hazardous!

This study claims almost the perfect opposite of what I experience every day. Less well educated people tend to believe in such thing much more often, whereas people with a higher education often have the heart to doubt. To my mind, believing in such things proves, that the person is looking for simple solutions and answers instead of making the effort of looking a little closer. Agreed. Also you should always have doubts about anything that someone tells you. No matter if it's called scientific research, tradition or experience. There's nothing to prevent someone from 'making up' a scientific report.

9/10 DAMN! Anyway: "You'd spot Hannibal Lector in seconds at an Open Source conference. Your life's safe." Yay!

Hey there! As a regular human, I, like many others, often think about problems in our world, what might have caused them and how to solve them. Many people end up with the 'root of all evil'. This thing is supposed to be the cause for our world being so shitty. But what is the root of all evil? Is it money? Nope. Is it religion? Neigh. Illegal immigrants? No, you stupe! The illuminati? Oh, please... Ok, let's start with explaining why the thing mentioned above aren't the root of all evil: 1st: Money. Money did emerge, because a universal trading-good was needed. One that has the same value to everybody, one that doesn't decay, one that can be easily taken along. So infact money was a great invetion. The potter no longer had to trade jars for some bread. The farmer didn't have to carry a sack of potatoes to the market place, to buy some porno-mags. etc. Yet money had a drawback: you can stockpile it. Then, when you have a rather large amount of money, you can charge even more money, for lending others a few dimes. That way you can grow your money without doing anything for it. (Aka banking.) As you can see, money is only evil, if humans use it for doing evil. 2nd. Religion. Several billion people in this world believe in something supernatural. Something that guides their way and something that has a plan for all of us. Usually these things are called gods. By praying to your gods, or by bringing sacrifices, you can becalm these gods, so they might help you in some way. In general religious people gain their accord from this. Religion, very often in the history of mankind, brought people together and, by combining their strength, achieved great deeds. But, probably even more often, religion has caused conflict, destruction and despair. Most wars between humans have been fought between different religions. Also people that belong to a certain religion, often try to convince others of it, usually by all means. But in the end, it's the human being that makes religion good or bad. 3rd. Illegal immigrants. This topic is a very explosive one. You can name however you want, but in the end, it's just racism and chauvinism. Not long ago, many people in germany believed that, by eradicating those that are not 'german' (the criteria that made you german don't matter), they could create a place for them to live in peace, autarkic, without any problems. Sixty years later, mankind has learnt from their faults and doesn't do such crap again ... far wrong! On tv in the USA, you still see mostly blacks, commiting crimes. In Paris, the people in the ghettos are rioting, because they still don't have equal perspectives and chances as those from higher classes. In germany we still have a political party that supports national-socialistic thought and still so many retards follow them. (There's so much more, but let's stop here.) Apparently there's more places where 'illegal immigrants' can come from than where they can immigrate to. In the end it just depends on where you go and on which people you ask about it. 4th: The illuminati. Well. I have an open ear for all conspiracy theories that survied long enough to reach even me. But as long as I don't hear more than 'Ook! There's the symbol of the illuminati on the $1 bill.', I won't spend my time with it. So where do we end up? The human being. We're the result of [insertverylargenumber] of experiments. The crown of evolution. The most powerful race on earth. We're so powerful, we can even destroy our own anthroposphere. Kewl, eh? Some facts from our current world: A: Whenever a large concern is firing thousands of employees, even though they made giant profits, a human being or a small group of them is responsible for it. B: Whenever a gaggle of soldiers invades a foreign country, a human being commanded them to do so. C: Whenever a government authorizes large agrarian companies to grow genetically engineered plants, a human being has be convinced that this was a good decision. It seem like some very human features are causing us to behave like this: A: The leaders of the concern aim for even more profit. So they let those that weren't fired, do the work of those that were fired. Might work a few times, but sooner or later, it's all going to implode. Human being aren't able to think ahead. If their deeds quickly result in what they aimed for, they consider them to be good ones. Nobody cares if years later, these deeds cause ten times more trouble. B: The soldiers are attacking the foreign country in the name of their own country. They are doing good for their own people. They are bringing their superior way of life to those uncivilized motherfuckers! Now try to imagine you're the country being invaded. All that you have put your efforts in, your beliefs, your culture, your way of life is being declared as useless. Your entire life's work to that day has no value anymore. Humans aren't able to to put oneself in someone else's position. They cannot assess what their deeds are doing to others. C: Being a politician is such a hard job. You must represent the people. You must make political decisions. You must rule a giant country. This too much. So let's rely on some people that are close to us anyway and let them do a part of the job. Humans are lazy. They hate to make decisions, they hate being forced to find a solution for their problems. It's so much easier to just do what you're told to. Even better: if what you did, turned out to be crap, you aren't responsible, because you were told to do so. We call this lobbying So let's sum it up: Root of all evil #1: Humans cannot think ahead. Root of all evil #2: Humans cannot put themselves in someone else's position. Root of all evil #3: Humans like being told what to do. Well, I reckon that all problems affecting the human world, can be reduced to one or several of these. "OMG! If this is true, we're all fucked. There's no way out of this shit. I'm gone killing myself." Wait! Luckily we're living in 'democratic' countries. (I'm just assuming this now.) You can use these human flaws to turn in, before this world goes to hell in a handbasket. The only thing that politicians are interested in, is being voted for again. Usually one politician in the parliament is representing a rather large group of people. (In germany we have ~600 politicians in the parliament for ~80mio. voters.) If there's something that you want to be changed, start a petition. Write a letter to your representative threatening to withdraw these votes on the next election, unless he does something against the thing that pisses you off. Get as many people singing for it as possible. Then send it to him. And believe me, the government is still much more powerful than economy, or religion, or evil martians, trying to subjugate the earth. All you have to overcome is their lazyness. So, if there's something that stinks, do something about it!!! Well, that's it. Your thoughts, please.

