shinRaiden

Anybody have a kleenex? Or a jeep? How about an IBM or a PC, and fruit rollups (dried fruit-jam sheets)? Have you ever had weinerschnitzel, or a slurpie (shaved ice drink)? Or try tech support: Ketchup? Only if you plan on making a contribution to the Kerry Kampaign. That fish is no whopper, that's only a burger. I'm sure that this will no doubt boost lo-crack's (er, bad plumber reference... ) name recognition. Now why isn't their R&D dept running with the idea, and selling it to the DoD for billions? Or maybe they fired all their R&D people to hire King Fud and his merry men of litigating lawyers.

Iraqis Pay Tribute to U.S. Service Members Group photo They also met with Pres. Bush. The press had no interest in asking questions about them and their background and what they would do, instead they rehased stuff they had asked previously. This was apparently organized under the direction of a Marvin Zindler from Houston, Texas. I don't know if it was a Shriners supported operation or not, Mr. Zindler may have contacts with them. Google for Marvin Zindler Mavin's Bio Some info on Marvin's friend who did the surgery

Then how come neither Kerry nor Edwards showed up for their security briefing from Tom Ridge? Even if he had nothing to say, they could still claim they were dutifully being informed and concerned about security, instead of just showing up and wondering what is going on. That's why Bush kept Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger over, since he figured that since they were in charge, they ought to be informed and competent. But the parts that were broken were preparing briefings saying that they were not broken, so why go and mess with something if it is working? But now that we know that there is issues, there is no excuse for blindly assuming that the folks running the show know what they are doing. Ironically, it is congress that can dictate to the administration, and demand accountablity, but they have abdicated in favor of prostitution to the media, especially Kerry and Edwards. Send the wives out stumping, you won't lose as many poll points, and do what you swore an oath to do. Furthermore, the 9/11 commission's finding of the need for a single intelligence czar; that was what Richard Clarke was supposed to be doing, and what could be rolled under Tom Ridge's umbrella. So they were attempting to exonerate Richard Clarke, steal via relabeling one of Bush's ideas, and undo the damage done by Jamie Gorelick, a commission member. A throughly typical DC scamjob, and the public was suckas to fall for it, but then again there wasn't much else worth watching on TV. Now even Osama's brother Yeselam Binladin is saying Michael Moore made up all sorts of crap, in trying to link Osama and Bush. What do you expect, when the guy looks like the chump who was the actor-standin for Jabba the Hutt in the directors cut of Star Wars ep. 4.?

OFP runs from 2x2 (100m) to 2048x2048 (102km) maps at 50m grids right now. The problem is not the grid arrays, it's all the texture naming and object placing that loads up your spacing. You could crank up the landgrid settings way high to make a good FS map, but then you would spend be flying over something two to four times as 'edgy' as verylow, and you still would have the trouble with having tons of objects, and you might get weird skewing as well. The 'easy' solution is to try dynamic placement, but that can be tempermental in MP, and have catastrophic effects on savegame files.

Have you tried dowatch, dotarget, dofire?

Driver development on the PC side is downright brutal, 1fps difference crowns the king card. Macs have been and will always be more 'esoteric'. Comments recently from Nvidia about their 6800 DDL board said that they give the API to Apple, who then makes the driver how they want to. Comparing MS's XP driver to even a detonator 4x.yy, I can only imagine what a 1/2way decent driver could do on the mac. Does Wine work on the Mac, and does OFP still work under Wine? Item two, if OFP2 were designed more modular, and platform independent, and based on OpenGL instead of DirectX, porting to Linux and MacOS would be far simpler. But it's kinda too late for that, and that would complicate development for the Xbox, although it may help for the PS3.

My understanding was that those statements were attributed back to VBS1 statements, which was just marketing spins saying that Visitor could handle data sets large enough and accurate enough to handle GIS data. I still have not found anything 'official' that says how to get GIS data into Visitor, but I believe that is the answer. If you are dynamically generating your maps, how would you handle all the object placement? How would you determine road and building and texture placement? That data is not stored in data files like DEM's and DTE's. That data is stored in overlay files that can be linked in editor programs. So I don't think that there is any 'new' system here, just the standard that we've been using so far. As for the 'island' factor, I'd like to see something other as well, perhaps some sort of 'modular' system, where you have a dump of smaller 'mini' maps, say 10x 1.28km instead of 1x 12.8km, and then only have the cell you are in and the 8 surrounding ones (9x square) dynamically loaded. Not significantly different for normal size islands, but this could help speed up large maps, as well as help dynamicallly tune sp and mp lag.

