demagogue

Congratulations NH! You have joined the ranks of a privileged few to open for somebody that big ... I couldn't be happier for you!

I wouldn't go that far. Even silly play with spectral graphs can give you a real sense about how the images match up against the sounds they produce. If you are paying attention, you can really get to understand how sound is nothing more than the union of different frequencies of air vibrations converging in time and space, and how that happens. I enjoyed trying to recreate phonemes and just weird sounds by applying what I knew about spectral graphs to see if the sound came out as I predicted. Lots of things are like this ... silly play is often the best way to get a feel for the actual, hands-on mechanics of what's going on, rather than the mere theory by the book. I'm thinking about this because, inspired by Max's recent Lightwave action, I'm trying to get a feel for how 3D modeling works, and I have to tell you at this early stage I'm learning more by just screwing around with the different functions and seeing what happens. But yeah, if he's not paying attention to what he's doing and just doing it for the sake of doing something silly, then it's probably a bloody waste of time! (...not much worse than a throw-away game of minesweeper, though.)

There was also a review in the New York Times today, and it gushed on and on about how epic it was, how it had a bang-up end worthy of the wait that definitively ended things, and at the same time how it could still stay relevant to young suburban kids ... keeping the epic and mundane-but-real balanced all the way through. I've read a few murmurs on the plot from that review ... (I don't know myself, just from the article, but I'll tag it anyway) My sneaky prediction was that Dumbledor actually *was* an older Harry, and that would bring the book full-circle, but somebody shot that idea down as wrong. I don't want spoilers, though; I'll read it for myself ... someday. I'm happy to hear that it'll be worth it ... that's good news to hear. It's nice when a series can come to a satisfying end (although for the record, I also liked the Sopranos end as, to me, an inspired non-ending; as long as it's done with some thought). Anyway, I'll be happy to read it, and it's enough to know it gets your enthusiastic thumbs up. Speaking of Sopranos, one thing its final season does apparently share with HP7, though, is

Wow ... performing in that kind of venue sounds epic. What a rush. I hope, because it was a contest, that the radio station could pull some strings for you to meet the big guys ... but maybe I'm being too optimistic. But it would be awesome if you could. Be sure to get a video for us if you can!

I like this one http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/rafting.html and this one http://www.thegreenhead.com/sidewalk-art/sa-31.jpg ... which weren't on that list.

This is big news. Congratulations New Horizon! B)b

Anyway, if no one can vote at all, then it basically locks in the result as of last night. I don't think it will hurt you, all in all. I think being popular on some internet forums worked in your favor for having a consistent turnout throughout, so if anything a final push might have worked against you, in relative terms I mean ... but that's just a guess.

Did you just put that map together? I have to say, not sure if you intended it or not, but it looks an awful lot like Tokyo in the layout, with the grand palace being right between the guildhall and market district. Interesting work, anyway. Food for thought. Some one official will have to tell you what their plans are on laying out districts for the city, though.

Sounds like the way that multibrushes work in Dromed, right? That does sound interesting, in that you could set up all sorts of stock object combinations good for using in rooms, houses, inns, pubs, etc, quick but good-looking filler, esp good for side-rooms that are peripheral to the game, you just want to stock without spending too much thought ... Or for that matter, good for quickly putting together entire buildings and maybe even collections of buildings, like off in the distance. And then you can always tweak it to taste after you've placed it. That is a good idea. Anyway, it doesn't take anything away from letting a builder do what he wants with the objects ... just a gratuitous but potentially nice convenience in some situations.

Just to be clear, I agree that it's probably better to keep them as individual pieces, not a one-piece. Although I guess it couldn't hurt to test it out and see how it looks? But even then, I'd keep the pieces separate for other uses on top of that, making a one-piece mostly redundant anyway. (Also, I don't know how the object hierarchy works for Dark Radient, but there is a way to associate them as a family of related objects, right?) My main concern, as I already said and Schwaa's alterego repeated, is just making sure they aren't so small as individual pieces that they'll get lost in the game. But then again, as jdude mentioned, little trinkets like this really make the world more immersive and I myself have sized stuff down a little in dromed for just this purpose. There don't *have* to be absolute rules ... in the end it's about what looks good and performs well in-game, and there's nothing stopping little stuff from really bringing a room alive. I sometimes get annoyed when rooms in Thief look a little too "prefab", even apart from the shelf-life idea. Some objects just look like they were objects made for a game, although very often for good reason (poly counts or gameplay reasons, etc). The obvious dearth of tiny trinkets might actually have been part of that. I guess the point here is it's really a judgment call with maybe some trade-offs on different levels (aesthetics, performance, etc)... pros and cons looking at it from different ways. Just take a good look at all of it in-game, walking around like a player might, and ask yourself does this really work best for this object?