As far as I am concerned, this 'Intelligent Design' crap is nothing but a counterpiece to the evolution-theory, made up by a bunch of 'Just for the sake of being against it'-fools. It's been there before, several times (e. g. creationism) and it had only one aim: being contrary to scientific theories and facts that object the bible. These people think that their oppinions and beliefs weigh more than the views of others, even more than scientifically proven facts. They have this idea that their religion is so cool that all other people should join it. Sure, religion has positive sides: many people can gain drive from it. But it still is nothing more than a hobby, something you do for yourself. You must not enforce your hobby upon others. Also these people tend to forget that there so many more religions, each of which has it's believers and even those who don't believe can be happy, can have hope and can lead a fulfilled life. Eventually, whoever says that intelligent design is a sience, should know what science is and then think again.

I also think, the 'try other shit'-way is a good one. But don't overdo it. I've hit the mapping-wall almost one year ago now and - oh fook! - texturing, modelling etc. is so much fun. Be sure to return to your native area when you got some fresh ideas.

That can be said about everything else like a movie, a painting, a new wicked looking toothbrush, a wine bottle and its label, a vacuum cleaner, a car, a print ad, an advertisement campaign, a building, a city, you name it. Basically I agree, but not at all on the advertisement. Ads have the only purpose to create a demand for the product among probable customers. Most of real big financial budgets are used for franchising, licenses and patents - things that don't really exist. There are small companies, making small games with small budgets and they sell them, making enough profit to live from. Same applies for music and movies - what would we do without independent-labels? So it's not all about mass sales. Let me quote an earlier post to contradict this: In other words: you don't always need money to make games and you don't always have to earn money with them. Games like Half-Life are so popular, because there are thousands of people, working for not a single dime, to extend it, and because Valve supports them doing so. Also we don't have to accept things, just because the big guys are doing it their way. If our ancestors would have done so, the USA wouldn't be independent and we'd still have monarchic rulership. Ben Mathis wrote an article about this (the third part to be precise), which I mostly agree with. http://www.mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3450 On EA again: Sure EA has sold many good games. The problem that I and many others have with it, is that they are big and that they can't stop growing even bigger. They squeeze out franchise products - like FIFA or other sport games - one new episode, every year. Franchise is for making money, nothing else. I have seen many people who worked for big players and small companies and every single one of them preferred the latter. Finally let me repeat this quote again: Because I think that whenever you make a statement about the games-industry, you should check if it complies with this fact - otherwise it's bollocks!

All these share the throne: Project Quantum Leap (Including Someplace Else) Issues Edge of Darkness Poke 646 Earthquake Test Center 2 (Coil - you'll love it!) Second rank: Smart Decoy Times of Troubles Infinite Rift Big Lolly Wanted! Redemption Case Closed Azure Sheep They Hunger 1-3 Soo many more. I'm afraid I played at least half of the HL mods listed on tenfourmaps.

This is what I'm hoping for. I'm still far away from a job in the game-industry (isn't this word a shame already - creativity cannot be industrialized), but it's my only goal, because this is a very young and not so strictly regularized area, which combines all arts. I also believe that companies like EA will grow even larger and when the fans are enventually sick of the 100th WW2 ego-shooter, they'll rip another promissing idea from a bunch of creative hobbyists and market it on a grand scale. But the day will come when a Quentin Tarantino of the games appears and will create an antipole to EA's junk food - at least for a while.

LIVE, THREAD! LIVE! Hello there! After my last try at making game textures ended up like this: I didn't proceed, due to noobish abilities and insufficient hardware. A year, a digicam and a graphic tablet later, I'm back: I remade out_w6b: Here's what I've got so far: normal map: specular map: Here's everything in action with the 1024*1024 version of the textures (150kb each): http://w.rabid-monkey.com/~hazardous/bms_texture_test/out_w6b_test1_haz.jpg http://w.rabid-monkey.com/~hazardous/bms_texture_test/out_w6b_test2_haz.jpg I am trying to get a position as a texture artist in the Black Mesa Source team (that's why I branded them) and my task is to recreate 3 textures to test my abilities - this is one of them. Alright. Any kind of constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

@kleinluka: I was hoping for a few hints from the pros. I'm afraid I just can't make no sharp edges. I tend to use the bumpmap filter whenever I want to make the texture to look more steric. Indeed I just created those scratches without thinking about them too much. But it is almost impossible for me to draw nice thin scratches that don't create ugly aliasing edges. :-? Anyway, thanks for the tips. I will revise the texture with those points in mind.

It'll probably ruin my reputation before I have any at all, but: I did these just for fun, so you may ignore them. Anyway, here's the real texture I tried to remake: lab1_slot4d: Obviously I do lack 2d-art skills. My textures either look extremely blurred, or you can pinpoint every single pixel. So don't kill me, please. *runsforcoverquickyl*