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What I want in a war simulation

Metaverse, here we come! http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld .html

I think I'll skip this Entropia thing, btw. It DOES sound like a casino.

But I'm starting to think these guys are right.

I'm going to be embarrassed to even ask for this thing at the counter.

Not that they're the only ones who are guilty of screwing early adopters--what company doesn't?

This article, A Fanboy Intervention, talks pessimistically about the Revolution, but really it can be applied to any new console. See step 10: No console is worth buying on launch day. Or, as the case would see, launch year.

All of the angst over the new generation of consoles makes me want to buy a PS2 and pretend it's still 2002.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/pornoff.html

>>Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way.

>I have never seen evidence of this.

This isn't evidence, it's anecdotal, but someone asked a hundred non-randomly selected people if they could take a break from their porn for one week. http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/pornoff.html. Half of them falied.

Again anecdotally, I've been called in on incident response investigations for inappropriate office computer use by people who Had To Have Known Better. Not necessarily addiction, but it's hard to think of a better explanation.

I know this article was featured on Slashdot, but for a really good explanation of why hardware specs aren't going to mean much anymore, I highly recommend reading Life After the Crash by David Wong

The essence of the article is that the direction that video games are moving in can't hold up much longer. Sure, Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox360 looks beautiful. You can see slightly better fog effects than previous generation consoles, and you can see beads of sweat dripping down the enemy soldiers' faces, but does this really make it a better game? For about 10 minutes your jaw hangs open at the realism of the game, but then you get used to it and realize it's exactly like every other first person shooter ever made. OK, instead of shooting demon possessed aliens from another dimension, you are shooting nazis, but does that really make the game any different once you adjust to your surroundings? Or, even more to the point, does it make it better than the last CoD title that you played?

The bottom line is that Nintendo is trying to do something that's actually different. They're betting the farm on the fact that gamers like myself are getting tired of shelling out more and more money for consoles that are less and less innovative. It's a gamble, and it's possible that they could be doing this too early, but they have proven in the past that they have a pretty good sense about the industry. I, for one, will stand in line to buy my Revolution, even if the fog effects aren't quite as good as the significantly more expensive Xbox360.

Yes, most of them are biased, but no more than any other reports on VGs.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/articles/vio lence/violence.htm
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62 504
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/halo2.ht ml

And some funnier ones
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld .html
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames .html

Yes, most of them are biased, but no more than any other reports on VGs.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/articles/vio lence/violence.htm
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62 504
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/halo2.ht ml

And some funnier ones
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld .html
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames .html

Yes, most of them are biased, but no more than any other reports on VGs.

http://www.gamerevolution.com/oldsite/articles/vio lence/violence.htm
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62 504
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/halo2.ht ml

And some funnier ones
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld .html
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wargames .html

Nintendo doesn't do this? They've hyped up The Legend of Zelda :Twilight Princess by showing mostly in-game footage none of this pre-rendered CGI nonsense. As they say Sony is responsible for this with FF VIII

Well it took over a minute to start to draw the page when there were no posts on it. I expect that this is now being hammered because people are going to The Great Internet Porn-Off instead. I wonder if that is coral cached too...

Take, for instance, your average microwave which can cook an egg in about two minutes. It has a magnetron that operates at roughly 2.5 GHz, at 700+ watts inside of a reflective faraday cage. While the egg is inside of the microwave, the radio waves emitted by the magnetron cause the water molecules inside to change orientation in sync with the polarity of the wave passing through them. This vibration results in friction, which creates heat, and in turn cooks the egg (or whatever other food is inside of the microwave). This affect is amplified by the fact that the microwaves are contained inside of a metal chamber which prevents them from escaping and helps to redirect them into the food.

Though some cell phones operate within the same frequency range of microwave ovens, they have a maximum (regulated by law) output of 6 Watts. This wattage, combined with the fact that the output is not contained within a localized area, means that the microwaves emitted by the cell phones would have a hard time even penetrating the shell of the egg, let alone cooking anything.

Furthermore, it is important to note that cell phones do not communicate directly with one another. When a call is made, the caller's phone signals the tower which contacts the second phone. All communication between the two phones is done through the tower. The two phones communicating between one another is made irrelevant by this.

Lastly, the if one explores the source site (Wymsey Village Web) for this page has the motto of "on the nick of the cutting edge of rural parody" and bills itself as a humor site. Taking stories from a site such as this would be just as foolish those things written on sites such as Something Awful, the onion, or Pointless Waste of Time. This only shows that one must always question the validity of ones sources, no matter how enticing or appealing their content may be.

