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I would like there to be something tying the games together somehow, but I also see OROW as a time to make whatever silly game idea you had but didn't want to spend ages making, so it could restrict some things. So I am undecided about themes at the moment.

Ok, so we'll have it in January, 7-13?

Running your own server isn't a good idea in most cases, your home connection will probably be 256kbps upstream, and at most 1mbit. In addition to that you're not really allowed to run servers on your home connection and you're at risk of it being cancelled. Especially if you start uploading dozens of gb a month.
You wouldn't need a seperate phone line, you'd just be using adsl or cable as you do now presumably, they're the only home connections you can get that cost less than a dedicated server in a server farm.

If you pay for a dedicated server you get the machine, on a 100+mbit connection to the interent, hundreds of GB of bandwidth, in a server farm with guaranteed uptime and so on. It is a big expense for one person though, we split the AGS server between 10+ of us and it works fine for everyone (it's something like £50 a month, which is more expensive than our old one, these are in Germany though, UK servers are expensive for some reason). Why do you need a dedicated server? If you don't need to run software besides web server stuff then a normal webhost is much cheaper, and if you do, but you don't need large amounts of cpu usage then a shared, virtual server is a good option.

Skyfire did the same to me, luckily I can to unblock myself and told him there was no need to be trying to cause a fight, and for some reason he accepted that. I guess if he's doing it to other people it's probably time to ban him. I do think you could have all just blocked his pms yourself if they became annoying, but at this point I don't think there's any reason to allow him to continue to use the forums. I'm banning him and locking this thread, both are undoable operations if the other moderators disagree.

He's the kind of kid that will continue this on email, or msn, or whatever, it's a funny joke to him... so if you're genuinely annoyed by him you'll block any other contact.

Wikipedia isn't a repository of obscure underground knowledge, and inclusion isn't a judgment on the quality of things. Just because your mum's apple pie is better than Delia Smith's doesn't mean she should take precedence over Delia on wikipedia, because she's not as culturally significant. The wiki admins have to deal with a lot of pages made by people that think that is how it should be though... pages about their new webcomics, sites, bands or even about themselves. I think BJ is worth inclusion in a large encyclopedia, but only just.

Yeah, I'd let a few wikipedians work it out if these are worth keeping. If we're the ones keeping them there then it's not a lot better than a vanity page, we know a lot of the authors personally... but it's good that SSH has added more information to the pages, that will help them decide.

Most of the stuff you watch on youtube is there without permission, unless you like watching the user produced stuff like teenagers singing along to songs on their webcams (oh wait, that music is there without permission too...). File sharing ethics side though, the RIAA and many of the larger labels it represents are outdated organisations clinging to power through litigation, and unless they can successfully abuse their position it's only a matter of time before these middle men are less important in the commercial music model as everything heads digital (from production to distribution to playing). Their strategies for maintaining that hold on the industry suck, not least including irritating DRM which hasn't once been effective, and limits people's (legal) ability to transfer audio between devices.

Because people are scared about the idea of a black hole growing and sucking in the entire world I guess. Like in the 30s people worried that if we created a nuclear explosion there'd be a chain reaction and the whole world would go nuclear. I don't know what the scientists are trying to do exactly, but it's almost certainly not as exciting as it sounds, generally the science media sucks if you want to find out exactly what is going on.

Second week of 07 would work ok for me, I'll be in uni, but I will at least be able to run the competition.

That's the week I planned to hold it, because I'll be in Germany 26-4th and it's best avoiding the few days around Christmas... we can hold it some other time, I don't mind really.

It feels about time for the next One Room One Week competition. I'm posting to ask firstly about interest, and secondly about when would be the best time to hold it. The Christmas holidays would be fine for me, but I know a lot of people have things to do over them, how many of you would be interested and available?

He's just an admin that saw a page about some freeware games without any sources and marked it for deletion... he's not the antichrist! SSH's modifications will probably save it, the articles probably meet the notability requirements now.

Christmas is too expensive and because I'm the only person with any available funds left in the family, I'm vetoing it this year. Unforunately we have no children to deprive. If anyone wants to hire a skinny, beardless santa then I'm available. I wasn't aware of this business opportunity before!

Yes there are many kinds of cycles on earth, not least the ice ages, but that doesn't mean the planet is indestructible, nor does it mean we would want to bring dramatic climate changes upon ourselves in the short term, even if in thousands of years they will happen anyway. Incidentally the moon doesn't keep the earth's climate "as steady as it is" to any great extent, we rely on lots of different feedback mechanisms for that, but you're right the Milankovitch cycles determine the ice ages. Whenever you dismiss the majority of the scientific community as "experts" in inverted commas, and promote an alternative view of how things are you had better know what you are talking about.