Before you run too far afield with Soldner comparisons, read the fine print, where it says that you will only play in small subsets of the giant world map. If they plan on mapping siberia realisticly as they claim, that's going to be the mother of DVD games. I can't begin to imagine how long it would take to set up the whole system to dynamically simulate real GIS data, let alone how big it would be. Second, if you read between the lines there as well, you notice that they appear to be having struggles as well with dealing with significant amounts of hardware or software lag due to lots of dynamically handled trees and rocks and objects. Go read up on aLonewolf's WRP (fwvr) spec, and you'll see how bad it scales.

What model motherboard are you using? Are you using an nForce2 board?

Couple interesting points: 1) Voice command - not chat, real command. Basically call a unit by id, and say destination or action. 2) Engine designed for portability, with platform-specific data as a wrapper interface. x) crappy _craft interface x) issues with AA/AS?

Almost certainly your problem. Toms Hardware did a scathing review of PSU's, in which they ripped on the fancy after-market ones, and sent the with-case ones to the shredder. If it says 350, expect 250max for a no-label, 300 for aftermarket. Some 500's were topping out at 400. I lost one, but there was black melty things inside, so I know that the PSU was toast.

In many places you will find voter registration forms. Before you fill any of them out, you need to read the information available from the online editions that Walker has linked. If the copy you find elsewhere has the same boxes, but not the same state requirements printed, it is invalid, and using it will not get you registered. If you want to register for an absentee (mail-in) ballot, check with your local county elections division, as the dates to register as an absentee are sometimes earlier than the ordinary registration deadlines. Just 100 days to go until a landslide of grumpyness or a recount.

What happened was that there was a lawsuit in California where the 9th Circus court of Appeals tossed out California's Primary elections system, as using a state elections process to conduct party business (nominate canidates) was deemed unconstitutional. The Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian parties together filed suit here in Washington state to have our primary system (which was nearly identical) thrown out as well. The complication comes in that for a long time Washington State has had 'anonymous' voter registration, where you don't list your party, but can vote for any party's canidates in the primary. The result was that various soft money groups were focusing on the primaries, to get the 'wrong' canidates on the general ballot, thereby skewing the general elections. It is still being worked out in the courts, and it's still not quite certain what we will have. Worst case scenario we get a California-governer-style turkey shoot-out. The secretary of state has planned for that, by blocking the ballots out by party in color-coded blocks. So what I meant by the 'best we can do', is that unlike other states where the parties can obtain lists of people who registered as affiliated, we don't have any such list, making get-out-the-voter efforts that much more labor intensive, especially since we have some of the most contended seats this year. Here's food for thought. Next week, my county council is expected to approve, on party lines, a measure that would restrict any human usage or contact with 65% of the owner's property, and restrict impervious surfaces like roof or driveway to 10%, to save the fishies. This would be a blanket ordinance affecting all private properties not inside incorporated cities. The deputy assistant county prosecuter admitted under oath on camera that this ordinance was not needed and was far in excess of the minimum required for compliance with various state laws. Do you really own your property? -One more note- I'm definately not a party hack. I did some nosing around at the state convention, and turned up some funky business that they were up to, and with the majority helped derail that process. My district chair said that the under-the-table report I gave to him was much more accurate than what he was being told. If you have a problem with the system, go take the bull by the horns. We did, and it shook up the party brass real good. I nearly beat the party designee for district elector and a previous state representative on a on-the-spot write-in, and others beat the the party designees in other districts. There were district caucauses earlier this year that all you voters were supposed to go to, and there is nothing but busyness until elections. Canidates don't automagically appear on the second tuesday in November, there are a whole lot of baby-kissing and stumping and yard-signing and county-fair-walking between now and then. So get out the voter today, and tomorrow, and election day.