It is somewhat disheartening to me that this would be covered on slashdot as factual information. I am bothered even more, however, by the fact that so many of my peers have readily accepted this as a fact even though it has an obvious air of incredulity.

Meet The Monkey Sphere

In short, the Monkey Sphere is the very reason why they take it from the people they don't know, instead of who they know and care about.

Finally, more players will be able to cram themselves into the few milimeters of empty space left on the WoW servers.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

FTA:
...I once asked Mr. Miyamoto about Nintendo's strategy when it comes to making games. I was surprised when he said that Nintendo only makes games to sell hardware units

I think this is a really good point. Nintendo's primary goal is to sell Nintendo consoles. They do this by not only having good games, but having a good console as well. They focus on what matters (selling consoles) and adjust everything else so they can acheive this goal.

Companies like ID are already innovating, but in a different way. ID is not a game company. They are a technology company. They make engines for games which they sell to make money. They make games to sell the engine, picking up quite a profit on the way mind you. A good example of this is Doom 3/Quake 4. They used Doom 3 as a technology demo, and Raven software and Activision liked it so much that they wanted to make a game using that engine.

Innovative things that I am exited about:
A Metaverse type of game, using Virtual reality.
This guy's vision of Virtual reality to come true. I think it would be fantastic.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - I am really looking foward to this game. It is exactly what I want: a RPFPS Game (Role Playing First Person Shooter Game). It has the kind of fully interactive gameworld that I want out of a metaverse (only smaller). AI that reacts depending on the situation (another innovative technology?). Really good physics (watch the demo movies). And the gameplay looks good; you interact with the world in pretty much the same way that you do in real life (with obvious limitations, of course).

I believe that the next innovation of games will be to make them as realistic as possible. We are already getting that now, with the game engines. Soon, I hope, we will change the way we interact with the games themselves (Virtual Reality). Hollywood (may) actually write good original stories (doubtful, I know), rather than re-hashing old ideas. We may get to decide how the story goes (like a choose-your-path book), and the game can go in different directions according to our choices.

As the technology gets better, hopefully the ideas will follow.

In short, it's the same wishful thinking that says humans have free will that says the universe was created as an act of will. You either accept random accident as the cause of everything (including your own actions) or you accept that somehow will can overcome that. The long version:

Embrace the Horror!

It's well worth reading.

"It isn't always necessary to shoot people: the gun often deters people from completing a crime, even if not shot. This happens hundreds of times each week in the U.S."

Touché. Unfortunately, they also tnd to escalate confrontations until someone is shot and killed, when the worst that might otherwise happen in the loss of a car, bag or home posessions, all of which can be claimed back on insurance.

This also happens hundreds of times each week in the U.S., and can be empirically proven by looking at the population-proportion of gun deaths in the U.S. vs. the population-proportion of gun deaths in somewhere like the UK.

Funnily enough, most criminals don't actually want to kill you - it's more hassle than it's worth, and ensures that the police are more likely to take the investigation seriously.

"As for your request for personal experiences, what purpose would it serve to answer your question, which is an obvious troll?"

Actually, I was trying to make a point. The GPP implied that these things happened enough to normal, everyday people that it warranted allowing/encouraging normal, everyday people to carry guns.

I merely asked a normal, everyday person if he had a single shred of personal experience to back up that claim. It's easy to point to two child abductions as proof that paedophiles are everywhere, but it's a completely disproportionate response.

We're a social species, and we tend to congregate in groups of 100-200 individuals. At a very basic subconscious level we assume that when we hear about something happening to someone (even someone outside of our monkeysphere), it's likely to happen to us - our brains subconsciously use "I only know 200 people, so that chances are 1 in 200" reasoning, instead of "actually, with today's mass-media and the fact that sensational things like this are only news because they're so rare, I've still got more chance of having my child hit by lightning than having my child abducted... so I'll hold off on driving them to school every day and forcing them to play indoors, and instead issue them with earthed copper skullcaps and thick rubber soles".

"Other animals kill each other (apes, baboons, chimpanzees, etc.), why shouldn't we? Aboriginal Bushmen will kill each other with arrows or stones over what appear to us to be small differences."

To be crude for a second, other animals routinely eat their own shit, fling it at enemies and fuck their own kin. Why shouldn't we? Oh yeah, because we know better than that. I'm not trying to be offensive, but this is so ill-thought-out that I'm wondering now if you're trolling.

