Well that is in beta, sounds looks like it was ported from the OpenGL version. It also doesn't address iPhone specific issues such as the event timer. Not that I know what state of release the iPhone version is in the article or even its source material, as I don't have any need of it or any desire to look it up.
funny - and due to bad editing on my part - I initially wrote it in and then removed it ^^
Re:I actually kind of miss the old combat system
on
Review: Mass Effect 2
·
· Score: 1
True to that, but I've found the RPG market as a whole is moving toward being interactive movies just as the adventure game market did before them. I've found ME2 tends to require more dedicated attention than most other RPGs due to the shooter aspects - I can't half ignore it like I can with Dragon Age: Origins.
The game suffers from the same problems I see in every bioware game 1) linear, on rails level design - there is NEVER two ways to get to the same place or complete the same objective. This has always been my main peeve with Bioware RPGs. 2) 'best setting' graphics tend to be about one generation behind the rest of the industry. 3) when they have mini-games, they tend to be repetitive and get old fast 4) ambushes - unavoidable, undetectable and completely surrounded. In other words, lame. 5) boring, predictable influence/romance chains. Haven't got to the ones in ME2 yet (in fact, I'll probably skip it since I imported a character in a romance), but DA:O didn't really change the general formula. Its always talk talk talk screw. How about, you know, having a date that turns into an adventure? Kidnapping? Variety?
That said, those are really minor quibbles - it isn't like gameplay is totally broken, and linear level design has its perks when trying to drive a story, which is usually a flaw in sandbox games like Fallout 3, aside from the many other issues I have with Bethesda games - terrible character development (and by that I mean the character, not the stats and stuff they own), bad model movement, boring repetitive quests, no emotional attachment to any characters (yes its a solo RPG, but you could, say, have friends... Amata was sort of a friend pre-game, but not really during the game and has almost zero character development). I don't even know why they let you model your character - what sex you are and what you look like pretty much has zero impact on the game whatsoever. Not that Fallout 3 is bad, but I feel only the first Gothic game got both Sandbox and social parts right (unfortunately, the combat and the sequels sucked).
When I had grammar in elementary through high school (maybe some schools didn't have it in the last 30-40 years, but mine certainly did, and stressed it), I was taught "it's" is always a contraction for "it is" and otherwise you should use its, so its fairly easy to know which to use once you know the rule. I usually just think "it is" instead of the contraction and then write or speak the contraction when I want that case. In fact, I practiced to never think in contractions that have ambiguity, so I always think they are, even if I say they're. I haven't mistaken their or there since about 8th grade either, though, so part of it may be rote and part may be due to context, as there means a place and their refers to personal ownership.
Actually, it may be possible to make an exception to the "it's" rule by personifying it and thus allowing the possessive, but the sentence I tried didn't look correct, so I'll let someone else try.
Cuz is the new ain't, and has been around since BBS-speak, if not before. There is no need for good grammar and spelling when you wanted to send a message or post then, just as there is no need for it now in IM and cell phone messaging now. The goal in is to send a message that the other person understands in as few keypresses as possible, not to, say, pad your resume or write an essay - essentially it's a form of shorthand. The challenge is to not let that creep into your writing when you do need to write an essay or resume.
First off, it's not a trilogy, unless you're Douglas Adams - their are at least FIVE books - Blue, Green, Orange, Red, and White. Possibly 6, but I don't remember if AGL ever came in hard copy (I've personally always used the online AGL and Cocoa reference).
The red book is the only real essential one. Some may say the Orange book as well, but I personally found NeHe tutorials and samples from other sites like nVidia helped me much more than the Orange book.
The blue is basically the man pages for all functions and pointless today (just go to Khronos and download the reference). I haven't opened my blue book since about 1996.
The green and white books are also pointless IMO, unless you really can't find sample code for them, since they cover XWindows and Windows non-portable pieces, such as setting up graphical contexts and other parameters and settings. In fact, I actually don't like how they do it, preferring more flexible parameter lists.
Well, I get a certain amount of schadenfreude when I see EDS get bad publicity because they basically wily-nily bought companies, destroyed their benefits, sucked any cash surplus out and fired half the workforce before cutting them loose so their stock didn't go junk. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience, and yes, I'm a bit resentful (how do you spin off a company the EDS way? Fire everyone and let the new company rehire - HR LOVED that one, btw). HP, I don't have any qualm against you aside from your crapware filled laptops and one year limited warranty.
