Humodour

For a non-programmer who wants to developed a 2D game quickly and easily, Python and Pygame are a no-brainer solution. But you still needs a technical mind. Making computer games involves a lot of maths and logic.

So I heard you like mudkipps.

You're a funny little man.

So, guys, your attacks on atheism aside, where do you account for the evolution of 'souls'?

Architecture, fire, and communal living... I don't think stupidity or lack of adaptability are the reasons Neanderthals died out. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-neande...es-ukraine.html And it begs another question for all those of you who believe in a sky fairy - does your world view allow for Neanderthals to have had souls and humanity, too? And if not, and given that fact that non-Africans have about 5% Neanderthal DNA, I guess that means Africans have purer souls? And if Neanderthals had souls, did Australopithecus? What about modern chimpanzees? Where in the evolutionary ladder do you account for the emergence of 'souls'? I'm sorry for presupposing an understanding of evolution. It's because I don't consider creationists to be people, so those of you who are can feel free to ignore this thread and go bash some rocks together and giggle at the pretty sparks, or bomb an abortion clinic, or whatever it is you lot do.

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for? You realize you are basically questioning my parenting skills, don't you? I think it's better for our friendship that I ignore your remarks on raising kids. I get that you are just trying to raise awareness, but your tact leaves much to be desired. I don't give a smeg about your parenting skills (although I get the impression you're a great parent). In fact, I'd suggest we keep your parenting skills out of this and return to the wider question of whether Christmas is a socially positive force in its current form. I'm saying think about the planet we all inhabit and what waste and excess consumption does to it (and yeah, if that doesn't motivate you to give a ****, as with people like Guard Dog, then do think about what state you're leaving the planet in for your children to inherit). There's every chance you are not even one of the people guilty of using Christmas as an excuses to be a hugely wasteful consumer whore (although given how many people do, I won't hold my breath), but I'm responding to you because you got defensive at me when I established the connection between Christmas and waste. Oh don't you bloody-well turn this back on the people who actually bother to care. It's not self-denial that's causing global warming - although I'm sure denial comes into play on that issue for you in terms of pretending the scientists are all wrong. And it's not self-denial that causes the majority of the world's population to be in poverty or near-poverty conditions - certainly conditions that are so wildly disproportionate to our own. It's unsustainable consumption. Note that word unsustainable. The most tragic thing about this all is that consumption isn't the evil because it can be made a heck of a lot more sustainable. The evil is Western society's collective laziness when it comes to considering alternatives in production and consumption which would alleviate the problems. Pretending the problems aren't severe or don't exist, or passing the blame on to somebody else's behaviour is just so much easier than asking "what if my lifestyle is hurting someone and I can fix that?" But, whatever, right? Hippies invented climate science during drug frenzies. It's all a great big socialist fraud to tax the rich more.

Synonym for breasts starting with t should not be a censored word.

Mate, tonight is one of the rare few times I drink. And, honestly, I laughed my ****ing **** off at this post. That is all.

I heard a few technical reasons (courtesy of Slashdot) as to why that's probably not true and just more Iranian propaganda. Moreover even if it is true, there's reasonable likelihood the drone would've wiped it's electronics beyond repair once it figured out it was hijacked. Further, even if it didn't, everything about its electronics is encrypted to the point that even a friendly American defence firm would have a hugely difficult time getting anything of value out of it. In fact, probably the most valuable resource this drone has to offer is it's paint coating (which, I guess, is not insignificant). Id est: this is much more of a propaganda coup for Iran than it is any sort of technological/military coup. And if the Americans are stupid enough to have not implemented fail-safes like deadreckoning, then, well, it's probably good that this happened BEFORE the war.

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for? Never said it did. I was weighing in with a different perspective on why Christmas isn't such a good thing.

You don't need some arbitrary holiday to get your kids presents. You don't need to buy your children's love by buying them presents. You don't need to be wasteful to get your kids interesting presents. Heck, it's not gifts for one's children that I really have a problem with anyway, it's the wider notion that everybody has to buy gifts for people on Christmas day or it's a sign they don't care. It's a bad social concept, and it has a massively wasteful result. You can't deny the number of unwanted presents (which have a very large cumulative greenhouse gas footprint and water consumption footprint from their production and transport) that end up in landfill or a cupboard for years from this one arbitrary day of the year. You can't deny the number of cats, dogs, and other pets that end up on the streets, at the pound, or euthanised because of this ridiculously over-blown gift-giving tradition. I know global warming doesn't mean much to you Americans but it does to the rest of the world and it will mean something to your kids when it starts toying severely with their living standards. Christmas is one tradition this planet would be better off without. Spread your love for each other more throughout the year and figure out a way to do so that doesn't involving buying ****loads of new consumables which will generally not be used nor wanted. There are ways to celebrate Christmas cleanly and sustainably, but people don't. That's the problem.