Oh, and Aboriginal Bushmen don't kill each other over "small differences", only over differences that you don't understand. Much like the way the USA spent decades developing weapons that could sterilise the surface of the earth many times over, and several times nearly used them, because it was in a dispute with another country about "their respective internal political systems".

Or how the USA (even now) invades or destabilises other sovereign nations because it disapproves of "piddling details of their internal economic policy".

Isn't cultural chauvenism wonderful?

"Why are you obsessed with guns as weapons?"

Because guns make it easy to kill someone - too easy, in fact. They have no other purpose in a civilised society, and they make it so easy a tiny child can accidentally kill themselves (or someone else) with a gun. You can't say that about a knife, rock, pitchfork, clothesline or tall building.

Guns are addictive, easy, and give people weilding them a massive power trip. No other weapon requires no real training to use, has the same godlike ability to deal death from afar with the merest flick of a finger, and confers the same feeling of (at least partial) invincibility.

"While you "elect t

Even the people who agree with Jack hate to admit it.

This kind of reinforces what the PA guys said about how we won't really be in trouble until an activist comes along who's not so crazy and shrill.

Then again, Jack seems to be finding his audience just fine.

That's because everything and everyone outside the moderators' respective monkeyspheres are greedy and evil. Even moreso if they are somehow associated with some big company or association, all of which in their minds are likened to evil big green globs of goo.

Apparently violent crime has done nothing but drop Since the release of the original Doom in 1994. (source)

(note, first saw this on http://pointlesswasteoftime.com/ but true nonetheless)

Oh! Oh!

I always thought Obi-Wan said "Play Station"!

(Reference)

Or the John Cheesified version:

LimeWire (waves hand): This is not the code you are looking for.
RIAA: This is not the code we are looking for.
LimeWire: Our code is clean
RIAA: Their code is clean.
LimeWire: Strip each other naked in the town square and scream 'I'M MADONNA, I'M MADONNA!'
RIAA: Uh... We were kinda planning on doing that anyway...

Note: John Cheese & above animation are NSW; John Cheese may cause serious brain damage!

But is this a good thing?

Generally, within-group (band, group of friends, political party, subculture, whatever) disagreements/debates tend to be much more diplomatic than between-group ones.

Take any example:

Politics. Sure the Left and Right in the US hate each other, but in the face of "outsiders" (9/11, for example) they band together against the external threat.

Friends. You might disagree with a friend over something, but the second he's threatened by an outsider (eg, started on by someone you don't know in a club), most people will at least stand behind him and back him up.

Subcultures. Goths can be (disclaimer: I have many Goth friends who aren't) notoriously whiny and bitchy, but when they're sat in a pub bitching at each other and a punk/metaller/raver walks in, watch them forget their differences and close ranks against the intruder.

Basically, people "within our group" are for the most part within our monkeysphere. People "outside of our group" are for the most part not. Disagreements within groups tend to be limited in their intensity, or they tear the whole group apart (which no real group member wants). Conflicts between groups allow participants to demonise and dehumanise their opponents, and so have no upper limit on their intensity (Hiroshima, for example).

So do should we all walk, talk and think exactly the same? No.

Should we all strive to become part of one big group (humanity), but retain our individual differences as much as possible? I think so.

That's interesting. I'm hardly an avid environmentalist, but for argument's sake, which of these strikes you as the most arrogant:

"If global warming keeps up we could die, which is bad for the world!"

"We can do whatever the fuck we like to the planet and its biosphere, and who cares if it's ruined later - I'll be dead!"

Frankly, the planet's a lump of rock, and it doesn't give a fuck if we're alive, dead or dancing the can-can.

The world (as in, the biosphere, animals alive right now, us, the planet's current biodiversity, the evolutionary potential within every living creature) depends greatly on us not engineering an ecological collapse through shortsighted selfishness.

I think most people consider ecological collapse bad because you're basically making millions of species extinct, even long before we as a species are faced with extinction (king of the adaptable generalists, humanity). People view the world as a beautiful thing because of its intricacy and diversity, and if the alternative is a radioactive desert with three different types of cockroach frankly I see their point.

You're right, and this is always a pet peeve of mine - what's the "normal, background" level of extinction? Why get upset about individual species going extinct, when species do it all the time?

I think it's because people find it very hard to get worried that millions of species might die out, but tell them "You'll never see an Orangutan again" and they suddenly realise how serious it can be. People can't fit planetary-level problems into their monkeysphere, but never again seeing a particular cute little furry face tugs at the heartstrings and prompts them to act.