That vented, I think every company has had at least one loosely defined specs created by marketing people who then promise an impossible date to meet even the loosest envisioning of those promises. I know I've seen them - too bad its usually way too late to change anything, but at least I can ask for clarifications before code is complete.
I know. It's like an advertisement for D&D. "Play Dungeons and Dragons! Meet cute girls! Spend your evenings with domineering sexy women DMs! Learn black magic and get that sourcebook you've always wanted!"
Funny, though - that isn't far from the truth from one group I played in - the (female) DM was wiccan, often dressed in tight leather pants (albeit mainly when her band played - usually a smock to gaming) and probably did teach spells, though I didn't really ask. The group was 3 female and 4 male, but since one of the guys was flaming homosexual and dressed as a tranny when he went for hookups, you could say it was 4 female and 3 male. Nobody was overweight - most of us subsisted on ramen, bread and eggs. I was still in a relationship at the time, so I didn't try to hook up (probably the reason I was invited - I didn't hit on the girls, lol).
Especially since the alternative seems to be "Become a Christian! Pray! Dress up! Hang around with older men and only a few depressed- or bored-looking people your own age! Burn books! Pray... again!"
watch the Devil cash in on Haitian souls! Get sodomized by Priests!^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Haved from Satan!
AFAIK, nobody has successfully gotten MacOSX running on VirtualBox unless the host is a mac. I've tried to create a hackintosh with it without success myself. If the host is a mac all versions of Windows and Linux run on it, and I believe Intel MacOS as well.
and huh? Microsoft's tactics were to announce the product and features years before they were released so people don't buy competing software, then release with half the features 2 years late. They also did dirty marketing like exclusive hardware/software ties (we'll give you a discount if you only bundle our products). It was very successful at killing off various competing DOSes and GUIs like GEM, which was FAR better than Windows at one point (until about 3.1, I couldn't stand Windows).
The secrecy-hype trick Apple learned early on from trade shows - the Disk ][ being a perfect early example (it literally was finished at a trade show). Sony had similar trade show tactics and are a much better comparison.
I beg to disagree - aside from drivers for some hardware, most hardware is compatible between macs and PCs and many UNIX tools either have been ported or could be ported fairly easily with a few exceptions, but in general another tool exists that is similar - generally, if it works on FreeBSD, it'll work on mac. All platforms have stupid users, and Linux is no exception - blame Ubuntu and EEE PCs. A lot of it is perspective, too - I HATE Ubuntu because it is a pain to set up and use as a developer. My brother LOVES Ubuntu because it is easy to set up and use from a user level. He also loves anything Apple and has the disposable income to buy anything Apple - I don't.
In many ways Apple supports standards better than Microsoft - OpenGL, OpenAL, kerberos, POSIX threads, Apache server all come standard, to name a few. Now name a few standards MS supports... lets see, off the top of my head, IPv4 and IPv6... damn, can't think of any others.
I'm not saying I don't have problems with Apple - I think they are overpriced, tend to have lingering developer-level bugs that consumers never see, tend to butt heads with standards (like C++ - not that Microsoft is any better), have historically been developer unfriendly (and their booting of iPhone apps wily-nily continues that).
I don't really have a problem with secrecy - to get a polished product, you need extra dev time and to get that you don't want to leak the product. Apple tends to be a bit extreme here, but they also have the same kind of crazy followers that Sony had in their betamax/walkman days, and Sony also had a legacy of secrecy.
I personally don't see a long term future with wrist watch computers, though the wrist may be an ok place to put the brains of the computer. Personally, I think eyeware/earware is the right direction, especially as minification of video circuitry gets better. It'd be nice to have some kind of hand apparatus to serve as a virtual keyboard, as well. The current state of most computer glasses is the resolution is terrible (often only 320x240 or 640x480), but you get a virtual 70-80" display - that would need to improve significantly.
Ultimately, I'd expect the glasses to be multipurpose - serve as corrective lenses (for nearsightedness, at least) - if the lenses needed to be opaque to put LCD/LED, cameras could display what you should see on the screen, sunglasses, light amplification glasses (e.g. for night driving), and a video display - even a heads up display - it could communicate with the car for info like speed and road conditions.
There is nothing new to Asus vaporware, but out of every five failures comes a great product. Some of their products are stillborn like the external video card that wasn't compatible with Vista's driver model, others are released but technical issues or poor adoption like the C90S upgradable laptop. Then they come out with a tiny notebook that runs x86 and create an industry.
