I bought it the day it came out, gave it one 1-hour session, then a 2-hour session and then removed it from my hard drive. I hated it that much. I never gave the patches a chance, even after I heard they helped immensely. The game was boring, tedious, and the most unfun waste of 3 hours I've ever had (well, ok, if you combine the dreadful games People Pong and Times of Lore you might get 3 hours, but only because I wanted Times of Lore to be fun and it wasn't) and I don't know what the fsck the developers were thinking.
Too bad MOO2 doesn't play on my current computers well (either the PC version or the mac version - I've got both). Maybe I need an emulator.
Ah, yes - just don't make the mistake I did - in college I made it all the way to the elemental plane of fire as a wizard without dying, then made the mistake of attempting to swap my ring of levitation for a ring of conflict without realizing I was standing over a lava square (and thus died instantly).
yeah, but you could always replace Verizon with, say Verizon's CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, and since he has the "right" to look at anyone's phone record for no reason whatsoever because he's CEO of the company, he could presume it's also his "right" to give that information to anyone he wants. The only exception might be if the "terms of use" prohibit sharing of private information such as conversations, which I would think would have to be true in some way (either by clause or law). Replace CEO with any privileged peon and it doesn't matter who does it as long as it's a person doing it.
Not that I condone them, or such an action. Bad Verizon. No free minutes!
some of this is philosophy differences - K-3D is trying to be more like Renderman(R) more than, say Studio Max - in other words, more suited for animators than game developers. You can see that by the lack of skeletal animation support, which is a necessity for most modern games because it's the basis for "rag-doll" style physics (among others). Midnight is probably also in that group, though I can barely tell the feature set due to lack of documentation. Art of Illusion seems to be more robust all around, having more features targeted towards game developers such as the aforementioned skeletal stuff, as well as uv unwrapping (albeit through a plug-in) and a number of features aimed at still-frame and animators. I haven't actually used AoI so I don't know how the rest of it stacks up against Blender, but to be quite honest, I never do base modeling in Blender, anyhow, because I'm one of those that think the interface is clunky and hard to use.
Oh, and AoI supports HDR lighting, so it supports multipass (because HDR requires multipass). How much multipass it supports other than that, I don't know. Many of your other points are completely valid. I personally can't stand modeling in Blender, but I do use it for skeletons and animation sequencing. I prefer to do my modeling in parametric CAD packages, just because that is my background and we have a Blender importer.
I have a similar situation, but I usually still have time for OSS because I trade sleep for dev time a couple days of the week. I also get a couple of hours because I don't need as much sleep as my wife, so technically it's not really trading except when I get so enrapt in the project that I lose track of time and realize I work in 3 hours. If I were doing the project because I was bored, I certainly wouldn't trade sleep for it - I do it because I'm fascinated by the subject matter, which is a far cry from my opinion of my work subject matter (like watching dirt grow).
After borrowing my niece (3) and nephew (1) for a weekend (niece is pretty good, but nephew is the embodiment of evil as far as trouble goes - if that kid isn't breaking into locked cabinets and guzzling poison by the time he's 2, I'd be amazed), I can see how children are a full time job, but once you get them to sleep through the night you can usually get some wiggle room in the evenings.
And as anyone who made it out of Econ 101 should know, there's more to the story. For example: Reduce supply of oil, and you increase demand, until it's no longer sustainable. At a certain point, more and more people simply stop using oil, because it's too expensive. Eventually, even the price might settle back, as either new sources of oil are found, or more and more things move to alternative forms of energy.
So, if they were to severely crack down on kiddie pr0n, pedophiles would probably move to lolicon or away from it altogether. And there are almost certainly fewer suppliers than users, so it should be easier to crack down on the suppliers. the problem with something like that is any "demander" can also be a supplier, as long as they got a supply from somewhere. It's more like a book than oil - with a book anyone can copy and reprint it until the last copy of the book is destroyed. The other option would be control the printing and copy media, but that infringes on other rights (in America, at least).
As far as I'm concerned, any failed suicide attempt is a "cry for help". If you're really trying, there are so many easy ways to kill yourself. Rig a hanging, shoot yourself in the head, take a kitchen knife and stab yourself in the throat, hard (lean on it, point towards you)... My friend's brother locked himself in a warehouse (I think), hung himself from a stepladder, rigged it so that it snapped his neck right away -- probably nice and clean, no pain. Because really, if they are still alive, they weren't really trying. Yeah - sometimes it's a "cry for help," other times it just is a screwup. I heard a story about a guy that tried to kill himself using the old carbon monoxide in the closed garage trick, apparently doing everything right to successfully do it, but the car ran out of gas sometime after he passed out and his wife found him (still alive) when she opened the garage in the morning. Is that a "cry for help" or just screwing up in a bad way? My sister-in-law's case is similar - had she cut a hairs-breadth deeper or at a slightly different angle, she would have bled to death in minutes from her wound - if that's a cry for help, its a pretty serious cry. If you mean by "cry for help" that it was an impulsive attempt vs a planned attempt, then I totally agree. My friend who shot himself in the head had bought the gun about a month before, likely planning it the whole time. Nobody except him knew about it and he never mentioned it when I saw him last a couple of weeks beforehand and he even made some future plans (we were gonna play paintball during midterm break - we did play, albeit without him as a memorial of sorts). If you could predict he was gonna kill himself, you're more psychic than I am. OTOH, if it were any of that group of friends, it would be him, so maybe I did secretly know.
The case you just described should not hold up in court (it's a setup). First of all, I was not caught with my pants down, the DVD player on, and a big wad of toilet paper in my hand - I could fight the charges for that in court today because the evidence is entirely circumstantial. I would expect the police to get a court order and set up surveillance if such were the case, not wily-nilly breaking down doors every time someone reported illegal activity (I mean, you're not reporting that you're watching me actively rape a hamster or anything that needs to be stopped immediately). If they did just break in and arrested me, I would insist it wasn't mine and ask for a lie detector test, and after it was done sue them for shoddy police work and false imprisonment. If I found such a stash in my house, even if it were a heap of blank DVDs I would call the police because someone obviously broke in and put them there.
