The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know

Yet another interesting talk about QM and what its results tell us about reality:

Mark Coleran about Fantasy user interfaces in movies

UX Week 2010 | Mark Coleran | The Reality of Fantasy from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Science is always right, right?

This article takes a revealing look behind the methods used in science and shows some unexpected sources of error, especially in medicine and psychology.
Definitely worth reading if you have anything to do with research yourself and in the end this affects us all somehow.

The Apple Tree

Some of you might already have seen it. If not go watch it now! 

Best PowerPoint Presentation Ever

Matt Blaze was invited to the RSA-Conference 2011 and they told him that uploading a PowerPoint presentation is a contractual requirement for speakers ... so here it is.

OpenDemo alpha version released!

Finally everything is working well enough to release a first version of my current project OpenDemo. This is an early alpha version so you can get a first look how things are done without any documentation yet.

I'm developing OpenDemo, to make the access of data in Counterstrike demos as easy as possible for coders.

The OpenDemo source files "OpenDemo.cpp", "OpenDemo.h" and the LoadingStream files "LoadingStream.cpp", "LoadingStream.h" should compile with any c++ compiler. If they don't compile in your compiler contact me immediately!

The other files are for demonstrating how to use OpenDemo in a vc++ project. Especially "ODExample.cpp" shows how to initialise, load and access a demo.

You can always get the latest source code packed together in a rar file with the link in the "My Projects" category.

Why the Mythbusters won't do RFID

Where are we coming from? Where are we going to? And do we even exist?

Here are some interesting answers from the point of view of a theoretical physicist:

So what's going on here?

Since i haven't posted here in a very long time because of usual stress during the semester, here is a small update. 

I'm currently working on a library that allows you to read counterstrike demos and use the data in them. A free and open source version will be released under a modified BSD license so you can do really everything with it except using it in commercial projects. There will also be a documentation and some coding samples how to use it. The first version will include almost all data in the frame macros and after that is done I'll add server packets in updates.

Since i want everything basic already working in the first release i can't say when it's going to be released yet.

Also I've found a really nice piece of music (if you've "watched" Heavy Rain ;) )

Here is the sheet: Heavy Rain - Piano Suite

Steam password security issue

Just a quick note for everyone reading this:

Use the remember password option to log into steam. If you have to enter the password restart steam after that. Don't enter the password and keep Steam running after it. There is currently a security issue that makes it possible to read the password of your account if you entered the password to log in.

The problem is reported to valve and hopefully they'll fix it as fast as they did the last time.

Will our life just be one big RPG?

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Turning off your hardware acceleration for better 2d performance?

No that s not a joke ... if you re working in a heavily 2d using program (Photoshop for example) you should turn your hardware acceleration off on all the new GPUs: -Link-

Really nice to see your expensive graphics card being outperformed by an on-board chip on a two year-old $50 motherboard!

Statement from amd: "Tom’s Hardware has tripped over a workload area (2D lines, etc.) that we have not optimized yet."

Network security isn't all fun and games

Today i found an interesting analysis about the network traffic of steam while playing Team Fortress 2 by Brett Turner and Andrew Woodward.

Though they have written this some time ago, i think it is still very accurate.

And just again it confirms my view of how Valve is doing stuff but read it yourself here: Network security isn’t all fun and games: An analysis of information transmitted while playing Team Fortress 2

Google TechTalks: Crypto Strikes Back!

Gamasutra: Dirty Coding Tricks

"When the schedule is shot and a game needs to ship, programmers may employ some dirty coding tricks to get the game out the door. In an article originally published in Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine earlier this year, here are nine real-life examples of just that." Read More ...

What a day ...

Man i m still shocked about what we have learned today. Our admin version of fps-death got leaked again and this time an admin of xj gave it away to someone who submitted a bhopscript demo to xj and then gave it to kayne who released it. Those people made him and other admins trust them. Since this is inexcusable he ll get kicked out today or tomorrow and we ll have to find a new admin who is doing his work and we can trust in.

What we learn from this is that you can t secure a program from leaking by giving it to as few people as possible ... still the temptation seems to be too big. So for future analysing programs there has to be a system that we know exactly who is using what and when and bind programs to computers even for people you think you can trust absolutly and of course an emergency shutdown so noone can use these progs after a leak. To do this and make it as hard to hack as possible will be a lot of work but it seems to be necessary.

Win 7 activation cracked 85 days ahead of general release

Image credit: user “arabmed” on mydigitallife.info forums

Looks like things haven’t changed all that much since Windows XP.

Small update ...

Well the last weeks were full of interesting and new things i learned, while working on kcac, and i can t really talk about them ... except that the next kcac version will be on a whole new level and in no way comparable with the old one. We are a team of experts now with gangien helping me out on the coding side and emti designing the artworks. Here is a preview screen of the current version:

I had to cut out the interface development completely for now because it would have taken too long. So we re working with winapi now to get the prog ready to use as fast as possible.

On the positive side you ll be able to record demos on servers once we released it.

Also there was an interesting story: While i was working on getting some data out of steam.exe we need for kcac i ran into my password saved in plain text in the memory ...

After investigating this a bit more i came to the conclusion that everyone with basic knowledge about reading other processes memory can read my steam password if he wants to. I talked about this with Soulfather and he sent a mail directly to his contact at Valve. Let s hope they ll take the appropriate actions.

Now about the fast demo-checker: The code is finished and i started with adding maps but since my focus is on kcac and i have to learn a lot for university atm i ll pause the map adding for some time. You can get an updated test version here. Ofc the interface will get a redo for the release. Once this is done it ll get the correct record time on all maps from the record list. So this will become the #1 tool for public demo checking.

River flows in you

me playing "river flows in you" on my keyboard: link

Fast demo checker pre-release!

Here is a test program for the demo-checker i m currently working on.
The loading code i wrote myself is streaming the demos with an 1mb buffer so it doesn t need more ram than that buffer to load demos. And it is really fast ;)

I ll release the code of the file-loading class with an explanation how it is done later.
The interface is not done yet but i ll add one when i m done with e2D and will officially release the prog after that.

You can download it here: Link

Note: This prog is not finished yet! I still have to change the average fps and server time to get the official results.