Archive: August 09, 2002
Via diveintomark, Leslie Harpold: Litmus Test.
I can tell right away if it's going to work out. I ask one question. I have more to follow it, but it's the one, you know? The one that tells me everything I need to know.
"What do you think I should know about you?"
There are all kinds of right answers. Infinite numbers, so many it's exponentially easier to be right than wrong.
Sometimes they talk about money. This is the third worst response. I never know what to do with the money guys but smile and nod, maybe slur out the word "Interesting," in a kind of disingenuous "I'll be changing the subject soon" kind of way. The worst possible response I only got once, and it was a lesson I deserved. "There's really nothing I feel you should know yet."
Has Al Qaeda changed its name to "Fateh Islam" ("Islamic Victory")? That's pretty funny. What a misnomer. Even more reason to wipe them from the earth.
Oh my gosh! This is exactly what I've been wanting to do! Via Madville.com, the Daily Photo Project.
Glenn Reynolds on Fox News: Lessons From History.
Despite these [low crime] rates, which Malcolm is right to call astonishingly low, the British government decided at the turn of the 20th century to begin a program of gun control that would ensure "that nobody except a soldier, sailor, or policeman, should have a pistol at all." The claimed justification was the "enormous" number of handgun injuries.
This effort was initially frustrated by popular resistance, but the first regulatory law in this campaign was passed in 1903, requiring a license for the purchase of a pistol. Such licenses were freely available, though, and citizens remained well enough armed that when (unarmed) London bobbies were chasing a group of armed robbers in 1909, they had no trouble borrowing pistols from passersby, while other armed citizens joined in the chase. Rates of gun violence remained low.
Though fear of crime was (again) claimed as a justification for much more intrusive gun controls despite no increases of any significance, the real motivation -- as historical records make very clear -- was the fear of armed labor unionists, and perhaps even Bolshevik revolution. Though Parliament in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries had seen an armed citizenry as a valuable check on tyranny, by the 20th century the government was determined to disarm the citizenry so as to eliminate any threats to its power.
By 1953, the English were effectively disarmed -- and compounding the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property. In the future, only the police were to use violence, and even they tended to be quite lenient toward violent criminals.
In a "coincidence" that will surprise few readers who are familiar with the work of criminologists like John Lott and Gary Kleck, English crime rates almost immediately began a steady rise, for the first time in 500 years. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is now 60 percent higher than in the United States. And it wasn't just crime in general: Gun crimes became far more common as well.
The rise in English crime has coincided with the growth of governmental intrusiveness where firearms are concerned. The history is entirely consistent with the findings of Lott and Kleck: that disarming honest citizens produces more crime, not less.
What's more, the English experience provides a concrete example of American gun owners' worst fear: A patient political establishment steadily whittling firearms rights away over a period of decades through means both open and covert as circumstances permitted, in order to bring the citizenry under more complete political control. These are lessons worth bearing in mind whenever the English experience is brought up as part of the American gun-control debate.
Via Madville.com, New Scientist: Crow reveals talent for technology.
The remarkable toolmaking talent of a New Caledonian crow called Betty has challenged the chimpanzee's reputation as the most proficient toolmaker in the animal world.
The bird, one of two kept at Oxford University's zoology field station, fashioned a hook from an ordinary piece of wire - something even a chimp cannot manage.
Betty's skills came to light when the two birds were given a choice between a straight wire and a hook to extract a bucket of food from the bottom of a plastic tube. When the male bird made off with the hook, the female bent the tip of the straight wire to make a replacement.
Astonished, the team checked to see that it was not a fluke by setting both crows a new challenge. Again, they had to retrieve the bucket of food but this time the team provided only straight wires. In nine out of 10 trials, Betty bent the wire and pulled up the bucket.
Wild crows make hooks from twigs and leaves and do not have access to materials that bend and retain their shape like wire. The captive bird's ability to make the right tool for the job from unfamiliar materials and using quite different manufacturing methods suggests some understanding of the properties of the material and what might be achieved with a hook.
Make sure you watch the video. It's actually fascinating! I can't tell what's going on in the second one.
http://dbh.sourceforge.net/
What's a disk based hashtable? A DBH is a convenient way to associate keys composed by characters to data records. Any kind of digital information can go into the data record, such as text, graphic information, database structures, you name it. The idea behind using a DBH is to get rid of what is known as an index file in the database world. In the DBH world, the index is built into the file format.
So this is what's been going on with Winamp. I noticed a site announcing 3.0 had been released, but I went to the site and found the same thing they did.
Via Yaysoft.com, Halo 2 Announced.
The game itself is everything you loved about the original Halo, but with all the knobs turned up to 11 this time round. This is not a quickie "Halo 1.5" follow-up using the same engine. We are using a completely rewritten graphics engine which allows our artists to work in previously unimaginable complexity and detail. Anyone who thinks the original Halo stretched the Xbox's graphical abilities to the limit is mistaken. There are gorgeous new realms to be explored, and Halo 2 will take you there. There will be several new weapons in addition to the reliable old standards from the first game. Not to mention the new vehicles you'll ride into battle. Or the many new enemies you'll face. If you had a hard time with the handful of Covenant races you met in the first game, you may wish to start practicing now; you'll need it when they unleash the rest of their army.
