ThatBlackout

This post has been blocked under the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act etc etc

BLACKOUT TIME

For those of you uninformed this is a protest against the passage of SOPA and PIPA, two overly aggressive acts that target piracy sites but contain clauses that can also shut down pretty much any site whatsoever.  Sites that rely on third parties (i.e. most social networks, YouTube, Mediafire, etc) will get shut down pretty much immediately and the acts give Congress the power to shut down any site they don't like.

Complaints to Congress about the act were received pretty much like this.

People: Hey this violates our freedom of speech.
Congress: Don't worry we're only targetting sites dedicated to piracy.
People: Then write that in the bill.
Congress: LOL don't worry we won't abuse our power we promise.
People: Why don't you write it in the bill then?
Congress: Because we know encroaching on your first amendment rights is wrong and we promise we won't do it, really.  We promise.

PIPA was made as an "OKAY okay we know you don't like SOPA, here's a better act" but it still uses DNS blocking and other practices in SOPA and it's basically the same bill under a different name, so don't be fooled.  Spread the word about them both.

I've drafted all of my posts to be invisible for the duration of the blackout and this site will be back up on the 19th of January.

Props to Wikipedia, Google, Ludum Dare, Equestria Daily (rofl), AndyGames, HackThisSite! and all the other sites/communities that set up protests; you guys rock.  Going to try to keep a running list of blackouts.

EDIT: The MPAA made a statement.  Interesting how they're still calling it an "anti-piracy" bill designed to "protect American jobs from foreign criminals" and not mention anything people are actually protesting against at all.  Credits to a certain CaptainLepidus for showing me this.

AI Class : Lectures now online!

First off, have to say that the online AI class hosted by Stanford was absolutely excellent and major props to Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig for teaching it.  Probably the only course I've ever taken that I legitimately enjoyed.

The course is over and the videos are now all public domain, so check them out.

Course Lectures

Update

Just some things going on.

Starload Flash port:
We got a sponsor!  Aidan's sorting out the last bit and it should be up soon official.

Kingdom 1420 Flash port:
Finished!  Still waiting to be approved, I think.  The Christmas release, which we thought would bring us more visibility from sponsors, sort of backfired because everyone did the same and the queue is massive.  Proud of how it came out though.

mono Flash port:
Under development.  Going to try to release this one on my own to at least figure out how this sponsorship stuff works first-hand.  Would provide a demo, but exclusivity and all, so it's under strictly closed beta.  Not that you'd want to see it, anyways.  It's almost exactly the same as the original.  Except I'm probably changing the name because everyone linked the title to the disease.

Diagnosis and Cantilever Bridge Flash ports:
Whaat.  Surprise!  I'm actually not going to be porting these two, trying to hire someone to do those for me and we'll split sponsorship profits.

So, anyways, I'm fairly excited.  Pretty glad about this whole Flash porting business.

Protest against SOPA

Redesigned my blog a bit to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act of 2011.  This act is horrible and I'm not even a liberal.

Quick outline of some problems:

• SOPA will give copyright holders power over foreign companies.  If there's an organization based in a foreign country that's engaging in illegal online trafficking with citizens in the U.S., the government gets authority to barge in and try to shut it down.  That's like China walking in and arresting the CEO of Apple for threatening its electronics industry.
• Third-party hosting sites are going to be absolutely screwed over.  Sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Mediafire become liable for what their users uploads, so if someone uploads a copyrighted video, guess what?  They get sued.  Their userbase is large enough that there's no possible way they can control everything that's posted.
• SOPA will actually hurt a great majority of businesses more than it will help.  Companies will have to invest in a bigger legal department to handle lawsuits, taking away from their capacity for other ventures.

ThatSideBlog!

Before the structure of this blog gets shot to hell, I'm making a side blog.

[REDACTED]

Everything I find slightly interesting or cool or neat that's not quite big enough to warrant a full-length post on this blog, I'll post on that one.  Or even just random rants.  That'll be my twitter, so to speak.

I want to keep my main blog somewhat relevant to indie game design or other similar ventures because that's what it was supposed to be about originally.

Also because I'm sure you guys don't want to hear about My Little Pony again.  Be warned, there will probably be a lot of posts about ponies on the side blog, and I'm thinking of commemorating one last thing on this one, so um.  Eat cake.

Small personal blog checklist in no particular order:

• "Atom Zombie Smasher" by Blendo Games
• "VVVVVV" by Terry Cavanagh
• "Portal 2" by Valve (not indie but they deserve a mention)
• "Tower of Heaven" by Askiisoft
• "BIT.TRIP RUNNER" Gaijin Games

A Programmer's View of the Universe

Had an interesting debate with some people on an IRC channel I frequent about universal processes and it was pretty neat so here's my own take on it.

Does true stochasticity exist?
Restated: Is there any element of the universe that is completely and utterly 100% random?

A common task in programming is generating random numbers for things like simulating a dice or generating noise. And really, true RNG (Random Number Generator - I'm going to use this acronym from now on) don't exist. People usually get away with it by making what's known as a PRNG (Pseudo-Random Number Generator) that uses an algorithm that's so ridiculously complicated and nonsensical that the result is pretty much random. Take this for example:

Plotted, it looks like this:

So, given a number from -100,000 to 100,000, the result of f(x) will be pretty much random.  But there's two problems to this approach.  Firstly, this is an algorithm, and therefore, there's a pattern, so it's not real stochasticity.  Secondly, the seed (in this case, the x) itself will have to be roughly random.  No matter how random this function looks, if you put in a 5, you will always get the same result.  f(5) will always be f(5).  Programmers get away with this by using seeds that change each time the script is run, like the system date and time, but even that's not fully random.  Good enough for a dice simulator, definitely, but it's still based on an algorithm that's always the same given the same parameters, and therefore not a true RNG.

Wait, what's this have to do with the universe?

Vince Emerson : Windigo

Just wanted to do a quick feature post for this guy here about this movie here.

I'm always really, really happy when I see small businesses like this go from start to end with a quality project, mainly because there's so few of them and because the odds are almost always against them.  This team of two (plus some supplemental actors) went above the line and created a full-length movie.  A good one.  And they're selling physical copies of it online, the whole commercial pack.