Sunday, December 19, 2010

Recent activities

Well, has been very busy recently, didn't do any gaming, not even Starcraft 2.

I have been very busy between my kids, Starcraft 1 videos, new job, Christmas light, Home improvement (adding a new office) and rental. Still recovering from the cuts resulting from the 15amp wires (they are incredibly hard after a while).

Yes I still want to make my own RTS game, but I just can't find any time for that.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Need a good PVP

PVP is not the pvp in WOW, it is Portable Video Player.

Recently I found I am drawing argo from wife from even watch the Korean Starcraft matches on youtube. Now argo come from not even playing games??!!

So some thoughts and I decided to get something small that can play back mp4, or even better, something tinny (like a phone) that can play youtube videos. Got to be cheap and no subscriptions. After some initial search I decided on either a cheap mp4 device or the apple i-touch. MS ZUNE is out of it because it is expensive but doesn't offer youtube through wifi (what a waste).

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Asp.net MVC

I did some research on ASP.NET MVC, and I have to say I like it! Very cool design and seems light weight. The initial caching of path seems to take some time but that is the only thing slow I noticed. The way the framework is designed is impressive. The only thing that might be a problem is the control path seems to be only 1 level, but it should not matter too much.

Monday, October 25, 2010

99 weeks out of employment.

Just saw this shocking link from some post:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978943.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

I am deeply shocked. There are people who make over 200k a year, and normal engineers just like you and me. All affected the same way, can't find a work and broke. When I was out of work, I go back to college and became a tutor, but that income will never cover the mortgage payment.

How can we help them? What can we do if we are in that condition? How come I know people who are been on social security for a long long time and their benefits never expire?

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Econmy 101

Here is my rant (from my post on Broken Toys)

The government can build a bridge to no where, and temporarily show some benefit, but that is bad and it be getting bad things.

It is has almost the same effect of print money and give to people (with the added disadvantage of wasting raw material and generate greenhouse gas). When you build stuff people don’t want with “stimulus”, you create inflation, people will find their money doesn’t worth as much any more.

Again, as I can’t stress enough, wealth is created. You create wealth by produce things people want, and the only way to benefit poor people is by increase productivity, so things get cheaper (the best example is food, much less people get hungry today than 100 years ago because of the leap in farm productivity).

Government spending can temporarily jump the economy, but it will never be long term and worst of all if people started to depend on it, you create a tumor that will just keep getting bigger.

As a matter of historical fact, check the 5 year plans of Soviet Union and Culture revolution of China. Do you know how many people died of hunger during the failed government economy pushes? Millions.

So less Taxes, more productivity. Let the Rich get richer, as long as the poor gets richer too.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Nice jQuery tutorial

I have been doing mainly Silverlight recently, but here is a nice jQuery one (better than doing ajax myself).

http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/ajax/Using-jQuery-with-ASP-NET.aspx

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Way too busy

I am very busy recently, work and others. At work 2 of my co-workers quit so there will be more stuff on my way. At home my daughter doesn't like eat much, every meal is a struggle.

I am still planning to make a new game, with my spare time I got the path finding, unit targeting stuff finished, but need to make a playable game (won't be enjoyable at all). All that need time that I don't have.

Remember when I was young, I had so much time and often get bored. Now this is just totally unexpected.

Yes and Starcraft II is getting a lot of my spare time as well, I am doing the achievement stuff one by one. Got to have some fun.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Funny Nuke

Here is a Video from NukeAtNight, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJY94AY4TZk&feature=sub

Just listen to it, at the beginning, there are something involving a girl named Sue and something about pylons.

Friday, September 10, 2010

I can see the future now

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-cortex-a8-a9-a15,11257.html#xtor=RSS-181

See this link. It is a Quad core Arm processor that will be used in smart phones. I am starting to think the future belongs to this kind of tiny but powerful devices (yes, I am sure Flash/Java/Silverlight can run on it). Maybe eventually your computer/phone/pda will all be in one, and you carry them on the run, and when at home, just plug in mouse and keyboard....

