Ryan

I'll enter too. Because lightning has to strike somebody, and it's just as likely to be me as anyone.

I died on wave 20.

IMO the live demo in the interview is very convincing. They put the controller in the hands of the journalist conducting the interview, and filmed him controlling the demo. If that was faked, they did a darn good job of it, even to the point of inserting stutters and vsync issues into the video (to say nothing of flawlessly choreographing the control).

Not to jump into a conversation that happened a month ago, but I actually think these guys are legit. There's a 40-minute long interview with the CEO on youtube that shows a live demo and goes into a little bit more depth (not much, but a little) on how it works. They don't strike me as being full of BS, and I've got a pretty decent BS detector. The way I see it, there are two fundamental, showstopping problems that they have to solve in order for this to work: search and data compression. In the interview, the CEO said that they render a single atom per pixel, and that this atom is chosen from amongst the trillions of possibilities via a "search algorithm". Given the state of search algorithm research these days, this problem does not look intractable to me. The bigger problem is data compression. When you start talking about "unlimited" detail, what you'll find pretty quickly is that you'll run out of hard disk space, to say nothing of RAM. The CEO provides no details on their approach here other than that they're "working on it". Personally, I think they will have to resort to some form of lossy compression. Lossless just wouldn't be up to the job. Once those two barriers are broken, it's just a matter of adding texture mapping, lighting, shading, translucency, shadows, and so on and so forth, which, compared to the previously mentioned issues, should be a walk in the park.

A Night of Blacker Darkness! Before that, I read "Hunting the Snark". Somehow, it got me into the perfect frame of mind.

Looking up, people are talking about A Wrinkle in Time. I must have read that book at too young an age, because I recall I found it strange and confusing and not very enjoyable.

Dr. Suess - early childhood Narnia - 3rd grade Redwall - 4th to 7th grade LotR - 5th to 6th grade WoT - 7th grade and beyond From there, it gets fuzzy since I've read so much over the years. There was a period when I read more SciFi than Fantasy. I've flipped back somewhere along the way...

I know I usually load up the forums after reading Schlock at 9...making me part of the problem.

I resisted this thread for a long while, mostly because I was starting to get sick of steampunk. But an insomniacs boredom knows no bounds, so here I am. I've actually watched the video now, and let me tell you: I am SO IN. But! I disagree that it's steampunk. Nothing about it looks steampunky. The airships aren't even zeppelins; they're more like FFIV-style airships. Which, frankly, is awesome. Reminds me of that Dr. McNinja fight on the pirate airship.

I thought I'd note, since people are still posting in this topic, that, based on my reading of the sample chapters in Alloy of Law, Brandon has decided to avoid this issue entirely. So, canonically, redshifting does not occur. As for FTL, that probably deserves its own topic.

Swicy. Mario or Luigi?

The enemy's gate is down. Pixar or Dreamworks?

Ah, okay. That's quite clear. BUT! I will say this. Smart animals clearly have some intelligence above and beyond base instinct. I mean, shoot, you can train a chimp to do sign language. They also can do marvelous things with their base instinct. If you could somehow modify that instinct, I could easily see a bear tapping pewter for extra strength in the same way it perceives the world around it by scent. You wouldn't get Bearquisitors flying through the air, since that requires a good deal of on-the-fly reasoning, but I see no reason why basic functions should be out of their grasp.

Raptor security guard, dismayed at the presence of the Doctors McNinja.

Zero.

Brandon has definitely gotten better at fight scenes since he wrote the Mistborn trilogy. This fight is fantastic, and I mean that in all its various and clever implications. Wut.

I've never put in the time or attention to really "get" realmatic theory, but based on my limited understanding, the fact that animals can accept spikes implies (in the strong, logical-implies sense) that they have souls, because hemalurgic spikes alter the spiritual DNA (among other things? It's been a while). It also implies that their spiritual DNA can be altered such that they can burn metals.

Squirrel Nut Zippers was my favorite band in high school. They still rank high up there, but I've listened to all their stuff so many times that if we were still using vinyl, the tracks would be worn smooth. Now a combination of Andrew Bird, bluegrass, Royal Crown Revue (another high school favorite that's still around), and Sufjan Stevens fills that place in my heart. BUT! They (relatively) recently put out a live album, and it's breathed new life into the old tracks for me. It's pretty great.

Imagine a chromium burner bringing down a steel-girded building. o_O

The VVVVV soundtrack. Because everyone needs a good chiptune now and then.

IIRC, Dan posted on his blog something to the effect that he'd like to tell more stories in this world with these characters, but hasn't made public any specific plans. My impression of the ending is that he was leaving his options open for future books, but that for the moment at least he has other projects he'd like to pursue. That sounds about right to me; I want to see what else Dan comes up with, but I also hope we get to see more John Cleaver at some point.

Nichijou (My Ordinary Life) is currently one of my favorite things. Very random, relentlessly funny, and consistently smart. I love it so much. Next comes Usagi Drop, a really sweet story about a 30-something guy who winds up taking care of his 6-year-old aunt after his grandfather's death. It's peaceful, touching, often funny, sometimes sad, and generally everything Anime usually isn't. As for other stuff, I'm still working my way through Battlestar Galactica, and I can't seem to stop rewatching selections from Dr. Who. Other than that, I'm mostly waiting for Chuck, Lie to Me, Human Target (assuming it didn't get canceled :\), and Top Gear to put out new material.

My opinion should count for little since I'm currently not what you would call an active member. But were I actually critiquing, I still wouldn't be able to keep up with 6-7 submissions per week. I'd end up doing two to four, and maybe possibly getting to the rest at some hypothetical future time where submissions are few and free time is abundant. In other words, I would never get to them. Of course, RE has never worked on the expectation that everyone will crit everything, but during the times that I've been active I've always tried hard so to do. It never felt right to expect others to crit me if I didn't reciprocate.

In a word: spammers. Spammers are responsible for most of the hacking that happens on the Internet. Spammers hack for two reasons: one, to obtain email addresses to spam; and two, to misappropriate a resource (be it a server or user account on a service like Facebook or Twitter) to use for hosting and sending spam. Based on what Eric has said here, I'm guessing this attack was performed in order to steal email addresses. That's not to say an actual human performed the hack on TWG, nor that TWG was specifically singled out for attack. That may be the case, but my gut tells me that the community was too small to merit individual attention. See, open source web software is a double edged sword: it has lots of advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that it enables the mass automation of petty hacking. Exploits are routinely discovered in this software, and while most communities are good about patching vulnerabilities, keeping up with updates can be a lot of work. The result of this is that hackers (primarily spammers) write scripts that seek out and exploit vulnerable installations. It doesn't matter how small the site: no fish is too small for spammers to fry. These automated scripts can (and do) exploit millions of sites, and it's this economy of scale that allows spammers to profit. And I agree: spammers need to get a life. A real life in a productive occupation, not the criminal, exploitative business of spamming. The world would be better off if they did.