My understanding is that the traces done by the recording industry against file sharers sometimes involve a court order trace from the ISP, which is what it should be - it should not be automated or voluntary by the ISP and the FBI or local police should be involved at this point. Even that does not prove guilt - someone needs to verify that the downloads aren't being redirected to either wireless or another IP (as a bot might do). If they can catch the guilty party red handed, all the better.
There is ALWAYS a cost in an illegal supply-demand scenario. The media cost and film/production/etc may be next to nothing but the risk of going to jail or paying a huge fine for viewing it has a real, tangible cost. It's more of a gambler's risk, but if nobody's willing to gamble, there's no sense in having dealers, right?
heh - it's simple - if I say X.0, X.1, X.2, X.3, X.4, or OS X I mean MacOS X (or if I further spell it out MacOS X or MacOSX). If I say X, X11, X11R6, X on Mac, XFree, or X.org (or XWindows), I mean XWindows.
yeah, I know MacOSX or MACOSX is not really "accurate," but it's a habit from needing to #define something in C and C++ source files for conditional compilation and using __MACOSX__ or MACOSX, which was something I stole, not started (I believe Metrowerks or MPW defined __MACOS__ but I'm not sure why __MACOSX__ is usually used instead of __MACOS_X__ for macro defines aside from programmers being lazy and its one less character to type).
The modern meaning I've heard is still along that line - basically "to take by force" (so more abduct than carry off) which makes a lot more sense in the context of "mind rape" meaning to steal thoughts or memories or "rape of [city]" meaning essentially plunder of that city.
Which brings to question what exactly was taken by force - this person's morality? First of all, a rape victim is forced into the situation and cannot get out of it - in virtual envs I've never heard of such a thing - you can always move away (unless maybe if there's body blocking and a gang is doing it?). Shutting off the computer or even the monitor or logging out are all ways to get out of such a situation - it's not like your avatar will end up pregnant or with Gonorrhea or a funny walk or some computer virus when you log on next. TFA makes a few more points along that line. Anyhow, wtf - next thing you know, Jack Thompson will be calling MMOs rape simulators.
I've not played a lot of MMOs, but every one I've played if I find someone annoying using some/hipthrust or/kneel emote I can just keep moving away and they don't bother me long. It'd be fun if one had a/groinkick or/bitchslap as retaliation for someone doing that (with appropriate reaction from the victim), but you know that won't likely happen because some tween will find it fun to do all the time. Anyhow, if they move to verbal, I just add them to my blocked list. I could see maybe if someone is stalking you or if there was some sort of "physical contact" abuse where some L400 char in WoW that says "Clothes off and kneel now or I PK you, noob," but as far as I know, nobody is doing that (or if they are, they're getting reported and banned). If that happened to me, I'd absolutely write down the character name and report it to the admins. Actually, I'd probably make PKing anyone with more than a handful of levels difference impossible (maybe unless you're evil - then I'd have a bounty on your head). If it became a persistent problem with L400s picking on noobs like that and nothing was done about it, I'd voice my opinion elsewhere, like an online petition, Slashdot, or whatever it takes to get the problem noticed.
I chatted with Ed a long time ago (email, I think) after several separate groups and individuals were all attempting to port OOo 1.0, including myself, which I believe was eventually abandoned due to data model incompatibility. I forget the exact details, but I think it was OSX's problem with weak binding (this is X.1 and X.2 we're talking about) and OOo using multiply defined symbols in their plugins and requiring dynamic weak binding. X didn't have that problem, so only the X version was released.
China and Russia sell pirated videos on the street corner and the police know about it, which is a problem. I've heard of both of them even selling videos recorded in US theaters with camcorders the day a movie is released. Both of these are a much bigger problem than going to your neighbor's house and ripping a few DVDs because someone is reaping huge profits off it and it's not the film creator or distributor - this is a much bigger issue to those vendors.
the US also makes an effort to hunt suppliers (the pirates or the hosts of the supplied goods). If the US started fining everyone they caught pirating anything, they might be able to put a curb on it, but just like drugs and prostitution, if they go after the supply and not the demand, it won't have much long term effect. As much as I hate to say it and as much as I loathe the RIAA and MPAA for cracking down on file sharers (and other reasons - esp. the RIAA), doing so probably curbs more illegal file sharing than shutting down file sharing sites.
I know a guy that got busted by the FBI for piracy (well, technically for operating a pirate BBS) and that put some serious fear in me and curbed my piracy, even though it probably shouldn't have - I was a peon in the whole scheme of things and I learned years later that the FBI botched the arrest, botched collecting evidence, and failed to identify or arrest any other key member. I think he got off with confiscated hardware and community service. Still, even with minimal punishment, fear is a powerful tool - probably better at enforcing the law than actually arresting people breaking those laws.
Having a sister-in-law that was sexually abused as a child (in the 1980s) to produce kiddie pr0n, and who is now suicidal and suffers constant anxiety, I'd say throw them all in jail, SPECIFICALLY the users. If you want to kill a problem, you have to control demand, not supply - reducing supply only increases demand, as anyone that has had Econ 101 should know (has stopping the supply of drugs or prostitutes ever worked?). Not that I don't think the suppliers should be strung up by their own intestines, and my father-in-law certainly deserved that, if not worse, but he did get jail time and psychological treatment. If the kids knew what they were doing and voluntarily did it, I wouldn't have a problem, but creating or viewing film of a child forced to have sex is wrong in so many ways. I have the same opinion of drugs - if you voluntarily want to do acid and know the risks, go ahead, but when you put other people at risk when you decide to drop 16 tabs all at once and then go joyriding in your dad's Porsche, you should go to jail for 6 lifetimes.
