If regulatory inconsistency is amusing to you then you've got an incredible amount of entertainment at your fingertips. Sorry some government bureaucrat feels the need to protect us all from negligently swallowing magnets, you seem to have described a lovely example of unnecessary restrictions.
According to Miller, had smart gun technology been available to Nancy Lanza, she could have programmed her guns so that only her fingerprint could have activated them; she could have enabled her son to shoot them at a firing range and disabled them upon returning home, or she could have enabled them for her son to use all the time, Miller said.
"So without the technology, we went from zero percent chance of preventing the shootings to having the technology and a 66% chance of preventing it," Miller said. "Those are much better odds."
Wow. How...what...really? "There's three scenarios related to this event I can think of in my head right now and two of them would be better ergo 66% chance of improvement?"
When I walk outside I can either be hit by lightning or not be hit by lightning, so 50% chance right? What the fuck?
No entanglement phenomenon has ever been shown (or really believed) to be capable of transmitting information faster than light. I promise you'll see it right there in the Slashdot headline if a decent experiment ever seems to show any kind of FTL information transfer.
Efficient real time rendering is a pretty interesting subject from my nerd perspective and I for one hope that games companies continue to spend some time and money on it even though it isn't the most important factor in making a game fun.
I noticed that the video just describes gold as being ideal in past millennia for carrying around in one's pocket and minting into coins, which seems like a pretty ridiculous reason for declaring it to be "real money." Paper fiat currency is even better for carrying around, so by this metric it's clearly superior now that we have printing presses.
Right? Or is it possible that the video is just a pop historical discussion irrelevant to your point?
This mod has been around for years (with public releases)...if anyone at Sony was even occasionally looking for this sort of thing they should have found it a long time ago. Attention like this probably doesn't help the odds but it isn't like they developed the whole thing in secret and just dropped this release as a shocker.
It's amazing what a difference the time makes in slashdot's opinions on this issue. There is no homogenous American "gun culture." I collect and shoot historic firearms because I find them fascinating and I hugely enjoy being able to restore and preserve them. However, no one else in my family owns any firearms and I grew up with parents who were quite opposed to the idea of gun ownership in general. I think you assume that everyone in the US owns guns because of some sort of derailed-train tradition with no reasoning behind it besides "my Dad owned guns..."
The fact is that many people responsibly own firearms for both sporting uses and self defense. Guns are absolutely misused at times, but the irresponsibility of some few is not in any way an acceptable reason to strip me of my right to have firearms and use them for whatever legal purpose I desire.
Note the fact that the authors enumerate extensive statistics and constantly reiterate that they are surprised to report that, contrary to popular opinion, there exists no favorable correlation between limits on gun ownership and a reduction in violent crime.
I have no intent to convert you or the many posters in this thread who seem to share your perspective into gun lovers, but I would greatly appreciate even a moment of consideration before emotionally founded kneejerk responses that accuse all Americans of being uncivilized morons who need a strong government to take away anything they might hurt themselves with. Thanks.
If it had been something people wanted to see like Avatar or Harry Potter, the early leak would not have mattered.
Shh, I don't think the studios need any further encouragement to continue pumping out movies with more "Ooh" and less "Hmm." I saw The Hurt Locker in theaters and while it wasn't my favorite of all time, I was certainly pleased that it didn't treat me like a complete moron (as opposed to, say, Iron Man 2).
1: Most guns in Mexico come from central america or from the mexican givernment/military. See those pictures of the drug lords with H&K G3 rifles or MP5 submachine guns? Yeah, those couldn't have come from America. We can't get those here. (Well, we can, but they're 30k or more)
2. Very few americans own M-16's. As in less than a thousand most likely. Why? Because the process of purchasing a fully automatic firearm is such a pain that most people don't go through with it. Do you want the ATF to have a sheet of paper where you signed a waiver allowing them to walk into your home at any point, on ant day, without notice to search your home? Neither do most of us, and that's EXACTLY what you have to do to own a fully automatic firearm in this country.
Just to clarify, very few Americans own fully automatic weapons because it has been impossible to legally register one for civilian ownership since 1986. The supply is fixed and thus the prices for those that have been registered are extremely high. Also, owning an NFA firearm (or suppressor) certainly does not void your rights under the 4th amendment. The BATF may be able to demand to inspect your registered items but they definitely do not have a free pass to search your home or any other personal property without permission or cause.
I only played the Quake Wars demo but the movement and combat on foot seemed vastly smoother and more natural (read: Quake-like) than any of the Battlefield games. It seems to me that a lot of recent id games have had strong technical merits but not so great gameplay. *Shrug*
it looks very similar to a RPG, which can take down a helicopter
"A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), or rocket launcher, is any hand-held, shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon capable of firing an unguided rocket equipped with an explosive warhead." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade
Chances of taking down that gunship with an unguided projectile considering the range are um....zero. That doesn't mean that the engagement was necessarily unreasonable but a lot of people seem to be rehashing this silly implication that the presence of an RPG means the gunship crew were under threat and felt the need to defend themselves.