1) everybody wants money, and when people don't get their money, they whine. That's not news, thats pigs at the bucket. 2) The chinese economy is also strained, as they have been turning their trade surplus around into oil purchases to make up for what they will never be able to produce. Their oil import expenses are rising faster than is their trade surplus revenues, and it is the UN that is preventing Iraq from selling Oil to the Chinese, and the only way the US would get a piece of that pie would be for the Iraqis to contract to Halliburton, generating tax revenue for the US. 3) Frank Lautenberg was swapped in a dubious manuver for former Senator Torrecelli, who was dropped as a canidate only after a convience store camera caught Torrecelli and a known mob boss putting the screws to a federal grand jury witness who was testifying against Torrecelli and the mob boss on charges of gross corruption. Lautenberg was brought in because he was a reliable party hack for the Jersey machine. Try the rose-tinted glasses, or the emerald ones if you prefer. 4) There appears to be a growing conspiricy to oust Cheney terminally by giving him more and more heart attacks. The fact that he hasn't despite the flurry of charges dredged up would I think serve as proof of his good health and ability to successfully continue his competent service. In dealing with diabolically corrupt organizations, a certain measure of baksheesh or palm-greasing is needed if you want to even get in the country. Halliburton's interest of course ought to be Halliburton. Obscure butterflies and oppressed indeginous people's are not their target markets. That is the responsibility of the local governments to regulate, and if there are problems, blame the natives for slacking off. Furthermore, how much of what you do in your day-to-day job goes unreported to your immediate supervisior? How much do you do under-the-table or short-cut to make the impossible possible, then fudge reports or leave the details out for the mangement? How many of you have managers that really don't know/care what is going on, just as long as something gets done that they can report to their managers and the accounts peoples? Then scale that to a company the size of Halliburton, and you wouldn't even have a case for ingorance at the CEO / Board level, they are so far removed. 5) The administration like everybody else just lines up with their hands out. It is the obligation of congress to arbitralily decide what they want to fund in their budgets, so if we weren't supposed to go to Iraq, why should we continue to fund it? That is a political question, and needs to be addressed by a majority before votes up or down on monies. Thank you to the troops who aren't sitting around, but still waiting for gear and pay while the politicians play. It's almost time for the august recess, and the troops, er, the politicians, need their vacations. 6) The entire military structure went into the can after the 'end' of the cold war, despite all the pieces of the cold war still burnin' and churnin'. What survived was companies and organizations that adopted the outsourcing business model, and lobbied it to congress. That way the doves could claim they were cutting the military, the military could get rid of a lot of stuff and jobs and services, and the lobbiests could bank. That whole outsourcing scheme, in which everybody attempts to screw everybody's accounts, is the reason why we got contractors all over the place doing stuff, and you don't know who does what for who. That change in management and structuring happened chiefly under the previous adminstration, and fortunately those contracters picked up the dropped ball. Is it expensive with dubious political ramifications? Of course, but it is better than nothing at all. 7) I can't say for other areas, but the GOP party organization in my district is above board, and I've done some digging to verify that. The official survey program we (the party district) recieved from the Bush / Cheney campaign has no such references to neighbors. The only neighborhood lists are those copied from voter registration lists (public) and compared against census lists (public). This is about the best we can do, since in Washington state voters do not select a party during registration. Furthermore, the very first thing done, for elections rules reasons and also to promote name recognition is to fully identify who we are and what it is that we represent. -- disclaimer -- I am running for GOP PCO (precinct comittee officer) this year, however none of the statements here are official party statements.

That tracks. I bet that it is a mis-assumed physics model shortcut, ie it is on the water therefore it 'must' be a boat, so auto-load the boat model. But when it tries to go into a motion loop, it's missing needed or expected information, so to davy jones they goes.

Great set of links, thanks. On the first one, make sure that you read the state specific rules. Some states have different requirements for ID submission, and differing deadlines. Don't delay, check it out, but confirm what the rules are with your local county elections board, so you don't get surprised.

Maybe a complication between the landcontact memory points and however the variable water (with tides) is handled? Possible option would be that if there is a seperate physics model for boats and landvehicles, that placing a object where it would automagically get handled as a boat model, regardless of whether it has such inheritance defined.

Combat! Hemmt Pack on BIS Nogova for first two, Combat! M113 Ambulance, with HYK soldier on the gurney. Combat! Bradley pack, HYK infantry, and BAS Koiwa aircover on 4 and 5. BAS AH-60L DAP and BAS D.R. on Tonal. Click the pics to get 3200x1200.

