news aggregator
What To Do With Old Laptops?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
News: Georgia's Governor passes videogame tax cuts
19-year-old Gamer Elected Mayor of Oklahoma Town
Although we know that John Tyler Hammons is a gamer, we're not sure which console he favors.
He seems to be an expert at the political game, however. As the Associated Press reports, The 19-year-old University of Oklahoma freshman, a political science major, was elected mayor of Muskogee, a city of 38,000. He will be sworn in to the unpaid position next week.
Hammons, who drubbed a 70-year-old challenger, wants to create an ethics commission and set up a campaign finance reporting system. From the AP report:
His ambition doesn't stop him from enjoying the typical diversions of a 19-year-old: video games, movies, fast cars and rock 'n' roll. As for dating, the skinny, baby-faced Hammons said he's waiting to see what kind of offers come his way.
Local cafe owner Gary Armstrong said:
He doesn't have the baggage. He doesn't owe anybody anything. It's sort of a fresh start for Muskogee.
IE 7.0/8.0b Code Execution 0-Day Released
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bush urges Saudi Arabia to raise oil output
Crude prices soar past $127 a barrel
Deadline Day for EA-Take Two Takeover
Today is the deadline for shareholders of Grand Theft Auto IV publisher Take Two Interactive to accept Electronic Art's tender offer of $25.74.
So, will the deal get done?
Probably not - at least not today. Forbes speculates that EA will extend its deadline. Adding a little sweetener to the offer wouldn't hurt, either.
Oft-quoted Wedbush-Morgan analyst told Forbes that EA screwed up by making its initial offer too high:
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter believes Electronic Arts started by offering too much for the company. EA could have started its bidding at $22 a share, or $1.7 billion...
By publicly starting at $26, then a rich 52% premium, EA must have figured Take-Two would jump at the offer. Zelnick Media was, after all, brought on in 2007 to turn around the faltering Take-Two. Instead, Zelnick stonewalled. "EA didn't know how to react," says Pachter.
Meanwhile, analyst Colin Sebastian told the San Francisco Chronicle:
I think it's more than likely the deal gets hammered out. Maybe it happens at a slightly higher price, but it's good for shareholders.
Sweeps Month: TV News Shocked by Cussing on Xbox Live
"It's fun that can turn foul, in seconds..."
That's the intro from a video report by Roanoke's WSLS-10 which frets about bad language used by players during Xbox Live Halo 3 matches. Anchor John Carlin (left), who pulled his own son's XBL play into the story, says:
[We placed] a microphone in Tyler’s headset. The conversation was x-rated from the first shot... In another clip, clearly a young child was among the players. His language as bad as theirs... And the kids aren’t just hearing the bad talk—they’re speaking it. Racial slurs and homophobic comments as well.
GP: Did we mention that May is sweeps month?
Bletchley Park Facing Financial Ruin
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Lead Animator - Realtime Worlds Ltd Dundee, SL, GBR
REALTIME WORLDS creators of the no.1 hit game CRACKDOWN, are looking for a Lead Animator to join our team on our next ground breaking title, the MMOG, APB: www.apb.com Realtime Worlds are on a very secure footing with our game projects signed with top-tier partners, a recent $50m investment and an all-star board of directors including of the Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto series, Vice President at Nintendo of America and Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
Engine Programmer - Sucker Punch Productions Bellevue, WA, USA
Sucker Punch Productions is a first-party, independent game developer working on the Sony Playstation, and is the creator of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, Sly 2 Band of Thieves, and Sly 3 Honor Among Thieves. The Sly series has won multiple IGDA and AIAS awards including "Original Game Character of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Animation", and "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction".
Housing starts post surprising rebound
Rare interfaith meeting in Muslim heartland
Report: Xbox Live Says GamerTag with Gay Reference is Unsuitable
According to a report on The Consumerist, Microsoft's Xbox Live has mandated that a gamer/customer of the online gaming venue change his GamerTag due to a gay reference contained in it. From the article:
Reader Grant says that his gamer tag "theGAYERgamer" was recently banned by Xbox Live. He hoped that a call to customer support would sort things out but all he received was a confusing explanation from an Xbox Live supervisor. According to the supervisor, it wasn't that she found the name offensive, but it was the "greater Xbox community" that found it offensive...
The Consumerist wonders why the Xbox community gets to decide, and whether the decision has homophobic overtones.
