zedz

Pretty much every phone before the iPhone used a recessed button for  unlock or sequential button presses.   Now, I do believe this patent is a  little too obvious and keeping people to use a slide to unlock for 14  years is ridiculous, but I do believe it was somewhat novel at the time.      

but it wasnt mate
here is another tocuhscreen phone out a couple of years before the iphone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonode#N1m

it used slide to unlock the touchscreen phone as well

Wait, is it 1997 again?

I dont understand

Does the keyboard button allow you to turn the system on? If so, then yes, it is very useful.

thats been available since last century, perhaps not all bios's allow it though, eg on one PC in the 90s I set it up so all I need to turn on the PC is to press any key on the keyboard, yes that can be handy.
Im talking about the when the PC is going youre typing and accidently press the power button (on the last one I had it was the same place as the pause/break button & same shape/size as any other button) and the PC instantly switches off,
Im still waiting for a single reason why this key is a good idea?

A remote power control button? I could see it being extremely useful if  the layout of the work area made it less than handy to reach the normal  power button on the case.  

wait, so do you turn off your PC with the power button (OK if it crashes yes I do that) but its windows/mac/linux aint happy if you do that! hell you will lose unsaved work.

A/ turning off a PC is easily done already with a few keypresses already
B/ Its not a frequent activity thus doesnt require a special key

yes mikemans right, just get the basic gameplay up and running, make it playable (hacking is good, since you will find >50% of the stuff/ideas you have dont pan out i.e. dont spend time perfecting something that you find doesnt meet your expectations, you can always rewrite your hacky code later)

FWIW heres what Ive done Im not sure how long it took, ~50 hours I think (including making the music,art,testing etc).
attack of the smilies yes I know, terrible name. Also please dont share the link as Im waiting until the sound api enabled browser hits mainstream.
a couple of bugs (with the sounds not resetting at the start of each level, which I have fixed & will upload a newer version later & also I should remove the debug text)
also u need a new version of chrome -> http://mlab.taik.fi/mediacode/archives/1533 to hear the sounds.

for this game the order of things I done was roughly (I plan & write this the night before in a exercise book)

A. add a 2d board of blocks
B. add a player 2d sprite, that moves from block to block (no animation)
C. change colors of the blocks
D. able to complete a level by coloring in all blocks
E. add an enemy smiley, that randomly moves from block to block
F.  coldet between smiley and player

the result is a playable game, within a day. I think you could manage this in a day?
after that, go from one side to making a 3d cube playing field, expand from 1 enemy sort up to 10 enemy sorts, add bonuses, fx's different levels etc.
But ultimately youre just working on the same basic idea

At the moment Im thinking what game to do next

btw, cheers for updating this thread speciesUnknown

One thing I noted at the time
I dont know if its a good idea to have the ireland vs the United states game on
11 september 2011, i.e. 10 years to the day of the twin towers. Now if I was a terrorist I'ld be circling that date/venue

OK after hearing about this game for ages I finally tried it out
http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ My link (might only work on chrome)
Im left scratching my head  , Is that it!, try to hit the targets , surely theres more? I fear not

the last massively hyped game I tried 'planets vs zombies' was just as boringly bad, maybe slightly better.
Is this some sort of joke Im not getting?

Makes me wonder how good (the also massively hyped)  'minecraft' really is, am I just getting to old to enjoy games or do others feel like this?

Im not knocking the guys that made these games but Im just shocked of what I saw, I was expecting something at least slightly different

Hats off to everyone who took part esp those that finished

I saw the comp during the first day, unfortunately I'ld started a new project the day before (so was in that new project rush buzz & didnt want to leave)
But I'll be in next time, can we have like a couple of weeks notice & if someone could PM & email me that would be great (since unlike years ago, Im hardly on this site)

Ill go easy on yous I promise (fingers crossed)

That you are good at something is just the sum of your upbringing, not something that was genetically predispositioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ

There are some family effects on the IQ of children, accounting for up  to a quarter of the variance. However, adoption studies show that by  adulthood adoptive siblings aren't more similar in IQ than strangers,^[25] while adult full siblings show an IQ correlation of 0.6. Conventional twin studies reinforce this pattern

INTELLIGENCE - fact - genetics plays a huge part

PHYSICAL (sport) - someone who is 1.6meters tall aint gonna be the best basketball player, or the mother was smoking whilkst pregnant etc. i.e. genetics is important

SKILLS (music etc) - here I'ld say genetics would be the least important, though intelligence&physical do help

Oh sure studying, practicing etc help everyone to a degree but all the  studying/great upbring in the world is not going to change someone born  retarded into an einstein

There is no such thing as naturally born talent,  

Aye, its proven that IQ etc are heritables(?)

I believe
For a man, the gift of the gab is prolly the most important trait to have, higher than intelligence, goodlooks, body stength etc
For a woman, good looks I'ld say would be the most important trait

Both a quite sad (esp the looks thing for woman), but hey thats the world we live in

A Brain in a Vat just posted what I was gonna say

if u copy yourself (say its possible & will last forever) i.e. u hold a chip in your hands & declare now I will live forever.
How much comfort is that for you, would you stick a bullet through your head (cause you know you will still live on) the answer is NO it doesnt change anything at all, your soul (not used religiously) dies when your body dies

If you want to live forever the better method is nanobots (or something)
cruising through your body removing all aging effects/disease etc

You've missed the point.  

yep
this is not the sole example as well, theres been a few cases where games have come out on windows & also linux & the linux ports have earned decent. & like the example mentioned above the linux users have paid on average more than the win users

anyways to the OP, perhaps look at a crossplatform solution eg Ive been doing some html5,webgl stuff recently it seems OK (apart from javascript is an idiot language, I just discorved an implemention bug this morning), theres also flash & other things

You would mostly be looking at a few weeks for a simple GRAPHICS engine that could have ships flying through space firing bullets  

Few weeks!
try less than a day

notepad++

draw a stretched quad orientated in the particle's moving direction, fade out the colors at the quads tail

p0,p1 are 2 positions, the pos + the direction its moved from

VEC3 q = cameras_position - p0;
VEC3 w = p1 - p0;
VEC3 n = return_VECTORS_normal( CROSSPRODUCT( q,w ) ) * width;

add+subtract n to the p0+p1 verts to get the 4 corners of the quad