Or even better, with the thin led screens, you can have a screen act as a keyboard (and when in phone mode the screen can be wrapped inside). Maybe I should pattern my idea.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Starcraft II blog

found this blog on the net:

http://www.ftwins.com/ftwins-pro-strategy/starcraft-2-brutal-video-campaign-walk-through-on-the-great-train-robbery-mission-8/

I was looking for a way to beat this in Brutal, and don't want to waste time trying myself.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Beat "All In" in Brutal

I finally beat the last level in Starcraft II "All In" in brutal. I was having trouble despite watching youtube on how others did that, but theirs seems easier because the waves seems to contain less numbers.

So basically I used the mind control device (but I did make a big mistake, I put the devices in front of the island where the artifact is instead of put it at the rear, puting them more at risk), and at the last moments I moved all my units to the center. After that, I kind of just waited and win because there are so much going on I can't do much.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Jaedon!

vs light, this is very interesting!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRqS68D2TH0&feature=sub

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Don't die pylo...

Just watched a Starcraft II commentory by Husky, very funny ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2m83fsqIx8&feature=sub He even named a plyon pylo, and from now on all plyons will be pylo for me :-)

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Car problem

I have a very old car and it finally started to give me problems that I can't ignore (i.e. not starting any more).

Last Friday when I try to start the car, it won't start. The day before I noticed that when I try to start the car, the starting process sounds "slow", but didn't pay attention.

Now the car won't start, I started to dig problems.

My first thought is the battery, but I want to make sure there is no other problems. So I jump up the car, and checked to make sure the alternator is producing electricity. Then I checked for leaks. I am a total amateur on this, what I did is, disconnect the battery, and measure the resistance of the 2 wires. The resistance is 0!! After some search, I understand that there are diodes inside the alternator, and I should measure it positive to positive. Still it is only 20 Oms. So I started to suspect that my alternator diode is bad. A friend of mine also had the same car type, and I measured his resistance, also 20 OM.

So based on that, I am pretty sure it is my battery. Changed the battery, tried to start, and somehow my security system won't let me start! Guess it is a all new round to check my 10 year old security system (which is installed before I bought the car).

Monday, August 2, 2010

ATI releases AA fix for Starcraft II

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Catalyst-driver-Starcraft-SC2,10992.html#xtor=RSS-181

Thank GOD!! I bought a ATI card for it's speed and power efficiency, and when I got Starcraft II, noticed the squares in some of the cut senses. I was regretting for getting the ATI card but now I will try out the beta driver immediately.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Got Starcraft II (Update)

Install Starcraft II at places where you can't control firewall is not a good idea, but at my home it went very well. I got windows 7 64bit, and because I have to AFK from time to time, I didn't even notice the patch download. When I came back to the computer, Starcraft II was already playable.

This is my first impressions. First, the graphics is very good. Sound quality is very good as well, love the music (will be better if they mix in the original sound tracks from Starcraft I). I only played a short time, and the cut senses are pretty good in general (but some are not movies, look like real time 3D generation and needs some anti-aliasing, it could be my graphics card, which is ATI5770, with everything on ultra).

Another thing is, it looks like every time I start the game, I have to logon to battle.net. What if my internet provider went down (which happened several times)? Have not tried to play without internet yet.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Got Starcraft II

Yep, I went to my local GameStop and bought Starcraft II. Went and installed at work to avoid wife (it is already 7pm so it should be OK). After all 12GB, I click on it, it keep saying "StarCraft II requires a patch, would you like to download it?". If I click yes, the same message will come back after a short black screen. If I click cancel, the game exits.

I guess it must because the company firewall. Blizzard should give some consideration to us who might not have internet access. Maybe a static download?

