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Comment Yes. Secession is racism. (Score 2) 1163

by ishpeck (#41964405) Attached to: Secession Petitions Flood White House Website

It was racism that caused Americans to secede from the British crown. It was racism that caused the Yugoslavians to secede from the Soviet Union (just ask Trotsky!) It was racism that caused Indians to secede from Britain -- that racist jerk Gandhi needs to be put in his place! It is racism that causes Tibetans to want independence from China. It is racism that Indonesia is no longer a Dutch colony. Oh, and I bet you Prince Pedro was being racist when he decided to secede from Portugal, too.

I'm going to say something that is sure to get me negative kharma from the polemicists but couldn't it be possible that people are dissenting on the policies of the president rather than on the race of the president?

I got a lot of crap from my family when I told them that I was voting for Obama. Yeah, they were kind of bigots about it. But if you can't actually try to speculate on the rational reasons somebody might want to secede and just chalk it up to "they hate black people" that makes you guilty of bigotry, too.
NASA

Shuttle Reentry Over the Continental US 139

Posted by kdawson from the boom-boom dept.
TheOtherChimeraTwin notes that the shuttle Discovery will land at Kennedy Space Center on Monday morning at 8:48 EDT. The craft will make a rare "descending node" overflight of the continental US en route to landing in Florida. Here are maps of the shuttle's path if is lands on orbit 222 as planned, or on the next orbit. Spaceweather.com says: "...it takes the shuttle about 35 minutes to traverse the path shown... Observers in the northwestern USA will see the shuttle shortly after 5 am PDT blazing like a meteoric fireball through the dawn sky. As Discovery makes its way east, it will enter daylight and fade into the bright blue background. If you can't see the shuttle, however, you might be able to hear it. The shuttle produces a sonic double-boom that reaches the ground about a minute and a half after passing overhead."

Comment Re:Awful (Score 1) 62

by Solra Bizna (#31217226) Attached to: Sony Develops a Universal Game Console Controller

The stick is ideal for games where you need the ability to move both quickly and precisely (say, to whip to the left and shoot the damn torpedo coming at you) with both hands, but not so much on platformers, for instance, where you want to move precisely before jumping to the next spinning, fiery climbable wall while some demonic dream-dad is throwing knives at you.

I played it on PC, with WSAD for movement, and it was still a pain.

-:sigma.SB

P.S. You forgot to mention that the knives were on fire, too.
Graphics

Disney Releases 3D Texture Mapper Source Code 83

Posted by timothy from the nice-of-them dept.
dsavi writes "Ptex, Walt Disney Animation Studio's cutting-edge 3D texture mapping library which was first used on nearly every surface in the 2008 animated feature Bolt, was released under the BSD license on Friday. Quoting the announcement on monophyl.com: 'We expect to follow Ptex with other open source projects that we hope the community will find beneficial. We will soon be launching a new Walt Disney Animation Studios Technology page under disneyanimation.com. It will include links to our open source projects as will as a library of recent publications.' This looks good for open source 3D graphics."

Comment Re:He is correct. (Score 1) 465

by Solra Bizna (#30586596) Attached to: Graphic Novelist Calls For Better Game Violence

"Reality isn't fun. If it was we wouldn't play games."

I'll second this and say that those people who want realistic games are a stupid minority who don't understand game design.

I'm a game designer/programmer who still spends a lot of time playing the original Ghost Recon with his friends. Often with respawn time set as long as 60 seconds, or respawns disabled entirely (and ALWAYS limited in quantity). This is a game where at least 70% of all bullet wounds are instantly fatal (and the rest are no joke), and where aiming usually requires you to hold still and aim carefully.

I also play games like Worms 3D, Spaceward Ho!, Harvest Moon, Starcraft, Tetris Attack... pretty wildly varying levels of realism there.

I'll have to say that people who relegate entire other groups of people to "stupid minorities" are stupid minorities who are sure not understanding something, not least of which that other people might have different tastes than them.

-:sigma.SB
Games

The Psychology of Achievement In Playing Games 80

Posted by Soulskill from the no-you-don't-get-points-for-reading-this dept.
A post on Pixel Poppers looks at the psychological underpinnings of the types of challenges offered by different game genres, and the effect those challenges have on determining which players find the games entertaining. Quoting: "To progress in an action game, the player has to improve, which is by no means guaranteed — but to progress in an RPG, the characters have to improve, which is inevitable. ... It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform — to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master — to improve their skill or knowledge. Say you take a person with a performance orientation ('Paul') and a person with a mastery orientation ('Matt'). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved. Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there's still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle."
Image

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.
Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."
Games

Dev Discusses Upcoming Spy-MMO, The Agency 75

Posted by Soulskill from the i-could-tell-you-but-then-i'd-have-to-gank-you dept.
Kheldon writes "The MMO Gamer recently sat down with Lorien Gremore, lead producer on SOE's upcoming spy-shooter MMO, The Agency. They discussed various aspects of its development, such as the 'stickiness' of session-based games, striking a balance between FPS and MMO players, and whether or not The Agency even falls under the definition of a traditional MMO at all. 'You might be in Prague, and experiencing play with a lot of different other players; you might have come in at your field office and gone out into the city, encountering many other players doing missions that you are also doing,' Gremore said. She added that the game's areas are large enough to have 'lots of different people in them, collecting intel, engaging in public combat, all of those types of things. These areas are big enough that there’s shops, there’s secret spaces, photos to be taken of suspicious objects, things like that. They’re all out there in the world. We’re really trying to create a balance, where you’re encountering a lot of social situations, chances to get into groups with other people, just by merit of the fact that you guys are doing the same sorts of things in the same sorts of places.'"

Comment Re:...Patch Tuesday (Score 1) 341

by Solra Bizna (#29689167) Attached to: Microsoft Plans Largest-Ever Patch Tuesday

Complaining about WGA is as stupid as people complaining about having to put the cd / dvd in to play a game. It's a very minor form of copy protection that causes no inconvenience to users - well, users that don't like to bitch about the massive effort of having to put a disc in to play a game.

The only reason I have a working optical drive between the three computers that I A) use regularly and B) have a monitor for is that a replacement for my most recently deceased one arrived today.

All the effort in the world won't cram my Brood War CD into the empty space that used to hold my G5's DVD drive and make it work.

I'm pretty much the biggest anti-DRM person that there is.

I think the fallacy in this statement is so blatantly obvious that I don't even need to point it out. (Which I did anyway. Go figure.)

-:sigma.SB
Music

Brian Eno Releases Second iPhone App 196

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oblique-strategies-ftw dept.
Brian Eno, or as he is known to many in my office, "God," has released his second iPhone App. A followup to Bloom, this one is called Trope and supposedly creates darker music. You create music by drawing shapes on the iPhone's screen.

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