Algorithms

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Flashback to my time at university. The Sedgewick was the most popular algorithms book among students, being both cheaper and translated to German. Myself, I was using the CLRS Introduction to Algoritms.

This book was found when we were rummaging through stuff that was going to be thrown away at work, and I couldn’t let that happen. I could have used it last week when I was implementing patricia tries. Why is there no good C implementation of them on the ‘net? Anyhow, the question of how to delete an element from a patricia trie isn’t addressed in Sedgewick, so it wouldn’t have helped. I found out, so it wasn’t important, but still, you look up one thing in a classic like this and it’s not in there? How sad.

Piracy & PC Games

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

I wish I could have put it as eloquently as the author of this article.

If the target demographic for your game is full of pirates who won’t buy your game, then why support them? That’s one of the things I have a hard time understanding. It’s irrelevant how many people will play your game (if you’re in the business of selling games that is). It’s only relevant how many people are likely to buy your game.

In other software markets, getting 1% of the target market is considered good. If you need to sell 500,000 of your game to break even and your game requires Pixel Shader 3 to not look like crap or play like crap, do you you really think that there are 50 MILLION PC users with Pixel Shader 3 capable machines who a) play games and b) will actually buy your game if a pirated version is available?

By the way, Sins of a Solar Empire looks like a really great game. Put it on Steam and I’ll probably buy it.

Scurvy Dog

~ Enno ~ 3 Comments

I am sick as a dog, my fridge is empty after the trip, and it’s raining every minute of the day. If I dont get to a store tomorrow, I feel like I’m going to starve, or at least get scurvy from the lack of fresh fruit.

GDC was exciting, but it has physically left me a wreck. On top of the pre-existing emotional wreckage that I need to take care of. When I’m done coughing my lungs out, that is.

Study: 95% of all e-mail sent in 2007 was Spam

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

CNET reports,

There was a time – 2004 to be precise – when spam “only” consumed 70 percent of all e-mail. Those were the good old days. Today, as Barracuda Networks’ annual spam report shows, upwards of 95 percent of all e-mail is spam.

Personally I think those numbers are skewed. Barracuda is a professional provider of spam blocking, and their customers are businesses that can afford to install a dedicated machine for spam filtering. We had one at Funcom. Me on the other hand, I don’t have one of those. And at least judging from myself, I’m less likely to enter my home email address into a form than my work email.

Still, 95% is insane. Spam processing is probably the major part of what my server is doing. About 2-3 of them every day make it through my SpamAssassin and end up getting filtered by the Thunderbird rules or myself. Some years ago I set up an automated process that takes the Junk folder on my IMAP server and teaches it to SpamAssassin so that it learns from the mistakes it made, so I’m staying ahead of the deluge.

Could everybody please stop buying from these people so they give up?

read more | digg story

Anarchy Online: New Engine.

~ Enno ~ 4 Comments

New Engine (Alpha)

Funcom released a first preview video of the new rendering engine for Anarchy Online this week. This makes me proud and happy. I lobbied hard internally to see this project worked on, and after getting it approved and doing the initial research and test implementations, Osman took over and has done a tremendous job on it.

read more | digg story

German police spies on journalists

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

In another blow for journalistic freedom in Germany, it’s been revealed today that the police has been wire-tapping journalists of tagesschau.de and NDR radio. This is apparently covered by paragraph 129a, one of those anti-terror laws that have done nothing to protect us, and everything to make everyday people’s life hell.

Link in German and some information in English (towards the end of the article).

This comes after last week’s revelation that police have been rifling through everybody’s mail. Link also in German, I’m afraid.