Eh... The Western front was very tame compared to the East but summary executions and collective punishment were still used (effectively) throughout the occupied territories to minimize partisan activity. There are plenty of books listing the numerous alleged war crimes of the Wehrmacht and Red Army against one another in the East.
In fact, the conventions are written in such a way as to specifically exclude from (most of) their protections those who are unlawful combatants [...] For example, a force that does not wear uniforms and hides among civilians is both not entitled to the protections of the conventions, but also is the responsible party in any attack that kills those civilians.
Absolutely true, however the key protection that all persons including unlawful combatants are entitled to is "humane treatment." It really isn't in the spirit of the conventions to justify massacring civilians by saying "but look our enemy wasn't following the rules!" Of course the conventions are not always going to be observed due to emotional stresses etc. but the goal should be to minimize violations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant#Combatants_who_do_not_qualify_for_POW_status
The exception was the SS, who massacred American soldiers at Malmedy and as a result were generally not captured after that, nor allowed to surrender.
Yep, and the originally all volunteer Waffen SS began reinforcing its ranks with conscripts in 1944 so awful luck to be a 17 year old with those runes on your collar, but such is life.
It seems unlikely that the man who dominates the entire country and can take what he likes from its tax revenues is going to do whatever you ask for a check.
And historically at least, the system of government best suited to corporate profits is not democracy, but fascist-leaning dictatorships. That's true whether we're talking about Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Batista.
Uh, what? If you mean that having a rather militarist government is good if you're a corporation in the arms industry, then yes. But why the hell would an arbitrary corporation prefer having the laws change at the pleasure of a demagogue who may or may not like them instead of having an easily "lobbied"/bribed legislature?
Ok I'll play. Since piracy rates for console games are vastly lower than PC ones, how does your theory account for the fact that most console games are released at an even higher price point than PC games?
Yeah that's the ticket to corporate success: "Let's be fair to our customers instead of trying to maximize short term profits." Don't let the door hit you on the way out. It's mahogany.
Sorry to rain on the populist parade but I don't think petty internet censorship alone is sufficient provocation for most people to feel inclined to risk their own lives and moreover the lives of all their friends and family by participating in any schemes of violent rebellion. The corollary to that quote should be that any government power can be abused forever as long as the abuses aren't flagrant enough to drive people to risk everything in revolt. See US Congress.
I doubt they're going to murder him for leaking information about their non-secret software if that's what you mean. Apparently North Korea still gets a fair number of Russian tourists and would probably like to not piss off the Russian government.
Gravity and movement in general are based entirely on time in HL as in just about every comparable game engine. I can imagine that there might be some weird bugs with fast firing weapons at slow frame rates but you make it sound like the engine was designed by morons.
For some fun, have a look here: http://svn.alliedmods.net/viewvc.cgi/trunk/hlsdk/pm_shared/pm_shared.c?revision=2980&root=amxmodx&view=markup&pathrev=2984
Hooray for faux quotations with no context.
First of all, "corporatism" in the context of Italian fascism is completely distinct from corporate businesses in 21st century Canada.
The word "corporatism" is derived from the Latin word for body, corpus. This meaning was not connected with the specific notion of a business corporation, but rather a general reference to anything collected as a body.
Some critics equate too much corporate power and influence with fascism. Often they cite a quotation that has been attributed to Mussolini, although it doesn't appear in any of his texts: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Several variations of the alleged quotation exist. However, no text written by Mussolini has yet been found with any variation of the alleged quotation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascism_and_corporatism
I hate the excessive influence of megacorporations (in the modern sense of corporations, catching on?) too but try to find a real precedent next time instead of spouting nonsense that makes us all look like incompetent asses.
Unmanned aircraft may be getting pretty good at firing missiles at buildings but I speculate that they're pretty far from being able to compare to the abilities of a real pilot in most situations. I'm sure Australia (like the US) coordinates its military to be prepared for a real war against another country as opposed to just the anti-insurgent potshot operations that UAVs are so good at.
Slashdot Mirror
If regulatory inconsistency is amusing to you then you've got an incredible amount of entertainment at your fingertips. Sorry some government bureaucrat feels the need to protect us all from negligently swallowing magnets, you seem to have described a lovely example of unnecessary restrictions.
According to Miller, had smart gun technology been available to Nancy Lanza, she could have programmed her guns so that only her fingerprint could have activated them; she could have enabled her son to shoot them at a firing range and disabled them upon returning home, or she could have enabled them for her son to use all the time, Miller said.