Multiplayer is an entirely different kettle of fish. Halo 2 is designed from the ground up to support internet multiplayer games over Xbox Live. You're no longer limited to playing LAN games against friends who live nearby. What's more, the multiplayer experience is being completely redesigned. The first Halo offered just a glimpse of what we originally had in mind; now, in Halo 2, our designers' vision will come to glorious, explosive fruition.
They have some amazing looking screenshots, and some desktop wallpaper.
Oh man, I can't wait - this game will be great. Halo had some of the best AI ever.
Also via Yaysoft, an interview with James Schmalz, Unreal Tournament 2003's "creative director", on gamespy.com.
New in UT2003: They've changed, improved, removed, and added some weapons, they have a new double jump, a new game type, amazing graphics, etc. I just hope I can play it on my computer.
As I was playing UT 2003, one thing I noticed right away was the changes in the weapons. Aside from cosmetic enhancements (most all of the weapons look completely different than before), it felt like all of the weapons have gone through an intensive balancing phase. All the popular weapons have returned, including the rocket launcher, pulse gun, flak cannon, shockrifle, biorifle, and the mini-gun. The popular Enforcer handgun is gone and in its place is an assault rifle that doubles as a grenade launcher. The sniper rifle has been put back on the rack, with a lightning gun taking its spot. Shooting out a bolt of lightning at your foe, the lightning gun can also shift to an alternate sniper mode where you can zoom in for headshots.
The crew from Digital Extremes. "We've done some major weapon tweaks for UT 2003," continues Schmalz, "mainly in play balancing. In addition, the 'luck' factor we've seen in the past is no more. For example, we've tightened the blast radius of the flak cannon when you shoot, so players really have to aim at their opponent to get the kill. Before, the spread was so wide you could literally be off aim and still get the kill. Random kills are less likely to happen now. Also, the chards don't bounce around that much anymore. We toned them down a bit. The rocket launcher only holds three rockets, instead of five, and the spread of the rockets have been tightened up. Again, this eliminates the randomness or lucky shot kills. We want the player to rely on their skills rather than guessing on a shot."
The cool thing about the double jump it gives the player extra mobility when going around the map. For example, an experienced player with a rocket launcher will know exactly where you're going to land if you're jumping to avoid his rocket. However, while you're jumping and you see that rocket is coming toward you, you can hit jump again and move forward away from the rocket and run off without getting killed. The double jump is just going to open up different strategies for players.
"Bombing Run is probably one of the bigger things we added to the UT 2003," explains Schmalz, "it's like a really violent game of football. Players can pick up the ball, pass it amongst themselves, and then deliver it to the other teams' goal. Meanwhile, you can shoot and kill the guy who is trying to take the ball away from you.
We spent a lot of time trying out dozens of different game types and prototypes for new games about a year and half ago and we didn't want to have ten new game types in UT 2003. We wanted the old favorites and something that was so amazing that we felt was just as kick-ass or more so, than Deathmatch or CTF. We wanted that one or two extra game types that were just totally killer.
Of course, an Unreal Tournament game wouldn't be complete without lots of blood and giblets. "I spent a lot of time on the death animations," laughs Schmalz. "Blood will spray out when you kill someone. If you snipe someone with the lightning gun just right, you can take off their forearm and leave them with a stump. We have this cool rag doll effect in the game so when you kill a guy, the physics system takes over the skeleton. So when they fall down, their body parts will react to the surroundings. For example, if they are killed on a flight of stairs, their arms will flop as their sliding down the steps. Or, when you shoot a guy and he is propelled against a rock. If his arm hits the rock a certain way, it will make him flip over toward that side. The death animations are different every time, and most importantly, extremely gratifying." One other cool effect: after you kill an opponent, their body turns into a ghostlike wire-frame figure that floats away as if being picked up by something. The whole effect is pretty wicked.
An an official demo by the end of the month! Oh man oh man oh man.
Also check out Planet Unreal.
Via WHEDONesque, an interview with the actors who play Lorne and Groo on Angel, from the BBC (video clips!). Kind of Random, really. I'd never seen the real person behind Lorne, and it's just really random because they're two minor characters on the show. Some of it was pretty funny though - the best clip was the one about the musical.
Via LWN, check it out:
Last week, CodeWeavers' CEO Jeremy White sent me a quick email to give me a heads up that they were getting ready to release version 1.2 of CrossOver Office, and to offer me the chance to preview a beta version. "CrossOver Office 1.2 is going to have support for Visio and Quicken, and lots of bug fixes," said White. "If you'd be interested in more, I'd be happy to discuss it with you, or drop you a beta."
Did I want to test Quicken on CrossOver Office? Are you kidding??? "Yes! Y-e-s! Y-E-S!," I swiftly replied. "But what about QuickBooks?" I added.
"One of the last minute failures was in QuickBooks," White replied. "But we fixed it. QuickBooks is a very recent addition, and we haven't really tested it to see how well it works, but so far it look promising."
Comes with screenshots, and lots of info. No time to read now though, unfortunately.
Cool stuff from Dorothea today.
In other words, this is a Very Good Thing that XHTML 2 is doing. It's a right pain to try to implement correct behaviors via CSS, because the markup hasn't heretofore given you much to hang your hat on. This is actually a rather old markup problem; plenty of SGML DTDs have elements for so-called "continuing paragraphs."
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Friday, August 9, 2002
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