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The Father of Civilization: Profile of Sid Meier
An anonymous reader writes with a link to Kotaku's recent profile of Civilization creator Sid Meier, and includes this snippet: "One year, as [coworker John] Stealey recalls, the two men went to an electronics trade conference. On the second night of the show, they stumbled upon a bunch of arcade games in a basement. One by one, Meier beat Stealey at each of them. Then they found Atari's Red Baron, a squiggly flight game in which you'd steer a biplane through abstract outlines of terrain and obstacles. Stealey, the Air Force man, knew he could win at this one. He sat down at the machine and shot his way to 75,000 points, ranking number three on the arcade's leaderboard. Not bad. Then Meier went up. He scored 150,000 points. 'I was really torqued,' Stealey says today. This guy outflew an Air Force pilot? He turned to the programmer. 'Sid, how did you do that?' 'Well,' Meier said. 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.'"
He probably could work backwards from the observable patterns in the simple games of the day to some kind of understanding of the math and/or code behind them.
And from there extrapolate solutions that informed his gameplay.
1. Obviously.
Times change. Actual stuff might be less interesting or even plain bad, but the breakthrough would remain in history.
The same happens with pretty much any art. Most literature no older than 100 years looks now dated and plain boring (yes, even golden classics). Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore (Yes, i know there are exceptions, but few and far between). However, if it was a huge success or a breakthrough (invention, innovation, something fresh, etc), it's worth mentioning and remembering.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Settle down. He memorized the patterns and called them algorithms. So what? Are you now going to call weather forecasters who talk about heat waves idiots (since heat is a transfer of energy, and not just a high temperature)?
Reminds me of a story which my friend told back in the day. He was on a golf court with another friend. Some player couldn't see where his shot went. Then my friend's friend says "I can calculate where the ball went."
'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' The ACTUAL ALGORITHMS! Not the patterns resulting from them like a mortal man would.
I see three possibilities here:
1. Sid Meier, super genius.
2. Sid Meier, not knowing as much about computers as we though.
3. The person that say that he said 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' is an idiot.
Which one do you subscribe to?
the algorithm results in the pattern. if it's simple then yeah, he observed how the algorithms work. if you memorize how koopa troopers walk and by what rules, then you know where they will walk and then you know the algorithm(that the actual game might have more complex code than is actually necessary to complete the algorithms in the way they manifest to gameplay is of no issue to this).
if you just memorize how every enemy on the screen acts on the screen you're none the wiser in a new level. once you can guess how the pattern will go for a new level then yes, you have deduced the algorithm. this is when a game loses it's magic.
if it never deviates from it, then the quickly observed pattern is the algorithm.. look, it's not rocket science. if you notice that everytime you're in the direction D from the enemy sprite a thing X happens. they you know the algorithm.
many games even nowadays have algorithms you can guess (accurately, mind you) what they are for enemy "ai"(which is a fucking joke still). even in games like WOW - that's what instancing, pulling and all that depends on. you even have "street names" for the internal variables like aggro.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Times change. Actual stuff might be less interesting or even plain bad, but the breakthrough would remain in history.
The same happens with pretty much any art. Most literature no older than 100 years looks now dated and plain boring (yes, even golden classics). Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore (Yes, i know there are exceptions, but few and far between). However, if it was a huge success or a breakthrough (invention, innovation, something fresh, etc), it's worth mentioning and remembering.
Yes, they do. There's plenty of good old music, but I'd argue that the reason many don't listen to it is lack of exposure, and dramatic improvements in fidelity. Who want's to listen to something that sounds like it was played in a trash can, or old scratchy black and white movies with poor special effects? As for old art, my wife and I recently visited the Louvre, and while there was plenty of cool stuff, many of the paintings just looked the same (quickly boring). Why? Most likely because they were all commissioned to paint monarchs or similar religious over and over.
Sid did some great work. But some of the recent stuff with his name on it is just crap in my opinion.
Just another day in Paradise
you are the chosen one NEO.........
Great description of of algorithm.. I am not sure if the person that made that post is a idiot him/herself but all an algorithm is is a set of instructions and directions. When you get up and go thru your normal routine before getting to your car and going to work, that can is an algorithm.
4. The person whining about this on a Sunday morning is a virgin
In 1980, a 'pattern' was something your wallpaper had. The word had no computer connotations. You're judging the man on how well he used 21st century lingo back in the 1980's.