GP: Interestingly enough, we just logged onto XBL (GamerTag = GamePolitics) and noticed that the similar-sounding account "gaygamer" is active. We checked that one because of the well-known website of the same name. So it's unclear whether "theGAYERgamer" was singled out for some reason or if there is more to the story.
Verizon Joins Linux Mobile Foundation
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Monkey See, Monkey Do
I came across this for the very first time today - the The MonkeySphere. I've never seen this before but Damn if it's not a right on accurate understanding of small social circles.
If you've never read it, please, go do so now. The basic premise is that we as a species can't actually comprehend or care about more than 150 people as a group and anyone outside that group is not considered a real person.
It explains why this is, gives practical examples of how and why this occurs and is, in general a pretty good read. Also if you don't, what I'm about to say next won't make much sense. So do yourself a favor and go read it!
The only thing I would add to this is that the end examples of how we *cannot* care about people outside of the 150 people social group tends to read a bit like justification for some of the pretty horrendous things we as a species do to each other. "Oh, it's alright that I just carpet bombed Iran, I couldn't care about them anyway because my brain isn't big enough".
I mean please, that isn't right.It might be what we are genetically programmed to think, but the whole point of being a rational species is that we can over come that to some degree. The mere recognition of this state is enough that we can overcome it in some ways.
What it doesn't take into account is the idea of respect, even just societal ingrained-but-not-really-meant respect. Politeness and so on.
I tend to believe these things were created as a direct result of this social limit of caring. It's a way of compensating for the fact that although I don't care if the person in the car infront of me lives or dies, I give the impression I do which salves any social interaction I may have with him/her.
Politness / respect is the social lubrication that makes us attempt to overcome our genetic indifference to those outside our social grouping and is what enables us to not act on impulses that are not repressed because of familiarity with the person concerned.
Yesterday I was involved in an Altercation at the mall. I was standing in line at Panda Express getting a refil for my daughter when I became aware of an altercation going on behind me. A man and a woman were getting verbally fractious and as I watched, the guy just smacked the woman in the face. Right there and then.
Obviously I jumped between them and then assisted the cops when they arrived track this guy down - he and the woman were unknown to each other.
I remember driving home and thinking "Ok, this guy didn't know this woman, why would he just think it's ok to thump her like that?". What had been going on in his day that he was so pissed off that he smacked a woman for bumping into him? What made him so mad that he didn't think before he did it? Did he seriously expect to get away with it??
It was a classic example of the MonkeySphere syndrome - she was outside his social circle, he was upset at something and lashed out at someone who he didn't know and didn't care about for a trivial reason.
It's a fascinating aspect of sociology. I hope you find it so too....
Equation Definition - A rant.
A while ago I was doing lighting. I was pretty much working out how phong shading, specular et all were done from scratch since I prefer to do it that way. Harder, but then I really understand it. I'm not a graphics programmer, but this isn't that hard.
Or at least it wasn't until a friend helpfully pointed me at the phong shading wiki page - found here.
There I found the above equation. I'm sorry - it means zero to me. I'm one of those people who can only grok an equation like that if I already know what it means. Looking at that blind and trying to understand what it means? Forget it.
So here's the ranty bit. The thing is mathematicians build equations like this because they can. They don't write them to be understood by Joe Schmo. If you are smart enough to read that equation cold, then you don't actually need the equation in the first place because you are ipso facto smart enough to work out what it's trying to communicate with you in the first place.
In which case the question has to be asked"why do this?".
Now I get what the equation is, because I worked it out for myself first. What would help tremendously though is if they used meaningful variable names for a start. Instead of Ip, use Lighting Value. Instead of Ka and Ia, use actual bloody names. It makes decoding it far far easier.
Also, put some bloody example usage in there. It's really not hard. Do an example - if we have Light X at distance Y from object A and Vertex V is at position whatever etc etc etc. I don't know about you but I *always* work best from example code because it allows me to truly plug in what I know and deduce the rest. Microsoft is usually pretty good about this although recently it's been a bit spotty - either you get examples in C++, C# and Visual Basic, or you get nothing.
But back to the point. Wiki pages like the Phong one don't honestly do a lot of good. If you understand it all, you don't need the wiki page in the first place. So please, if you intend to explain something mathematical, a) use meaningful names and b) put some damn examples that explains usage and flow of the equation (again with meaningful examples)....
Copyright
Advertisements
Random Dopass Audio
Gaming News
Dev Blog Feeds
Science & Tech News
Akismet spam counter
Syndicate