"So without the technology, we went from zero percent chance of preventing the shootings to having the technology and a 66% chance of preventing it," Miller said. "Those are much better odds."
Wow. How...what...really? "There's three scenarios related to this event I can think of in my head right now and two of them would be better ergo 66% chance of improvement?"
When I walk outside I can either be hit by lightning or not be hit by lightning, so 50% chance right? What the fuck?
I would be a lot more impressed if you didn't hit any.
No entanglement phenomenon has ever been shown (or really believed) to be capable of transmitting information faster than light. I promise you'll see it right there in the Slashdot headline if a decent experiment ever seems to show any kind of FTL information transfer.
Intentional homicide numbers include those committed in justified self defense.
Efficient real time rendering is a pretty interesting subject from my nerd perspective and I for one hope that games companies continue to spend some time and money on it even though it isn't the most important factor in making a game fun.
I noticed that the video just describes gold as being ideal in past millennia for carrying around in one's pocket and minting into coins, which seems like a pretty ridiculous reason for declaring it to be "real money." Paper fiat currency is even better for carrying around, so by this metric it's clearly superior now that we have printing presses.
Right? Or is it possible that the video is just a pop historical discussion irrelevant to your point?
On behalf of the four other slashdotters who care about history for more than just mudslinging, thank you.
This mod has been around for years (with public releases)...if anyone at Sony was even occasionally looking for this sort of thing they should have found it a long time ago. Attention like this probably doesn't help the odds but it isn't like they developed the whole thing in secret and just dropped this release as a shocker.
It's amazing what a difference the time makes in slashdot's opinions on this issue. There is no homogenous American "gun culture." I collect and shoot historic firearms because I find them fascinating and I hugely enjoy being able to restore and preserve them. However, no one else in my family owns any firearms and I grew up with parents who were quite opposed to the idea of gun ownership in general. I think you assume that everyone in the US owns guns because of some sort of derailed-train tradition with no reasoning behind it besides "my Dad owned guns..."
The fact is that many people responsibly own firearms for both sporting uses and self defense. Guns are absolutely misused at times, but the irresponsibility of some few is not in any way an acceptable reason to strip me of my right to have firearms and use them for whatever legal purpose I desire.
I think you will also find a considerable body of research and opinions that contest the idea that banning all guns would even result in an any decline in violent crime. Off the top of my head, this paper is a good example:
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf
Note the fact that the authors enumerate extensive statistics and constantly reiterate that they are surprised to report that, contrary to popular opinion, there exists no favorable correlation between limits on gun ownership and a reduction in violent crime.
I have no intent to convert you or the many posters in this thread who seem to share your perspective into gun lovers, but I would greatly appreciate even a moment of consideration before emotionally founded kneejerk responses that accuse all Americans of being uncivilized morons who need a strong government to take away anything they might hurt themselves with. Thanks.
If it had been something people wanted to see like Avatar or Harry Potter, the early leak would not have mattered.
Shh, I don't think the studios need any further encouragement to continue pumping out movies with more "Ooh" and less "Hmm."
I saw The Hurt Locker in theaters and while it wasn't my favorite of all time, I was certainly pleased that it didn't treat me like a complete moron (as opposed to, say, Iron Man 2).
1: Most guns in Mexico come from central america or from the mexican givernment/military. See those pictures of the drug lords with H&K G3 rifles or MP5 submachine guns? Yeah, those couldn't have come from America. We can't get those here. (Well, we can, but they're 30k or more)
2. Very few americans own M-16's. As in less than a thousand most likely. Why? Because the process of purchasing a fully automatic firearm is such a pain that most people don't go through with it. Do you want the ATF to have a sheet of paper where you signed a waiver allowing them to walk into your home at any point, on ant day, without notice to search your home? Neither do most of us, and that's EXACTLY what you have to do to own a fully automatic firearm in this country.
Just to clarify, very few Americans own fully automatic weapons because it has been impossible to legally register one for civilian ownership since 1986. The supply is fixed and thus the prices for those that have been registered are extremely high. Also, owning an NFA firearm (or suppressor) certainly does not void your rights under the 4th amendment. The BATF may be able to demand to inspect your registered items but they definitely do not have a free pass to search your home or any other personal property without permission or cause.
I only played the Quake Wars demo but the movement and combat on foot seemed vastly smoother and more natural (read: Quake-like) than any of the Battlefield games. It seems to me that a lot of recent id games have had strong technical merits but not so great gameplay. *Shrug*
it looks very similar to a RPG, which can take down a helicopter
"A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), or rocket launcher, is any hand-held, shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon capable of firing an unguided rocket equipped with an explosive warhead."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade
Chances of taking down that gunship with an unguided projectile considering the range are um....zero. That doesn't mean that the engagement was necessarily unreasonable but a lot of people seem to be rehashing this silly implication that the presence of an RPG means the gunship crew were under threat and felt the need to defend themselves.
