Diamond

Not really related to recent events, but still interesting: tourist photos in North Korea One example: the border with South Korea. Guess where NK is.

I saw that coming a mile away. I mean, every time anything like this (or worse) happens, there is always a president or someone in the government saying "how horribly cruel it is" and how they are taking the investigation "under their personal control" and the murderers "will not go unpunished". Walsingham hits the jackpot. Of course it will be one of the topics in political talk shows for like a week, but it will soon be forgotten, just like the others. I, for one, have already lost count how many notable journalists has got shot in the past few years. Muso, FSS (that most people like to think as of successor of KGB) as an organization is not directly involved in such events these days, though I will not be surprised if some higher ups from law enforcement are. I think it's known as the FIS. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> FSS, actually. I'd correct it to "last 100". In fact, with the first Romanovs, things started to go relatively well (Peter I, for example), but they were kinda hit or miss. Do you really think they are going to explain? The common practice is to start an investigation that leads nowhere (see the top of my post) and wait until everyone forgets and moves on.

I have just watched the trailer. Wow.

I can decompose my reasoning if it was too cryptic: A: "the topic with a smiley was created by a person" B: "the topic with a smiley was not created by a person (but a bot)" Let's assume (aproximately) based on the historical evidence: p(A) = 0.1 p(B) = 0.9 p(B) >>> p(A), hence the topic with a smiley is most likely to be created by a bot. And, Alan, I didn't look at poster's join date, I used similar reasoning on poster's name to (incurrectly) induce that poster is a bot.

Hmmm, I initially thought this thread was started by a bot,... because of the smiley in the title.

We had Vista presentation from Microsoft at our uni recently (which I didn't attend), and two notable facts that left the impact on the attendees are it has a lot of neat features it was so painfully slow on a laptop with 2Gb RAM, it'd be enough to make one weep

Worse even if that thing crashes gdb. (happened to me)

Ah, I knew it would have some impact one day. (w00t)

It is golden color, but doesn't have the right shading. Your shading is diffuse, you need to add more specular reflection. Like this or this. Notice, every image of gold you posted has reflections. Argh. Morgoth beats me to it.

I concur. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> We know.

Just my (somewhat random) thoughts on this (in no particular order): You need some more things apart from tutorials and books to be a good programmer. At least, all good programmers I know possess them: Genuine interest in technology Interest to take things apart and understand how they work (they ask "Why" questions more often than "How to" questions). Discipline and interest to practice Some mathematics background (not necessary, but it helps) If you are serious about programming, the best way to learn it is to go to a college or university. Of course, if you are determined enough you can do without it (that's what I used to think before going to uni), BUT it is very very useful regardless of whatever self-taught people say (that's what I think now, approaching the end of my CS degree). Uni will teach you essential concepts that you didn't even know exist, and, most importantly, it will teach you how to learn effectively on your own. Last note: it is a good idea to practice a bit and decide if you really want it. I used to teach junior programming course (TA), and I observe that most people enroll in the course because they play computer games (mostly WoW) and think that if playing games is so mush fun, developing games would be even more fun; about ~30% drop out or fail the course, because it was too hard, boring, tedious, not what they wanted, or it required too much commitment. ~20% pass the course and decide not to do any programming courses ever again.

But that means the AI doesn't have perfect logic. Unless, of course, it is hit by a lightning and flips out, as Hollywood loves to reassert.

Another perspective from Somethingawful forums.

As long as this AI will deem necessary to give the Intelligence it creates a sense of meaning of life, which will not happen if the this AI itself wasn't given this sense by people creators.

I actually think with their perfect logic, they won't see the point of conquering the world, or for that matter, existing at all, unless you give them a stimulus to exist.

DEFCON Demo. This is a brilliant game. I think I'm getting it after exams. (w00t)

The trees look exactly the same. Is there a way to change the random seed? typos

Screenies?

I suppose you mean "80Gb HDD with NTFS partions"?

The best thread title I've seen lately.

You were following the game too closely, watching too much trailers, vids and interviews. I, on the other hand, didn't do it for quite a while, so my interest in NWN2 is revived.

No.

I thought that both drarf's and tiefling's voices were OK, though some of other NPCs sounded artificial (esp. tiefling cutscene). And Volourn, I didn't say I don't like Annah's character, in fact it is one of my favorites (and not because she was a little girl who had sex with her father). Nevertheless, I just don't want to see characters being recycled, I hope tiefling will be something different. You, on the other hand, seem to reserve special hate for this type, just like Hades and Christianity. P.S. NWN1 battle music wasn't awesome, I hope it doesn't return.

Asus P5W-DH Intel Conroe E6600 Seagate Barracuda (7200) 320Gb Corsair PC4200 2Gb RAM GeForce 7600GT 256Mb It may be weird that I have a Crossfire mobo and an NVidia card, but I really like the mobo and I really want to have a decent video driver for Linux.