Other companies that make innovative products like Apple had their flops too, but sometimes a flop drives a new market, like the Newton, other times they move into an existing market and fail, like the Pippin. Then out pops iTunes and iPod and iPhone and they're a market driver again.
Even Microsoft had its flops amongst their many hits (love em or hate em, you've gotta admit, they are very successful) - the MSX, and Bob to name two.
my previous employer had us change passwords monthly, they had to be a minimum of 8 characters and max of 20, had to contain at least one number, one special character (of 6 allowed), and one of each upper and lower case characters.
I personally thought it was a bit silly because the restrictions made it easier to guess (IMO), but the 3 tries before getting locked out pretty much kills any hacking of it, at least without social engineering.
password and Password were popular 20+ years ago - amazing people still use them. I miss the days when almost all passwords could be hacked with god, password, or admin (or anything else that stroked an admin's ego if I had to go beyond that).
Corporate does all the things you say. We were purchased and they want us to migrate to their policies and security, which includes per-machine keycard login, which really doesn't work well for teams like QA since it also forbids remote desktop and breaks all of our VMs (which are headless in a lab). I heard several million and 12 man-years of labor would be needed to get us to get the level of security they want, which isn't happening soon.
All games have a set of rules and mechanics, and that alone requires some thinking.
The material may not be particularly engaging, but all the games you mention involve pattern recognition and response. Studies have shown Tetris is mentally stimulating, but the same recognition/response in tetris could be applied to Pac Man (to a lesser extent) or, say, a Rubik's Cube. Memorization of the patterns and what response to use is essential to being good at the game.
In shooters and RTS's, players memorize maps and strategies - a player with good knowledge of maps and a good strategy will almost always defeat a player with poor knowledge of one or the other or both.
RPGs themselves have strategies and stories and often minigames, but incidentally I've found many of these are repetitive and not terribly creative. I've said before that the next time I see Tower of Hanoi in an RPG, I throw the game away - I'm sticking to that. My biggest gripe about RPGs is they tend to either be heavily on rails (Bioware, I'm wagging my finger at you - having to run around a pile of rubble I can see over is silly, and having to complete the map to get there is even sillier - the preset, nearly constant ambushes are my second biggest grudge) or have non-engaging characters and plot (Bethesda, I'm wagging my finger at you). The last RPG I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, characters and environment for was Gothic - plodding through the terrible combat was the hardest part. Its too bad they really didn't develop it from there - Gothic 2, 3, and the spiritual successor Risen all seem rather blah to me and I didn't finish any of them (heck, I didn't even finish the Demo of Risen, and didn't make it far in G3 before the constant 10 on 1 wolf pack battles got me frustrated with it).
Talk and surf can be done on any GSM network, not just AT&T - lack of it on Verizon networks is a byproduct of CDMA technology. CDMA itself has bad spectral efficiency and is essentially being killed off in the 3GPP and 4G, so I expect Verizon and Sprint will need to extend or replace it. That said, AT&T's data rates are pretty shoddy according to my brother - he likes T-Mobile better (I don't have a data plan, so I have no idea).
screw key management trust - MANAGEMENT (as in corporate management) trust is essential. My management forced blocks on ssh and sftp because reverse sessions were deemed a threat for corporate data espionage (not that I can't, say, insert a USB fob and do the same, lol). Whereas before the block I could, say, run xterms on my home machine over an encrypted channel and work at home on my Linux box, I can now only use a Windows machine using VPN software (and incidentally, upper management wants to kill that, but they've had a hard time doing it because middle management does a lot of work from home).
Not to mention there is certainly not a 1:1 gain in speed from doubling the bandwidth. Double bandwidth is nice for, say, copying blocks of memory, but it doesn't help for performing operations, and sometimes added latencies can make it under perform slower memory - early DD3 for instance, had CAS latencies double or more of DDR2 without a huge gain in bandwidth (800 to 1066) and often could be beaten by much cheaper DDR2. Without a more comprehensive analysis it is hard to say which is faster.
my first thought was I'd need to care about VSYNC and HSYNC again. It wouldn't need to be as big as old CRTs - those use an electron gun and electromagnets to move the beam - all they need is some way for the laser to target each pixel on the phosphor at a suitable speed.
