in court. The main reason it will fail in court is because they can block sites that talk about piracy but don't contain any pirated content, and that is constitutionally illegal in the same way it is constitutionally illegal to not allow talking about, say, how to build pipe bombs and fertilizer explosives (as per the Anarchist Cookbook in the 1970s).
Incidentally, the law will not actually block the IP itself, only the registered name (so slashdot.org could be blocked, but 216.34.181.45 would not be), which proves that the writers are ignorant of how the technology even works. You enter the IP in the URL name and the block is bypassed.
If I were Spain I'd point out how completely broken SOPA is and that their attempt at it was also broken (though I don't know the reasons because I haven't read it, I'm sure they could come up with something).
I noticed that with my roommate my first and second year in college and part of 3 (I dropped out for a bit to pursue a music career) - he had an Eidetic (photographic) memory, went to lectures and paged through the textbook and maintained a 4.0 GPA, while I studied for hours and hours to learn the material and was pushing a high B/low A at best. My teachers for my first 3 years of college were, incidentally, almost all Chinese or Indian and stressed rote memorization of formulas. The exception was the dean of the math department, an American I would describe more as a masochist than a teacher and an intro to computing teacher who was also American, but I should have tested out of that requirement because my knowledge was WAY past what that class covered (those first few college courses I really didn't know what to expect).
If you have that discipline, great - my wife thinks she does, then realizes she spent $2000 more than she has in her account because she forgot about several things she charged. Whenever she needs a bailout like that (which comes from our "liquid" emergency fund - I have additional money in mutual funds, but those take longer to get to), she cuts up her credit cards, and it just happened again over Christmas. She lives month to month, but I don't - I have at least 3 months worth of paychecks squirreled away in various investments and savings accounts.
Anyhow, there is a big reason I use cash instead of debit or credit cards - my spending habits can't be traced and sold to some marketer, which the credit card company has the right to do according to the fine print.
My head would explode if this were my intro to game creation. So much of this depends on variables that aren't known, so it is hard to recommend anything, but I'd need to know a) what level of programming skills do the kids have, and in what languages b) what level of graphics programming skills do the kids have (2D, 3D, do they understand collision detection, etc)? c) what potential do these students have (are they average high schoolers, or future MITers)? d) is this a team project or a class project? A class project can be larger, but requires everyone to buy in and help somewhere they can help. Team projects are usually smaller and more specialized. e) is this just in class, or are you going to expect homework? A motivated teen can develop a lot of code week-to-week, but computer availability could be a factor (does the school require laptops?).
I'm guessing they have no AI skills, but for a first game you may want to avoid AI.
I've never worked on a triple-A title, but I have worked on a title that sold around 50000 copies created by a small team (varied from 8 to 22 over the course of the project, but really the last 10 or so fall in the category where a mother tries to give birth in 1 month by divvying the work between 9 people). It was 3D, but it took about a year to develop and it didn't really make the jump from demo code to game until about the last 2-3 months.
Anyhow, my point is I strongly recommend avoiding 3D for a first game. More advanced students can use 3D graphics, but even then it probably should be kept to planar (for instance, pinball) for a first game to simplify difficulty. Also it doesn't necessarily have to be a game - creating animations are excellent for learning and use many of the same skills (think cutscenes or scripted events). It isn't impossible - I wrote a first person shooter by myself my first year in college (sadly, it was IRIX only, not networked and had horrible AI, which I never finished - it was always either too good or too bad, but the graphics, movement, and collision detection were all done).
Ah Catholics... I never quite understood why adulterers (a man that remarries when his first wife still lives is adultery under ancient Jewish law and biblical law, which share the same source, but the modern meaning of the word adultery has changed) are excommunicated, but thieves and murderers are not. Murderers are even blessed by a priest and have their final rites read to them before they get executed.
I realize "classical" adultery was one of the worst sins in biblical times, punishable by stoning to death (I remember it by "marriage or stoning... it's a death sentence either way," which was a Bible school joke).
Call it flamebait, but the parent has a point - Cube 2, Nexuiz, Tremulous, etc all play almost exactly like Quake 3, and in some cases the graphics aren't much better. Some more modern games like NetDevil Warmonger are more tech demos (that one is based on proprietary Unreal 3 tech, as well). Many of the best free games do mimic popular commercial games.
That said, there are a few that have some merit, like the Battle For Westnoth. It takes a lot of work to make commercial quality games, even though some commercial quality open source engines exist (albeit most with requirements that the games created on them are free).
Paul implies that sex without marriage can lead to sin, but does not say it is a sin in Corinthians I, and this is the closest the Bible comes to saying it is a sin. He does say prostitution is a sin, and also that widows with desires (I don't remember the exact words) should get married. Corinthians I also pretty much said Paul had no desires. Divorce is a sin, and remarriage while the original partner is still alive and then having sex is adultery, which is why the Catholic church prohibits it (and has a weird rules allowing childless couples to do it called an annulment). The funny thing is I don't recall it saying getting divorced and then having sex with someone else is a sin, it specifically prohibits getting divorced and remarried and then having sex (but I think it is implied - see the section below on sex=marriage).