It's an occasion that encourages immense waste and consumption. So I have no problem with Christmas. I have a huge problem with the "gift" giving. Besides, over 95% of Americans are religious. Now that is one ****ed up statistic. Can't say I really blame the atheists in America for being so militant given the **** and idiocy they must have to put up with on a daily basis.

So guys, with Civ 4 plus both X-packs, who are your favourite leaders and why? Out of, for example, Expansive, Imperialistic, Philosophical, Financial, Creative, which do you prefer? I guess it partly depends on what victory type you're going for.

I don't think there exists any mechanism to eject an EU member state. Greece would have to leave voluntarily (i.e. under intense monetary pressure).

Zesty college girls? I do love good eye candy every now and then, but no, I'm talking about CMS and ATLAS independently finding spikes matching Higgs boson decay at 125 gigaelectronvolts. Each results is between sigma 2 and 3 significance, but the fact that they both found something there, and both at exactly the same electronvolt level makes it more significant than the individual sigma of either result. More collisions will be run to increase the level of significance to an acceptable threshold. Basically, once confirmed, this will be one of those historic moments in history when humans discover something fundamental about the universe - why things have mass.

They've (probably) found Higgs.

A few are successful despite piracy, not because if it. Check out the link Starwars posted for indie developer opinions. "A few"? http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Indie/

Britain should just leave the EU and stop poisoning it. They can successfully coexist with it like Switzerland does.

I'm glad I clicked on this thread but I'd suggest moving it to Way Off Topic so more people see it!

I wonder if Scotland will join the Eurozone? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16114902

No. A reserve bank doesn't exist in a vacuum. It needs to model the entire economy, and the impact its actions will have on the entire economy (and in the long-term), in order for it to act appropriately and correctly. In fact, I'm struggling to think of a more destabilising way for a reserve bank to act than what you propose - giving no heed to how their actions will develop in the long-term and simply reacting always in the short-term. That isn't to say that a reserve bank should act often - if they're doing their job properly they should very rarely need to intervene.

Over what time period? I would say all of them: short-, medium-, and long-term. Hence the need for economic modelling. If you only model for the short-term, for instance, then you're ensuring a cycle of boom and bust because you can't see the forest for the trees. And if you're modelling for the long-term, you run into the problem of chaotic dynamics - small initial perturbations in the model lead to increasingly divergent outputs over time (hence the need to constantly recalibrate models). The people running the Fed aren't morons. They're just doing something extremely difficult which is also exposed to political interference.

Because we do not yet know how to model economics. Economic models are constantly recalibrated to fit current data (reminds me of the Standard Model). So for the same reason human economists fail to predict crashes and bubbles, so too would an AI running the reserve bank (like Watson or some other expert system). The other consideration is that human adaptability and intuition, while perhaps more biased, political and fickle than a computer algorithm, is of benefit more often than it is not. Until we have human-like AI, any computer system running a reserve bank would not have this capacity. Finally, the fact is that we already throw a ****load of computing power at the problem.

I would imagine that by the time we actually have the technology to actually accomplish that, the prices for various resources would actually make it economically viable. Hangover fuzzed thought: Will commercial appetite exist for all the electronic trinkets we currenty enjoy? If so, might such demand not be met by adapting biological organisms? I'm not sure where you're going with that, but personally speaking, biomimetics has been a personal obsession of mine since I was a teenager, and it has a very special place in materials science, so I would say yes. I mean, we're only just now discovering that photosynthesis involves quantum effects. Nature has a lot to teach us. Can't see biological spaceships in the near future, though... save non-biological computers based off biological circuits and network.

As long as complex side-quests are not the only type of side-quests. Simple black and white side-quests have their place. While they certainly shouldn't comprise more than say 30% or 50% of all side-quests, they shouldn't be abandoned altogether. Games are which are composed entirely of moral dilemma or ethically grey quests become extremely tiresome, not least of all because life is not like that. If you're going to create a ****ing ethically grey side-quest, give people the black and white options too for Christ's sake! I'm looking at you Deus Ex: Human Revolution.