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Generally, patents cover a physical process or product, and copyrights protect ideas and written works. The reason there are not that many software patents probably has to do with the idea that software is generally considered to be intellectual in nature rather than physical and a patent won't protect your rights to something as long as a copyright will. You get one copyright on your idea, you're done. It's protected until you've been dead about 25 years. I can't remember exactly how long the term is on a patent, but I do know that if you miss a window to renew it, it becomes public domain. Even if you do renew a patent, it can only be renewed so many times before it's considered public domain.

That's what my previous research into the whole thing yielded for me, anyway.

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That's a good point, Snarky. I don't think a lot of people are really thinking about the moral implications of creating a computer mind. In fact, if you go back and look at scientific advances in our past, I think you'll find the moral implications are almost never considered until the action has been taken. Yay hindsight! Such is the way with us though, I suppose.
I see the situation going down like this: A group of scientists who have been working their entire professional lives on this problem finally get it right and create an autistic, partially psychotic thinking box and decide that it's probably too dangerous to be left on, but before they can turn it off you've got new Thinking Box Rights Advocates taking them to court to keep the thing on, then it goes to the supreme court (assuming it's done in the US, which it probably won't be because we suck anymore, but that's a different discussion). The Supreme Court will likely refuse to hear the case until it has been an issue for quite some time (they don't like to take the lead on decisions anymore). In the meantime the Psycho Box will remain on, and activists will convince lower bleeding- heart courts to give it access to the internet so it can be among its peers and next thing you know Skynet is knocking on our door.
I'm being facetious, obviously, but except for the part about Skynet I really wouldn't be surprised.
If anyone ever cared what my opinion on things was, and they rightly don't, I would say that if we make it we can terminate it if it proves dangerous or unwieldy. It's just the common-sense thing to me. But a lot of the people I know call me a cold-hearted bastard when discussions about this sort of thing come up, so I'm not really one to speak for others. For example, with the questions asked a long while back about the 5 people on the railroad track and sacrificing one life to save theirs, it would not be worth it, imho. Given that there was no information given to the contrary, I would have to assume that all 5 of those people, or at least one of them, was perfectly capable of detecting a speeding train long before it hit them, so I would not interfere. If they don't have the common sense to step out of the way, who am I to do the work for them?
Sorry for the long post. Just got caught up in this thread for some reason....

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Just a quick one, I couldn't resist. Hope it's not too vague

3 angry Mathematicians, one brainy biker babe, and alligator-skin lab coats.

Greg Martin also has a great planet tutorial.
http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_planet.html

Both of his tuts helped me getting started with space pics, but I do things my own way now. Try the tuts, then adapt what you learn to your style.

Putting the atmosphere on a planet is tricky, especially if your image has a decent restriction on the number of colors. I've seen guys that can pixel in a very convincing atmosphere, but I'm not really a pixel-pusher. Best I could ever really do is to do a final image of just the planet and the gradually reduce the colors and touch up the results as I went. I'll try to post some examples for you if you'd like, when it's not 5:30 in the morning.

Alrighty. Took me a whhile to get this done with work and all, but I worked on it quite a bit. I got a view for each side and wanted to see what you thought.

Does anybody know of any decent fairly cheap CD/DVD repair kits? I'd like one of the refillable or reusable kits. I was looking for reviews and couldn't find any, so I was wondering if you guys had used any that you like.

Illa'an's heart fell as he looked out over his troops. Their faces were as dark and forboding as the sky over the mountains, and he knew that many of them would never see home again. As he drew his sword to signal the advance up the mountain, he regretted his reign had come to this.

I think it looks pretty good. But there's something strange about the way the blood comes up onto the wall. The line from the pool on the floor to the high spot on the wall seems a little too straight, I think. Or maybe it's the line from the pool to the base of the wall. It still looks alright, It just looks a little off.

Okay, I added some shading to the forearms and hands in the back view and I kind of like the way the butt turned out, a straight line all the way across just stuck out too much and made him look like he had a ghetto booty. Are the shades on the arms too contrasted from one another? It looked odd at first, but if I tried more subtle colors I couldn't really tell that they were shaded at all, so I went with this.

Thanks ProgZ, I'll post up some more progress in a couple of days.

Sorry it took a while to get back. First off, excellent paintover, Progz. I wracked my brian and tried to come up with something similar but, to be honest, you simply captured my character, period. If you don't mind, I'd like to use your paintover and work from that. I've never actually just taken a paintover from the cl, even though I know you're allowed, I've never allowed myself to do it, but I just don't think I could come up with anything that is any closer to what I'm trying for. The style and coloring are spot-on, and the complexity is perfect. And, quite frankly, it simply got me excited about working on this guy again.

So, hope you don't mind that I took your paintover and started on a back view:



I took out the quiver and replaced it with a backpack-type sack thing. I forget exactly what they are called, but it's kind of like a canvas duffle bag. Still working on the whole back view, but how's it coming so far? I'm mostly happy with the feet I think, and the bag is coming along. The hair is iffy, but I'm not giving up on it just yet.

If you don't want me running with your work, ProgZ, just say so. I was just too impressed and excited.

