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But do we really want that? I'm quite a modern thinking person, but I just feel that stops us being human.

Could be, at least for some purely biological species definition, but what does that matter if I'm still me?

What is the point in achieving greatness if you no longer have the emotions to feel it?

Why wouldn't I feel it? Emotions are part of a mind, so an uploaded mind would certainly still have them, assuming the upload process works at all of course.

The friends to celebrate it with?

Why wouldn't I have those? Are you going for some variant of Cybernetics Eat Your Soul sci-fi trope here?

The partners to love?

Other uploads, or even fleshy humans, through either robot bodies or a virtual reality environment, can act as partners. You do know what is the most important part of Second Life economy, right ?-)

Sorry, but I just feel its wrong and no amount of logical points will sway my opinion on that simply because its not a "logical" debate to begin with.

What debate? Nobody's forcing or even encouraging you to abandon your fleshy form. I'm simply speculating what I would do. Or did you mean you're going to dictate how I should live my life?

As for "no amount of logical points will sway my opinion", that's not something to be proud of. It's a mental problem to overcome. You are basically declaring yourself deliberately irrational.

Don't forget the TVTropes page: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnhanceButton Sorry.

Just like how the "real researchers" laughed their ass off at the human genome project?

The human genome project was easy to scale up, the data was right in front of them, it was just a question of crunching it. And we still haven't a firm grasp of the complex interactions between genetic information, far from it.

Unlike such a project, we don't have the data in front of us to create intelligence, it would be as though there was considerable debate over the existence of genes in the first place. And even if we did, you'd still need an almost perfect physics engine to be able to do whatever you wanted, pretty much down to the molecular level. I'm not saying it will never happen, it probably will, but not for scores of generations at minimum. In the meantime you and your buddies can get a similar level of enjoyment with the abovementioned paper and pencil. I wouldn't see it as competition for online games, any more than I'd see football as competition for online games.

Ah yes, but do we have the data in front of us on what creates a good story? Because before editing, that's all this kind of thing is -- data. And data can be procedurally generated.

I'm not talking about a simulated world or whatnot. I'm specifically talking about using an algorithm to create outlines of NPC interactions in a RPG, which would later be used by a professional video game scriptwriter to flesh out scenarios.

Thus speaks a man who has never experienced the addictive tab-craziness of TV Tropes ;)

Or Wikipedia. Or Encyclopedia Dramatica. Or Ward's Wiki and Everything2, which were probably the originators of this densely hyperlinked style that encourages hyperbrowsing.

Thus speaks a man who has never experienced the addictive tab-craziness of TV Tropes ;)

Whiny article. All complaints, no solutions. I reached the end of the article expecting another page which would discuss how real world weapons should behave in games. No such luck.

For a better analysis, see Gatling Good on TVTropes. Also More Dakka.

America's Army has realistic weapon mechanics, of course. (It's sponsored by the U.S. Army). Players have complained about that.

Whiny article. All complaints, no solutions. I reached the end of the article expecting another page which would discuss how real world weapons should behave in games. No such luck.

For a better analysis, see Gatling Good on TVTropes. Also More Dakka.

America's Army has realistic weapon mechanics, of course. (It's sponsored by the U.S. Army). Players have complained about that.

I dont care what you all day, my KF-7 Soviet is a real gun, I have seen them on TV.

That's because the Goldeneye 007 guns are mostly renamed versions of real guns. What you're seeing on TV is an AK-47.

(or so I heard).

You bastard. Sneaking that Tvtropes link in there, don't you know that ruins lives.

Actually, not only does slashdot make money off of ads (as several other people pointed out), but you can voluntarily give them real money for "enhanced" service. That's pretty much exactly the same model as most FB games (or so I heard).

How about getting a sense of humour?

Sheesh, since when did MS-shilling become Serious Business?

Mart

A few years ago there were these 'gigapet' things that were all the hype, I had about 2, they were fantastic 'pets'. Then they suddenly went out of style.

Tiger's Giga Pets were a me-too of Bandai's Tamagotchi. Digimon began as Bandai's attempt to extend Tamagotchi into the boy's market; it exists today as the dueling TV and game franchise of Nintendo's Pokemon.

With today's technology I bet you could have a fantastic new 'gigapet' that would be every bit as realistic as a real duck/cat/dog/animal X.

Did Nintendogs come close?

I am from Canada, and while I have my fair share of beefs with the education system (currently in University to be a teacher myself), I have seen (through practicums within high-schools) that if you live in a city you can enter into enriched programs. I myself was extremely bored throughout high-school since I grew up in the country and attended a school with no enrichment.

