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Comment Bully tactics (Score 5, Interesting) 225

by sorensenbill (#42724845) Attached to: WTO Approves Suspension of US Copyright in Antigua
As a US Citizen I'm glad to see them stand up to our government's bully tactics. I hope they follow through and set an example for other countries currently getting strong armed. I think it's pretty funny they knew where to hit the politicians where it hurts, a gut shot to the copyright lobby. I really hate the way this fuels international perception of Americans, our government may feel this way but I'd say it has more to do with campaign money than actually representing the collective public interest.
Games

Submission + - Spiritual Successor to Dugeon Keeper in Pre-Production (wftogame.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A spiritual successor to the iconic Bullfrog Studios Dungeon Keeper series is in pre-production. It is being created by Subterranean Games, a group made up of fans of the original Dungeon Keeper series, as well as fans of Evil Genius, Majesty and Overlord. It is going to be fully moddable and uses the Unity engine for graphics rendering. The game is currently on Kickstarter, where you can view a intro/promotional video of the game, as well as the plans that the production team have for it. The kickstarter can be found at : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/subterraneangames/war-for-the-overworld
Privacy

Submission + - Students protest biometric scanner move (thenorthernecho.co.uk)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Newcastle University students protest biometric scanner move

UNIVERSITY students may have to scan their fingerprints in future — to prove they are not bunking off lectures. ... ... Newcastle Free Education Network has organised protests against the plans, claiming the scanners would "'turn universities into border checkpoints" and "reduce university to the attendance of lectures alone".

"
AI

Submission + - Programming-based MMORPG for AI and automation

Submitted by
JoshRMT
JoshRMT writes: "I'm the lead developer of an upcoming MMORPG that has bedazzled the programming community. The game is designed around giving the players a development environment to custom-create their own programmable routines for their creatures and assets. Additionally, players can script their own powers and actions. I believe this game will allow developers to simulate highly advanced and automated societies.

Unlike Second Life and other games, Topia Online is built on an economy where every object in the game is used to 'fuel' these scripts. For example, you may need 'Wolf Figurines' to call certain functions or edit specific properties in a script. Your character requires the 'snooping' skill to write a script to iterate through someone else's inventory array. The script marketplace allows developers to sell their scripts to others for the in-game currency.

Although you can directly control your character, he remains in the world even after you've logged out. Therefore every player will have a script running to perform jobs while they are offline.

If this sounds interesting to you, here are some screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/Uawcq.png
http://www.topiaonline.com/content/images/topia.png
http://i.imgur.com/PEl1M.png

Our Kickstarter is trending slowly, and we're having a hard time explaining to non-programmers how they can enjoy the game. We're reaching out to a lot of IT / 'technical' communities to help us get a following. I'm not trying to advertise the Kickstarter, so I won't link it here, but I would definitely like to spark some discussion about 'programming in online games'."
Piracy

Submission + - Music Industry Threatens to Bankrupt Pirate Party Members (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Music industry group the BPI has threatened legal action against six members of the UK Pirate Party, after the party refused to take its Pirate Bay proxy offline. BPI seems to want to hold the individual members of the party responsible for copyright infringements that may occurs via the proxy, which puts them at risk of personal bankruptcy.

Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye criticized the latest music industry threats and reiterated that blocking The Pirate Bay is a disproportionate measure.

Comment Mental Health not Gun Laws (Score 2) 2987

by sorensenbill (#42290331) Attached to: 27 Reported Killed In Connecticut Elementary School Shooting
I live in NH and we have some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation and are ranked 47th in incedences per capita of violent crime. Rampage killers don't care about gun laws, but maybe if there was better help to identify and treat this it could have been prevented. This person is a sick fuck and gun laws wouldn't change that. FWIW: I don't own a gun

Comment Multi angle aerial shots (Score 3, Informative) 153

by sorensenbill (#42278659) Attached to: Google Loses Santa To Bing
I've never used them for navigation but Bing maps(furnished by Nokia I believe) have much better aeriel photos. I can see my house from 6 angles on Bing, which is mostly blocked by a large tree on Google. That being said I still use Google maps for pretty much everything else just because I'm used to it.

Comment Re:I live in Nashua NH, This is about property rig (Score 1) 936

by sorensenbill (#42275119) Attached to: New Hampshire Cops Use Taser On Woman Buying Too Many iPhones

I wasn't at the mall, I'm not claiming to be an expert on Police policy, and I have no connections to LE. However what this comes down to is that this woman was tresspassing on a premise she was asked to leave on more than one occasion. We take property rights very seriously here, this was a long drawn out incedent with someone from Massholechusetts who thought that they didn't have to follow the rules. She didn't get asked to leave for the first time then tased 30 seconds later. There is no freedom to not listen to cops, we're a reasonable state and you're ordered to leave you should listen. Language barrier is being falsely injected into this story, it's not like it's hard to pantomime telling someone to GFTO.

She had a chance to listen with the request to leave, and chose not too. It's her personal responsibilty to comply with the law, if this were on someones private property they would have had the right to brandish(but not fire) a gun. We don't baby people up here like a lot of the other states, she screwed up and payed the price. Live Free or Die doesn't mean you have the freedom to ignore the law.

New Hampshire is a unique place compared to most other states especially in this part of the country. While we may be ranked #1 in beer consumption we're ranked dead last in poverty even though our social services are minimal. We expect people to be responsible for their actions and the vast majority of people are. I can walk into a store an buy a long gun just my showing my license to prove I'm over 18, no permit, registration, fingerprints needed yet we're 47th for gun violence.

This sort of sums out the New Hampshire way, the rights of the property owner to have a tresspassor removed come before the rights of the tresspassor to keep being an asshole. If you watch the youtube video it's not as bad as TFA makes it seem, she didn't get shot with a taser it was a handheld one to get her to hold still so she could be cuffed. There's also a funny part where a random bystander walks over and stands right over the two cops trying to cuff her and just watches them.

Comment The OTHER Python Challenge (Score 2, Interesting) 132

Made me think of the puzzle website I went through while learning the programing language. Any puzzle lovers out there interested can find it here http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ It can be done with little or no knowledge of the language as long as you don't mind reading the docs.

Comment Welcome to MA (Score 5, Informative) 297

by sorensenbill (#42224559) Attached to: Black Boxes In Cars Raise Privacy Concerns
I was born and raised in Massachusetts and this is just the culture of the State Police. Anyone who regularly drives on the highways has been passed by a cruiser with it's lights off doing 90 in the passing lane. After his first lies didn't pan out he retcon'd a new story about being asleep that fit the black box data.

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