Of course, traditional Jewish law doesn't have a category for premarital sex, and that may be why it isn't mentioned - sex is categorized as married, prostitution, or adultery (rape is a form of adultery). Punishment for adultery is death by stoning. Just the act of sex without payment is either commitment to marriage or adultery, or as the old joke goes, a death sentence either way.
Orthodox Jews say it doesn't explicitly forbid gay sex - it specifically prohibits only MALE gay sex (and it's Leviticus 18:22). It also prohibits incest and bestiality, sleeping with your wife's sister and such, but lesbians are OK. Punishable by death, traditionally.
Of course, this is the old testament God, too - the one that smites pretty much anyone that moves, wipes out towns, turns people to pillars of salt - you know, the "loving" God who also tells us not to kill. WTF, God, we have to live by your rules but you don't have to? No wonder Satan wanted out.
this reminds me of a debate I had with a Jehovah's Witness (normally I wouldn't, but she was cute, and I needed some eye candy at that time in my life). She was definitely set in her ways and me mine...
me: so how do you justify Dinosaurs? her: the Devil put them there to deceive us on how old the world is me: why would Satan do that? Seems like a total waste of time her: to sway your belief me:I don't see how the age of the earth and belief in God have anything to do with one another, but ok... her: see? It has already swayed your belief me: no it hasn't - I don't believe the world was made in 7 days either, but to me that is figurative her: no, it's real me: (shaking my head and looking up a verse in her Bible) hey - there's missing verse here, and this is strangely interpreted her: there is nothing missing or incorrect in our Bible me: so you're saying your mistranslation of a translation of a translation of a Bible doesn't have any mistakes? her: it's not a mistranslation, God made sure our translation was perfect me: so what is my Bible then? her: a mistake.
Well it wouldn't be completely unprecedented, as I'm fairly sure we've blown up in-development nuclear enrichment facilities before with cruise missiles. Iran is already being threatened with a boycott of their oil by Europe, one of the main consumers of their oil. The larger problem is Iran's threat to perform live fire maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz, blocking around 17% of the world oil supply from being able to reach Europe and Africa.
Except with this design the coolant is liquid sodium, and a large leak exposed to water could start an extremely hot fire and keep the reaction from stopping. It is not an inherently safe design and not immune to meltdown. It can, however, burn just about any nuclear fuel including nuclear waste and thorium. Also it is extremely complex, which is one of the key reasons the power companies have cited as why they have not tried to build one (or as I call it, an excuse to keep the virtual monopoly going). That said, I still think they're safer than light water reactors, as what I'm describing is more of a worst case scenario, like having an earthquake break the containment and then a tsunami flood the building, starting a sodium fire and melting the containment vessel before the plant can be shut down. Depending on shutdown time, that may not even be a feasible scenario - some of these reactors can be shut down in a minute or two, much faster than LWRs used today.
The design Bill Gates is proposing isn't inherently safe - it is similar to IFRs (Integral Fast Reactors) that use liquid sodium as a coolant. Liquid sodium is highly flammable when exposed to the atmosphere, and one prototype IFR reactor in Japan was shut down indefinitely due to such a leak.
Incidentally, IFRs fully burn their fuel, TWRs don't and leave some trans-uranics like another reactor variant called LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) which is self-cooled by molten salt and doesn't need another coolant, making it inherently safer. The main advantage of TWR over IFR is that it is bigger and designed to recycle its fuel and run for an extended period. One advantage of TWRs is that they can burn any actinide fuel (thorium up), including non-fissile U238, which is probably why they are favored over LFTRs - Thorium, while 4x more abundant than Uranium, is also 5000x as expensive right now because there is no market for it (incidentally, LFTRs can also be fueled by U235 and I've heard they can burn nuclear waste, but I guess that would make them LFURs...). In any case, IFRs and TWRs, unlike LFTRs, still run a risk of meltdown, so I wouldn't call them safe.
Incidentally the US nuclear regulatory commission (NRC) seems to be the stick in the cog blocking the development of IFRs and LFTRs - they both need reprocessing facilities and they fear creating a reprocessing facility on US soil will create a so-called "plutonium economy" and risk proliferation, even if the facility was built next to the plant and the materials never leave. When John Kerry (for the most part) forced the shutdown of the IFR, proliferation was the key reason, and the reality is the plutonium in the IFR would never be purified or need to leave the plant (sometimes I just want to take a baseball bat to some Senator's heads, and no, I don't pick them by party). By making a long burning IFR, they are working around the regulatory loophole holding up a potential implementation, but they still have to build the test reactors elsewhere because the NRC makes it nearly impossible (and thus China's involvement).
Between pro-business Republicans in the back pockets of the power industry that want no other reactors other than Light Water Reactors (because fuel enrichment is extremely profitable, especially when you sell the service to yourself and pass the cost on to consumers) and uninformed anti-nuclear Democrats that oppose nuclear energy entirely without even listening to any arguments for it, politically it is a dead end to try and get any design built in the US.
You mean a rip off of CP/M. Microsoft didn't ever rip off UNIX - NT's POSIX compliance was obtained through legal means (paying to be certified). Even Apple (MacOS X based on NeXT which was built on top of BSD) wasn't POSIX compliant for a long time (they were always POSIX compatible, but they didn't pay for certification until X.3 or so).