You didn't miss much. Enrichment programs were usually taking out 40 minutes every week and while nice in showing possibilities on what to study... it still didn't give any direction. Even regular courses were like that - while the art course did try showing students many ways they can be artistic, they never taught basics (e.g. what amounts to perfecting drawing ability.)

The regular courses were either tried to teach respiration to those that already mastered it, or skipped past essential basics. In addition, there wasn't enough material to fill the necessary 110 hours of instruction, so they assigned homework instead and used class time to play games such as "7-up".

In hindsight, I'd have preferred a correspondence course. No enrichment there, but at least progress within said course isn't blocked by unnecessary delays, and there isn't any need to participate in distracting items that provide no direct benefit to education.

Even the far smaller Predator can carry up to 750 pounds and stay aloft for at least 40 hours. Though I guess you could still throw in a bunch of Spikes and still have a nice Macross Missile Massacre.

Let me rephrase: The index in an electronic work tends to be far quicker and more comprehensive than that in a book. Novels tend not to include an index at all; good luck finding and reviewing a clue that the author left several chapters ago.

people playing games don't usually like being reminded that they're not the avatar

Then why did games like Ultima IV, where the player character doesn't become an Avatar until the end, sell? ;-)

games of most genres need to maintain a certain internal consistency or in many cases the enjoyment and level of engagement with the media is reduced.

Agreed; others can read more about internal consistency.

He couldn't figure it out, so he attributed the fault to a No See Um. Might as well blame it on goblins, or declare that A Wizard Did It.

There might someday be a porno with an actual good plot.

Reviews indicate that "someday" came when Eyes Wide Shut was released. TV Tropes has a list of other examples.

Who gets to define neutral though?

If you can't define 'Neutral', just look it up.

Duh.

Well if you want a true definition of Neutral, this is a better link!

>gravity gun
all well and good, but when it comes to hand held gravity guns, I prefer the Xeelee Starbreaker

Excellent apology for Apple. Well done.

PS "Think Different" is not poetry, where'd that idea come from? That's an obvious retcon. Apple's slogan is a funny play on words from IBM's slogan of "Think". You know, gray, monolithic IBM that removes choice and squeezes all the joy out of computing? Remember Apple's famous 1984 ad? The hammer thrower was symbolically smashing IBM. From Steve Jobs 1983 Apple keynote address: "It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM-dominated and -controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right?"

Here's the text from the ad, does it remind you of any companies you know today in 2010? "Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!"

...and all kinds of contact sport gets softened up and dumbed down,....

Softened up - yes. Dumbed down? I think that's always been the case.

I take it you're not intimately familiar with (American) football then? It's complicated.

Which is not to imply that other contact sports like rugby and such aren't also intellectually complicated. But you can't touch the amount of picayune detail that goes into the actions of a football team, not to mention the rules. It's like the Warhammer 40K of athletic sports. I'm actually quite surprised that football isn't more popular among geeks as a spectator sport (apparently the winner there is baseball).

So you are saying that TV Tropes ruined your life?

Though for that amount of money I wouldn't be surprised if they threatened people with thugs, and hundreds of thousands might be nicer than losing the use of your legs..

"Don't go to Wildwood Casino, if you win they send mafia thugs after you!"

Just apologize, blame it all on some stupid bureaucrat, pay what you owe and a million extra on top, and go back to making money. Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; just because you're a CEO doesn't mean you have to be Stupid Evil.

Okay, feeding the Troll.

I don't understand the joke

The mayan 2012. In 2012, the mayan calendar rolls over.
(Think 999->1000. Except with the mayan dates it's slightly more complicated)

On a western "big, round" new year, like celebrating 1999->2000, you would probably be drinking a *western* alcoholic beverage to celebrate it. Like a bottle of French Champagne.

So with the same reasoning, on a *mayan* calendar roll-over, it should be appropriate to celebrate by drinking a *mesoamerican (mayan)* alcoholic beverage. Like this one.

Well, unless you believe that 2012 in which case, there will be no-one left to celebrate calendars or drink alcoholic beverages, because the world would have ended. Due to a sudden failure of all major laws of physics and logic or something a like, from what I understand...

Android and WebOS are the only real competition for the iPad going forward. This year, there's no chance Android or WebOS tablets will outsell the iPad,

Though HP is saying they are fast tracking a webOS tablet. This isn't that much difficult (provided they can recycle huge chunks of previous Slate and WebOS designs, which sound realistic), and could hit the christmas deadline by pouring enough resources onto it.

and further down the road, I don't see people buying either over the iPad, as there's pretty much no compelling reason to.