Is it misleading? Yes. Is it done for a noble purpose? Yes, I think so.

Maybe it would be nice if games could alsobe targetted at other markets, but I suspect the interest just isn't there. Just look at films - barring the odd Titanic / English Patient (eww), how many blockbuster chick-flicks are there? Granted they do exist, but the film market dynamics are different. Currently, the market says "geeky boys play games" - hence games focus their sights on geeky boys.

Not really. If slashdot readers are mocking the con-goers wholesale, it's probably just an indicator that they are not part of their monkeysphere.

Reminds me of an article posted about how MMORPG's will eventually take over the world. If the object has real world value and takes time and work to obtain, shouldn't it be a crime to steal it?

So, what are sequels doing for the gamer who's not interested in keeping up with the sequel treadmill?"

hmmm... maybe not buying them?

however, while some gamers might not venture into the sequel of their favorite game, there must be enough followers to keep the gaming industry making sequels after sequels.

it's similar to spams, while most people just ignore them, some of them ended up buying from the spammers, and this is what keeps the spamming industry going and even growing.

creating a different genre or trying something new is a big risk that most companies can't afford to take, this is especially true if each new game costs few millions to produce. that's why we saw a lot of interesting, exciting and ground-breaking games in the '80s because the cost was so low, people were more willing to take risk and create different games.

i have created a game almost to the words as described here (Point 2 Paragraph 2) and discussed here.

but let me tell you, it's been very difficult to get people playing it or even understanding it, because everybody's so used to the grinding.

everyday, i have to answer questions from players who want to know how to grind their stats to the top, because grinding is what defines game at the moment.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/halo2.ht ml Oddly enough, now they have real research to back up their conclusion.

I feel obligated to link to the Gamer's Manifesto (which has made news here before, incidentially.)

Note in particular section 4.

I get up one day and every kid is glued to a box that's fucking training him. Tell me it ain't. Millions of them, all over the country, all over the world, millions of kids spending hours and hours getting quicker and quicker on the trigger, getting truer and truer aim and colder and colder inside. That's training, if I ever saw it.

I've lived almost my whole life in small towns in the Northwest. Redneckville. I don't, as a rule consider myself a redneck, but Bubba and Cletis serve a purpose -- they enforce curtesy. You make fun of thier girlfriend, dog, or truck, you get a large dose of pain and a dental bill. Some years ago I moved back east for a couple of years, and the cultural difference was staggering. Guys act like "sissy girls", calling names, making little comments, and constant little put-downs. My coping skills consisted of offering to take off my shirt, head out back, and settle the issue with fifteen years of martial arts training. This was considered barbaric. In my eyes, they were immature, rude and self-centered. How did they get this way? They litigated and sued and passed laws until they're so "civilized" that the prissly little girly-men who spew vituperence don't have to worry about someone shutting their mouths for them when they fail to self-regulate. Frankly, I found their words extremely hurtful, but always just this side of being legally actionable. Kudos for civilization.

So, I'm back in barbarian land. I try to be a gentleman, but Bubba and Cletis are to deal with those who can't control their baser instincts. Folks are polite and respectful (or thy talk funny because of the missing teeth). On line, just like back east, there is no fear of physical or legal reprisal. Nice guys stay nice, but the pinheads have NOTHING to keep them in check - viola - Pinhead city.

So, I'm thinking of starting a "Rent-a-Redneck" service to bring curtesy and manners to the rest of the world. . . .

... but in practice, you open the door to increased risk... navigating bookmarks of someone you don't know could run you right into spyware/malware... there aren't enough filters in the world to keep up with what is put out there.

Sadly, too, the concept of Monkey Sphere comes in, too...

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.h tml ...

Though it will start small, it will eventually become just too big, if it survives... it will become just another random maze of links for people to click through at 3am when they should be coding for a project due at midnight the next day.

===

Sorry to be a drag, just being realistic :/

Patents. Did you know there's a patent held by some microscopic software company on spherical camera controls in realtime 3D, and they're starting to level lawsuits against EVERYONE? Did you ever wonder what happened to force feedback, controllers that push your hands around so you can feel the action in the game as well as see it (we're talking real force feedback, not controllers that vibrate like pagers)? Somebody has a patent, that's what. Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?