Will try out at home, after 12pm when wife sleeps :-(

Monday, July 19, 2010

Starcraft II beta (update)

Finally got beta working on my laptop, it was very slow though (about 3 year old low end dual core XP machine).

So I got a chance to go home today to try it on my desktop. Strange thing happened.

On my laptop (windows XP), once it installs, when I run, it will download 2 more patches.

On my desktop (windows 7), once it installs and run, it went to login screen directly, and if I try to login, it fails with "invalid version".

Googled and there are several discussions, but no solution.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Starcraft II beta

Yes, finally I got a beta invitation!! It is kind of late and I was in a personal emergency when I read that message, and have to leave immediately.

It is kind of late but I am so happy now. I was so bored that I wanted to play Diablo II, and found I can't find my copy (We bought 2 Diablo II so both me and my wife could play, but that is over 10 years ago and it is lost somewhere), so I have to buy online from Blizzard. Now thank you Blizzard!! I am going to download it (slow over the hospital wifi) and enjoy it later!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Almost pirated a movie.

Yep. I was experiencing with a internet TV on my computer last weekend, and the provider explained that it has signed contracts with many content providers so they could provide the TV legally.

So I decided to give it a try. On the menu there are lot of movies, foreign and US. I picked "Clash of the Titians", and the picture is crystal clear, no buffering at all.

Then I got worried. No ads or nothing that I could think of that could provide this financially. Even though the site clam it has permission, my common sense tell me that it is not possible.

I immediately re-activated netflix, but nope, it is not on yet. I searched the movie theaters near by, but none of them carries it. Eventually I found tickets on sale out of state on movietickets.com, and I immediately bought a ticket for 3.75.

Guess this is a good example of never be greedy, or else I could waited and watch the same movie on bigger screen for just 1.07 from redbox.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Chrome Browser Video

This is a video the google people did for Chrome, I have to say it is very impressive!!

Take a look, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgQDjiotG0&feature=pyv&ad=5456497857&kw=video%20downloader%20chrome.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Here is another a$$ hole want more money from you and me

from cnet, politicians want internet tax again.

I guess the bridge to no where has run out of money again.

I am going to immigrate to Korea.

According to toms, Korea people will get free version of Starcraft II.

Those lucky bastards. They already have Starcraft as their national sports and now this??

In the related news, happy July 4th.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

WOW may go free to play?

And here is the link from toms.

So it is just a distant possibility. Anyway, just yesterday I was thinking if WOW could have a offline mode I would be play it from time to time.

If it really went free to play, I might spend an hour or two per week and buy some stuff to boast my abilities.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Microsoft meeting

My co-worker has finally pushed me to our local Microsoft meeting, and I have to admit it is a good experience. Relaxed and fun, free food and items. I win a MS T-shirt (which I always want to have one). The presenter showed some cool lambada moves and some general coding styles. Best of all, I saw a few former co-workers :-)

So if there are MS group meetings at your locale, I strongly encourage you to attend.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

The oil leak (again)

It is still not resolved. I am very pissed off by BP and The US President.

BP is definitely at fault, despite all the awards it got.

And Obama should have done much more!! He could have summoned the CEOs and experts of other companies and solve this. Even the Iranian president offered help. TAKE IT!!!!!! Mr. Ahmadinejad probably can do this much quicker.

And all the related US Government agencies. If they can't prevent this, can't do anything about the spill, can't offer any good ideas and all they do is point to each other, that means they are useless and should be trimmed.

Big companies and big government is the same, all should be break up.

Unreal Tournament

I had the game back in 2000, and love the game play (especially the one where you can snip on top of a tower and the last one).

Recently during a conversion with a friend, we talked about unreal and he wanted to play. So I promised that I will give him the CD. Well, turned out that CD is lost forever and somehow I wanted to play again as well.

So I went to GameStop near my home and bought unreal tournament 3. The graphics is better than the original, and I am going through the levels right now hopping the great levels in the original is still present in this new version.