I can understand being desensitized, but you're distant from the subject matter and I think that makes a huge difference - standing over a bloody virtual corpse is NOT the same as the real thing. I wasn't really playing video games when Challenger blew up (I was pretty young), and I cheered and thought it was great. People dying didn't sink in until later when I got to know the astronauts through news, but it certainly never had the same impact as seeing real people dying or knowing someone that died. I didn't weep for the victims of the World Trade Center or Tsunami victims or anything like that, either, because I didn't know them. Those events are a far cry from a guy having a heart attack right in front of me at a shopping mall, and even though paramedics were there within minutes, it still was a complete shock to me. The event didn't even make the local news, and I didn't know the guy but he basically died in my arms and I was a serious wreck for several months. Another case - even though I never saw the body I was deeply impacted by a friend that blew his brains out with a.38 while he was in his last year of high school (I was in my first in college), and I was well desensitized to violent games by then.
Movies are a different beast - the ones that stick most vividly in my head are the ones like the guy being torn apart in Shawn of the Dead. For some reason the gore in that got to me, but much gorier horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or war movies like Hamburger Hill never do - heck I barely remember the movie. It really is how well you relate to a character, I think.
I can't imagine going into a public place and starting firing away with a gun at unarmed people - or even a mercy killing for someone that is dead anyway but begging for their life - I just couldn't do it. Heck, even when the main character in Robocop was basically mercy-killed I almost barfed the first time (later viewings I had no problems watching, but that scene always has disturbed me).
As far as that kid goes, his parents and sister were completely surprised and I'm able to completely relate with them. I've found out through my sister-in-law's troubles that unless the person is committed by a court order, it's almost impossible to get help since they usually won't voluntarily go. Even if they voluntarily commit themselves, most insurance companies cut them off at one month per year, even if they need help for longer (and at rates around $2000 a day it's a tough out-of-pocket expense). I can fully see family or friends not knowing, as well - my sister-in-law is two-faced - always smiling and happy when she visits us and always smiles and happiness around her husband and kid while secretly she's looking around the room for something to kill herself with. None of us knew when she attempted the first time - even her husband didn't have a clue until he saw blood running out from under the bath
I don't care so much about software patents as the duration that patents. In the USA, this is the same as hardware inventions, 17 years. 17 years was once very important - it gave small inventors time to shop their idea, ramp up manufacturing to build it and market it, and get their feet off the ground. In the software world 17 years is 5 or 6 generations of a product, over which time you own a complete monopoly - easily enough time to establish a practically indomitable monopoly.
what did you expect from something that evolved out of an easter egg from calling about:mozilla in the address line (which still works, but with less effect these days)? I admit, the mozilla project's mascot is pretty ugly.
Is it just me, or does this whole article looks like they pulled it from a single short list on Wikipedia, but throwing in the Adobe reference as a wildcard?
on old netscape-based browsers, it would also change the animated netscape to an animated dinosaur head.
Clarus and the Llama were jokes of sorts that evolved into mascots.
Most of the other icons were intentionally created for mascot reasons and don't really have excuses.
the platypus-thingy has horns and a pitchfork because Darwin has BSD roots and is really an old joke on daemons (creatures that performed actions that the gods couldn't be bothered with for good or evil, not the twisting of the word by Christians into embodiments of evil).
How the heck did any of these beat out Microsoft Bob's mascot? I always wanted to punch that nerdy smiley between the eyes, then punch the person that installed Bob on a school computer.
I don't think it hurts that much - if you choose to use extensions, you need to realize they might not be adopted as-is into the core API. It's like using beta software - it's cool and new, but all the kinks may not be worked out. The real problem is in ARB consists of a bunch of competitors that offer several independent solutions to the same problem, where with Microsoft, you get their solution and are stuck with it. Sometimes this results in long delays in implementing features, or what I can best describe as party infighting (e.g. why GLSL was developed even though nVidia already had a working shader language in Cg).
What is really hurting OpenGL right now, however, is just that DirectX beats it squarely performance-wise and developers know it. It therefore is only the first API looked at by developers that want to write cross-platform, but most developers are satisfied with just writing for the major market - Windows. Even though OpenGL will be months behind Microsoft on this front, they plan to address the performance problems with two releases later this year. The first, codenamed Longs Peak, is backward compatible, but adds an optimized Lean and Mean profile for performance at the expense of backward compatibility. Toward the end of 2007 Mt Evans is supposed to be released, and will, like DirectX 10, not be backwards compatible and only usable on the latest hardware (but also be highly optimized for it).
The blog site says the shaders are recompiled into assembly shaders, not DX9 specifically. Since everything on cards is distilled down to assembly, a DX10 card being fed the right assembly should be able to run this natively. Some posts indicate there is also a software handler or layer for DX10 functions on other cards, but these will likely run quite a bit slower than a DX10 card just because DX10 is a rewritten, non-backwards compatible API. Certainly anything that would work in DX9 would run at DX9 speeds or a slight bit worse. Running DX10 on a DX9 card could get into trouble with areas where the shaders do not fit - see this wiki entry for shader model differences.
This should be feasible, at least at the shader level, and as far as why it doesn't work in XP, let's face it - Microsoft is using the change in device model (specifically the Display Driver Model) as an excuse not to write more code to support the older OS and force a move to Vista. Apple does the exact same thing from version-to-version by being the OpenGL supplier and not upgrading the old version's OpenGL and nobody cries too much, or perhaps its because they're a little fish in a big ocean (for Windows, the graphics card manufacturer supplies the driver; on mac, Apple supplies it).