And to the post below, Xenix was also legally licensed, but MS couldn't get a license to use the name UNIX so they created their own, which was hardly original in the 1970s, which is why we have numerous UNIX variants that may or may not be UNIX but are for the most part, compatible.
Lets put this in Gillette terms - if someone started marketing Gillette compatible razor blades and undercut Gillette's razor blade cost, that would be a problem for Gillette, correct?
It is my belief that is the same problem Sony was worried about with the "Other OS" option on the PS3 and why they ended that option, especially since there are people working on getting access to the RSX (in PC terms, the GPU) and working around the hypervisor (hardware virtualization that grants or restricts access to parts of the system) that prevents it. If too many PS3s were purchased and not enough games (which are their razor blades), it inevitably destroys their bottom line.
I personally have never bothered with running anything other than PS3 things (games and blu-ray) on my PS3, so no features were taken away from me. I really have no interest in installing Linux on it either - my 5 year old desktop PC that I use for backups has essentially the same era NV70 graphics as the PS3 and runs Linux.
Shame the programming API isn't anywhere near as elegant as the hardware. Most PS3 developers I know (I know a few - I used to work for a game developer) hate the programming API with a passion and would much rather work on 360.
Some people still say the PS3 is the best Blu-ray player out there, and is the main reason I got one two years ago. I have the PS3 remote, but I think my DVD player's remote is better designed. Both are far and away better than my old Philips remote, though - they basically threw away conventions and made their own, or designed the buttons by the layout of the board - what idiot designer puts giant skip chapter buttons next to play instead of fast forward and rewind, and makes FF/RW tiny buttons below those? I didn't use that remote long before buying a universal remote that didn't drive me nuts (and I would hope in 20 years they've cleaned up their act - the DVD player itself was fantastic and only replaced because it was too big - something like 16"w x 6"h and I replaced it with a 1" thick player that fit with my tuner in the cabinet).
Most people's brains can't process more than about 15FPS, so all you need is interpolation between frames and it should look smooth. That is why 120MHz-240MHz TVs seem to look better for fast action, but they still are getting the same 30FPS data and interpolating 3-6 extra frames in-between. I personally was able to see the difference between 60 and 120, but couldn't really tell a difference between 120 to 240 (maybe if the movement is really fast, but they were showing American football at Best Buy).
Not bad, but the lack of self-occlusion and self-shadowing is evident if you look for it (grout on brick in the still, for instance - this is obviously a flat texture without even normal mapping). This is why I get the "it's fake" vibe instantly when looking at it, though my brain hasn't processed exactly why.
But CG is getting there - I didn't hear many complaints about the CG in Avatar and the acting wasn't bad (my personal complaints are all plot related).
A lot of CG still suffers from technique flaws, and if you know the technique used, you can find the flaws and see that it is rendered. For instance, if you know a scene is ray traced, you know that ray tracing is better for specular lighting than diffuse and generally has hard shadows (good for outdoor scenes, but bad for indoor). Some of these can be eliminated by expensive (time-wise) hybrid techniques, but then you get to the "is it worth spending X amount of time on it or not for a tiny bit more realism" and for something like TV that answer is usually no, which is why I can pick out CG on shows like Sanctuary (which is almost all CG) and Terra Nova (which is a mix).
From a "realism" perspective, the original Star Wars films are about as scientific as a cartoon, which is why the genre is generally called space opera and not science fiction. I have no problem with George Lucas messing around with Star Wars, as he wants to keep the movies "current" and sell more toys - if he pisses off his adult fans in the process, so be it. The movies aren't targeted at adults, they are targeted at 12 year old boys (for the most part) and have to stay relevant for that market to keep the merchandise bandwagon going. This is all about capitalism and making billions of dollars at the expense of art, but in this rare case the artist is making the money - if you don't like that, stop buying his stuff (like I did 20+ years ago).
Sci-fi seems to have gone a couple different directions lately. First you've got man vs machine and man vs alien - this is almost always CGI driven schlock like Cowboys and Aliens, Battle:Los Angeles, Transformers, I am Number Four (haven't seen it, but if Michael Bay is involved it goes here), etc. Then you've got the mind benders like Moon, The Adjustment Bureau, and Inception. A genre that popped up in the last few years is "let's rip off ET" where you get Super 8 and Paul.
Here are some of my personal peeves I hope they avoid: 20th century medicine or earlier used 200+ years in the future (cancer is still a scourge, "he's dead Jim" insti-death, etc). Troll 2 quality monsters Giant spaceships hovering over cities (they would crush the city) Creatures that behave like they're in a computer game with a bad AI Groaner names for anything - I started hating Avatar when they first uttered "Unobtanium." - not unwatchably bad, but it is essentially a Michael Bay-like action movie with a hippie theme. Independence Day wasn't unwatchably bad, either, and that was the CG pinnacle of its time (it was an action movie with wafer thin characters and almost no plot, which is why I disliked it, but many of my friends thought it was the best movie, ever, and saw it 10+ times in the theater). Tossing in impossible things just because CG can do it or some 1960s art showed it. Avatar's floating mountains, for instance, which is based on 1960s art (or 1970s at the latest). Or Terra Nova's dinosaurs that keep attacking as they are MACHINE GUNNED (these things have brains the size of a pea, yes, but so does a turkey, and they still feel pain).