It's funny/sad that, as is the case with evolution to some extent, there seems to be genuine popular opinion in the states that it's all a big lie, or a mistake. I don't actually think it comes from not wanting to admit that our usage of resources is becoming a problem, it seems to come from a deep misunderstanding and distrust of science. Scientists are all biased, they're all in someone's pocket, they're all trying to make their field seem more important and they all disagree with each other anyway. That seems to be the prevailing view.

Now there's certainly a lot of debate in climatology on what the outcomes of global warming will be, modelling the atmosphere is a difficult problem, but few serious scientists hold the view that we're not affecting the atmosphere significantly, and outside the cyclical norms of (geologically) recent history. Primarily human activity has increased CO2 levels such that they're many times higher than they have been through ice age cycles going back hundreds of millenia, and the average global temperature is rising in a way that doesn't have a known precedent. That much is scientific consensus these days, and quite measurable. Not many people would say the net result of all this is another imminent ice-age, because most don't seem to have much of a clear view on where it's all headed. Some people are worried to the point that they think it's already too late to avoid catastrophic problems, and some think we can live with it just fine. On this I'm happy to err on the side of caution, and I'm glad that's the view most of the governments of the world are looking at it. It's nice to see people taking a stand together on something that they could so easily stick their heads in the sand about.

I agree we're not killing the planet, we're building huge civilisations unsustainably, and seriously overpopulating the earth, that's all, it'll survive, but it'll probably won't be so nice for us humans. And we're talking human scale time here, hundreds of years, not tens of thousands, so the ice ages have little to do with the problem at hand. You may as well say it doesn't matter if we solve the Israel-Palestine issue, because in X thousand years it'll be covered in ice anyway, things will easily calm down once the terrorists get bored of attacking the settler's igloos.

"Rated R for graphic battle sequences throughout"

Trailer is painfully OTT... bit too much for me to take with all the straight heroics and glorified warfare packed in. The massive epic CGI battle thing that LOTR heavily featured has worn a bit thin now that everyone else has their crowd animation systems. I'm sure the "300 men vs a BAJILLION persians" idea was a hit back at the render farm. The idea of two hours of that doesn't appeal to me, but if they're being faithful to the source material I expect there's more to it than the trailer suggests. It does look pretty. The best thing about all these comic book adaptions is that a lot of them experiment with translating the source style to film, even if results aren't always perfect.

If you damage part of your brain you can lose memories you had, if you damage a different part you can stop being able to have certain emotions, another part goes and you can't recognise objects, or enjoy music, or perform the tasks you were good at, and so on. It seems clear that each aspect of our conscious minds and personalities is inextricable from the brain that forms them. So I can't envisage anything meaningful existing once that is no longer active.

It makes sense that people who are near brain death experience some similar things, but it doesn't suggest that there's anything "on the other side", just that their faculties are breaking down in a similar way.

Actually any scary thoughts I've considered about death are in that shut down phase, the kinds of effects that could happen when things are completely breaking down... perhaps your perception of that time wouldn't be short and painless at all, who knows. However, I've lost consciousness and nearly died due to lack of oxygen before and I experienced nothing special, so if I had to guess, I expect it'll be like that. Hope so, it's not very scary at all.

The shading isn't very close to his reference, but I'd get bored shading in MS Paint too.
This is going to become another one of those is it or isn't it impressive threads again! As usual with the Paint stuff, to anyone that can draw, it's only impressive for its masochism.

Skip uni for a week? I've done it for less cool reasons...

Did you read this?

[OTOH!]

I find the forum "discussions" generally very annoying, and it's slightly offputting to me that people I know to be intelligent get so involved in them, especially after they turn into the train wrecks that they often do when certain people get involved. I don't see the appeal at all, just like I don't see why you'd want to have a 40 person discussion on anything in real life, especially if the 40 people include very young people, and very stupid people. Picturing some of you guys in a heated argument with Skyfire about anything is amusing, and sad.

OTOH! I recognise that a lot of people find them entertaining, so I'm ok with the just not clicking on them if I can help it policy. I expect this is more a problem with my attitude to arguments in general.

Unfortunately not, mapping is one of the most mundane tasks you'll have to do as a modeller. There are lots of ways to flatten out a curved surface onto a plane, depending on what your priorities are (like with all the different globe -> map projections that exit). A computer can't tell how you would like to paint the model, which parts are logically connected in the painted skin, which parts you want to have more texture area, which parts of a surface it's worth distorting to keep things joined up and so on, so it can't do it automatically. The mapping tools have become a bit better than they were, but you still have to UV map manually for most complex models. The only good news is it doesn't take too long to learn... you get into a pattern of working pretty quickly and can zone out while doing it.