This is what Red Baron looks like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06vBHL51LBg
I don't think being a Air Force pilot would help a lot. The reason Sid won was because he was better (or more used to) playing computer games, including seeing patterns how the enemies arrives (from left or right etc).
No that's not what he's saying at all.
Perfect AI would be able to learn your behavior and adapt to it.
That way there would be no fixed behavior for you to learn, and you'd have to adapt constantly.
Saying that you can't plan if you don't know exactly how your enemy will react is kind of sad.
It's sort of like admitting that you can only follow a fixed formula yourself and that you are incapable of adapting to your opponent.
How do you deal with playing against another person? Are you unable to plan for them because they might react in unexpected ways?
Or do your friends all play according to some fixed recipe?
Railroads was absolutely terrible, but really I don't see how Civ 5 is bad.
do you kickban people who do unpredictable things when playing against you?
the variations into the algorithm are the salt. totally random behavior is predictable, because the you know there is no logic and can play accordingly as the ai will never be able to attain any goal. it could never win a game of doom, but if it always runs the same paths between places then again it's never going to win that way either. the point with real intelligence is that you can't troll them repeatably, or rather you can't know if you can, because of free will.
look, a game where you already know what the enemy is going to do with certainty is a game ALREADY PLAYED. what's the point, except maybe to demonstrate to someone else how the game works? which is what sid was doing in the story in the article.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Railroad Tycoon
Still has never been outdone in the genre. Transport Tycoon, additional editions of RRT, not even the latest Rails, which I believe Sid lent his name to without really being involved.... none of them can hold a candle to the original Railroad Tycoon.
Which one do you subscribe to?
4. Sid Meyer said 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' for brevity since he counted on his coworker's ability to deduct that he meant "the patterns resulting from the algorithms" Smart people speaking to smart people don't need many words to say a lot. With precision.
It's sort of like admitting that you can only follow a fixed formula yourself and that you are incapable of adapting to your opponent.
How do you deal with playing against another person? Are you unable to plan for them because they might react in unexpected ways?
Or do your friends all play according to some fixed recipe?
Other people follow a rational process when acting. If you understand their process, you can predict their actions, and beat them - that's the vast majority of what tactics is. Sure, you might not get it right 100% of the time, and yeah, they might act unpredictably - but an unpredictable action is usually one that is tactically inferior (or you've made a failure in not identifying it as a tactical possibility). So yes, play against a human a bunch of times, and you will begin to understand their "algorithm", they'll begin to understand yours, and that's where the fun really starts.
AIs don't have the faculty to develop their own rational processes, so they're given algorithms that mimic them. A decent AI should generally make rational, tactical actions, and they should be somewhat predictable, based on what makes tactical sense given the physics of the gameworld, the current state of play, etc.
If your opponent intentionally tries to be unpredictable, the game is no fun. Try playing chess with someone who isn't making tactical moves, but just acting unpredictably - you might lose a few games due to over-thinking, but overall, you'll probably win, and get no satisfaction out of it because chess is a highly tactical game, and an unpredictable player removes a large part of the tactical element, making the game not fun.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Yeah, it's sad watching him giving his name and reputation to games not deserving it.
Do you kickban people who make a sound tactical decision that you've predicted they'll do?
look, a game where you already know what the enemy is going to do with certainty is a game ALREADY PLAYED. what's the point, except maybe to demonstrate to someone else how the game works? which is what sid was doing in the story in the article.
Not necessarily - like I said, how the enemy acts is only one factor. In the simplistic game from the article, yeah, fine, once you understood the algorithm, playing was pointless. But using your WoW example: it's one thing to know that the dragon is going to breathe fire at a certain time - it's another to be able to manage your resources so you still have your defensive/movement abilities ready for that situation, to co-ordinate the group so that they can react accordingly, and to still be able to pull out enough damage to kill it before it hits its enrage timer and kills you all.
Tower defence is another genre where you can almost always know exactly what the enemy is going to do - and yet people still enjoy them. Why? Because they're games of strategy and resource-management, rather than tactical out-thinking of the opponent.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
All my friends and myself still listen to 3 decades old music, not to mention all the blues and jazz classics that are far older.
Books don't become boring because they are old. Look at the so many movies that come out as remakes from 100 year old books.
E.g the three Musketeers (albeit the latest remake was just shit)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The word pattern has had the meaning the GP used for a very long time. It's not new lingo.