Well there's a huge reason :
- the iPad is running the iPhone's OS X, meaning that it can only do what apple decides to approve (and they don't approve porn and flash, among other).
- HP announced switching to webOS, which (like almost anything on the market beside iPhone's OS and the latest iteration of Windows Mobile) lets you do what you want with the device. Either you use your webOS device as-is (and have a controller/doctored walled garten "no risk of bricking your phone" where to play) or you just type-in the proper command (a spoof of the Konami code in earlier version, got an easier to type alternative in more recent versions) and can install everything that you can think of. (And if you ask : yes, adult themed application are available).

Well, just hope that the HP acquisition won't cause all hobbyist-friendly features to suddenly disappear.

If porn is only available on one of the two, guess who'll win ?

there is a fake me out there, with a fake name, a fake birthday, a fake home address, a fake mother's maiden name, a fake birth city, fake likes and dislikes, etc. every time i am asked for this info online, i consistently and continually use the fake alter ego

this is the future of privacy: aliases

FakeYou and You link together seamlessly within doubleclick and other usage-tracking data, unless other always isolated in every way (IP, userspace data and cache, accounts and sites visited, fingerprinting based on anything from hours of use to packet and request strings). We're accomplishing almost nothing.

OTOH, if aliases are shared (this happens accidentally via bugmenot's accounts), the usage data consolidated becomes a view of several users. FakeYou gets smushed with 50 other fakeSomeones or more, making the job of following circletimesquare inordinately harder (the Lost In A Crowd trope). It'll still be extractible for valuable cases (surveillance, espionage, high profile targets), but the cost/benefit would give most of us back some reasonable amount of anonymity.

If I really needed to hide my acts, I'd use a dedicated machine/VM and someone else's compromised wifi as my point of origin, and then I'd resort to all the above steps (yours AND mine).

The pessimist in me fears this (the near impossibility of anonymity) WILL come around to bite us on the ass. Someone will find ways to abuse this information.

How about killing the bullies? Before they have a chance to reproduce, of course. Clean up the gene pool! No bullies allowed!

Ah-hem!

I mean, under the laws of physics and rational human reason, there's just *no way* that Barbara Eden could fit into that tiny little bottle.

The term we're looking for here is Willing Suspension of Disbelief, which itself is quite dependant on the fact that while the author's work may not be realistic, it is at least internally consistent.

However, if you break this internal consistency, turning your work into a mashed goop of misdirected literary intent, convoluted cross reference, stretched idioms, and outright lameness, you end up with a Wall Banger. It's my understanding that this is precisely what happened to Lost. It also happened to BSG. It will basically happen to any story arc centric show in which the writers make shit up as they go along. For some reason, TV producers seem to think this is a good idea. Personally, I would have fired the writers and cancelled Lost in pre-production the moment I found out the writers did not have even a basic narrative plan from day one.

An example of a show this didn't happen to was Babylon 5. Apparently the writer had a good outline of the entire series mapped out before any shooting began. That's how you tell a long story in television, or anywhere else for that matter. This is pretty basic stuff, usually figured out by most people at around age six when their favourite make believe fairy tale world of swords and sorcery is finally ruined by someones suggestion that the party destroy the orbiting space dreadnought by sabotaging its reactor core. The Lost writers need to take a basic course in how to a) write and b) how to be a GM.

I mean, under the laws of physics and rational human reason, there's just *no way* that Barbara Eden could fit into that tiny little bottle.

The term we're looking for here is Willing Suspension of Disbelief, which itself is quite dependant on the fact that while the author's work may not be realistic, it is at least internally consistent.

However, if you break this internal consistency, turning your work into a mashed goop of misdirected literary intent, convoluted cross reference, stretched idioms, and outright lameness, you end up with a Wall Banger. It's my understanding that this is precisely what happened to Lost. It also happened to BSG. It will basically happen to any story arc centric show in which the writers make shit up as they go along. For some reason, TV producers seem to think this is a good idea. Personally, I would have fired the writers and cancelled Lost in pre-production the moment I found out the writers did not have even a basic narrative plan from day one.

An example of a show this didn't happen to was Babylon 5. Apparently the writer had a good outline of the entire series mapped out before any shooting began. That's how you tell a long story in television, or anywhere else for that matter. This is pretty basic stuff, usually figured out by most people at around age six when their favourite make believe fairy tale world of swords and sorcery is finally ruined by someones suggestion that the party destroy the orbiting space dreadnought by sabotaging its reactor core. The Lost writers need to take a basic course in how to a) write and b) how to be a GM.

Links for Big Fuck Bunny, or it didn't happen!?