Sorry, carry on.
Eh... The Western front was very tame compared to the East but summary executions and collective punishment were still used (effectively) throughout the occupied territories to minimize partisan activity. There are plenty of books listing the numerous alleged war crimes of the Wehrmacht and Red Army against one another in the East.
In fact, the conventions are written in such a way as to specifically exclude from (most of) their protections those who are unlawful combatants [...] For example, a force that does not wear uniforms and hides among civilians is both not entitled to the protections of the conventions, but also is the responsible party in any attack that kills those civilians.
Absolutely true, however the key protection that all persons including unlawful combatants are entitled to is "humane treatment." It really isn't in the spirit of the conventions to justify massacring civilians by saying "but look our enemy wasn't following the rules!" Of course the conventions are not always going to be observed due to emotional stresses etc. but the goal should be to minimize violations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant#Combatants_who_do_not_qualify_for_POW_status
The exception was the SS, who massacred American soldiers at Malmedy and as a result were generally not captured after that, nor allowed to surrender.
Yep, and the originally all volunteer Waffen SS began reinforcing its ranks with conscripts in 1944 so awful luck to be a 17 year old with those runes on your collar, but such is life.
It seems unlikely that the man who dominates the entire country and can take what he likes from its tax revenues is going to do whatever you ask for a check.
And historically at least, the system of government best suited to corporate profits is not democracy, but fascist-leaning dictatorships. That's true whether we're talking about Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, or Batista.
Uh, what? If you mean that having a rather militarist government is good if you're a corporation in the arms industry, then yes. But why the hell would an arbitrary corporation prefer having the laws change at the pleasure of a demagogue who may or may not like them instead of having an easily "lobbied"/bribed legislature?
Ok I'll play. Since piracy rates for console games are vastly lower than PC ones, how does your theory account for the fact that most console games are released at an even higher price point than PC games?
Yeah that's the ticket to corporate success: "Let's be fair to our customers instead of trying to maximize short term profits."
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. It's mahogany.
Sorry to rain on the populist parade but I don't think petty internet censorship alone is sufficient provocation for most people to feel inclined to risk their own lives and moreover the lives of all their friends and family by participating in any schemes of violent rebellion. The corollary to that quote should be that any government power can be abused forever as long as the abuses aren't flagrant enough to drive people to risk everything in revolt. See US Congress.
I doubt they're going to murder him for leaking information about their non-secret software if that's what you mean. Apparently North Korea still gets a fair number of Russian tourists and would probably like to not piss off the Russian government.
I ran across a bunch of pictures from a Russian tourist a while back with translated captions. I found them pretty interesting.
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/dprk/index_e.html
Gravity and movement in general are based entirely on time in HL as in just about every comparable game engine. I can imagine that there might be some weird bugs with fast firing weapons at slow frame rates but you make it sound like the engine was designed by morons.
...
...
For some fun, have a look here:
http://svn.alliedmods.net/viewvc.cgi/trunk/hlsdk/pm_shared/pm_shared.c?revision=2980&root=amxmodx&view=markup&pathrev=2984
void PM_AddCorrectGravity ()
{
pmove->velocity[2] -= (ent_gravity * pmove->movevars->gravity * 0.5 * pmove->frametime );
pmove->velocity[2] += pmove->basevelocity[2] * pmove->frametime;
pmove->basevelocity[2] = 0;
}
"frametime" being the key value.
First of all, "corporatism" in the context of Italian fascism is completely distinct from corporate businesses in 21st century Canada.
The word "corporatism" is derived from the Latin word for body, corpus. This meaning was not connected with the specific notion of a business corporation, but rather a general reference to anything collected as a body.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
And on top of that, your quote is a total fabrication anyway.
Some critics equate too much corporate power and influence with fascism. Often they cite a quotation that has been attributed to Mussolini, although it doesn't appear in any of his texts: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Several variations of the alleged quotation exist. However, no text written by Mussolini has yet been found with any variation of the alleged quotation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascism_and_corporatism
I hate the excessive influence of megacorporations (in the modern sense of corporations, catching on?) too but try to find a real precedent next time instead of spouting nonsense that makes us all look like incompetent asses.
Unmanned aircraft may be getting pretty good at firing missiles at buildings but I speculate that they're pretty far from being able to compare to the abilities of a real pilot in most situations. I'm sure Australia (like the US) coordinates its military to be prepared for a real war against another country as opposed to just the anti-insurgent potshot operations that UAVs are so good at.