Here are some issues I see as a problem in the future, and may be good sci-fi issues: A society that doesn't age, has machines that clear their arteries, etc - death is rare and usually accidental, so how is population controlled (birth control? gladiator combat? suicide?) A society that doesn't need to work. Maybe a bunch of capitalists run everything and everywhere else is a slum, or maybe there is a Star Trek like society, or maybe everyone owns a robot that works for them. People needing technology to do their jobs. Discovering life on another planet, but it is vastly different and possibly inferior to our own (so how do we deal with it? what do we do with it? if we found Egyptian society of 4000 years ago, would we make contact and be gods to them?) People that no longer need to bear children (vat grown babies - and we already have artificial uterus's for sharks, so I think this is an imminent issue) - is it really immoral (I don't think so, but the Catholic church may feel different)? Does society become hedonistic? Do Jesus, Allah, and Buddha join forces on a murderous rampage to redeem humanity? Cybernetics, though I think there are many issues ignored in sci-fi, like powering them, and I think people are attached to their human parts - augmentation is no big deal, but, say lopping off your arm for a cyber arm would be. Growing replacement anything in a lab (limbs, eyes, pets, people, etc).
Here are some things I don't have a problem with, but may or may not be possible or may have limited potential: Warp drives (some like time bubb
I'd be more impressed with that statement if there was, in fact any good sci-fi on TV.
no. There is some unrealistic inane idea sci-Fi on TV though that panders to the ignorant masses. Terra Nova makes me groan as often or more often than Train does (I'm a lyrics guy, and my wife is not a lyrics gal - she LOVES Train because she ignores the inane groaner filled lyrics and just sings the choruses), and that takes effort.
and if you don't understand what I mean by groaner from Train, here's an example from the groaner filled "If It's Love": early in the song there is a lyric about "husband and wife," so I assume the song is about a straight couple, and then this "I wanna buy ya everything Except cologne 'cause it's poison"
Colognes are a name for perfumes marketed to men... and yes I am aware there are some marketing gimmick colognes for women, but these are always labeled "women's cologne" and "women's" is not in the lyric.
and that is the only thinker in that song - any song that mentions "Mister Mister" and "remember Winger" gets some serious groans for bands I didn't like in the '80s that got popular God knows how. If he dropped Menudo into the mix, I'd probably throw up every time I heard this song.
they may be developing more slowly, but they break plugin compatibility with each release now, and they also say that pleasing corporate users by maintaining compatibility with stuff like the java plugin is not important at all. This decision doesn't just affect corporate users, though - I've stopped using Firefox at home because they broke my slingbox player twice now and I'm fed up with it. I switched to IE at home, and I hate IE with a passion (I'd use Chrome, but Chrome wasn't supported yet when I checked last - I just checked and as of Nov 17 it is supported, so time to make that switch).
Congratulations Firefox - you've managed to change me from biggest fan to I hate your f**king guts.
Try a marathon of Hobgoblins Vampires vs Zombies Sorority House Vampires from Hell Zombies Gone Wild (which is the worst movie I've ever seen I think - and this plotless disaster had a huge budget compared to the next one, which is better...) O.C. Babes and the Slasher of Zombietown
if you haven't gouged your eyes out, gone insane, or drank yourself unconscious by that point, throw in "best worst movie" Troll 2 or Biker Zombies from Detroit, which are bad on their own, but masterpieces compared to the rest of this trash - they are more Manos or Plan 9 From Outer Space bad, as in you can laugh at them instead of just groan in agony.
Instead of Russia and Latin America communists attacking the US like in the original Red Dawn they use North Korea, a country that couldn't pull it off because they just don't have the logistics to do it. China maybe, but North Korea by itself just is not happening, even if they do take over the south first. Their active army is too small (though they do have the largest reserve army in the world) and they just don't have enough air transports to do it in a timely manner.
The video game Homefront is based on a unified Korea dominated by the north invading the US, if that is what you're after. It came out in March, and one of the writers for Red Dawn was involved (John Milius) as I recall. I didn't play it, personally, I'm just pointing out that it essentially has been done.
Fortress America was Mexico invading from the south, Russia from the east, and China from the west, but it was heavily biased toward America and difficult to lose as them. The only time I ever remember playing America and losing I was rolling horrifically bad and the Russians rolling incredibly well. I think they averaged 9 or 10 units killed for every 1 I killed that game (I pretty much repelled the east and south fronts, but Russia rolled over half the map and won the game on their own).
Plus for a dirty bomb you'd ideally use something that tosses out a lot of gamma rays, and I believe RTGs are designed to slow radioactive decay and mostly emit alpha rays. They do still require shielding because they do emit high energy gamma rays, but nothing remotely close to what most people think of when they hear "nuclear reactor," which is most likely a pressurized water nuclear reactor (PWR).
I think the fear of the word "radiation" sometimes causes a panic and people don't realize that they are surrounded by radiation every day, whether from their cell phone, a granite kitchen counter, or the sun.