I saw that on slashdot last week with 'A Gamers' Manifesto'

Patents. Did you know there's a patent held by some microscopic software company on spherical camera controls in realtime 3D, and they're starting to level lawsuits against EVERYONE? Did you ever wonder what happened to force feedback, controllers that push your hands around so you can feel the action in the game as well as see it (we're talking real force feedback, not controllers that vibrate like pagers)? Somebody has a patent, that's what. Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?

http://johndiesattheend.com/ningraph.gif
which i got from this : http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/manifest o.html

Because every developer on the floor knew that the most impressive demos for the PS3 were totally prerendered. They could even name the people who worked on them. And for some reason no one in the games journalism community would point blank persistently ask Sony and groups like Axis Animation what the deal was. Look at this article where it's all speculation and guessing. The public deserves to know that what they were shown is not exactly how a game is going to look on PS3. Meanwhile, closed door demos of the Xbox 360 were actually impressive. I don't work for either company or work in games for that matter, though I do love them. I am totally neutral about both machines. My bias is negative towards Microsoft as I'm a Mac zealot and my Xbox is my least favorite console. I went into E3 feeling Microsoft had blown it. Then I saw what it could do, held the controller in my hand, and now am impressed and rather excited about the Xbox 360. And privately a developer told me that they aren't anywhere near having the machines run full speed or utilizing their full power in the very obvious Mac G5 dev kits they're running everything from. But I will say this: HDTV is going to be a requirement. The PS3 remains vaporware in my mind - I recall claims of rendering scenes of the Final Fantasy movie on PS2's "emotion engine". And ultimately what's even sadder is there were a mere handful of games at E3 that made me excited. Okami, the new Zelda, We Love Kattamari, Shadow of the Collossus, Stubbs the Zombie, and that's pretty much it. Horsepower may be here, but games are as stunted, as juvenile, and as retreaded as ever. Future marines vs. monsters and bimbos galore. Meanwhile next gen gaming is going to cost more, Microsoft have shunted most PC development to the Xbox, killing the richness of PC games for the most part other than MMORPGs. And now we're going to have live updating advertising in games, along with additional content that will have to be purchased. Want that sword +2? You can buy it for $4.99. Welcome to gamer hell.

Which would you rather play? A game with great gameplay but mediocre graphics, or a game with great graphics and mediocre gameplay? The new consoles seem to be designed for incredible graphics at the expense of gameplay. Check out the Gamer's Manifesto

Maybe he should register a complaint with this guy then!

I usually read John C. Dvorak just so that I can get a good giggle, but after this article I was just angry.

Now, the content of the article was not upsetting to me, I thought he had a few valid points. Instead, I was upset because rather than think for himself, Dvorack just wrote a cheap knockoff of a similar article posted on www.pointlesswasteoftime.com.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.ht ml

The interesting thing here is that not only is the PWOT version of this argument much more entertaining, it is also more convincing.

Does anyone else find it ironic that Dvorak article decrying the lack of new ideas in the gaming industry is itself a recycled idea?

This is longer, funnier, and more on-topic for this thread: Episode IV, As it Should Have Been

You are correct! Noted cultural observer David Wong has put together a summary of events after Tupac's death that seem to point to the possibility that Tupac faked his own death. Interesting reading.

...but I'm sure they'll remain faithful to the series.

Microsoft Writes Open Source Child Porn Buster

Ah, my mistake. I thought you were addressing me as Buster and suggesting that Microsoft was writing Open Source Child Porn.

I mean, really, is Microsoft above alleging a connection between Child Porn and Open Source Software?

I'm sure Dr. Oxford himself would concur regarding such a connection, after all.

Why is it that religious leaders can always incite their zealot followers to violence against those who are different, but they can never incite their zealot followers to embrace the tranquillity, harmony, sanctity of life, forgiveness, mercy, tolerance, and passiveness that pretty much all of the major religions are based on?

because humans are fundamentally pack animals, and talking up The Other (tribe) as a threat is always easier than teaching people to learn full control of their animal instincts (a rather difficult task that requires years of work). see also the monkeysphere.

Episode IV (as it should have been) in pictures.

This reminds me of THIS ARTICLE which is a piece of satire on Halo 2 and the whole killing instinct in humans...

It points out that violent crime has GONE DOWN since these games hit shelves.

We spend so much time in this society trying to repress human instinct... somebody compared this to restricting porn sales and they're right. You're not fighting a certain kind of entertainment. You're fighting human desire and physical urges. And boys are born wanting to hold a weapon and use it.

If you have a way of exercizing that instinct that doesn't harm anyone, then why not let them have it? It's almost petty not to.

Battlefield Earth, bad movie, but great review:
http://pointlesswasteoftime.com/film/bfearth.html

I FOUND THIS OH COOL.