wow

Everyone has an agenda. Government is the most powerful entity in our mixed society. It is (and has amply proven itself to be) capable of corruption, graft, and political pursuit of goals contrary to the interests of those who are taxed to fund it.

Concentration of power is the problem. Politically, big corporations and big government are a difference without a distinction. They both pursue their own agendas in service to the elites who are stakeholders, and then use propaganda to claim otherwise.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

FULL DISCLOSURE: These are products I created and operated by my company. But very relevant.

The term MUD tends to harken back to an earlier time before 'puters had graphical horsepower of any note. But the reality is, online text-based games come in all varieties, and the one's we operate are in a league all their own. More significantly, they are still serious ongoing commercial efforts. If you want to see what a MUD can be when it's been in continuous development, expansion for decades, then check out:

http://gemstone.net/

http://dragonrealms.net/

GemStone IV, which began its life as a sequel to GemStone ][ (then called GemStone III just to confuse everyone) first came to existence on the online service GEnie. Eventually it moved to CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy and others. When online services went the way of the doodoo bird, we moved them to the internet machine. DragonRealms is somewhat younger than GemStone, but same sort of history. I began work on it shortly before forming my company Simutronics, something like 27 years ago.

Despite having worked on lots of other types of games, such as mobile titles, and working on other PC/Mac/Linux games of a much more graphical variety now... these text based games remain the corner stone of Simutronics.

Yes, the phonemaker gets more revenue. However, the money used to fund those replacements comes from an increased levy on all phone purchasers who have coverage. So everyone with coverage pays more for phones. The extra money that everyone pays for phones means less money spent on all other possible purchases. So Apple's revenue increase is Krogers' or Target's or Shell's decrease.

We usually disregard widely-distributed costs and look at local effects. This is especially true of politicians. But those effects are real and directly affect the aggregate economy numbers.

I got the SEIKI 4K TV from TigerDirect not long ago. I hooked it up as a 4th (!) monitor. It dwarfs the 3 30" dells I have next to it since, well... it's frikin 50"!

Despite being a lot bigger the pixel density is roughly the same as the 30" Dells which are only 2560x1600. The SEIKI 4K is rocking, obviously the 4K resolution of 3840x2160.

So is it cool?

Kinda of.

The fundamental problem, of course, is that the refresh rate is only 30 hertz. This is driven by the fact that current 1.4 HDMI spec can't push faster than that. So the screen has a soft pulsing. It also tears badly on fast moving things, but this may be a separate issue not related to the TV, not sure. Been messing with my video card to try and solve that. VSync doesn't seem to help, so maybe it is the TV.

Color reproduction is just ... meh. You have to switch modes to get things to look right depending on what you are doing... say work vs. play. Games do look spectacular at the high resolution and the big size. I have the monitor at a normal seated distance, so it's ... immersive. Much like the Rift in that way, but without the nausea and fatbits.

The bottom line is, don't get this TV unless you are a crazy early adopter who just likes cool toys and throws money away to do it. Wait until next year when HDMI 2.0 comes out and more monitor-class 4K units come onto the market. Then, yes... if you are a resolution junkie like I am, get one! Because even in this early form, the promise is quite clear.

Oh, and it impresses friends. Very important point. :)

I'm curious about what the equivalent term for "mileage" is.

All out of mod points or I would do it myself.

well, it's better than "First Post!"

I find that an even better way to construct a password (that you can still remember) is to use a language other than English for all or part of it. More specifically, it works best if you use a language that that requires transliteration to type in the Latin character set and then use your own transliteration/transcription spelling (rather than, necessarily, the common or "official" one). Good examples might be words in Hebrew, Russian or Greek.

Consider the Russian word for 'good'. I will spell it using substitute Latin characters since /. seems to strip it otherwise: "xopowo"

I love Russian because it uses mostly Latin or Latin-like characters, but they are usually pronounced differently (that "p" looking guy sounds like an "r" and that "w" looking character is more like "sh").

So that word is pronounced, to the American ear, something like "hur ah show" (leaving out the hard-to-transcribe soft guttural). You might spell it in your own transcription style as "herisoh" or "whoreashow" (which might be easier to remember!) or whatever.. the more you make it your own, the better.

You don't have to master another whole language to do this, just a few words will do.

Oh, and be sure to stay out of the rainbow table range or none of these techniques are all that helpful.

Damn,he was fun to watch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_Hunter

The supplier's website says that with mild, dry storage conditions, the food is good for up to 25 years. My guess is their estimate is closer to the truth than yours.

Thoughtful analysis untainted by political correctness is getting scarce these days. Which by definition means it's getting more valuable.

Didn't notice if this was mentioned or not, but there are some commercial solutions like deathswitch.com

They fire off emails to you on a schedule. If you fail to respond, then they suspect maybe you are pushing up daisies... other fail-safes kick in (they check with a designated friend, etc.). If you are, indeed gone, then they spew whatever you want to whomever you designate. You can even program in a follow up or two for later. A year after you are dead, a nice parting practical joke, eh?

Followed quickly by a headless king.

This does not require an elaborate analysis, only a cursory reading of history.

What??? Game Programmers are NOT secretive at all. We share virtually everything! I'm sitting right now at the tail end of GDC where we spent a week of doing nothing but sharing. Where did you get that notion?