I don't know exactly about the USA, but where I live (Netherlands), certain court sessions are publicly accessible by any individual, even when not involved with the case in any way. Journalism students, for example, use these.

Now, wouldn't anything filmed in these public sessions be in the public domain anyway? As opposed to court sessions that are held "in chambers"?

Either you're illegally modded 'Insightful' instead of 'Funny', or I'm experiencing a quickly developing vision impairment that causes me to see words where they shoulnd't be...

This (small) documentary about Daniel Kish, a blind person using echolocation, suggests these blind people use this technique in a quite advanced manner. See the 'test' they perform on one of the blind people featured in the film, at about 4:20. Sounds like he's able to hear much, much more than just some surroundings. At the end, they even go out mountainbiking.

If ever I should become blind, I'd surely investigate in this technique.

What's newsworthy? This news will be forgotten. What will be remembered is that IP is violated on a large scale. This will fuel incentives towards more grotesque punishments of the violators.

</sarcasm>

I remember a relative bought a modem back in the days. It came with 2 diskettes (anyone still remember what that were? ;) ). One labeled 'Compuserve' (IIRC), and the other one containing the communication apps. I seem to remember reading the user's manual of Kermit, and not understanding a single word of it. Of course, I would understand things right now - thanks to the right amount of experience and a degree in IT. And thanks to things now being handled by the appropriate communication drivers.

The BBS'es of that time of course looked like nothing compared to the internet of now. I do remember they featured 'graphics', though. Ah, the secret joys of viewing big blobs of ASCII art - in no more than 16 colors, for those lucky enough to own an EGA monitor!

Interesting. I was always wondering which game companies actually wrote their own engines.

Which makes Carmacks position even more amazing. Imagine having the graphics engine you wrote yourself powering a multitude of games...

I found the QuakeC compiler endlessly exciting. Never gotten a grip on the QuakeC structure, though. I remember the Reaper Bot, a very intelligent Quake bot. Of course, Quake 3 and Unreal all have their own bots now. Still, I'm excited by the idea of a programmed bot being able to 'learn' the layouts of a map and reacting more or less intelligently to a player's actions.

If only I'd have a little more time, I'd be diving more deeply into neural networks, pathfinding, etc.

And only now do I find out that Id has actually been acquired by Zenimax, which owns Bethesda as well. According to this interview with John Carmack, Doom 4 will actually be a Bethesda title.

So I guess we might as well expect a Doom-4-engine-powered Oblivion II. Exciting!

I always thought Id's games were perfect examples of engine showcases. I remember being very fascinated with Quake; read all about it, BSP modeling etc. (I even tried to create my own 3d-engine, which failed miserable, by the way).

Anyone else remember Ramblings in Real-time by Mike Abrash? Worth a read if you're interested in the mechanics of the Quake 3D-engine.

But Quake still wasn't very much more than showcasing... Id often seemed to rely on parties such as Raven Software for convincing storylines, exciting level designs, etc. I'd like to see them produce a game like Oblivion... A cutting edge 3d engine to power a convincing RPG world, what more would you want!

That wasn't really the point of the guys anecdote, now was it? Nice job skewing the perspective here.

A typical reaction of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. I know of an ugly example myself of a person being very unable to handle peer pressure. And pressure from a loved one can be very hard to deal with. This form of peer pressure easily leads to abuse - oh yes, and it's all legal, because the ill-treated one didn't complain!

Don't underestimate this kind of peer pressure play. Be glad you've never experienced things like this in your own life. Or seen things like this happen in the lives of people you care about. Oh, and a little compassion with people failing the Strong Will test wouldn't do harm, either. Most of us make bad decisions during some time in life, and only some of us get to suffer the consequences. Doesn't make them complete morons, you know.