There is a difference between Apple and Microsoft, however - Apple has a cross-platform API and chose the one asked for by developers. Microsoft thinks so little of OpenGL, they plan to dump it 2 releases down the road (at least I read they deprecated it in Vista which is typically 2 releases before ceasing support). From what I hear, Aero even dumps to classic if you try to run any OpenGL app, including java3D, which means 90% of my work day I couldn't even use it. I understand why - Aero is a DX9 context and OGL is an OGL context in the hardware, and they're not compatible, but if the hardware manufacturers support both, you'd think they could come to a happy medium or transparently handling and compositing different contexts (in a windowed mode everything could be rendered to a surface, just like what Quartz Extreme does on mac). I suspect MS has some weight behind that not ever happening, however, possibly by intentional OS-design choices. I understand why MS forked off in the first place - for a long time the ARB moved like an indecisive, mentally retarded 7 headed, 7 legged tortoise with each head controlling 1 limb, but those days are long gone and it bugs me that they intentionally ignore/cripple what is sorta the industry standard API (since they dominate the industry, technically DX is the industry standard, which I know they've asserted at least once, but damn you google for not finding the link).
The article appeared to be slashdotted when I tried to follow the link, so I didn't get to RTFA.
He also says the Columbine killers were his heroes, which pretty much tells me they were his influence. The Columbine killers were likely influenced by postal rampages that started in the 1980s, but just changed the venue to a school.
It's also not the first time some whackjob serial killer has said he either was Jesus or was some kind of prophet. Take Jonestown founder Jim Jones, Branch Davidian David Koresh, or remorseless murderer Charles Manson.
Not to nitpick too much, but it really was the other way around - NASA uses metric, but parts of Lockheed (I believe the blame officially went to someone contracted by Lockheed) does not. Its also not Metric vs American, it's metric vs Imperial or English units, only the English have, for the most part, abandoned the old system. The US was on their way to doing the same in the late 1970s, but Ronald Reagan stopped the conversion in 1981. There are many people that think this was a great win for the country and converting would come at an incredible cost (and the belief that Europe was shoving it down everybody's throats), but I'm firmly in the other boat - this was the stupidest decision in the Reagan presidency and has cost the country over the long run (having to buy metric and Imperial tools to work on my cars and bikes has been my main expense). It's a lot like how the US didn't adopt GSM because cell companies had heavy investment in Analog and CDMA - it ends up making everything more expensive in the long run and you get less out of it because you are a minor market compared to the rest of the world. And to think the continental congress almost nationalized metric circa 1800 (it lost by 1 vote).
Still, that stuff was tested (several times, as I recall, though it was possibly correct during testing and had a bad software patch later) and they missed it, so chalk it off as human error.
For clarification/expansion on the original poster's information, the Quadro series is used for 3D accelerated graphics, just not so much games - it is nVidia's chipset for OpenGL acceleration aimed primarily at the Workstation/CAD market and is essentially nVidia's answer to the FireGL cards from ATI (AMD).
Seeing that Linux uses OpenGL for 3D, those cards probably offer better overall performance, at the price of being a bit behind the technology curve from a gamer perspective.
This thing would smoke my desktop and I work for a CAD company (though I am due for a refresh this year - hopefully something a lot better than the junk Quadro 440 I've got in there now - they buy dual 3GHz chips [fastest available at the time] and stick in a 440 [cheapest available at the time]... sigh...).
the worst day ever was the day AOL switched from Floppy Disks to CDs.
I used to archive everything on those free floppies. All the CDs were good for was cheap coasters and as "throwing stars" when my college roomies were drunk and crazy (which was FAR too often).
Monty Python References? It was way more than that. The games lampoon everything in pop culture - I remember references to Star Trek, Lassie, Mad Max, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr Who, Godzilla, WarGames, Terminator, the Bambi meets Gozilla short, The Goonies and even Robin Hood. Some of these I didn't even catch while playing the game, only much later when I saw the movie again - like The Goonies quote (when you pick up the coins at the bottom of the wishing well in Fallout 2).
I've heard some people say they wished Fallout had ditched the pop culture references and been a grittier game - those same references were the some of my favorite parts of the game. I think if you take them out, you're making some other game, not Fallout.
In a world of shooter gibs, bloody mess is a hackneyed joke, and not really funny anymore. I also know developers (myself included) that couldn't _tell_ a joke to save our lives, but can be incredibly funny in writing. I thought Fallout's written jokes and references were hilarious, such as one character ranting about the Bill Gates-like Myron and his "endless stream of prostitutes" followed by "typical project manager" - anyone that has a project manager probably pictures them at that instant, just because of the word 'typical' (and my manager at that time reminded me of Lumbergh from Office Space, which made it all the more funny).
I was going to link Mark Goodman's (creator of the Bilestoad) web page, but the link I had seems to not exist anymore. I remember Mark saying it meant 'axe death' or something like that.
and I didn't say it was a good game - I can list a large number of stinkers, if necessary (hopefully not). I brought that stinker up mostly as a joke. Bilestoad was at least somewhat interesting once you figured out (or read the manual for) what was going on, but it played slow and the controls sucked. In my teenage years I only opened a manual if it had a decoder in it - my opinion was if the game (or any application) was too hard to figure out without one, it wasn't worth my time.
but you can sell your WoW gold for real world currency, as many people do on eBay and other sites.
We don't need a new or special tax for this, however, just a modification of Use Tax laws to include services, which some states already have done. I mean, who cares if you buy WoW gold on e-Bay or a boat - in both cases you're spending real money and getting something back. Not that most people are going to pay Use Tax - I'm probably one of the few that has - I bought a little over $4000 worth of untaxed computer parts online one year to build PCs for family and friends. I could have saved about $350 by not reporting it, and probably would have gotten away with it. Heck, my brother does thousands of dollars of eBay transactions and never reports any of them.
speaking of David Hasselhoff, I predict a German buyer. If Uwe Boll did TV instead of movies, I'm sure it would be him.