The meaning has changed, at least with the way it's used in software today. A GoF pattern includes the solution to apply - the algorithm, you might say - when the pattern is encountered. Sid Meier memorised solution techniques, a.k.a. algorithms. If he had used the word 'pattern', it would have said nothing about how he solved the situations he recognised by a pattern.
Most literature no older than 100 years looks now dated and plain boring (yes, even golden classics). Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore
No. You have it backwards. Most recent literature is crap. Then again, most of the stuff that's ever been written is also crap. The difference between the works in the canon and the stuff that's getting published today is that over time it tends to be only the worthwhile material that endures. Mainly for this reason, if you pick up a book that's still in print after a long time then it's likely to be a lot better than a random contemporary book.
The idea that nobody listens to music over twenty years old is about a dumb as it's possible to get in a syntactically valid sentence.
Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore
That is not true. Most people continue to listen to the music they heard and loved during their teens, twenty something years. People trained in classical music listened to them before they turned 25. Very few people like the music they hear first time in their fifties and sixties. Looks like we start losing the ability to like fresh music starting from age 25-35 and by the time we reach 60s and 70s we totally lose it.
I wonder if the music executives pick the music that made superhits some 30 or 40 years ago, dress it up using modern arrangements, and disguise it well, but use the same foundation melody, scale and rhythm and try to create new hits.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So, what you're saying is that perfect AI is simply a case of using random behaviour?
A realistic AI is going to use apparently random behavior as a distraction; so will a competent human commander.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He's still right, though. You and your friends listen to 3 decades old music because you've stagnated, but even you won't listen to just any 30 years old record. I mean, even though it was a #1 hit close to 30 years ago, "Never Gonna Give You Up" is mostly remembered due to Rickrolling. Most music, most literature, most films and most art has always been shit; contemporary shit is just more acceptable due to being part of the zeitgeist. Old crap is forgotten, and people forget that they forget, and thus you get the popular delusion that there used to be some golden age.
I wonder if the music executives pick the music that made superhits some 30 or 40 years ago, dress it up using modern arrangements, and disguise it well
Its all the same 4 chords.
"His name was James Damore."
That's not the whole story, either.
He's talking about music spanning a period of maybe 50 years. Compared with (for example) the last 5 years, statistically you would expect there to be far more extremely good songs over the 50 year period. Also, history makes it easier to track down "the good stuff". It's a lot easier to find a widely accepted classic album from 20 years ago then to work out which albums released this year will retrospectively be regarded as brilliant.
Now Alpha Centauri was a really good game. I wish I would see innovations like in AC instead the x remake of the same game.
AC had:
* real 3D map
* real atmosphere and a good story
* innovated combat system
* innovated diplomacy
* and in my opinion way better game then Civ III and the remakes (Civ IV, etc).
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
By the way it was worded, it could, to some people, sound like a case of using a technical term in order to impress the less knowledgeable.
A: Hey Sid, how did you catch that curve ball?
B1: I memorized the physical forces acting on this particular spinning sphere traveling through the gaseous medium.
B2: I saw that the ball tended to veer up and right, so I positioned my hand close to there as a way to prepare.
Yeah, it's kind of an extreme example, but would anyone even consider response B1 over B2?
Now, I don't know Sid, I do love his games, and I guess you can stretch the interpretation of "algorithm" just enough to cover all the possible meanings that he could have meant, so I'm more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this anecdote. But if someone threw out response B1 to my question A, I would be dubious, to say the least.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
If your opponent intentionally tries to be unpredictable, the game is no fun. Try playing chess with someone who isn't making tactical moves, but just acting unpredictably - you might lose a few games due to over-thinking, but overall, you'll probably win, and get no satisfaction out of it because chess is a highly tactical game, and an unpredictable player removes a large part of the tactical element, making the game not fun.
It works in chess as well. The randomness is just more subtle. White noise is almost never a good strategy (outside of say, "Rocks, Paper, and Scissors"), but incorporating a moderate amount of randomness can slide your game into a state that the foe hasn't seen before.
I wonder if the music executives pick the music that made superhits some 30 or 40 years ago, dress it up using modern arrangements, and disguise it well, but use the same foundation melody, scale and rhythm and try to create new hits.