This is my first real character sprite attempt. The character will be in a 320x200 resolution. As you can see, I have pillow-shaded the bejesus out of it, a clear indication of my complete inability to shade much of anything within a small space and without the use of an airbrush.

So on with it then:
x1:

x2:

I included the palette currently used by the character at the top. Any paintovers are welcome. Feel free to bash the crap out of this sprite.
Also, I'd like it to look good in the end, but I'm new at animating pixel-people, so I need to keep the color count low if possible to ease that process a bit.

The amount of RAM a system has, has nothing to do with whether it's a Mac or a PC, it has to do with the hardware. The reason that the Mac Pro's support 8 gigs of RAM is exactly why it's so much more expensive.

And don't forget that the type of operating system is just as important. Just because your motherboard supports like 1TB of ram doesn't mean your OS does. Currently there are 2 types of OSes that I am aware of. 32-bit and 64-bit. A 32-bit OS will only support up to 4GB total RAM throughout the machine (this includes any video cards or other PCI memory sources) whereas a 64-bit OS will support much much more (you don't really even have to worry about how much a 64-bit OS can support given current technology.).
So, it's not just about the hardware it's about the software running the hardware.

Lol, so many things here that I do myself.

- I have had the name Azaron or Azaron_Flare since 2001, although I only use it in communities that I feel connected to. That name also appears in 3 of my 5 email addresses.

- I shake my leg when working on a project on the computer or when I am really into a game. I almost never realize I'm doing it, but it drives the wife nuts

- I almost never have both feet on the floor when sitting at my desk. Usually, one leg is on the floor while the other is in another chair or tucked under me. Never have figured out why, except that for some reason it actually physically hurts to have both feet on the floor. Strange?

- The last ritual I really have is that I have a friend I play games with a couple of times a week. No matter what else we play, the night always starts with a 2 on 4 game of Age of Empires 2: the Conquerers and ends with a 2 vs 3 battlefest in Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates. Always.

http://www.freewarefiles.com/
Do a search for video capture. There are several promising free video and screen capture options available, and MC Screencapture looks promising. I don't currently use any screen or video capture apps, so I can't really comment on their quality or usefulness.

Great sprites! I like the originals too. Very nice. The only thing that really looks bad is the girl looks very bow-legged. And the walk cycle amplifies that. Try to bring her feet more toward the center of the sprite. As it is, if she walked the way the walk cycle currently shows, she'd fall over.

EDIT:

I found two of the sites I use quite a bit for walk cycles.
http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml - A very good tutorial
http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html - This is the best thing I have found for visualizing a walk cycle. You can change how heavy the character is, their gender, and even their mood and speed.

It wouldn't hurt to put something under the tv, you've got the room and it wouldn't clutter too badly. And maybe a light switch next to the doorway leading to the kitchen (unless this room is from my first apartment. I only had one switch in each room, and I even had one that was near the top of a door. The renovators were on crack I guess ) And I'm pretty sure you've got plenty of room to put a table or lamp on one or both sides of the couch without cluttering either.

I like your style, it's nice and clean, but a little texture on the carpet in the room would probably help bring things a little closer as well. I'm not sure if it would fit with your style though.

First off, the light beams: These occur naturally, but only when there is some sort of particulate in the air. You only perceive light if it hits something, so in order to see a beam of light, there must be some sort of dust or water vapor or other gas in the air for it to bounce off of. Otherwise it is invisible to you. Now, the more dense the concentration of particulate, the brighter and more defined the beam will be... TO A POINT. If there is too much particulate, it will scatter the light and wash out your field of vision. Walk outside during an early morning heavy fog, and you will see this effect. Or turn on the high beams in a car in a misty area. It will literally make it impossible to see anything beyond the vapor in the air.

So, I would say as far as using beams in your art, they can be used to affect the mood of a piece, but keep in mind that using them will give the piece a sense of heaviness in the air, as well as allowing you to draw focus to something. ie: in your forest piece there, the beams draw my attention to the opening in the rock face, but also give the impression that the area is very humid (which, judging by the look of the foliage, it is. Good work ), or very dirty (lots of pollen in the air, although if there was enough there to effect beams like that you wouldn't be able to breathe ). I also get the impression that the scene takes place early in the day, because that is the time that moisture tends to "burn off" of evaporate into the air.
For the room, a light beam coming through the window would definitely give the impression of a lot of dust hanging in the air, but it would also be a little harsh to look at if it was too bright and may wash out important details behind it. In some cases it can make a room look smaller too.

Bounce light is just that: light that bounces. Objects reflect their color and absorb other light, so any light being reflected off of an object will be the same color as the reflecting object. You also have to take the object's surface into account. A rough surface will diffuse the light to the point that it will be negligible, but a shiny or smooth object may actually reflect a great deal of light. The reflected light will lose some of it's intensity, however, so no reflected light will ever be as strong as the initial light source unless it's reflecting off of a mirror.
Loominus just posted an EXCELLENT tutorial about light in one of Hillbilly's threads in the CL, so take a look. It's good stuff.

Cool. Thanks for the help, guys!

alrighty. I was trying something a little different with the top bar before, but it wasn't really working out, so I took your advice and made the top more like the bottom. It's still a little bright, still some tweaking there, but it's much more pleasant now I think. How say you?