Not on any of my computers... they all have buttons in front, though to shut them down without, say, shutting down through Windows you need to hold the button several seconds (and Windows and Linux don't really like that much, so better to use shutdown). One of my boxes does have a power supply switch, as well, which is useful because the computer leeches power if it isn't switched off at the power supply (like ethernet).
As for data network efficiency, they could stop using ATM for data packets over fiber, which is only 60% efficient (the rest is header - its optimized for voice traffic) and probably save 25-30% of waste power and increase efficiency right there (TCP/IP, for instance, is something like 88% efficient for a 1500 byte packet). As I recall, CDMA used for cell phones is terribly inefficient for phone traffic, much less data (supposedly 4G networks are going to help). A back-to-front efficiency analysis probably does come to 1000% in some cases.
I don't remember the book that well (I read it years ago), but weren't the main models in the book Nexus Six?
I personally would be flattered if it were my book - I think a tribute like that would be good for marketing, as well, but maybe the lawsuit is for more publicity. And it definitely isn't as obvious as, say, trademarking the Penfield Mood Organ (a device where people can dial in the mood they want...), which is one of many PKD oddities (and some of his books have some really messed up things in them - way too many drugs involved, and its obvious).
But when was the last time you had to write a proof? The last time I did was in a class called partial multivariable differential equations, and I've only used partial multivariable differential equations once and never written a proof again - on a voluntary project (open source) to write a fluid dynamics simulation (which was a patent nightmare - it eventually was abandoned because all the obvious methods were patented, though the software version of two of those expire this year... yes, there are patents for graphical hardware versions of those exact methods, and yes, plural - it seems the patent office is clueless that they have multiple versions of the same thing).
My vectors and matrices class - similar to the second one - essentially covered Euclidian space, Euler angles and Gimbal lock, matrix analysis and breakdown (reduction), determinants, inverse matrices, eigenvalues (scale, rotation, and shear matrices used in computer graphics), and brushed on quaternions. These are all very important in the computer graphics world, but not terribly important otherwise. I personally got a lot out of it, as I like to toy with 3D engines, but YMWV.
What they are predicting is basically stable micro black holes (quantum black holes). A traditional black hole is a singularity (a point of infinite mass and zero volume) surrounded by large mass with volume. A stable micro black hole would be a singularity without the additional mass.
I am not a physicist, either, but the chances of stable micro black holes seems infinitesimal, at least at LHC energies - cosmic rays would have doomed us already if such a scenario were true.
Slashdot Mirror
Well that is in beta, sounds looks like it was ported from the OpenGL version. It also doesn't address iPhone specific issues such as the event timer. Not that I know what state of release the iPhone version is in the article or even its source material, as I don't have any need of it or any desire to look it up.
funny - and due to bad editing on my part - I initially wrote it in and then removed it ^^
True to that, but I've found the RPG market as a whole is moving toward being interactive movies just as the adventure game market did before them. I've found ME2 tends to require more dedicated attention than most other RPGs due to the shooter aspects - I can't half ignore it like I can with Dragon Age: Origins.
The game suffers from the same problems I see in every bioware game
1) linear, on rails level design - there is NEVER two ways to get to the same place or complete the same objective. This has always been my main peeve with Bioware RPGs.
2) 'best setting' graphics tend to be about one generation behind the rest of the industry.
3) when they have mini-games, they tend to be repetitive and get old fast
4) ambushes - unavoidable, undetectable and completely surrounded. In other words, lame.
5) boring, predictable influence/romance chains. Haven't got to the ones in ME2 yet (in fact, I'll probably skip it since I imported a character in a romance), but DA:O didn't really change the general formula. Its always talk talk talk screw. How about, you know, having a date that turns into an adventure? Kidnapping? Variety?
That said, those are really minor quibbles - it isn't like gameplay is totally broken, and linear level design has its perks when trying to drive a story, which is usually a flaw in sandbox games like Fallout 3, aside from the many other issues I have with Bethesda games - terrible character development (and by that I mean the character, not the stats and stuff they own), bad model movement, boring repetitive quests, no emotional attachment to any characters (yes its a solo RPG, but you could, say, have friends... Amata was sort of a friend pre-game, but not really during the game and has almost zero character development). I don't even know why they let you model your character - what sex you are and what you look like pretty much has zero impact on the game whatsoever. Not that Fallout 3 is bad, but I feel only the first Gothic game got both Sandbox and social parts right (unfortunately, the combat and the sequels sucked).