First, it's looking good. Second, are each one of those vials/lids on that tray individual objects, or is it more like a set piece, like it's all attached to the tray and you just plop the whole thing down as is? Sounds to me like Springheel is curious about some of those tiny looking vials and lids ... which look like they could get completely dwarfed in a scene if they were just used by themselves, as an author might want to if they were presented as individual objects. Or put another way, some of those vials on that tray look a little too small (in that screenshot, anyway) to be useful individually, although that size seems to good as a set piece, as you have them. But then you have the issue that authors might not appreciate as much objects that can only really be useful as part of a set-piece. They might appreciate the flexibility of using those vials as individual objects, so they don't feel hemmed in with what those objects are good for. Also there's the idea that pre-fab set pieces are very often the kind of objects in modding that start looking overused and worn-out the fastest, as most mods will stick to stock material, as we all know from seeing certain objects in Thief looking overused. At the very least, authors might like to be able to rearrange the vials so they're not in the same order every time. So then you might want to make them as individual pieces, and a little bigger so author's could have a little more flexibility in using those objects in fresh ways. Then it occurs to me you might have a prefab-esque set-piece, or smaller pieces to be used as part of a set piece, using those smaller vials (which still admittedly looks good), and bigger individual versions of them if an author wanted to use them individually for whatever reason. They might be more useful that way. Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud. The point is, some of those vials and lids look pretty darn small to be useful individually, but packaging it as a set piece (prefab or otherwise) has its own issues. Just something to think about. It all looks good.

Sounds like a broken vacuum cleaner. :)b I took a linguistics course once where we learned to "read" spectral graphs of speech to distinguish the phonemes of the actual words being said. You could just look at the graph and say, "Oh, he's saying 'dog'". I think it would be funny if we were shown one of these graphs. "Oh, he's saying 'A. Scott Kingston'. .... Wait a second...!"

Demo downloaded. Sounds like a good idea that I wouldn't have thought would be that good at first, but on reflection it really is a good idea.

Really, you have to come from a family that regularly puts their bread in the freezer as soon as they buy it. And then it's so obvious, you can't eat it while it's frozen because it's too hard. You have to take it out and let it soften up before you can eat it. So for those kinds of people, it's one of the first things they'll think about because they can't eat bread without thinking about it. But if you don't do that, then it probably never even occurs to you.

More like things that get hardened when they get cold. It makes sense when you come from a family, like mine, that kept bread in the fridge or freezer to keep it fresh, but it also hardened it.

Hell, even I wrote the skeleton of a screenplay just like the Matrix and felt gypped when it came out.

Yeah, that happens all the time. My Japanese students would always walk around saying "fuck you! fuck you! Hey, teacher, fuck you!", to the nice, young lady teacher and she'd smile or just roll her eyes, they'd all smile. And I tried to tell them that you can't just casually use that word, and they'd wonder "why not?". They knew it was a "bad" word, but there wasn't a feel for what's just bad and what's really bad or insulting. Sounds like a similar case here. For perspective, it should probably be pointed out that Westerners regularly mortally insult Japanese -- every time they stick their chopsticks into rice or pick up something from another's chopsticks, putting a credit card on the counter instead of handing it over, saying the word "you" too casually, etc ... all of these pretty serious offenses. I got in big trouble for not taking my shoes off one of those fitting platforms with mirrors where you try on the suit you want to buy, even though you could have shoes on inside the store (??). And they were not joking that it was a serious wrong. Live and learn ... next time you'll know better. Just one more the way that globalization works out the kinks. I should probably also point out, for perspective, that a few of my students were mentally ill and got terrible treatment by Western standards. They needed to be in a special school, and instead they were with the normal students, usually pushed in the back and ignored. And in one case the teacher put one behind a curtain and drew the curtain over him so he wouldn't disturb the class. Some sensitivity. The problem here is that Japan doesn't have a culture of popular activism ... so stuff like ignoring handicapped or minority needs, or consumer risks and dangerous products, or stupid use of taxes ... can just pass by without much comment. Or for that matter, the minister of health calling women baby-making machines last year, or 500 Japanese businessmen renting a hotel in China and buying Chinese 500 prostitutes on the anniversary of the Rape of Nanjing, or the rampant domestic abuse or the student I watched getting beat up by a teacher whose been openly beating up students for (seriously) 15 years, etc, etc. It's like they're stuck in the 1950s Midwest, I sometimes feel. The whole culture could use a shot in the arm, with a few people standing up for something, instead of trying to sweep everything under the rug with a nervous laugh.