Baywatch wasn't exactly targeted towards smart people, you know - it was more targeted towards the crowd that gets off work at their blue collar job and immediately downs a 24 pack of Bud while flipping through the TV for something good to watch (e.g. none o' dat CSI in-te-lektual crap)
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I bought it the day it came out, gave it one 1-hour session, then a 2-hour session and then removed it from my hard drive. I hated it that much. I never gave the patches a chance, even after I heard they helped immensely. The game was boring, tedious, and the most unfun waste of 3 hours I've ever had (well, ok, if you combine the dreadful games People Pong and Times of Lore you might get 3 hours, but only because I wanted Times of Lore to be fun and it wasn't) and I don't know what the fsck the developers were thinking.
Too bad MOO2 doesn't play on my current computers well (either the PC version or the mac version - I've got both). Maybe I need an emulator.
Ah, yes - just don't make the mistake I did - in college I made it all the way to the elemental plane of fire as a wizard without dying, then made the mistake of attempting to swap my ring of levitation for a ring of conflict without realizing I was standing over a lava square (and thus died instantly).
yeah, but you could always replace Verizon with, say Verizon's CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, and since he has the "right" to look at anyone's phone record for no reason whatsoever because he's CEO of the company, he could presume it's also his "right" to give that information to anyone he wants. The only exception might be if the "terms of use" prohibit sharing of private information such as conversations, which I would think would have to be true in some way (either by clause or law). Replace CEO with any privileged peon and it doesn't matter who does it as long as it's a person doing it.
Not that I condone them, or such an action. Bad Verizon. No free minutes!
some of this is philosophy differences - K-3D is trying to be more like Renderman(R) more than, say Studio Max - in other words, more suited for animators than game developers. You can see that by the lack of skeletal animation support, which is a necessity for most modern games because it's the basis for "rag-doll" style physics (among others). Midnight is probably also in that group, though I can barely tell the feature set due to lack of documentation. Art of Illusion seems to be more robust all around, having more features targeted towards game developers such as the aforementioned skeletal stuff, as well as uv unwrapping (albeit through a plug-in) and a number of features aimed at still-frame and animators. I haven't actually used AoI so I don't know how the rest of it stacks up against Blender, but to be quite honest, I never do base modeling in Blender, anyhow, because I'm one of those that think the interface is clunky and hard to use.
Oh, and AoI supports HDR lighting, so it supports multipass (because HDR requires multipass). How much multipass it supports other than that, I don't know. Many of your other points are completely valid. I personally can't stand modeling in Blender, but I do use it for skeletons and animation sequencing. I prefer to do my modeling in parametric CAD packages, just because that is my background and we have a Blender importer.
I have a similar situation, but I usually still have time for OSS because I trade sleep for dev time a couple days of the week. I also get a couple of hours because I don't need as much sleep as my wife, so technically it's not really trading except when I get so enrapt in the project that I lose track of time and realize I work in 3 hours. If I were doing the project because I was bored, I certainly wouldn't trade sleep for it - I do it because I'm fascinated by the subject matter, which is a far cry from my opinion of my work subject matter (like watching dirt grow).
After borrowing my niece (3) and nephew (1) for a weekend (niece is pretty good, but nephew is the embodiment of evil as far as trouble goes - if that kid isn't breaking into locked cabinets and guzzling poison by the time he's 2, I'd be amazed), I can see how children are a full time job, but once you get them to sleep through the night you can usually get some wiggle room in the evenings.
So, if they were to severely crack down on kiddie pr0n, pedophiles would probably move to lolicon or away from it altogether. And there are almost certainly fewer suppliers than users, so it should be easier to crack down on the suppliers. the problem with something like that is any "demander" can also be a supplier, as long as they got a supply from somewhere. It's more like a book than oil - with a book anyone can copy and reprint it until the last copy of the book is destroyed. The other option would be control the printing and copy media, but that infringes on other rights (in America, at least). As far as I'm concerned, any failed suicide attempt is a "cry for help". If you're really trying, there are so many easy ways to kill yourself. Rig a hanging, shoot yourself in the head, take a kitchen knife and stab yourself in the throat, hard (lean on it, point towards you)... My friend's brother locked himself in a warehouse (I think), hung himself from a stepladder, rigged it so that it snapped his neck right away -- probably nice and clean, no pain. Because really, if they are still alive, they weren't really trying. Yeah - sometimes it's a "cry for help," other times it just is a screwup. I heard a story about a guy that tried to kill himself using the old carbon monoxide in the closed garage trick, apparently doing everything right to successfully do it, but the car ran out of gas sometime after he passed out and his wife found him (still alive) when she opened the garage in the morning. Is that a "cry for help" or just screwing up in a bad way? My sister-in-law's case is similar - had she cut a hairs-breadth deeper or at a slightly different angle, she would have bled to death in minutes from her wound - if that's a cry for help, its a pretty serious cry. If you mean by "cry for help" that it was an impulsive attempt vs a planned attempt, then I totally agree. My friend who shot himself in the head had bought the gun about a month before, likely planning it the whole time. Nobody except him knew about it and he never mentioned it when I saw him last a couple of weeks beforehand and he even made some future plans (we were gonna play paintball during midterm break - we did play, albeit without him as a memorial of sorts). If you could predict he was gonna kill himself, you're more psychic than I am. OTOH, if it were any of that group of friends, it would be him, so maybe I did secretly know.
The case you just described should not hold up in court (it's a setup). First of all, I was not caught with my pants down, the DVD player on, and a big wad of toilet paper in my hand - I could fight the charges for that in court today because the evidence is entirely circumstantial. I would expect the police to get a court order and set up surveillance if such were the case, not wily-nilly breaking down doors every time someone reported illegal activity (I mean, you're not reporting that you're watching me actively rape a hamster or anything that needs to be stopped immediately). If they did just break in and arrested me, I would insist it wasn't mine and ask for a lie detector test, and after it was done sue them for shoddy police work and false imprisonment. If I found such a stash in my house, even if it were a heap of blank DVDs I would call the police because someone obviously broke in and put them there.