When I had grammar in elementary through high school (maybe some schools didn't have it in the last 30-40 years, but mine certainly did, and stressed it), I was taught "it's" is always a contraction for "it is" and otherwise you should use its, so its fairly easy to know which to use once you know the rule. I usually just think "it is" instead of the contraction and then write or speak the contraction when I want that case. In fact, I practiced to never think in contractions that have ambiguity, so I always think they are, even if I say they're. I haven't mistaken their or there since about 8th grade either, though, so part of it may be rote and part may be due to context, as there means a place and their refers to personal ownership.
Actually, it may be possible to make an exception to the "it's" rule by personifying it and thus allowing the possessive, but the sentence I tried didn't look correct, so I'll let someone else try.
Cuz is the new ain't, and has been around since BBS-speak, if not before. There is no need for good grammar and spelling when you wanted to send a message or post then, just as there is no need for it now in IM and cell phone messaging now. The goal in is to send a message that the other person understands in as few keypresses as possible, not to, say, pad your resume or write an essay - essentially it's a form of shorthand. The challenge is to not let that creep into your writing when you do need to write an essay or resume.
Except from what I read, the tablet runs the iPhone OS, so would use OpenGL ES, which is a subset of OpenGL for embedded systems.
First off, it's not a trilogy, unless you're Douglas Adams - their are at least FIVE books - Blue, Green, Orange, Red, and White. Possibly 6, but I don't remember if AGL ever came in hard copy (I've personally always used the online AGL and Cocoa reference).
The red book is the only real essential one. Some may say the Orange book as well, but I personally found NeHe tutorials and samples from other sites like nVidia helped me much more than the Orange book.
The blue is basically the man pages for all functions and pointless today (just go to Khronos and download the reference). I haven't opened my blue book since about 1996.
The green and white books are also pointless IMO, unless you really can't find sample code for them, since they cover XWindows and Windows non-portable pieces, such as setting up graphical contexts and other parameters and settings. In fact, I actually don't like how they do it, preferring more flexible parameter lists.
Well, I get a certain amount of schadenfreude when I see EDS get bad publicity because they basically wily-nily bought companies, destroyed their benefits, sucked any cash surplus out and fired half the workforce before cutting them loose so their stock didn't go junk. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience, and yes, I'm a bit resentful (how do you spin off a company the EDS way? Fire everyone and let the new company rehire - HR LOVED that one, btw). HP, I don't have any qualm against you aside from your crapware filled laptops and one year limited warranty.
That vented, I think every company has had at least one loosely defined specs created by marketing people who then promise an impossible date to meet even the loosest envisioning of those promises. I know I've seen them - too bad its usually way too late to change anything, but at least I can ask for clarifications before code is complete.
Funny, though - that isn't far from the truth from one group I played in - the (female) DM was wiccan, often dressed in tight leather pants (albeit mainly when her band played - usually a smock to gaming) and probably did teach spells, though I didn't really ask. The group was 3 female and 4 male, but since one of the guys was flaming homosexual and dressed as a tranny when he went for hookups, you could say it was 4 female and 3 male. Nobody was overweight - most of us subsisted on ramen, bread and eggs. I was still in a relationship at the time, so I didn't try to hook up (probably the reason I was invited - I didn't hit on the girls, lol).
watch the Devil cash in on Haitian souls! Get sodomized by Priests!^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Haved from Satan!
AFAIK, nobody has successfully gotten MacOSX running on VirtualBox unless the host is a mac. I've tried to create a hackintosh with it without success myself. If the host is a mac all versions of Windows and Linux run on it, and I believe Intel MacOS as well.
and huh? Microsoft's tactics were to announce the product and features years before they were released so people don't buy competing software, then release with half the features 2 years late. They also did dirty marketing like exclusive hardware/software ties (we'll give you a discount if you only bundle our products). It was very successful at killing off various competing DOSes and GUIs like GEM, which was FAR better than Windows at one point (until about 3.1, I couldn't stand Windows).
The secrecy-hype trick Apple learned early on from trade shows - the Disk ][ being a perfect early example (it literally was finished at a trade show). Sony had similar trade show tactics and are a much better comparison.
I beg to disagree - aside from drivers for some hardware, most hardware is compatible between macs and PCs and many UNIX tools either have been ported or could be ported fairly easily with a few exceptions, but in general another tool exists that is similar - generally, if it works on FreeBSD, it'll work on mac. All platforms have stupid users, and Linux is no exception - blame Ubuntu and EEE PCs. A lot of it is perspective, too - I HATE Ubuntu because it is a pain to set up and use as a developer. My brother LOVES Ubuntu because it is easy to set up and use from a user level. He also loves anything Apple and has the disposable income to buy anything Apple - I don't.