I'd argue that today the execs pick the gimmick first before anything else. The quality of the music's far down the list. Pop music's always been a little bit about style over substance but acts like Lady GagMe epitomize it. Back to Sid Meier.... I haven't played the original Civ for more than a decade but I sure did when it first came out. Folks who weren't around yet or are too young to remember don't realize what an impact it had.
Civ 5 is pretty good. The ai still needs work though, sid's answer to harder difficulties has always been letting the computer cheat a lot (and even if he didn't make civ 5 it's the same).
Railroads was absolutely terrible, but really I don't see how Civ 5 is bad.
Civ V is very good. It's my favorite, but I can see how others would still prefer III or IV.
I'm forced to listen to a narrow selection of that music every time somebody at work decides to have the 'Classic Rawck' station playing on the radio on his workbench.
I bought 5 Pink Floyd CDs yesterday morning at a garage sale.
The 'old stuff' isn't a be-all and end-all. My favorite album right now is David Bowie's new album that he released this spring.
My father's favorite music is the stuff that was popular a few years before he started listening to music: the big band stuff like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. I like that music, too. But it's not a be-all and end-all.
What Phillip Glass and John Cage and those folks are doing actually eclipses all the popular crap. I'd certain rather listen to a recording of an orchestra playing a Charles Ives work than any of the pop musick.
Or Terry Riley's The Harp of New Albion which I can barely listen to at the moment, because my Klipsch speakers aren't hooked up, and so many of the subharmonics of the detuned piano are missing when it's played on low quality equipment.
Check out Phillip Glass' 'Dracula' in the Piano arrangement. There's a CD release.
Very few people like the music they hear first time in their fifties and sixties.
That's usually because people in their 50s and 60s have been listening almost exclusively to the same music for 30-40 years. How many people who continue to listen to new music on a regular basis end up hating it?
In my experience, most people who continue to listen to contemporary music on a regular basis find about as much new music to like each year as they did when they were in their 20s.
He would have been hired to work at a high freq trading shop.
From the childish notion that immense intellect would manifest as gaming skill to the baffling assumption that being a real-life fighter pilot would have any bearing whatsoever on playing a 2d side scroller. Sounds like the perfect kind of imbecile to be impressed with Sid Meier hype.
i could live a little longer in this prison
It's (1), Sid Meier, super genius. I've spoken to the man twice, the tech side of Baltimore where we both live is pretty small. Sid is exactly the sort of guy who will stare at a game, note the patterns, and then figure out what algorithms must be driving them, all while a regular person is just playing. There is not a hint of boasting from the guy in person, he's just that good at what he does.
There was a very clear meaning for "pattern" in a computer gaming context by 1980. In 1980 Pac-Man was first released in the US. By 1981 the word "pattern" to describe navigating the maze was so popular that the "Pac-Man Fever" album included patterns for each level.
It works in chess as well. The randomness is just more subtle. White noise is almost never a good strategy (outside of say, "Rocks, Paper, and Scissors"), but incorporating a moderate amount of randomness can slide your game into a state that the foe hasn't seen before.
It works, because chess at a certain level is all about memorized patterns. You memorize the most strategically valid positions the board is most likely to be in. If you're at that level, and you see a state you haven't memorized, it's most likely because that state is strategically inferior. However, as you say, a slight loss of strategic value might be worthwhile, if it means the opponent doesn't have a ready counter, like you do for all the patterns you've got stored. But the randomness has to be very small, or the gap between optimal strategy and your semi-random one grows too great.
Incidentally, that's why I don't like chess much; I feel like I'm doing a computer's job poorly when it's all data storage and retrieval.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap
Vast hordes of young people who believe, like we did at that age, that history didn't begin until they were born.
Actually, I disagree with your assertions about nobody listening to music from two decades ago. Recent history has shown that music seems to be rediscovered after about two decades. It happened in the 80s when people rediscovered 60s music. And it's happening today as people are rediscovering 80s music. It certainly has worked well for Rick Astley, among others,...
Billie Holiday died in 1959, The Cure had their studio début in 1979. Your sixties are longer than mine.
Nirvana.
Cities in Motion 2 is probably one of the best tycoon games available. Highly recommended.
If Depeche Mode and Cranberries are what you like, I doubt I'm the right person to give you advice on music. But yeah, if you can't think of one good new music group to show up the last 10 years, then you've evidently stagnated, so it turned out I was right all along. Luck, I suppose.
Well, really my only Sid Meier encounter, if you don't count sitting in an audience.