It is great to play old games for cheap, my copy is only $10 :-)

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Boobs and talents

I was reading a blog about some new movie Megan Fox started in and the author was talking about how no movie will show case her talents.

Will, unfortunate for her, big boobs cover up whatever talents underneath.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Economic Enlightenment Survey

A very interesting Survey on Economic Enlightenment. The link is http://econjwatch.org/articles/economic-enlightenment-in-relation-to-college-going-ideology-and-other-variables-a-zogby-survey-of-americans, which contains more info on how/what kind of people did on this Survey.


1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

And all the answers should be of type "Generically speaking", or "statistical" nature.

And the answers are:




















1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
Yes
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
Yes
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
Yes
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
Yes

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
No
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
No
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
No

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.
Yes



So how did you do?

Friday, June 18, 2010

Phenom II X4 940 first impressions

My Phenom II x4 arrived today, got it installed and here are my impressions.

1. consumes much more power than my old athlon X2 4800+. the 4800 boots at 150W, idles at 80W, max out at 160W. The Phenom II x4 boots at 200W, idles at 110W, max out at 260W (during video encoding).

2. Faster. Twice as fast during video encoding. This I really cares because I need constantly upload videos from my camcorder to youtube, and the encoding speed is killing me.

3. Windows experience index jumped from 5.5 to 7.4, and my other scrolls (memory, video) also jumped from 7.0/7.1 to 7.4. My disk score didn't change.

Starcraft videos

Jaedon vs Baby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghxOPQtQA_k&playnext_from=TL&videos=iO3wEEiQusQ&feature=sub

And, Starcraft II, this is a really great one, massive toss power:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1LBC3FHh4M&feature=channel

Enjoy!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Still Waiting for Starcraft II

I always thought I am a very responsible adult, have the ability to not over spend, save for the future and when spending, spend rationally.

And Starcraft II kind of affected my mind. It is like a drug. I just bought a quad core cpu to replace my aging Athlon X2 (even though it should be able to handle Starcraft II just fine), and I will buy Starcraft II at the release (instead of wait for a used copy for half the price).

And the waiting is burning me from the inside. I feel like a drug addict.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BARACK PETROLEUM

Yes I am really pissed, and I steal that headline from drudge.

This oil leak is not supposed to last this long. Even if they keep pouring heavy stone and concrete on that thing the leak would have been stopped by now (because the bigger the area the smaller the pressure).

The US President did nothing. He could easily offer a xx million reward to anyone who could solve the problem. He had the entire Navy/Army/air force at his command. I am sure just dump 1000 tons of stones will make the leak slower. And, NOTHING!!!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

MVVMSAQ model for Silverlight

MVVM is the base coding style for Silverlight, and I am adding a Synchronized Action Queue to it.

Silverlight can get data from server via WCF or Asmx (also javascript of course), but neighter WCF nor asmx supports synchronized data mode, which can make the code a bit hard to maintain when multiple operations are required for a single action.

the SAQ model (Synchronized Action Queue) will fix that. Basically we fake synchronized action via a thread, and all actions will be queued for the thread to process. It has no advantage when a single action is required for any operation, but when you need combined actions for a given operation, the synchronized command will make the code much easier to read and maintain.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The oil leak

I can't believe they haven't stopped it yet. Initially I thought it is because it is deep and hard to get near, but now I saw the SAW right on the pipe??!! If they can get a saw that close, they can get anything close.

What they should do is, make a pipe with a valve that is bigger than the leaking pipe, stuck it on to the leak, seal from below (I know we can seal iron together under water). Now you have a leaking pipe with a valve on top, just close the valve.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Net Orbiter, cross dll obfuscating added

I took some time to add cross dll obfuscating. It was pretty easy (but I thought it will be easier). One core change is needed, and all others are just configuration changes. Much easier than when I use native TypeBuilder.