So what was he supposed to do? The previous doctor was busted for malpractice, do you want to have a crooked doctor for you? If he didn't fire him, it would come back politically, and in any case do you want a convicted felon druggie working on the next-in-line? The whole nonsense about this being an uber-plot to bounce cheney is coming from those who lost their talent to read tea leaves by switching to frapachinos. And as for the reporters getting capped, go read "Boots on the ground". At least one reporter had the humility to admit he didn't know the first thing about body armor or how to wear it, let alone buy it, but was willing to admit he was ignorant and ask the right questions of the right people. Having also had hunting experience, that reporter also had the sense to keep his head down when the bullets started flying. As to Mr. Chalabi, why isn't anyone nominating him for Nobel Peace Prize? Yeah, he spent some time in jail and as a wanted man for insurrection and fraud, started resistance movements and militias, and pumped himself up as a somebody, but so did Nelson Mandela. Seriously though, is it possible to prevent every con man in the world from peddling snake oil?

The biggest engine toy iirc is the dynamic lighting system, in combination with the enhanced optimizations. iirc, doom3 is yet another bsp-tree game like all late ID games, but with the obligatory stretched limits and additional shader capacity. I think the biggest 'new' change is the gynamic lighting system, geting away more from pre-compiled or 'early'-compiled lightmaping, that is useless on dynamic models (Quake2/3, OFP).

Well at least one politician is speaking his mind, and we sure could use more of that frank honesty more often. That incident with Cheney was where his antagonist was blowing smoke being confrontational, and Cheney had put up with enough for long enough. Now if it were some other country, there'd be fist-fights, as we've seen in Africa and Asia. Notice who is getting listed as options, and who is asking for replacements. Options: Powell, Guliani, McCain, etc. Grumblers: Media, old beltway bandits, Alphonse D'Amato, etc. The problem is that for all you people who are scared of Bush, replacing Cheney is the worst option from what you are saying. If Bush is the great bogey-daemon that you make him out to be, he needs all the hard nosed of Rice, Cheney, Ashcroft, etc, to reel him in, and replacing Cheney with a presumed pansy would give more leash to the dog you want caged. You also seriously underestimate the capability and capacity of those alleged options. Just because the ingorant and incompetent media claims that there is a schism, doesn't mean that there actually is one. I have a friend who is absolutely convinced that Kerry will win, and says a lot of the things that are said here too. I happen to believe the exact opposite, and tell him so. But we are still good friends, and continue to be so because we don't let the hyperventilation of politics over-run our real life. Now those that do, make all the ruckus because they have nothing better to do, and sadly all the real people see are the rabble-rousers, so they get depressed into apathy, instead of lulled into apathy by the previous enlightened leadership of the most glorious comrade leader. As for the NAACP, they denounced Bush as a racist, when his gubernatorial administration made sure everything was done to ensure the likelyhood of the death penalty for the thugs that killed James Byrd. The funniest thing about that case though, was the Klan came to town unarmed without their hoods, and called for the death penalty for those thugs, while the Black Panthers across the street were waving AR-15's in the air threatening to burn down Texas. Incidently, Jesse Jackson invited Bill Cosby to say the things that the NAACP didn't want said. Finally, notice how quick Leahy shut up after Cheney called him on the carpet for being a blowhard. That was funny too. If you take politics that serious, you've been in DC drinking the swamp-water way too long. - edit - With the voting issue, that's logistics, that's how the military will always be. The mail might get there, some time. For those in Iraq, the proper answer to whether they'll get to vote, is Inshallah. That's not so concerning as is the continued idiotic usage of electronic voting machines. That would make the presidential elections as open to Organizatiya control as was the abominable American Idol voting.

Clarifications: John McCain has the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross, but not the Medal of Honor. McCain says that he was put in solitary for an extra two years because he refused the offer of early release, demanding instead 'first-in, first-out', explaining he believed that the NV would spin the story through the US media that daddy got him out. What McCain has going for him is his strict discipline to what he believes in. Where the problems come in is that as he survived Hanoi, comes from a long history of "The Navy way or the wrong way" (when my grandpa found out that my aunt was up and joining the blinkity-blank army... ), and furthermore being bit of a gritty Arizona politician, is it any wonder that he livens things up? Since he doesn't work the way 'washington' does, the ignorant media once again trips over themselves trying to put words in his mouth. My point was that if McCain makes a peep, it's all over the front pages, but if Miller launched a lengthy castigation of his party's leadership, 'not' news. Furthermore, Miller being from Georgia, is from the south, and life and communication is totally different in those parts.