My understanding is that the traces done by the recording industry against file sharers sometimes involve a court order trace from the ISP, which is what it should be - it should not be automated or voluntary by the ISP and the FBI or local police should be involved at this point. Even that does not prove guilt - someone needs to verify that the downloads aren't being redirected to either wireless or another IP (as a bot might do). If they can catch the guilty party red handed, all the better.
There is ALWAYS a cost in an illegal supply-demand scenario. The media cost and film/production/etc may be next to nothing but the risk of going to jail or paying a huge fine for viewing it has a real, tangible cost. It's more of a gambler's risk, but if nobody's willing to gamble, there's no sense in having dealers, right?
heh - it's simple - if I say X.0, X.1, X.2, X.3, X.4, or OS X I mean MacOS X (or if I further spell it out MacOS X or MacOSX). If I say X, X11, X11R6, X on Mac, XFree, or X.org (or XWindows), I mean XWindows.
yeah, I know MacOSX or MACOSX is not really "accurate," but it's a habit from needing to #define something in C and C++ source files for conditional compilation and using __MACOSX__ or MACOSX, which was something I stole, not started (I believe Metrowerks or MPW defined __MACOS__ but I'm not sure why __MACOSX__ is usually used instead of __MACOS_X__ for macro defines aside from programmers being lazy and its one less character to type).
The modern meaning I've heard is still along that line - basically "to take by force" (so more abduct than carry off) which makes a lot more sense in the context of "mind rape" meaning to steal thoughts or memories or "rape of [city]" meaning essentially plunder of that city.
/hipthrust or /kneel emote I can just keep moving away and they don't bother me long. It'd be fun if one had a /groinkick or /bitchslap as retaliation for someone doing that (with appropriate reaction from the victim), but you know that won't likely happen because some tween will find it fun to do all the time. Anyhow, if they move to verbal, I just add them to my blocked list. I could see maybe if someone is stalking you or if there was some sort of "physical contact" abuse where some L400 char in WoW that says "Clothes off and kneel now or I PK you, noob," but as far as I know, nobody is doing that (or if they are, they're getting reported and banned). If that happened to me, I'd absolutely write down the character name and report it to the admins. Actually, I'd probably make PKing anyone with more than a handful of levels difference impossible (maybe unless you're evil - then I'd have a bounty on your head). If it became a persistent problem with L400s picking on noobs like that and nothing was done about it, I'd voice my opinion elsewhere, like an online petition, Slashdot, or whatever it takes to get the problem noticed.
Which brings to question what exactly was taken by force - this person's morality? First of all, a rape victim is forced into the situation and cannot get out of it - in virtual envs I've never heard of such a thing - you can always move away (unless maybe if there's body blocking and a gang is doing it?). Shutting off the computer or even the monitor or logging out are all ways to get out of such a situation - it's not like your avatar will end up pregnant or with Gonorrhea or a funny walk or some computer virus when you log on next. TFA makes a few more points along that line. Anyhow, wtf - next thing you know, Jack Thompson will be calling MMOs rape simulators.
I've not played a lot of MMOs, but every one I've played if I find someone annoying using some
the original dispute was over the license - see the faq and the license in dispute:h tml
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/faq.php
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/sissl_license.
I chatted with Ed a long time ago (email, I think) after several separate groups and individuals were all attempting to port OOo 1.0, including myself, which I believe was eventually abandoned due to data model incompatibility. I forget the exact details, but I think it was OSX's problem with weak binding (this is X.1 and X.2 we're talking about) and OOo using multiply defined symbols in their plugins and requiring dynamic weak binding. X didn't have that problem, so only the X version was released.
China and Russia sell pirated videos on the street corner and the police know about it, which is a problem. I've heard of both of them even selling videos recorded in US theaters with camcorders the day a movie is released. Both of these are a much bigger problem than going to your neighbor's house and ripping a few DVDs because someone is reaping huge profits off it and it's not the film creator or distributor - this is a much bigger issue to those vendors.
the US also makes an effort to hunt suppliers (the pirates or the hosts of the supplied goods). If the US started fining everyone they caught pirating anything, they might be able to put a curb on it, but just like drugs and prostitution, if they go after the supply and not the demand, it won't have much long term effect. As much as I hate to say it and as much as I loathe the RIAA and MPAA for cracking down on file sharers (and other reasons - esp. the RIAA), doing so probably curbs more illegal file sharing than shutting down file sharing sites.
I know a guy that got busted by the FBI for piracy (well, technically for operating a pirate BBS) and that put some serious fear in me and curbed my piracy, even though it probably shouldn't have - I was a peon in the whole scheme of things and I learned years later that the FBI botched the arrest, botched collecting evidence, and failed to identify or arrest any other key member. I think he got off with confiscated hardware and community service. Still, even with minimal punishment, fear is a powerful tool - probably better at enforcing the law than actually arresting people breaking those laws.
Having a sister-in-law that was sexually abused as a child (in the 1980s) to produce kiddie pr0n, and who is now suicidal and suffers constant anxiety, I'd say throw them all in jail, SPECIFICALLY the users. If you want to kill a problem, you have to control demand, not supply - reducing supply only increases demand, as anyone that has had Econ 101 should know (has stopping the supply of drugs or prostitutes ever worked?). Not that I don't think the suppliers should be strung up by their own intestines, and my father-in-law certainly deserved that, if not worse, but he did get jail time and psychological treatment. If the kids knew what they were doing and voluntarily did it, I wouldn't have a problem, but creating or viewing film of a child forced to have sex is wrong in so many ways. I have the same opinion of drugs - if you voluntarily want to do acid and know the risks, go ahead, but when you put other people at risk when you decide to drop 16 tabs all at once and then go joyriding in your dad's Porsche, you should go to jail for 6 lifetimes.
.38 while he was in his last year of high school (I was in my first in college), and I was well desensitized to violent games by then.