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I'm on the other boat - I'm almost certain it will pass because congress has proven time and again that they are technologically ignorant and completely out of touch with how this is blatantly unconstitutional and will do it citing "the greater good," even though the law basically allows the entertainment industry to block any site and ISPs have to comply, which will never hold up in court. The main reason it will fail in court is because they can block sites that talk about piracy but don't contain any pirated content, and that is constitutionally illegal in the same way it is constitutionally illegal to not allow talking about, say, how to build pipe bombs and fertilizer explosives (as per the Anarchist Cookbook in the 1970s).
Incidentally, the law will not actually block the IP itself, only the registered name (so slashdot.org could be blocked, but 216.34.181.45 would not be), which proves that the writers are ignorant of how the technology even works. You enter the IP in the URL name and the block is bypassed.
If I were Spain I'd point out how completely broken SOPA is and that their attempt at it was also broken (though I don't know the reasons because I haven't read it, I'm sure they could come up with something).
I noticed that with my roommate my first and second year in college and part of 3 (I dropped out for a bit to pursue a music career) - he had an Eidetic (photographic) memory, went to lectures and paged through the textbook and maintained a 4.0 GPA, while I studied for hours and hours to learn the material and was pushing a high B/low A at best. My teachers for my first 3 years of college were, incidentally, almost all Chinese or Indian and stressed rote memorization of formulas. The exception was the dean of the math department, an American I would describe more as a masochist than a teacher and an intro to computing teacher who was also American, but I should have tested out of that requirement because my knowledge was WAY past what that class covered (those first few college courses I really didn't know what to expect).
If you have that discipline, great - my wife thinks she does, then realizes she spent $2000 more than she has in her account because she forgot about several things she charged. Whenever she needs a bailout like that (which comes from our "liquid" emergency fund - I have additional money in mutual funds, but those take longer to get to), she cuts up her credit cards, and it just happened again over Christmas. She lives month to month, but I don't - I have at least 3 months worth of paychecks squirreled away in various investments and savings accounts.
Anyhow, there is a big reason I use cash instead of debit or credit cards - my spending habits can't be traced and sold to some marketer, which the credit card company has the right to do according to the fine print.
My head would explode if this were my intro to game creation. So much of this depends on variables that aren't known, so it is hard to recommend anything, but I'd need to know
a) what level of programming skills do the kids have, and in what languages
b) what level of graphics programming skills do the kids have (2D, 3D, do they understand collision detection, etc)?
c) what potential do these students have (are they average high schoolers, or future MITers)?
d) is this a team project or a class project? A class project can be larger, but requires everyone to buy in and help somewhere they can help. Team projects are usually smaller and more specialized.
e) is this just in class, or are you going to expect homework? A motivated teen can develop a lot of code week-to-week, but computer availability could be a factor (does the school require laptops?).
I'm guessing they have no AI skills, but for a first game you may want to avoid AI.
I've never worked on a triple-A title, but I have worked on a title that sold around 50000 copies created by a small team (varied from 8 to 22 over the course of the project, but really the last 10 or so fall in the category where a mother tries to give birth in 1 month by divvying the work between 9 people). It was 3D, but it took about a year to develop and it didn't really make the jump from demo code to game until about the last 2-3 months.
Anyhow, my point is I strongly recommend avoiding 3D for a first game. More advanced students can use 3D graphics, but even then it probably should be kept to planar (for instance, pinball) for a first game to simplify difficulty. Also it doesn't necessarily have to be a game - creating animations are excellent for learning and use many of the same skills (think cutscenes or scripted events). It isn't impossible - I wrote a first person shooter by myself my first year in college (sadly, it was IRIX only, not networked and had horrible AI, which I never finished - it was always either too good or too bad, but the graphics, movement, and collision detection were all done).
Ah Catholics... I never quite understood why adulterers (a man that remarries when his first wife still lives is adultery under ancient Jewish law and biblical law, which share the same source, but the modern meaning of the word adultery has changed) are excommunicated, but thieves and murderers are not. Murderers are even blessed by a priest and have their final rites read to them before they get executed.
I realize "classical" adultery was one of the worst sins in biblical times, punishable by stoning to death (I remember it by "marriage or stoning... it's a death sentence either way," which was a Bible school joke).
Call it flamebait, but the parent has a point - Cube 2, Nexuiz, Tremulous, etc all play almost exactly like Quake 3, and in some cases the graphics aren't much better. Some more modern games like NetDevil Warmonger are more tech demos (that one is based on proprietary Unreal 3 tech, as well). Many of the best free games do mimic popular commercial games.
That said, there are a few that have some merit, like the Battle For Westnoth. It takes a lot of work to make commercial quality games, even though some commercial quality open source engines exist (albeit most with requirements that the games created on them are free).
Paul implies that sex without marriage can lead to sin, but does not say it is a sin in Corinthians I, and this is the closest the Bible comes to saying it is a sin. He does say prostitution is a sin, and also that widows with desires (I don't remember the exact words) should get married. Corinthians I also pretty much said Paul had no desires. Divorce is a sin, and remarriage while the original partner is still alive and then having sex is adultery, which is why the Catholic church prohibits it (and has a weird rules allowing childless couples to do it called an annulment). The funny thing is I don't recall it saying getting divorced and then having sex with someone else is a sin, it specifically prohibits getting divorced and remarried and then having sex (but I think it is implied - see the section below on sex=marriage).