This is of course why you (eventually) need horses, when you just want to "cruise" to some further part of the map, then you leave/tie it up somewhere (and know it can't disappear), and off you go to your mission.

Don't take what I was saying the wrong way. Yeah, like Orb was saying, there's the law on the one hand, where her case isn't that strong as a copyright claim. But that can still be true and the studios were swarmy, and if you read the book and watched the movies you'd feel uncomfortable about it. Actually, I think it's a bit more complex than that, though. This is why studios nowadays don't accept unsolicited idea submissions ... Because it's just human nature to pick out plot points when you read a book, many times half-consciously, and then the author paints himself into a corner. If they gave credit to every idea-peddler they might have used, there was no preexisting deal ... so it's very unclear what that credit means. In contract law, the principle is "pre-contract consideration is no consideration". What that means is, you can't contract for a deal after the fact. When she sent her book, unsolicited without a deal, it's like she's providing a free service because she didn't demand money for it, a right to view her stuff and get it swimming in their heads. Contract law won't let her later get paid for a service she's already provided for free; you can't demand $20 for a paint job you've already done spontaneously for free. And the movie's already now been written; there's nothing really to contract with her for because the only real "work" she did, unless she basically wrote the screenplay herself, she gave away for free. So the movie-makers don't really know what to do with her. Since there's no contract, any money sum is out of legal boundaries, even if they wanted to be polite. Any credit or money they try to offer as a hospitality immediately opens them up to potentially unbounded equity liability, as if it were an implied contract. They can't be polite without putting themselves at great risk by getting potentially screwed over by her. It's a kind of catch 22 they get stuck in. So they just keep quiet and hope it blows over, as is their right without a contract. The catch is, both sides often don't see it coming and may well be acting in good faith, until it's too late. So that's why everybody should be thinking pretty formally right from the start, before anybody does anything ... like, don't send a script unless it's solicited and it's clear what might happen and you've got yourself legally covered.

What's "clear" is that that is clearly a PR page that biases the facts in her favor ... hardly objective. Unless she wrote the actual screenplay, it's very hard to win a copyright claim based on elements of the plot and characters. I mean, even clearly copying exactly quotes or characters or individual "scenes" still doesn't give you that strong of a case. I've studied the cases on it, and it really has to be like, she submitted a screenplay, and then essentially that same screenplay ends up on screen. The leading case about someone that read a book and then made a movie based on essentially the same plot with tweaked characters in a slightly different setting, the book author didn't win. Coming to America, Rent, lots of cases like this ... and the courts usually aren't very sympathetic unless it's like I said. I mean, if Terminator and Matrix came from this book, I already have a feeling that it's not going to be close enough to each individual one make a judge very sympathetic. I remember reading an early 80s book, and it dawned on me that it was Back to the Future ... guy goes back in time, accidentally prevents his parents from meeting, and has to go to great lengths to get them back together. It happens all the time; in fact I'm tempted to say it's probably a norm that screenwriters build off the inspiration of a book or something. Matrix in particular was stealing plot-points from all over the place; doesn't make a copyright claim. And as for the Matrix and Terminator in particular, come on man, those are genre pieces through and through. I remember in one interview the W Bros were saying a number of Matrix-like screenplays had been circulating in Hollywood for years ... And the one that finally set the Matrix apart was adding Kung Fu. But the idea itself as a plot is hardly new. Also, on Terminator, statute of limitations is SoL; you don't sue in time you're chance is up; too bad. They're not going to make exceptions especially if you are stupid enough to send your books to screenwriters and not protect your interests, or not pay attention to your interests. Anyway, I'm just trying to give a flavor for the other side here. Of course, I'd want to see a more objective presentation of the facts if I were trying to make a more objective judgment. My first reaction, though, is that the page you linked seems to me to be overstating her case. (Can you tell I studied copyright law? )

Not sure about swinging. I don't think you can change the physics of the rope to swing, anyway; since my intuition is that it's hardcoded. You might try making the rope moveable terrain that triggers when G grabs it, though. Sort of like a glorified elevator or moving platform you can hang on to. Then you could have it set up more like a rope on a wheeled pulley, that wheels him across the pit as he holds on to it. Might be a fair compromise that accomplishes your task. Use an elevator tutorial to make a custom moving platform out of the rope, change the button operation to whatever property covers G grabbing the rope, and then tweak the values so it moves pretty quickly, looks natural, etc. (BTW, you'd probably get even better answers if you asked in TEG at ttlg).