I can understand being desensitized, but you're distant from the subject matter and I think that makes a huge difference - standing over a bloody virtual corpse is NOT the same as the real thing. I wasn't really playing video games when Challenger blew up (I was pretty young), and I cheered and thought it was great. People dying didn't sink in until later when I got to know the astronauts through news, but it certainly never had the same impact as seeing real people dying or knowing someone that died. I didn't weep for the victims of the World Trade Center or Tsunami victims or anything like that, either, because I didn't know them. Those events are a far cry from a guy having a heart attack right in front of me at a shopping mall, and even though paramedics were there within minutes, it still was a complete shock to me. The event didn't even make the local news, and I didn't know the guy but he basically died in my arms and I was a serious wreck for several months. Another case - even though I never saw the body I was deeply impacted by a friend that blew his brains out with a
Movies are a different beast - the ones that stick most vividly in my head are the ones like the guy being torn apart in Shawn of the Dead. For some reason the gore in that got to me, but much gorier horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or war movies like Hamburger Hill never do - heck I barely remember the movie. It really is how well you relate to a character, I think.
I can't imagine going into a public place and starting firing away with a gun at unarmed people - or even a mercy killing for someone that is dead anyway but begging for their life - I just couldn't do it. Heck, even when the main character in Robocop was basically mercy-killed I almost barfed the first time (later viewings I had no problems watching, but that scene always has disturbed me).
As far as that kid goes, his parents and sister were completely surprised and I'm able to completely relate with them. I've found out through my sister-in-law's troubles that unless the person is committed by a court order, it's almost impossible to get help since they usually won't voluntarily go. Even if they voluntarily commit themselves, most insurance companies cut them off at one month per year, even if they need help for longer (and at rates around $2000 a day it's a tough out-of-pocket expense). I can fully see family or friends not knowing, as well - my sister-in-law is two-faced - always smiling and happy when she visits us and always smiles and happiness around her husband and kid while secretly she's looking around the room for something to kill herself with. None of us knew when she attempted the first time - even her husband didn't have a clue until he saw blood running out from under the bath
I don't care so much about software patents as the duration that patents. In the USA, this is the same as hardware inventions, 17 years. 17 years was once very important - it gave small inventors time to shop their idea, ramp up manufacturing to build it and market it, and get their feet off the ground. In the software world 17 years is 5 or 6 generations of a product, over which time you own a complete monopoly - easily enough time to establish a practically indomitable monopoly.
what did you expect from something that evolved out of an easter egg from calling
about:mozilla
in the address line (which still works, but with less effect these days)? I admit, the mozilla project's mascot is pretty ugly.
Is it just me, or does this whole article looks like they pulled it from a single short list on Wikipedia, but throwing in the Adobe reference as a wildcard?
on old netscape-based browsers, it would also change the animated netscape to an animated dinosaur head.
Clarus and the Llama were jokes of sorts that evolved into mascots.
Most of the other icons were intentionally created for mascot reasons and don't really have excuses.
the platypus-thingy has horns and a pitchfork because Darwin has BSD roots and is really an old joke on daemons (creatures that performed actions that the gods couldn't be bothered with for good or evil, not the twisting of the word by Christians into embodiments of evil).
How the heck did any of these beat out Microsoft Bob's mascot? I always wanted to punch that nerdy smiley between the eyes, then punch the person that installed Bob on a school computer.
I don't think it hurts that much - if you choose to use extensions, you need to realize they might not be adopted as-is into the core API. It's like using beta software - it's cool and new, but all the kinks may not be worked out. The real problem is in ARB consists of a bunch of competitors that offer several independent solutions to the same problem, where with Microsoft, you get their solution and are stuck with it. Sometimes this results in long delays in implementing features, or what I can best describe as party infighting (e.g. why GLSL was developed even though nVidia already had a working shader language in Cg).
What is really hurting OpenGL right now, however, is just that DirectX beats it squarely performance-wise and developers know it. It therefore is only the first API looked at by developers that want to write cross-platform, but most developers are satisfied with just writing for the major market - Windows. Even though OpenGL will be months behind Microsoft on this front, they plan to address the performance problems with two releases later this year. The first, codenamed Longs Peak, is backward compatible, but adds an optimized Lean and Mean profile for performance at the expense of backward compatibility. Toward the end of 2007 Mt Evans is supposed to be released, and will, like DirectX 10, not be backwards compatible and only usable on the latest hardware (but also be highly optimized for it).
The blog site says the shaders are recompiled into assembly shaders, not DX9 specifically. Since everything on cards is distilled down to assembly, a DX10 card being fed the right assembly should be able to run this natively. Some posts indicate there is also a software handler or layer for DX10 functions on other cards, but these will likely run quite a bit slower than a DX10 card just because DX10 is a rewritten, non-backwards compatible API. Certainly anything that would work in DX9 would run at DX9 speeds or a slight bit worse. Running DX10 on a DX9 card could get into trouble with areas where the shaders do not fit - see this wiki entry for shader model differences.
This should be feasible, at least at the shader level, and as far as why it doesn't work in XP, let's face it - Microsoft is using the change in device model (specifically the Display Driver Model) as an excuse not to write more code to support the older OS and force a move to Vista. Apple does the exact same thing from version-to-version by being the OpenGL supplier and not upgrading the old version's OpenGL and nobody cries too much, or perhaps its because they're a little fish in a big ocean (for Windows, the graphics card manufacturer supplies the driver; on mac, Apple supplies it).