Of course, traditional Jewish law doesn't have a category for premarital sex, and that may be why it isn't mentioned - sex is categorized as married, prostitution, or adultery (rape is a form of adultery). Punishment for adultery is death by stoning. Just the act of sex without payment is either commitment to marriage or adultery, or as the old joke goes, a death sentence either way.
Orthodox Jews say it doesn't explicitly forbid gay sex - it specifically prohibits only MALE gay sex (and it's Leviticus 18:22). It also prohibits incest and bestiality, sleeping with your wife's sister and such, but lesbians are OK. Punishable by death, traditionally.
Of course, this is the old testament God, too - the one that smites pretty much anyone that moves, wipes out towns, turns people to pillars of salt - you know, the "loving" God who also tells us not to kill. WTF, God, we have to live by your rules but you don't have to? No wonder Satan wanted out.
this reminds me of a debate I had with a Jehovah's Witness (normally I wouldn't, but she was cute, and I needed some eye candy at that time in my life). She was definitely set in her ways and me mine...
me: so how do you justify Dinosaurs? :I don't see how the age of the earth and belief in God have anything to do with one another, but ok...
her: the Devil put them there to deceive us on how old the world is
me: why would Satan do that? Seems like a total waste of time
her: to sway your belief
me
her: see? It has already swayed your belief
me: no it hasn't - I don't believe the world was made in 7 days either, but to me that is figurative
her: no, it's real
me: (shaking my head and looking up a verse in her Bible) hey - there's missing verse here, and this is strangely interpreted
her: there is nothing missing or incorrect in our Bible
me: so you're saying your mistranslation of a translation of a translation of a Bible doesn't have any mistakes?
her: it's not a mistranslation, God made sure our translation was perfect
me: so what is my Bible then?
her: a mistake.
Well it wouldn't be completely unprecedented, as I'm fairly sure we've blown up in-development nuclear enrichment facilities before with cruise missiles. Iran is already being threatened with a boycott of their oil by Europe, one of the main consumers of their oil. The larger problem is Iran's threat to perform live fire maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz, blocking around 17% of the world oil supply from being able to reach Europe and Africa.
Not only depleted Uranium - from what I've read in the past about these, they can pretty much use whatever actinide is on hand from Thorium up.
Except with this design the coolant is liquid sodium, and a large leak exposed to water could start an extremely hot fire and keep the reaction from stopping. It is not an inherently safe design and not immune to meltdown. It can, however, burn just about any nuclear fuel including nuclear waste and thorium. Also it is extremely complex, which is one of the key reasons the power companies have cited as why they have not tried to build one (or as I call it, an excuse to keep the virtual monopoly going). That said, I still think they're safer than light water reactors, as what I'm describing is more of a worst case scenario, like having an earthquake break the containment and then a tsunami flood the building, starting a sodium fire and melting the containment vessel before the plant can be shut down. Depending on shutdown time, that may not even be a feasible scenario - some of these reactors can be shut down in a minute or two, much faster than LWRs used today.
The design Bill Gates is proposing isn't inherently safe - it is similar to IFRs (Integral Fast Reactors) that use liquid sodium as a coolant. Liquid sodium is highly flammable when exposed to the atmosphere, and one prototype IFR reactor in Japan was shut down indefinitely due to such a leak.
Incidentally, IFRs fully burn their fuel, TWRs don't and leave some trans-uranics like another reactor variant called LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) which is self-cooled by molten salt and doesn't need another coolant, making it inherently safer. The main advantage of TWR over IFR is that it is bigger and designed to recycle its fuel and run for an extended period. One advantage of TWRs is that they can burn any actinide fuel (thorium up), including non-fissile U238, which is probably why they are favored over LFTRs - Thorium, while 4x more abundant than Uranium, is also 5000x as expensive right now because there is no market for it (incidentally, LFTRs can also be fueled by U235 and I've heard they can burn nuclear waste, but I guess that would make them LFURs...). In any case, IFRs and TWRs, unlike LFTRs, still run a risk of meltdown, so I wouldn't call them safe.
Incidentally the US nuclear regulatory commission (NRC) seems to be the stick in the cog blocking the development of IFRs and LFTRs - they both need reprocessing facilities and they fear creating a reprocessing facility on US soil will create a so-called "plutonium economy" and risk proliferation, even if the facility was built next to the plant and the materials never leave. When John Kerry (for the most part) forced the shutdown of the IFR, proliferation was the key reason, and the reality is the plutonium in the IFR would never be purified or need to leave the plant (sometimes I just want to take a baseball bat to some Senator's heads, and no, I don't pick them by party). By making a long burning IFR, they are working around the regulatory loophole holding up a potential implementation, but they still have to build the test reactors elsewhere because the NRC makes it nearly impossible (and thus China's involvement).
Between pro-business Republicans in the back pockets of the power industry that want no other reactors other than Light Water Reactors (because fuel enrichment is extremely profitable, especially when you sell the service to yourself and pass the cost on to consumers) and uninformed anti-nuclear Democrats that oppose nuclear energy entirely without even listening to any arguments for it, politically it is a dead end to try and get any design built in the US.