Now I need to make the interface a bit better, the current one is really hard to use even for me.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

New obfuscator almost working now

Yep, after I developed my last obfuscator, which uses .Net's emit functionality, I decided to create a new one, parsing and constructing the .net assemblies myself.

The reason is simple. The emit functions has 2 drawbacks. First, there is no way to specify a catch or finally block is tiny or fat, and no way to let them not generate a leave command automatically. That increase the code size dramatically. Second, it automatically adds the framework reference in the assembly, so if it is a silverlight assembly, it will became a .net assembly, and requires a extra ildasm/ilasm to fix it.

The parsing was easy, obfuscating is much easier too, the reconstructing of the .net assembly is HARD!! I have to spend all my free time (which is tinny, often less than an hour a day) on it, and two days early I thought I got it, till I encounter a big file and the obfucsator was able to shrink it a lot. It just won't load. Turned out there are many small places where ECMA335 didn't specify, and I had to try it out.

Now all that is left is polish.... Which will be slow and boring.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Finally reconstructed a .net assembly

Yep, I was toying with ECMA335 recently and parse a .net assembly was easy. The re-construct of a .net assembly from the parts was hard, as you have to keep coming back to update the different RVAs. After that, I keep running to "Invalid IL format" problems, and turned out they are the alignments.

Last night I got it working, I was able to reconstruct my reconstruct program and use the reconstructed program again. That was with 3.5 framework. When I use the 4.0 framework, I got a strange "Divided by 0" exception, even though I can de-assembly using ildasm, so it is not a total success.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The little things

I really like that song done by Danny Elfman, called "The little things".

There is several videos of it on youtube, but when at work listen to something without video will be great. Today I suddenly thought about it might be available on amazon. And it is surely there. Finally listening to it at work is just that much pleasant.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Babies knows right from wrong

Very interesting link and cute baby here.

However this is my assumption from the beginning, intelligence is from spiritual plan (by God), and the computing power is grown later on. So in this case it is the intelligence of moral code, and the ability to see through complex situations or consider other use cases depended on number of brain cells and experience.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Ron Paul Schools Bernanke on Bailout

Just watched this, Ron Paul on price fixing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6rQ0U01Yc

Thursday, April 22, 2010

4 way sli of Fermi

This guy did a great video of setup/benchmark of 4 way sli of nvidia fermi, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY8uppkjwL0

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Count your purchaes, You owe Tax!

Yep, that is what NC tax collectors are telling their tax payers. They are demanding Amazon to give customer info (name/address/what they purchased)so they could collect taxes, even from previous years.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002870-38.html

Does that mean if you live in NC, and you bought some drink when you were on vacation out side of the state, you have to pay taxes on that drink to NC government?

This tax system is way too over reaching. Let's either move to either Fair Tax rr Income tax + property tax and abolish all other taxes.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Silverlight 4 is here!

Yes, finally! And for all the developer tools (Visual studio express 2010), go here

Thursday, April 8, 2010

An Alternative Theory of Unions

Just read the Paul Graham essay
An Alternative Theory of Unions.

It is a great read. Last month me and others argued about unions in a post in broken toys. One side of the argument is unions protect workers, and my argument is unions will prefer manu work in farms and resist machinery. The essay supported my argument from another point of view.

Of course, that essay also give me chills. I have long believed that one day IT work will be paid less than janitors (IT job is easy and fun). Now I really need to find what is the next high in demand profession and try to switch.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Energy star for Gas Powered Clock

Heard this from Neal Boortz this morning, and I did a quick google search and fond many links, this is one of them.

Yes the EPA is awarding energy stars to funny things, and because the post is dated in Mar, it is not likely an April fools joke.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-talk-energy-star-appliance-fraud-0328-20100327,0,3996362.story

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Why the British is no longer a world power

Have you ever wondered why the once mighty British Empire is now just a tiny island without much world influence? Here is part of the reason. Its legal system is in such a bad condition, that selling a gold fish to a 14 year old can result in $1000 fine, placed under curfew and wear a tag.