If you want to start a collaboration to make an erotic sequel to Big Buck Bunny, you could try posting on any imageboard that observes Rule 34

... is that you have all those other places to put stuff if they don't fit in just one place. Personally, stuff I like either goes into Wikipedia or tvtropes :)

Hermione Granger is a Author Avatar. So it's quite OK for her to be as attractive as JK Rowling is rather than as attractive as JK Rowling thinks she is.

I'm inclined to agree with the article.

Fallout 3 was, in many respects, among the best games I've played, in my favorite genre. Yet as much as I enjoyed it, I felt frustrated while playing, because there's too much stuff, and insofar as I'm invested in playing the game, I feel as if I'm somehow obligated to find and use everything in the game. This is fun for a while, but eventually, when you're searching for the 28th Nuka-Cola Quantum or 97th Nirnroot, it gets painfully frustrating -- at least, until you get your next quest reward.

CRPGs suffer from Chekhov's Gun, that is, every element that appears in them is expected to be meaningful. So, you create a game with dozens of distinct types of gun, or medieval weapon, or what have you, and it's expected that you're going to collect and use each one at some point.

Another favorite game of mine was Portal, which was a short game, which basically taught you how to play the game, had a final confrontation, then ended. There weren't really any extraneous elements. That's one direction to go in.

Another direction is the path followed by Neverwinter Nights 1: the initial campaign basically demonstrated the elements of the toolset, which the community used to recreate classic D&D modules and to create new ones, generally on the short side.

If you want to read something alot more entertaining and you're happy with it being spread across multiple pages, read the pages at TV Tropes instead: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalComputer It includes all the ten tropes in the list, plus many more, without obnoxious advertising.

It's much funnier, has exhaustive examples, and will ultimately ruin your life.

A bit more back on topic, my favourite "enhance" button was seen in some terrible movie starring Jack Black as a CIA hacker which I came across whilst, er, herbally medicated. It featured the usual "enhance" button with a (literal) twist - using "inference AI" it could turn a patchwork of images into a 3D model... including the bits that weren't filmed. The wall-banging stupidity of this was even a major plot point - the model was done so they could find out where someone had stashed the microfilm, or some such rubbish - typical modest programmers, they write their AI to infer things and it turns out to be an all-seeing eye that can observe past events witnessed by no other human. The only reason I'm sad I can't remember the name of that film is in case I accidentally start watching it again.

Then...don't reward them by linking to them?

Instead, we can link to TV Tropes: Magical Computer and ruin each other's days the right way.

I might regret posting Tvtropes later but: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnachronicOrder

Sending an android to the moon is definitely cool. The Japanese definitely understand the rule of cool.

Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.

You're right; Iron Man was way better ;-)

You know what gets me about most superhero movies these days? They're trying to be "grown up". This wouldn't be so bad if their idea of "grown up" wasn't "darker and edgier". I mean come on, Batman is about a guy who dresses up as a bat fighting against guys who dress up in bad Mexican wrestling masks. Taking it way too seriously isn't more adult, it's pathetic. Besides, nobody likes a brooding moralist.

Now, I'm no big fan of comics or "Iron Man" in particular, but the movie was fantastic. Tony Stark is a brilliant, successful engineer, acting the superhero *and* having fun and mugging at the camera, not denying he's the guy in the suit *at all*. I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's works, but while his reboots of Batman may be slicker and more stylish, they just aren't nearly as fun as "Iron Man". This from a guy whose favorite movies almost always have unhappy endings ("Memento", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", etc) or are "thinking" movies.

Usually the most important ingredients to a film are the screen/scriptwriter and director, but I think that "Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" show situations where this isn't the case. I know who Christopher Nolan is; I love his other works. But Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne as a flat character and Batman as a kung fu asshole in need of a throat lozenge. Robert Downey Jr has charm and wit, and it shows in "Iron Man". Anyone who has doubts after that performance can watch "Sherlock Holmes" (now *that* was a reboot that had me very pleasantly surprised). The one thing that saved "Dark Knight" was Heath Ledger, amazingly out-Jokering Nicholson.

It's a fine line between mindless happiness and "mature art", but I have to say that Tim Burton pulled it off fairly well in the first Batman, and "Iron Man" doesn't even make pretensions in that direction. The Batman reboots try to act "grown up" by slathering on the darkness and grittiness thick, but when you wipe that away, you find a typical superhero flick, just more "stylish" and not nearly as much fun. I don't know about you, but I don't go to superhero flicks for darker and grittier.

But he is bound by law...

In what jurisdiction? Cite, please.

Earth-That-Was, duh.

Back in the 80s, this was par for the course. Especially for Atari, Infocom, and Origin games.

