Robosquid

Awesomeawesomeawesome Robosquid is up!

Yay, finally ^_^

Sorry this is a short post but I'm kind of high on euphoria. Not really, I just don't feel like typing a big ol' post.

Cookies

Hi there. It's time for another rant. Oh, by the way, how was that programming contest?

I won, but they couldn't send me the prize, because I am not a physical being. v_v

XD OK, time for a rant about cookies now. I am sick of all the misconceptions about these. I will lay out everything that a cookie can do:

• A cookie is a simple text file. It can store anything it wants to, but even if it stores a script, it cannot be executed.
• A cookie can only be accessed by the website that created it.
• A cookie can store only information that you have given to a website. It cannot store, e.g., your credit card number if you have not given that to the site that created the cookie.
• Contrary to the popular misconception that cookies can store all your browser history, cookies can only store the history of your browsing on the site that created the cookie, maybe a family of sites all owned by the same company, or, in the case of "ad tracking cookies", websites whose ads are provided by the same advertising company.

So we can see, cookies cannot do most of the things that they are purported to do. The only way that personal information can be stolen via cookies is this: A malicious ad is on a site that you give information to, and the ad tracks your keys and takes the info. The way cookies come in: they're the easiest way to associate the data with you, by storing it in your cookies.

So who's the real culprit here? Cookies? Nope. Malicious ads are the problem. Cookies merely let the ads have a slightly easier way to associate the information they grab with you. So, what should you do?

Don't block cookies. They make browsing very convenient, by e.g. allowing a site to "remember" you, eliminating the need to type a password every time you visit from the same computer. What you should do instead is get something like AdBlock for Firefox, which blocks almost every single ad on the Internet from ever showing (and, conveniently, stealing your credit card number). If you really hate Firefox or can't switch, then there are some alternatives, which don't run as part of your browser but instead in the background of your OS, which fixes the problem for every single browser you run.

So what have we learned? Cookies are not malware. They can barely do anything malicious. The problems they can cause can better be stopped by blocking ads, rather than cookies.

Good advice. I hate it when people say to disable cookies.

That's all for now, folks. By the way, I've already started writing the classes for Thred.

Bye.

UPDATE: If you're still wondering about cookies, here's a good website: [link]

Update to My Programming Game

Sorry, I can't be here and give very many coherent messages. I'm in a programming contest.

That guy is just getting scarier and scarier.

I have dubbed my game Thred. It is about threads adn mispelings ar sooper. I've also changed a ton about it, so it's not all bitwisey and stuff. It's more abstract now. It's way simpler than Core War and makes more sense.

I've made some super awesome bots for it, and they're called "needles". One is a scanner, and one is a replicator. Look those up on the Core War Wikipedia article if you don't know what those mean. I'm programming it now. I'm using C++. I'll hook up SDL or something to show a little graphical representation of the memory array. I'm aiming for a 5-23 release, because that's my dad's birthday and I'm going to show it to him as a present, and also because I need a deadline. I might not finish because I'm still finishing a final project for my stupidest class. I'll try my best, though. Soon I'll set up a KOTH server (King Of The Hill).

See ya later.

Homework is a Lamewad, and Programming Games

I hate homework. I hate it much. I can't imagine who was stupid enough to popularize making big stupid projects to present and making stupid things to research when the teacher could just teach them xyrself. I hate how teachers don't coordinate at all so you get a huge project and part of it's due the next day and your partner is in Spanish and he has another huge project so he doesn't get his part done. I hate teachers who think they own your schedule and your life and say "You haven't had anything to do in a while" as if they knew and then give you a gigantic project. I hate when teachers give you worksheets every day and don't give you any time in class to work on the big project that's due in a week.

Whoa...

Sorry, but I hate it all. And it's been the worst for the last couple of weeks.

In the snippets where I can browse the web (usually at school, not at home) then I've been looking into some programming games, where you don't actually play, you program AI and let it do the playing. I think I'll make a few in Python. I have ideas for both a tile-based programming game and a Core War derivative. Core War is somewhat strange, and I've decided to design my derivative more after real processors. (NOTE: for those who don't know assembly, you can skip the rest of this paragraph and the next one.) Each instruction is 32 bits: the instruction is one byte, the modifiers (direct/indirect/immediate arguments if you know what that means, and a few other stuff if I need it) are another byte, and then there are up to two operands in the other two. Most instructions will have an 8-bit version and a 32-bit version (i.e. they deal with 8-bit-sized data or 32-bit-sized data). Another difference from Core War will be that the arguments will be ordered destination-first, because that's probably the most well-known way.

For those of you who've heard about Core War, here're a few examples in mine:

;imp
mov32 1, 0

;dwarf
add8 1:2, #4 ;x:y = 4x + y for convenience, because in 8-bit instructions, addresses count by 8 bits rather than 32
mov32 2, 2
jmp -2
die

Ooh. Sounds cool. I've actually won a few tournaments in Core War.

O_O

My other game will be pretty simple. It'll be tile-based. Your bot can face 4 directions. Each turn he can shoot, turn left or right, or go forward or backward. He can see the first thing besides empty space in all 4 directions.

I've also almost finished a little rect-based collision framework in Python, so that Octopus can make games more easily. Homework has gotten in the way a bit, though.

That's all for now. ^_^

See ya. v_v

Hey! You're back.

Yeah. I decided to post another example for my Core War-like game. It's a simple scanner--it looks through memory until it finds instructions that aren't die and then starts setting them to die. It doesn't kill itself.

;a simple scanner
search:		cmp8	blank:0,	{die} ;{} around an instruction gives its number
		jnz	bomb
		add8	-1:2,		#1:0
		jmp	search
bomb:		cmp8	2:2,		search
		jz	restart
		add8	1:2,		#1:0
b:		mov32	blank,		blank
		jmp	bomb
restart:	mov8	blank,		blank
		jmp 	bomb
blank:		die

There it is ^_^

It doesn't look very strong.

Yeah, it's just a simple example. See ya!

<_<

~(o_o)~ Octopus

Where have you been?

Sorry, I haven't had much to post about and I was kind of busy lately.

I've had lots of fun on the Internet.

...

Anyway, I realized that I don't really have much practice programming anything, so I shouldn't be trying to make Forge right now. I've decided to create a little team called Octopus. The logo is ~(o_o)~. There should actually be two underscores, but this blog engine has decided to remove any double underscores. <_< It's a simple text logo that is really super cool. My friend Zonbi (his blog is in my links) is in it, and maybe Wish (also in links) will join it too. We'll make some simple little games.

About octopuses?

The first one is kind of like Ika-chan, and there will be octopuses and squids and fish and stuff.

^_^