In many ways Apple supports standards better than Microsoft - OpenGL, OpenAL, kerberos, POSIX threads, Apache server all come standard, to name a few. Now name a few standards MS supports... lets see, off the top of my head, IPv4 and IPv6... damn, can't think of any others.
I'm not saying I don't have problems with Apple - I think they are overpriced, tend to have lingering developer-level bugs that consumers never see, tend to butt heads with standards (like C++ - not that Microsoft is any better), have historically been developer unfriendly (and their booting of iPhone apps wily-nily continues that).
I don't really have a problem with secrecy - to get a polished product, you need extra dev time and to get that you don't want to leak the product. Apple tends to be a bit extreme here, but they also have the same kind of crazy followers that Sony had in their betamax/walkman days, and Sony also had a legacy of secrecy.
I personally don't see a long term future with wrist watch computers, though the wrist may be an ok place to put the brains of the computer. Personally, I think eyeware/earware is the right direction, especially as minification of video circuitry gets better. It'd be nice to have some kind of hand apparatus to serve as a virtual keyboard, as well. The current state of most computer glasses is the resolution is terrible (often only 320x240 or 640x480), but you get a virtual 70-80" display - that would need to improve significantly.
Ultimately, I'd expect the glasses to be multipurpose - serve as corrective lenses (for nearsightedness, at least) - if the lenses needed to be opaque to put LCD/LED, cameras could display what you should see on the screen, sunglasses, light amplification glasses (e.g. for night driving), and a video display - even a heads up display - it could communicate with the car for info like speed and road conditions.
There is nothing new to Asus vaporware, but out of every five failures comes a great product. Some of their products are stillborn like the external video card that wasn't compatible with Vista's driver model, others are released but technical issues or poor adoption like the C90S upgradable laptop. Then they come out with a tiny notebook that runs x86 and create an industry.
Other companies that make innovative products like Apple had their flops too, but sometimes a flop drives a new market, like the Newton, other times they move into an existing market and fail, like the Pippin. Then out pops iTunes and iPod and iPhone and they're a market driver again.
Even Microsoft had its flops amongst their many hits (love em or hate em, you've gotta admit, they are very successful) - the MSX, and Bob to name two.
my previous employer had us change passwords monthly, they had to be a minimum of 8 characters and max of 20, had to contain at least one number, one special character (of 6 allowed), and one of each upper and lower case characters.
I personally thought it was a bit silly because the restrictions made it easier to guess (IMO), but the 3 tries before getting locked out pretty much kills any hacking of it, at least without social engineering.
password and Password were popular 20+ years ago - amazing people still use them. I miss the days when almost all passwords could be hacked with god, password, or admin (or anything else that stroked an admin's ego if I had to go beyond that).
Corporate does all the things you say. We were purchased and they want us to migrate to their policies and security, which includes per-machine keycard login, which really doesn't work well for teams like QA since it also forbids remote desktop and breaks all of our VMs (which are headless in a lab). I heard several million and 12 man-years of labor would be needed to get us to get the level of security they want, which isn't happening soon.
All games have a set of rules and mechanics, and that alone requires some thinking.
The material may not be particularly engaging, but all the games you mention involve pattern recognition and response. Studies have shown Tetris is mentally stimulating, but the same recognition/response in tetris could be applied to Pac Man (to a lesser extent) or, say, a Rubik's Cube. Memorization of the patterns and what response to use is essential to being good at the game.
In shooters and RTS's, players memorize maps and strategies - a player with good knowledge of maps and a good strategy will almost always defeat a player with poor knowledge of one or the other or both.
RPGs themselves have strategies and stories and often minigames, but incidentally I've found many of these are repetitive and not terribly creative. I've said before that the next time I see Tower of Hanoi in an RPG, I throw the game away - I'm sticking to that. My biggest gripe about RPGs is they tend to either be heavily on rails (Bioware, I'm wagging my finger at you - having to run around a pile of rubble I can see over is silly, and having to complete the map to get there is even sillier - the preset, nearly constant ambushes are my second biggest grudge) or have non-engaging characters and plot (Bethesda, I'm wagging my finger at you). The last RPG I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, characters and environment for was Gothic - plodding through the terrible combat was the hardest part. Its too bad they really didn't develop it from there - Gothic 2, 3, and the spiritual successor Risen all seem rather blah to me and I didn't finish any of them (heck, I didn't even finish the Demo of Risen, and didn't make it far in G3 before the constant 10 on 1 wolf pack battles got me frustrated with it).