I saw a good remake of Last Ninja somewhere, Google for it, because it's out there. Also, go to this site: http://www.retroremakes.com/wordpress/ And then click the archives and competition links. There's a list of like 100's if not a few 1000's of remakes listed on there.

On that, one of the most interesting thing I read ("know" is too strong a word ) about black holes, sort of related to what you guys were talking about, is that the measure of its entropy is proportional not to its volume/density (like you'd think; like practically every other body of stuff out there), but to the surface area of the event horizon. This is how I understand it (somebody correct me if I'm off). So a shorthand way to understand entropy is like a measure of the amount of "signal information" that will be lost as it goes up; e.g., melting ice or heating air in a balloon, the organization/information it holds gets dispersed or smoothed out (to more undifferentiated stuff) by the amount entropy goes up. Usually, it's proportional to overall volume/density changes; and it's supposed to always net increase over time. So with black holes, entropy would be going down because everything is getting compacted into a singularity, about as pure a "signal" as you can get. But it's counteracted by the Hawking radiation raising entropy, as some mass gets scattered back out into space virtually at random (very high entropy). But that radiation comes off, for the same reasons mentioned above, in proportion to the surface area of the event horizon. When stuff crosses it, you get the radiation, not when it gets "inside" (unlike a star, where you get fusion radiation when its volume is squeezed). But, so the paradox goes, if that's right, then you still have a problem because entropy is going down according to the volume -/density +, but back up according to just the surface area increase, which is less. Still some missing entropy to account for somewhere to balance it out. But even aside from that paradox, it's still just weird that the amount of information in a black hole is set by its surface area, not what's inside. How does that work out? I remember one guy comparing it to a movie screen. What's important as far as the signal is what gets projected onto the screen (the event horizon), not the "real movie" itself (the mass inside the singularity, or whatever it is). The information of a movie only makes sense as its displayed on the 2D screen, so to speak. Whatever's going on, it's very interesting and very different from the way most everything else works. I guess we'll have to wait until they come up with quantum gravity to hear the answer.

Here's another supposed strange implication of special relativity, that black holes can't exist. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/621/1 (I was going to paste this into to my last post, so I wouldn't be double-posting... but I don't know how to delete this post now. sorry.) Anyway, the argument is first that because of SR, time slows (to an outside observer) for something falling in as it gets closer to the black hole's event horizon, until time basically stops right at the horizon. The light just stays hovering on the horizon; and later light from inside can't get out. Second, black holes also give off Hawking radiation over time. Quantum pairings (spontaneous creation of particle + antiparticle) will happen right at the horizon, where one side falls in and the other doesn't. But because of conservation, the escaping particle has to get its antiparticle back, and because quantum info doesn't have to obey SR it can get it back. (I think that's the idea?). So it's radiated back from surface of the horizon, and the black hole loses that little mass, which adds up over (a long) time. And now these guys are saying that, for an outside observer, if time is stopped at the horizon, basically the whole future-history of the horizon perpetually happens all at once (?). So the black hole would radiate away before it can even be formed, like trying to fill a bottomless glass. So black holes can't exist. But something seems fishy about this argument. Seems like somebody would have thought of that before and figured out why it doesn't work. Interesting food for thought, though.

Ok, here's the PJ's skit. Thurgood: Sure am happy I ran into you. I'm trying to clean up this neighborhood and thought you could help me by pointing out some of the drug addicts. Smokey: Well, okay. But, uh, now-a-days drug addicts have some pretty peculiar names. T: You mean nicknames? S: Well ... street names. Like Who's on crack. Say What's on smack. And I Don't Know freebases. T: Well, do you know the fellas' names? S: I said Who's on crack. Say What's on smack. And I Don't Know freebases. T: Well, who's on crack? S: Yeah. T: I mean the fella's name. S: Who. T: The guy on crack. S: Who! T: The crack addict! S: Who is on crack. T: I don't know! S: I Don't Know freebases. T: Who freebases? S; No, who's on crack. T: Say what? S: No, he's on smack. T: Who's on smack? S: No, who's on crack. T: I don't know! S: Freebase! T: Shut up you damn, stupid crackhead!