Infocom was famous for the odd physical objects (called feelies) included with games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feelie

The concept caught on, and all the good gaming companies were doing it:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Feelies

Actual comic books game with some Atari games:
http://www.tripoint.org/sq/ew/ewcover.html

Err...

That's going to be one interesting court case, especially when the time for evidence comes.

Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks?...

Because fan fiction writers have the weirdest ideas. (Warning: The picture is lethally cute.)

I'll come pay to play; Just give me a "Donator Mech" that can unload a Macross Missile Massacre at will and I'm in!

Condoms break and or slip off.

Quoting my self :

or don't wear the condom properly...

A properly used condom doesn't fail.
If the condom breaks or slips, it wasn't used propely.

Condom should :
- be of adequate size (just stop buying XXL condoms to pretend that you have a ginormous dick. The size doesn't even play a role, beyond discomfort)
- be checked for expiry date on package
- be checked for breakage of package
- be kept in a proper container (solid, shields direct light)
[And all of the above can be performed "off-line" in case you complain that it kills the romanticism of spontaneity]
- package opened only with finger (no scissors or whatever)
- be unrolled on an *fully erect* penis only (if the pee-pee isn't ready do more foreplay or switch to another method which doesn't require a condom).
- DO NOT stack them (the joke "layering 2 condoms" is exactly that : a joke. Condom are designed to rub against wet mucous membranes. Not to rub latex-against-latex. That damages them)
- DO USE ONLY a water lubricant. Or just do more foreplays. Do not use a fat one like vaseline (that make the latex porous).

If used so a condom never fails. Never failed me for the hundreds of time I've used them so. Nor my friends.

Also, how about oral sex?

Quoting my self :

well at least not during the screwing-while-wearing-condom. Now, if you do other stupid stuff

The discussion was about putting your pee-pee into a "nasty ho'". And I still maintain that a correctly used condom protects in that case.
Of course, if you still managed to get into contact of semen/menstrual blood by doing other games, the fact that you wore a condom specifically during the "screwing" part, won't protect you.

Now notice by the way that, according to current knowledge, the risks are dramatically low, specially in case of receiving male or giver-to-female.

Though hey, 80% of the population has an oral HSV1 infection, and now she does too.

Sorry, but you did not do the research. To quote wikipedia :

HSV-1 is usually acquired orally during childhood , but may also be sexually transmitted

80% of the population doesn't get HSV-1 because it's an STD, 80% simply get it because it's transmitted through saliva and kids tend to lick anything.
Only in a few border case it goes another route
(- you need one non-infected person performing oral sex to someone with genital HSV-1 exactly at the moment it is active.
- And that person in turn need to have it because she was uninfected and received oral sex from someone with an oral HSV-1 at the exact moment it was active).

The herpes you where thinking about when trying to sound terrifying is the HSV-2. (Which is probably what she got). But the oral form of that one is much less common.

The scientists at Area 51 had spent half a century studying the same alien fighter that Goldblum rode to the mothership. Assume that he (a) stood on their metaphorical shoulders and (b) used the fighter's computer as a bridge to the mothership's, and suddenly it's rather less of a stretch.

More discussion on this topic

So the debate isn't realism vs. non-realism; it's what falls into acceptable breaks from reality.

Well, you know what? True skill is the ability to win the game that actually exists

How skilled are you at the game of Roulette? Because that's what items turn a fighting game into. When the championship is decided by whether powerful items spawn next to you or next to your opponent, you see why tournament players turn off the game-breaking items.

Here

No. See, computer cracking, unlike most all other technical vocational skills save perhaps demolitions and practical forensics, runs on Narrativium. You either have it or you don't, and thinking that a megacorp outfit could beat a street deck^^H^H^Hhacker is foolish at best.

Seriously though, yes, it can be taught. As in, if you are a good programmer already you could probably get up to speed in a couple of weeks, unless you have some weird mental blocks on the bit twiddling aspects. A "security researcher" additionally needs to be able to grok an arbitrary system just like a good non-security hacker but (importantly) is focused on grokking it just enough to exploit/secure it, which i guess could slow some people down. The core problem is that the information is spread out and unorganized due to the organic growth that led up to the modern "security scene", and making sense of this is what occupied most of my initial time when I tried to get my head around the subject. There are a few good introductory books on the subject (The Art of Exploitation, etc...) and if you're a programmer already they should make you able to sift through the chaos. "The security mindset", effectively instinctive (aggressive) paranoia, helps a bit; but if you have at least a little sense you shouldn't need it. Sorry if I'm rambling, but I woke late today and the concerta (ritalin) hasn't really hit yet. Also, not affiliated with krakowlabs.com, just a freak coincidence.