See details here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1262250/Great-grandmother-tagged-selling-goldfish.html

The intention of the law is good, but I think with so many restrictions, the UK people is no more free than people in North Korea.

Monday, March 29, 2010

.net obfuscator

I finally got some extra time yesterday and did some finishing touches on the .net obfuscator. I tried to find a baml parser but failed, so I will just let the user give a path to the xaml source files instead.

The configuration screen looks bad, but the obfuscator do get the job done.

Now all I have to do is find a name and design a website to release it.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

"It's like we are married, but we are not fxxking"

I am sorry I have to put such word in there, but that is a exact quote from Paul Graham's essay in 2009 when he quoted a Start-up founder on what's the relation ship is like between co-founders.

Very interesting, and again I urge young people to start Start-ups, which is the true drive for a nation's economy.

The full link is http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

2010 census

Yes it is census time again, and I heard on Clark Howard over the radio about some interesting facts.

It is needed because so they know how many people a state is representing.

But for that you only need how many people are in the household.

And sometimes you got very intrusive questions, and those, according to Clark, is big companies doing market research but don't want to pay for it. So they use our tax dollars.

I don't hate big companies, but I hate big corporations/unions/organizations who use our tax dollar for their interests.

Friday, March 12, 2010

So here is where our tax dollars went

Just saw this on dredge:
Senators question $1 million pay for charity's CEO.

It is OK for a charity's CEO to get paid for $1million. But it is not OK if they get their money from tax payers. That is called looting.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Online tax revolt

Heard this from Neal Boortz this morning :-)

Now you can join the Online Tax revolt:
http://www.onlinetaxrevolt.com/
and see your avatar walk to DC :-)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Star Costa

The game I am writing in my spare time can finally be called beta now. The interface and graphics still suck, but the rough model is there. It is easier now to send ships to other planets (the interface is still confusing), and the computer AI is tough without any cheating.

The biggest problem right now is still graphics, aside from that, the AI is too tough. The is because it thinks fast and expands fast, and a human player has no way to catch it even when he can see all computer's moves (Yep I still need to turn on fog of war, right now everything is in the open so it is easier for me to debug).

I will find time to write a short description on how to use the game and set it lose.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Why tax the rich doesn't work

Below is a quote from
http://www.reuters.com/article/comments/idUSTRE61J26V20100220, by tomgee. Because it is burried deep in the comments section, I can't just provide a link else you will be lost. So the full copy is provided:

I was amused to see an interview of a laid off worker–from a plant that made $300,000 RV’s. Wanted to blame the rich and “soak them”. Guess he didn’t realize that middle class people don’t buy many $300,000 RV’s and that the “rich” weren’t buying them because they were hurting too. If we take every cent from the “top 5%” it won’t help our weak economy–it would crash it. The “rich” pretty much have their money available to stimulate the economy–and where it is most needed. If they spend it on expanding or maintaining their business–100% efficient stimulus. If they put it in the bank where others can borrow it–100% efficient stimulus. If they buy U.S. stocks or bonds (local, state, federal corporate)–100% efficient stimulus. If you get after them with more taxes you will do two things: (1) you will make them move money based on tax implications instead of wise investing–and wise investing tends to get the money to the right places. (2) the money you take from them in taxes goes into the inefficient government system where much of it is wasted (3) you may make them reduce investments (I.e. bury some money where it does no good at all) since the natural tendency is to spend and invest that in excess of you needs—and spending and investment is what stimulus is about. If you threaten a future of higher taxes–they will cash out their investments now and pay taxes at the current lower rate. That “selling spree” is the exact opposite of stimulus–and they will move the money somewhere where the taxes won’t be as bad–but that might not be as beneficial for the economy. The problem right now is not that the rich have too much pie–because if we spread it all around equally no one wouldn’t be happy with their slice. Our problem is jobs–there are not enough to go around. The problem is that we need to make more pie. And the government can’t make anything–businesses and entrepreneurs make things–and these tend to be “rich people” or people that end up there if they are successful. People that make a wage tend to not understand that the same business that makes $500K this year can often lose that much the next–and if the business is taxed out of their profits in good years they can’t survive the bad or expand even if there is reason to. It might take $10 million in “at risk” investment to grow a business by 20 employees and $500,000 profitability (a 5% return). The business would need about $2.5 million to go to the bank and get the loan for the $10 million–Which means they have to be able to keep some of their profits at some point. And if you cut their profits in ½ with additional taxes it will take them twice as long to accumulate the capital to expand–or you might even make it where it isn’t worth doing. And you make them increase the price of what they produce (which the “poor” then buy) to try to make the math work. This is why redistribution doesn’t work–you eventually divide less and less.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Building Game in Silverlight (Progress report)