Talk and surf can be done on any GSM network, not just AT&T - lack of it on Verizon networks is a byproduct of CDMA technology. CDMA itself has bad spectral efficiency and is essentially being killed off in the 3GPP and 4G, so I expect Verizon and Sprint will need to extend or replace it. That said, AT&T's data rates are pretty shoddy according to my brother - he likes T-Mobile better (I don't have a data plan, so I have no idea).
screw key management trust - MANAGEMENT (as in corporate management) trust is essential. My management forced blocks on ssh and sftp because reverse sessions were deemed a threat for corporate data espionage (not that I can't, say, insert a USB fob and do the same, lol). Whereas before the block I could, say, run xterms on my home machine over an encrypted channel and work at home on my Linux box, I can now only use a Windows machine using VPN software (and incidentally, upper management wants to kill that, but they've had a hard time doing it because middle management does a lot of work from home).
Not to mention there is certainly not a 1:1 gain in speed from doubling the bandwidth. Double bandwidth is nice for, say, copying blocks of memory, but it doesn't help for performing operations, and sometimes added latencies can make it under perform slower memory - early DD3 for instance, had CAS latencies double or more of DDR2 without a huge gain in bandwidth (800 to 1066) and often could be beaten by much cheaper DDR2. Without a more comprehensive analysis it is hard to say which is faster.
my first thought was I'd need to care about VSYNC and HSYNC again. It wouldn't need to be as big as old CRTs - those use an electron gun and electromagnets to move the beam - all they need is some way for the laser to target each pixel on the phosphor at a suitable speed.
Not on any of my computers... they all have buttons in front, though to shut them down without, say, shutting down through Windows you need to hold the button several seconds (and Windows and Linux don't really like that much, so better to use shutdown). One of my boxes does have a power supply switch, as well, which is useful because the computer leeches power if it isn't switched off at the power supply (like ethernet).
As for data network efficiency, they could stop using ATM for data packets over fiber, which is only 60% efficient (the rest is header - its optimized for voice traffic) and probably save 25-30% of waste power and increase efficiency right there (TCP/IP, for instance, is something like 88% efficient for a 1500 byte packet). As I recall, CDMA used for cell phones is terribly inefficient for phone traffic, much less data (supposedly 4G networks are going to help). A back-to-front efficiency analysis probably does come to 1000% in some cases.
I don't remember the book that well (I read it years ago), but weren't the main models in the book Nexus Six?
I personally would be flattered if it were my book - I think a tribute like that would be good for marketing, as well, but maybe the lawsuit is for more publicity. And it definitely isn't as obvious as, say, trademarking the Penfield Mood Organ (a device where people can dial in the mood they want...), which is one of many PKD oddities (and some of his books have some really messed up things in them - way too many drugs involved, and its obvious).
But when was the last time you had to write a proof? The last time I did was in a class called partial multivariable differential equations, and I've only used partial multivariable differential equations once and never written a proof again - on a voluntary project (open source) to write a fluid dynamics simulation (which was a patent nightmare - it eventually was abandoned because all the obvious methods were patented, though the software version of two of those expire this year... yes, there are patents for graphical hardware versions of those exact methods, and yes, plural - it seems the patent office is clueless that they have multiple versions of the same thing).
My vectors and matrices class - similar to the second one - essentially covered Euclidian space, Euler angles and Gimbal lock, matrix analysis and breakdown (reduction), determinants, inverse matrices, eigenvalues (scale, rotation, and shear matrices used in computer graphics), and brushed on quaternions. These are all very important in the computer graphics world, but not terribly important otherwise. I personally got a lot out of it, as I like to toy with 3D engines, but YMWV.
What they are predicting is basically stable micro black holes (quantum black holes). A traditional black hole is a singularity (a point of infinite mass and zero volume) surrounded by large mass with volume. A stable micro black hole would be a singularity without the additional mass.
I am not a physicist, either, but the chances of stable micro black holes seems infinitesimal, at least at LHC energies - cosmic rays would have doomed us already if such a scenario were true.
we've been fighting the little blue bastards since 1983.