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Comment JEALOUS! The Warden is protecting his turf, yo. (Score 1) 353

In D&D, the Dungeon Master isn't the leader. He's the opposition.
A dungeon is a kind of prison:
http://thesaurus.com/browse/dungeon
So, what is a warden, if not the master of a dungeon?

"Some people are opposed to the death penalty because it makes the state into a murderer. I'm opposed to the prison system, because it turns the state into a gay dungeonmaster."
      -Emo Philips

Comment He's a little boy. Give him another chance. (Score 1) 613

People with autism-spectrum disorders are well demonstrated to be able to achieve hyper-normal ability in specific areas of motor skills. I had a 12 year old kung-fu student with Aspergers, and his formwork was really amazing (although he lost his edge when he came into contact with an opponent). I had other students for longer and with seemingly stronger basic ability who never *got* the forms the way this boy did. Now he's 17 and spends all his time playing X-Box.

So, did he cheat, or not? Maybe, but if he did, Microsoft really ought to give him another chance. The real problem here is that they refuse to slap him on the wrist and then clear the tag. Whether he's autistic or not, he's 11 YEARS OLD. A "no strikes" rule before permanently labeling a kid a cheater is really draconian way to deal with a child.

Games

A General Guide For Mod Creation 29

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Kieron Gillen has combined and updated a series of guides he wrote for getting into the development of game mods. He provides a detailed explanation of the process from concept to reality as well as a look at some of the obstacles you're likely to run into. Quoting: "First thing is that it really is work, and should be planned as such. As I've said earlier, you really need to be aware you have to sacrifice other elements of your life to get it done. If you just rely on your free time, the Mod will fail. You may find it helpful to actually time-table periods when you can do stuff, in the same way you would book a regular evening class. If every night you put aside a limited amount of time to do work, you'll make steady progress. This is considerably healthier than the boom/bust approach which most modders will follow. But - y'know - most people on your team will move on a cycle of massive productivity followed by long fallow periods."
Data Storage

Facts and Fiction of GPU-Based H.264 Encoding 79

notthatwillsmith writes "We've all heard a lot of big promises about how general-purpose GPU computing can greatly accelerate common tasks that are slow on the CPU — like H.264 video encoding. Maximum PC compared the GPU-accelerated Badaboom app to Handbrake, a popular CPU-based encoder. After testing a variety of workloads ranging from archival-quality DVD rips to transcodes suitable for play on the iPhone, Maximum PC found that while Badaboom is significantly faster than X264-powered Handbrake in a few tests that require video resizing, it simply can't compare to the X264-powered Handbrake for archival-quality DVD backups."

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