Hehe, that Kerry 'Catch-up' is funny. This amendment is an interesting and thorny issue. The primary intent of this amendment was not actually affect and implement federal policy on reciprocality of marriage recognition, nor was the intent to make legal marraige a federal 'right'. Rather, the primary intent was to legislatively throw the issue back in the face of the Supreme Court specifically, and the courts in general, for their innovative interpretations. First, as the recognition of legal marraige is not a federally granted right, it is automatically delegated to the states by the 10th amendment. This would make the Federal Defense of Marraige act, the premise of which I agree in many points with, in many ways unconstitutional, as it attempts to restrict a right constitutionally designated to the states outside of a superseceding constitutional amendment. This amendment would have established a federal standing for federal administration of marriage licensure, but was not promoted as such. That such false premise is a dangerous way to do politicking. Congress is welcome to make all the specious non-binding resolutions they care, but to play around with the gravity of constitutional amendments solely on the basis of 'sending a message' is seriously bad business. In similar historical cases, such as women's sufferage, states and territories which had, prior to the amendment specifing the right to vote to men and women, enacted women's sufferage legislation saw that legislation overturned federally, until an appropiate constitutional legal framework was established. Most unfortunate though, is that this proposition was inevitablly a lose-lose situation for the proponents. If it were to be passed, they would be branded as bigots by the media. If it fails, they would be derided as fringe failures. So what will happen is you will have states, not cities and counties - unless the local laws delegate it that low, pick and chose what they will and won't recognize, based on the whims of their constituents. There would then be two possible legal appeals tracks, although others may be contrived: 1) Intra-state appeals: Gay couple or whatever appeals that the the state restrictions infringe on civil liberties granted to citizens of that state by state constitutions. As the states vary significantly in the wording of their constitutions and extra-constitutional civil rights legislation, expect to see rulings all over the board. Responses to that would also be myriad and complex, and the federal courts would toss it back in an endless loop, it being solely a state issue. 2) Inter-state appeal: Couple gets married in one state, moves to another state and is procedurally arrested for adultary (criminal appeals path) or challenges the state's non-recognition of marraige (civil appeals path) from the first state. Federal standing is immediately evident as this is a cross-state dispute. Further Federal standing comes from established Federal laws on international marraige reciprocality, which could be another avenue - couple marries outside US, moves in, demand that they be recognized. What standing they would have without mutual citizenship, I dunno. Now if the politicians were really serious about creating a substantive legal framework for addressing this, rather than leave it to the whims of the courts - I want them stacked my way, you want them stacked your way, but I think we can agree that either way stacked courts are bad business - they could have done so, and properly communicated it to their constituents. Given the context that this amendment was handled in, why anybody bothered to get worked up over it is beyond me. There are far more important things to get angry over, like Tony Stewart bumping my town's Kasey Kahne at the Tropicana. Now that's something to yell and scream about - because thats what you do in entertainment. When you bring that kind of antics and paranoia to politics, you turn away the serious people you claim to be seeking. As for McCain, doesn't anybody else remember him denouncing calls for him to veep for Kerry as rediculous and preposterous? Why does't Zell Miller (D-GA) get as much attention for disagreeing with his party, as McCain (G-AZ) does for disagreeing with his? Again, the media isn't so much biased as they are ignorant. Also what I have found, is that when people run around waving their arms screaming that the sky is falling, it's real ease to sneak up on them and drop them in a tickle-fit. Only a change in the hysteria.

The other catch to those financial numbers is while the US currency is dropping on the international monetary markets, oil prices have been independently rising. This is due primarily to long-term growth of base-line demand in china. Recent 2-week drops in market prices due to OPEC bumps in production are only a minimal effort to gloss things over the summer, and unless serious global energy policy is re-evaluated, or a whole lot of consumption removed, total world demand is going to skyrocket over production, as China will be buying up the oil, with the cash they have from their trade surpluses. That is as much the rest of the world's problem as it is Bush's.

Polls from week of June 20ish: cnn 40 Bush 50 Kerry 10 unk fox 50 Bush 40 Kerry 10 unk * 40 Bush 40 Kerry 20 unk. (last one was yap, yet-another-pollster) Moral of the story is that polls are bunk, their purpose is to spin, and I always lie to the pollsters. I'm sure you've all noticed a 'small' number of apathetic people that ought to be concerned voters. At least football isn't as big over here, and there are no major sports finals scheduled for that time. In all seriousness, my sister is eligible to vote for the first time this year, and although I doubt she can be trusted to vote the party line, I'm still going to encourage her to vote. I'd rather she vote for Kerry or Nader, than not vote at all.