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Comment Re:The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug. (Score 1) 726

> The film is a satire of what Heinlein wrote in total seriousness. His books are a mixture of cult-of-the-individual libertarianism and characters travelling back in time so that they can fuck their mother The film is satire, do you have a source on Author's intent says that the book isn't meant as a commentary? In my reading of Heinlein his points are usually designed around addressing and commenting on what is brought up in his books. Further, the stories you're talking about with regards to fucking his mother, that's just not what it's about any more than the other short story involving a pair of twins who had children together, are you lumping it in there to try and discredit everything he wrote because you don't like it for some reason? Matter of fact A lot of Heinlein's books support individualism in the context of a familial relationship and building relationships that support the people around them. A lot of his stuff is either off the beaten path or out there, but there's a lot more to it than the character fucking his own mother and suggesting that's all that story about is absolutely dishonest.

Comment Re:They've got a good shot at it (Score 1) 252

I think Valve has a very good shot at taking on the console market.

I'm not really sure it's meant as direct competition against the console market. Though the announcement of the "box" part of the actual Steambox may change my opinion of that. If the likely soon to be announced Steambox is just going to use the Linux based SteamOS then you'll still need a computer powerful enough to run the games that exists separately from the Steambox itself. It definitely creates a much more convenient and probably quiet means of playing with Steam on your TV, but without box specs it's hard to say how much of a computer you'll need to support it. Plus it's all well and good to say that AAA and other titles are already targeting SteamOS for distribution, but it doesn't mean much until they release the games for it. Either way it's an exciting new chapter in gaming!

Comment Re: Hey (Score 1) 535

Isn't that a little... Obtuse maybe? I mean there's at least a general definition in the form of a higher power/individual with some degree of interest in our lives. I mean if you walk up to someone and ask about God not everyone is going to have the same definition, but nearly everyone will have some idea what you're referencing.

Comment Re:A More Dynamic Countdown (Score 2) 156

THIS is a much more useful gauge. So thank you for showing this to me. I'm picking it up for the PS3 myself, but I like what Valve is doing and if I had money/a more significant interest in the games being offered in the Potato Sack Bundle, I'd probably be helping a bit more myself. As it stands, it's clever, and fun, and it's supporting a good/interesting cause in indie game development, and an opportunity for Valve/Steam to experiment with a new concept. Go them!

Comment Re:I dunno, man (Score 3, Insightful) 449

That's actually pretty reasonable. App devices are designed for function, but they tend to be oriented towards quick bursts of something. EX: iOS games are largely built to be a quick serving here, a quick serving there. But sitting at a desk to work just 'feels' more like you're doing something to be productive. I love my fancy app infested phone, if I have a moment of brilliance and self actualization I can make a quick note on it, but if I want to really expound on that idea a workspace is better suited towards actual working.

Comment Re:Fee Wi-Fi are a drain on the bottom line? (Score 1) 312

I think that while for some owners this may be true, but for the owner mentioned in the article, he's talking about filling a different niche. His business sounds like it's doing fine by offering service to people who DON'T want wi-fi, and like the idea of being in a shop where people aren't using it. He's just changing his business model to fit a different subset of consumer that he wants to work with.

Comment And what about... (Score 1) 154

Those of us who wear glasses as part of our day to day vision requirements? Wearing a pair of glasses over top of our regular frames is not only bulkier, but significantly more uncomfortable, annoying, and even difficult as a result of only having so much viable nose space to properly hold them on. Sure contacts are great and wonderful for the people that want them, but for some of us, they are neither a viable option, or comfortable, not to mention that I for one don't really want to pay for more eyewear than I need. 3D is great and all, but a huge chunk of gamers wear glasses. I've enjoyed the three movies I saw in 3D in spite of the glasses, and to be frank, that has been almost enough to warrant avoiding the 3D films. (And that's not even getting into the asinine pricing scheme...)

Comment Re:Not a programmer but... (Score 1) 547

I do dictation (definitely not programming, but the sitting at a computer for hours on end is there) I usually work between 40 and 50 hours a week, and while the last couple weeks I've been doing some filing on the side, this past week has been awful for just sitting at the computer all day everyday. And I definitely find myself having to do surfing or similar somethings to not go crazy...
Science

Statistical Analysis of U of Chicago Graffiti 157

quaith writes "Quinn Dombrowski, a member of the University of Chicago's central IT staff, has been recording the graffiti left in the Joseph Regenstein Library Since September 2007. To date she has photographed and transcribed over 620 pieces of graffiti; over 410 of them are datable to within a week of their creation. She has now published in Inkling Magazine a statistical analysis of the entire graffiti collection covering such subjects as love, hate, despair, sex, anatomy, and temporal fluctuations of each of these. After November, both love and despair graffiti drop off significantly until spring, while sex graffiti reaches its one and only peak in December before declining for the rest of the school year. The story includes links to all of the original graffiti photos, which the researcher has made freely available to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license."
Graphics

19th-Century Photographer Captured 5,000 Snowflakes 80

tcd004 writes "Wilson Bentley began photographing snowflakes in 1885, and managed to immortalize more than 5,000 crystals before his death in 1931. Now his images are widely recognized and highly sought after. At the age of 19, 'Snowflake' Bentley jury-rigged a microscope to a bulky bellows camera and took the first-ever photograph of a snowflake. Photography then, particularly microphotography, was much closer to science than art. In a 1910 article published in the journal Technical World, he wrote, 'Here is a gem bestrewn realm of nature possessing the charm of mystery, of the unknown, sure richly to reward the investigator." The video embedded at the link above touches on another long-forgotten piece of history: a sketch of the photographers who captured arial views of assemblages of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from WW-I, carefully choreographed and arranged to form a Liberty Bell, a Stature of Liberty, a US flag... as forgotten as the origin of the WW-I term razzle-dazzle.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Code Review of Doom For the iPhone 161

Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform. "Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."

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