You mean a rip off of CP/M. Microsoft didn't ever rip off UNIX - NT's POSIX compliance was obtained through legal means (paying to be certified). Even Apple (MacOS X based on NeXT which was built on top of BSD) wasn't POSIX compliant for a long time (they were always POSIX compatible, but they didn't pay for certification until X.3 or so).
And to the post below, Xenix was also legally licensed, but MS couldn't get a license to use the name UNIX so they created their own, which was hardly original in the 1970s, which is why we have numerous UNIX variants that may or may not be UNIX but are for the most part, compatible.
Lets put this in Gillette terms - if someone started marketing Gillette compatible razor blades and undercut Gillette's razor blade cost, that would be a problem for Gillette, correct?
It is my belief that is the same problem Sony was worried about with the "Other OS" option on the PS3 and why they ended that option, especially since there are people working on getting access to the RSX (in PC terms, the GPU) and working around the hypervisor (hardware virtualization that grants or restricts access to parts of the system) that prevents it. If too many PS3s were purchased and not enough games (which are their razor blades), it inevitably destroys their bottom line.
I personally have never bothered with running anything other than PS3 things (games and blu-ray) on my PS3, so no features were taken away from me. I really have no interest in installing Linux on it either - my 5 year old desktop PC that I use for backups has essentially the same era NV70 graphics as the PS3 and runs Linux.
Shame the programming API isn't anywhere near as elegant as the hardware. Most PS3 developers I know (I know a few - I used to work for a game developer) hate the programming API with a passion and would much rather work on 360.
Some people still say the PS3 is the best Blu-ray player out there, and is the main reason I got one two years ago. I have the PS3 remote, but I think my DVD player's remote is better designed. Both are far and away better than my old Philips remote, though - they basically threw away conventions and made their own, or designed the buttons by the layout of the board - what idiot designer puts giant skip chapter buttons next to play instead of fast forward and rewind, and makes FF/RW tiny buttons below those? I didn't use that remote long before buying a universal remote that didn't drive me nuts (and I would hope in 20 years they've cleaned up their act - the DVD player itself was fantastic and only replaced because it was too big - something like 16"w x 6"h and I replaced it with a 1" thick player that fit with my tuner in the cabinet).
Most people's brains can't process more than about 15FPS, so all you need is interpolation between frames and it should look smooth. That is why 120MHz-240MHz TVs seem to look better for fast action, but they still are getting the same 30FPS data and interpolating 3-6 extra frames in-between. I personally was able to see the difference between 60 and 120, but couldn't really tell a difference between 120 to 240 (maybe if the movement is really fast, but they were showing American football at Best Buy).
Not bad, but the lack of self-occlusion and self-shadowing is evident if you look for it (grout on brick in the still, for instance - this is obviously a flat texture without even normal mapping). This is why I get the "it's fake" vibe instantly when looking at it, though my brain hasn't processed exactly why.
or Blade Runner
But CG is getting there - I didn't hear many complaints about the CG in Avatar and the acting wasn't bad (my personal complaints are all plot related).
A lot of CG still suffers from technique flaws, and if you know the technique used, you can find the flaws and see that it is rendered. For instance, if you know a scene is ray traced, you know that ray tracing is better for specular lighting than diffuse and generally has hard shadows (good for outdoor scenes, but bad for indoor). Some of these can be eliminated by expensive (time-wise) hybrid techniques, but then you get to the "is it worth spending X amount of time on it or not for a tiny bit more realism" and for something like TV that answer is usually no, which is why I can pick out CG on shows like Sanctuary (which is almost all CG) and Terra Nova (which is a mix).
From a "realism" perspective, the original Star Wars films are about as scientific as a cartoon, which is why the genre is generally called space opera and not science fiction. I have no problem with George Lucas messing around with Star Wars, as he wants to keep the movies "current" and sell more toys - if he pisses off his adult fans in the process, so be it. The movies aren't targeted at adults, they are targeted at 12 year old boys (for the most part) and have to stay relevant for that market to keep the merchandise bandwagon going. This is all about capitalism and making billions of dollars at the expense of art, but in this rare case the artist is making the money - if you don't like that, stop buying his stuff (like I did 20+ years ago).
Sci-fi seems to have gone a couple different directions lately. First you've got man vs machine and man vs alien - this is almost always CGI driven schlock like Cowboys and Aliens, Battle:Los Angeles, Transformers, I am Number Four (haven't seen it, but if Michael Bay is involved it goes here), etc. Then you've got the mind benders like Moon, The Adjustment Bureau, and Inception. A genre that popped up in the last few years is "let's rip off ET" where you get Super 8 and Paul.
Here are some of my personal peeves I hope they avoid:
20th century medicine or earlier used 200+ years in the future (cancer is still a scourge, "he's dead Jim" insti-death, etc).
Troll 2 quality monsters
Giant spaceships hovering over cities (they would crush the city)
Creatures that behave like they're in a computer game with a bad AI
Groaner names for anything - I started hating Avatar when they first uttered "Unobtanium." - not unwatchably bad, but it is essentially a Michael Bay-like action movie with a hippie theme. Independence Day wasn't unwatchably bad, either, and that was the CG pinnacle of its time (it was an action movie with wafer thin characters and almost no plot, which is why I disliked it, but many of my friends thought it was the best movie, ever, and saw it 10+ times in the theater).