I finally finished the other big piece of the game, AI. Right now I am trying to build a model so I can view AI progress, because by game design, AI movements are not visible.

I am a bit disappointed after the AI design, because it is too calculating .....

Friday, February 12, 2010

"What Evil Begets"

Don't remember how I got to that link, but here it is, a very interesting story:

http://reader-meet-author.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-evil-begets.html

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Bernie Madoff and SOCIAL SECURITY

Heard from Neal Boortz today. He did an comparison between Bernie Madoff and SOCIAL SECURITY, and it amazed me how much similar the two have in common! I never thought of this before.

Here is the link to the website of the original post:

http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2010/02/this-one-almost-slipped-by-me.html

In short:
Madoff takes money from investors and promise them returns, same as Social Security. And both of them instead of invest the money, they spent it for their own needs (Social Security was spent by politicians to buy votes).

The only difference is Madoff went to prison when his scheme didn't work out, but politicians were not affected at all when Social Security went to red.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Building Game in Silverlight (Progress report)

This is primarily for me, as a record.

I finally offloads all calculation to threads, now the game will take advantage of multiple CPUs, depend on how many stars the map will have, all your CPUs will be loaded.

This has to be done, because unlike CIV (where I based my game on), the battles can happen simultaneously on multiple planets, and if I do it on one UI thread, the game won't be playable. This is the down side of RTS game (CIV is turn based), it is going in real time and can hit CPU hard. Even if you have the latest greatest 6 core CPU, with say 1000 stars your system might not be able to handle it.

Anyway, now 2 of my 3 main goals for this game is done:
1. Game is Browser based (sandbox), no need for virus checks etc.
2. Game is multi-threaded, should be able to used as a CPU bench mark.

The last and the most important one, Game should be fun and addictive, is still far from reach.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Making a product is hard

I am still making my own game of space conquest (I am thinking about calling it ArkStream, all the other names seems to be taken).

It is harder than I thought. First I don't have any continues block of time for anything now, and also polishing the game is taking much longer than I thought.

Initially I thought the mathematical part is the hardest, but now all of that has finished (path finding, turret rotation etc). The hard thing now turned out to be how to make the game look good, and attractive.

The game is to a point where the computer can sends ships to my planet (and I screwed up the part where I send ships to other planets), and have a space battle. The battle looks bad. Everything looks so plain, and it can't give me the "feeling".

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

You can fly by EPIK

Finally found the version of the song used in one of the starcraft youtube I saw. I really like that female voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEBmlnyEguM

This is tough consider I don't understand most of the song :-)

Building Game in Silverlight

I am currently designing a game in silverlight. It will be a RTS but similar to CIV (always want to make CIV a RTS game, may or may not work).

To make things simple, it will be planet based, and I recently made ships and turrets and finished all the aiming/turning operations.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Firefox 3.6

If you saw the intro, this is one cool browser.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

windows 7 God mode

Kind of funny:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/GodMode-Windows-7-How-to,9345.html#xtor=RSS-181

Also my windows 7 network issue was fixed, turned out I forget to set my administrator's password after installation.