There is a difference between Apple and Microsoft, however - Apple has a cross-platform API and chose the one asked for by developers. Microsoft thinks so little of OpenGL, they plan to dump it 2 releases down the road (at least I read they deprecated it in Vista which is typically 2 releases before ceasing support). From what I hear, Aero even dumps to classic if you try to run any OpenGL app, including java3D, which means 90% of my work day I couldn't even use it. I understand why - Aero is a DX9 context and OGL is an OGL context in the hardware, and they're not compatible, but if the hardware manufacturers support both, you'd think they could come to a happy medium or transparently handling and compositing different contexts (in a windowed mode everything could be rendered to a surface, just like what Quartz Extreme does on mac). I suspect MS has some weight behind that not ever happening, however, possibly by intentional OS-design choices. I understand why MS forked off in the first place - for a long time the ARB moved like an indecisive, mentally retarded 7 headed, 7 legged tortoise with each head controlling 1 limb, but those days are long gone and it bugs me that they intentionally ignore/cripple what is sorta the industry standard API (since they dominate the industry, technically DX is the industry standard, which I know they've asserted at least once, but damn you google for not finding the link).
The article appeared to be slashdotted when I tried to follow the link, so I didn't get to RTFA.
He also says the Columbine killers were his heroes, which pretty much tells me they were his influence. The Columbine killers were likely influenced by postal rampages that started in the 1980s, but just changed the venue to a school.
It's also not the first time some whackjob serial killer has said he either was Jesus or was some kind of prophet. Take Jonestown founder Jim Jones, Branch Davidian David Koresh, or remorseless murderer Charles Manson.
Not to nitpick too much, but it really was the other way around - NASA uses metric, but parts of Lockheed (I believe the blame officially went to someone contracted by Lockheed) does not. Its also not Metric vs American, it's metric vs Imperial or English units, only the English have, for the most part, abandoned the old system. The US was on their way to doing the same in the late 1970s, but Ronald Reagan stopped the conversion in 1981. There are many people that think this was a great win for the country and converting would come at an incredible cost (and the belief that Europe was shoving it down everybody's throats), but I'm firmly in the other boat - this was the stupidest decision in the Reagan presidency and has cost the country over the long run (having to buy metric and Imperial tools to work on my cars and bikes has been my main expense). It's a lot like how the US didn't adopt GSM because cell companies had heavy investment in Analog and CDMA - it ends up making everything more expensive in the long run and you get less out of it because you are a minor market compared to the rest of the world. And to think the continental congress almost nationalized metric circa 1800 (it lost by 1 vote).
Still, that stuff was tested (several times, as I recall, though it was possibly correct during testing and had a bad software patch later) and they missed it, so chalk it off as human error.
For clarification/expansion on the original poster's information, the Quadro series is used for 3D accelerated graphics, just not so much games - it is nVidia's chipset for OpenGL acceleration aimed primarily at the Workstation/CAD market and is essentially nVidia's answer to the FireGL cards from ATI (AMD).
Seeing that Linux uses OpenGL for 3D, those cards probably offer better overall performance, at the price of being a bit behind the technology curve from a gamer perspective.
This thing would smoke my desktop and I work for a CAD company (though I am due for a refresh this year - hopefully something a lot better than the junk Quadro 440 I've got in there now - they buy dual 3GHz chips [fastest available at the time] and stick in a 440 [cheapest available at the time]... sigh...).
the worst day ever was the day AOL switched from Floppy Disks to CDs.
I used to archive everything on those free floppies. All the CDs were good for was cheap coasters and as "throwing stars" when my college roomies were drunk and crazy (which was FAR too often).
Monty Python References? It was way more than that. The games lampoon everything in pop culture - I remember references to Star Trek, Lassie, Mad Max, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr Who, Godzilla, WarGames, Terminator, the Bambi meets Gozilla short, The Goonies and even Robin Hood. Some of these I didn't even catch while playing the game, only much later when I saw the movie again - like The Goonies quote (when you pick up the coins at the bottom of the wishing well in Fallout 2).
I've heard some people say they wished Fallout had ditched the pop culture references and been a grittier game - those same references were the some of my favorite parts of the game. I think if you take them out, you're making some other game, not Fallout.
In a world of shooter gibs, bloody mess is a hackneyed joke, and not really funny anymore. I also know developers (myself included) that couldn't _tell_ a joke to save our lives, but can be incredibly funny in writing. I thought Fallout's written jokes and references were hilarious, such as one character ranting about the Bill Gates-like Myron and his "endless stream of prostitutes" followed by "typical project manager" - anyone that has a project manager probably pictures them at that instant, just because of the word 'typical' (and my manager at that time reminded me of Lumbergh from Office Space, which made it all the more funny).
I was going to link Mark Goodman's (creator of the Bilestoad) web page, but the link I had seems to not exist anymore. I remember Mark saying it meant 'axe death' or something like that.
and I didn't say it was a good game - I can list a large number of stinkers, if necessary (hopefully not). I brought that stinker up mostly as a joke. Bilestoad was at least somewhat interesting once you figured out (or read the manual for) what was going on, but it played slow and the controls sucked. In my teenage years I only opened a manual if it had a decoder in it - my opinion was if the game (or any application) was too hard to figure out without one, it wasn't worth my time.
but you can sell your WoW gold for real world currency, as many people do on eBay and other sites.
We don't need a new or special tax for this, however, just a modification of Use Tax laws to include services, which some states already have done. I mean, who cares if you buy WoW gold on e-Bay or a boat - in both cases you're spending real money and getting something back. Not that most people are going to pay Use Tax - I'm probably one of the few that has - I bought a little over $4000 worth of untaxed computer parts online one year to build PCs for family and friends. I could have saved about $350 by not reporting it, and probably would have gotten away with it. Heck, my brother does thousands of dollars of eBay transactions and never reports any of them.
probably People Pong
:)
Yep... I'm a fountain of (useless) knowledge about 80's games
speaking of David Hasselhoff, I predict a German buyer. If Uwe Boll did TV instead of movies, I'm sure it would be him.
Baywatch wasn't exactly targeted towards smart people, you know - it was more targeted towards the crowd that gets off work at their blue collar job and immediately downs a 24 pack of Bud while flipping through the TV for something good to watch (e.g. none o' dat CSI in-te-lektual crap)