Tossing in impossible things just because CG can do it or some 1960s art showed it. Avatar's floating mountains, for instance, which is based on 1960s art (or 1970s at the latest). Or Terra Nova's dinosaurs that keep attacking as they are MACHINE GUNNED (these things have brains the size of a pea, yes, but so does a turkey, and they still feel pain).
Here are some issues I see as a problem in the future, and may be good sci-fi issues:
A society that doesn't age, has machines that clear their arteries, etc - death is rare and usually accidental, so how is population controlled (birth control? gladiator combat? suicide?)
A society that doesn't need to work. Maybe a bunch of capitalists run everything and everywhere else is a slum, or maybe there is a Star Trek like society, or maybe everyone owns a robot that works for them.
People needing technology to do their jobs.
Discovering life on another planet, but it is vastly different and possibly inferior to our own (so how do we deal with it? what do we do with it? if we found Egyptian society of 4000 years ago, would we make contact and be gods to them?)
People that no longer need to bear children (vat grown babies - and we already have artificial uterus's for sharks, so I think this is an imminent issue) - is it really immoral (I don't think so, but the Catholic church may feel different)? Does society become hedonistic? Do Jesus, Allah, and Buddha join forces on a murderous rampage to redeem humanity?
Cybernetics, though I think there are many issues ignored in sci-fi, like powering them, and I think people are attached to their human parts - augmentation is no big deal, but, say lopping off your arm for a cyber arm would be.
Growing replacement anything in a lab (limbs, eyes, pets, people, etc).
Here are some things I don't have a problem with, but may or may not be possible or may have limited potential:
Warp drives (some like time bubb
no. There is some unrealistic inane idea sci-Fi on TV though that panders to the ignorant masses. Terra Nova makes me groan as often or more often than Train does (I'm a lyrics guy, and my wife is not a lyrics gal - she LOVES Train because she ignores the inane groaner filled lyrics and just sings the choruses), and that takes effort.
and if you don't understand what I mean by groaner from Train, here's an example from the groaner filled "If It's Love":
early in the song there is a lyric about "husband and wife," so I assume the song is about a straight couple, and then this
"I wanna buy ya everything
Except cologne 'cause it's poison"
Colognes are a name for perfumes marketed to men... and yes I am aware there are some marketing gimmick colognes for women, but these are always labeled "women's cologne" and "women's" is not in the lyric.
and that is the only thinker in that song - any song that mentions "Mister Mister" and "remember Winger" gets some serious groans for bands I didn't like in the '80s that got popular God knows how. If he dropped Menudo into the mix, I'd probably throw up every time I heard this song.
they may be developing more slowly, but they break plugin compatibility with each release now, and they also say that pleasing corporate users by maintaining compatibility with stuff like the java plugin is not important at all. This decision doesn't just affect corporate users, though - I've stopped using Firefox at home because they broke my slingbox player twice now and I'm fed up with it. I switched to IE at home, and I hate IE with a passion (I'd use Chrome, but Chrome wasn't supported yet when I checked last - I just checked and as of Nov 17 it is supported, so time to make that switch).
Congratulations Firefox - you've managed to change me from biggest fan to I hate your f**king guts.
you haven't seen bad movies then...
Try a marathon of
Hobgoblins
Vampires vs Zombies
Sorority House Vampires from Hell
Zombies Gone Wild (which is the worst movie I've ever seen I think - and this plotless disaster had a huge budget compared to the next one, which is better...)
O.C. Babes and the Slasher of Zombietown
if you haven't gouged your eyes out, gone insane, or drank yourself unconscious by that point, throw in "best worst movie" Troll 2 or Biker Zombies from Detroit, which are bad on their own, but masterpieces compared to the rest of this trash - they are more Manos or Plan 9 From Outer Space bad, as in you can laugh at them instead of just groan in agony.
Instead of Russia and Latin America communists attacking the US like in the original Red Dawn they use North Korea, a country that couldn't pull it off because they just don't have the logistics to do it. China maybe, but North Korea by itself just is not happening, even if they do take over the south first. Their active army is too small (though they do have the largest reserve army in the world) and they just don't have enough air transports to do it in a timely manner.
The video game Homefront is based on a unified Korea dominated by the north invading the US, if that is what you're after. It came out in March, and one of the writers for Red Dawn was involved (John Milius) as I recall. I didn't play it, personally, I'm just pointing out that it essentially has been done.
Fortress America was Mexico invading from the south, Russia from the east, and China from the west, but it was heavily biased toward America and difficult to lose as them. The only time I ever remember playing America and losing I was rolling horrifically bad and the Russians rolling incredibly well. I think they averaged 9 or 10 units killed for every 1 I killed that game (I pretty much repelled the east and south fronts, but Russia rolled over half the map and won the game on their own).
Plus for a dirty bomb you'd ideally use something that tosses out a lot of gamma rays, and I believe RTGs are designed to slow radioactive decay and mostly emit alpha rays. They do still require shielding because they do emit high energy gamma rays, but nothing remotely close to what most people think of when they hear "nuclear reactor," which is most likely a pressurized water nuclear reactor (PWR).
I think the fear of the word "radiation" sometimes causes a panic and people don't realize that they are surrounded by radiation every day, whether from their cell phone, a granite kitchen counter, or the sun.