So, I'm at . . . COMDEX? CES? One of those big-ass electronics trade shows. Might have been Chicago, might have been Las Vegas.
I got away from my booth for an hour, and I head for the area where computer games are being shown. I'm totally jazzed to see a dummy box and demo of Colonization. I look over the material about it, and to another totally jazzed gamer next to me say something like "Cool, it's like someone did a decent remake of Seven Cities of Gold!"
A voice at my shoulder says "Good, that's what I had in mind."
SQUEEE!
I'm serious. I am really not understanding your argument? Dozens of Bach's mostly forgotten? Of course, for every genius known worldwide there are a million forgotten tryhards. Your point is?
As for the literature, I'm not saying there aren't good books being written today. But I quoted relevant examples: some of the highest selling books of the last decade: Fifty Shades of Gray and the most sold books in the world: Harry Potter. What is the connection between quoting examples of high selling contemporary literature, and being stagnated. I'm befuddled both by your incomprehensible argument and by the people modding your posts up. I just don't understand how anyone can defend the ridiculous thesis that old literature and music are inferior to today's literature and music.
No, I despise Madonna too. Competitive with Let It Be? Competitive with Dark Side Of The Moon? Competitive with Born In The USA? Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Elton John had the same gimmick-- dress outrageously, but he makes good music. Lady HaHa is nothing BUT an image. The music is only incidental, and it's all Autotuned.
Let me add that I come by my music snobbery honestly. I worked in radio for 17 years and observed pop music rotting away a little more each year. Before you say I'm just an old fart who hates anything new, there *is* good stuff being made today but the record companies aren't signing them. They toil away in small venues night after night busting their asses for next to nothing. They write their owns songs & play their own instruments, and don't need or want Autotune.
with wow it just boils down as a social problem of getting everyone in the place - so that becomes the actual game. it's like ballet practice every fucking saturday, the mobs lack initiative totally. that's why I stopped playing - it does a very poor simulation of going to fight a dragon, or giant or whatever.
I don't think people play tower defense games over and over again too much. ufo 1(xcom) people played over and over though.. what matters is that it is obfuscated so far that it's not obvious what tactic wins. then there's of course games which depend on reactions coupled with knowing the algos.. my original comment was simply about that people who can predict how mobs act by knowing their algorithm inside and out don't need to be super geniuses. but a game where you can see it plainly usually get to be boring form purely gameplay perspective. of course games have stories etc to follow and to hook you as well.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Actually, I disagree with your assertions about nobody listening to music from two decades ago.
Yeah, just... I didn't say that.
"Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore"
In other words, almost all music which was played on the radio 20+ years ago is completely forgotten today, except the top 50-100 or something. Sure, there are dedicated radio stations, but as far as mainstream goes, 3 years seems like a long time as well.
With that being said, I am listening to music which goes back as far as the 30s (classical music aside). Sadly, most of my acquaintances don't even know of it (again, except top 10 or something, and those mostly through remixes).
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
It works in chess as well. The randomness is just more subtle. White noise is almost never a good strategy (outside of say, "Rocks, Paper, and Scissors"), but incorporating a moderate amount of randomness can slide your game into a state that the foe hasn't seen before.
This infuriates long-time chess players, but new players don't even notice it.
Other people follow a rational process when acting. If you understand their process, you can predict their actions, and beat them - that's the vast majority of what tactics is. Sure, you might not get it right 100% of the time, and yeah, they might act unpredictably - but an unpredictable action is usually one that is tactically inferior (or you've made a failure in not identifying it as a tactical possibility). So yes, play against a human a bunch of times, and you will begin to understand their "algorithm", they'll begin to understand yours, and that's where the fun really starts.
AIs don't have the faculty to develop their own rational processes, so they're given algorithms that mimic them. A decent AI should generally make rational, tactical actions, and they should be somewhat predictable, based on what makes tactical sense given the physics of the gameworld, the current state of play, etc.
If your opponent intentionally tries to be unpredictable, the game is no fun. Try playing chess with someone who isn't making tactical moves, but just acting unpredictably - you might lose a few games due to over-thinking, but overall, you'll probably win, and get no satisfaction out of it because chess is a highly tactical game, and an unpredictable player removes a large part of the tactical element, making the game not fun.
When you reach a level of skill in Chess where you focus on positional play(tactics still exist, but they are backing up your strategies) instead of pure tactics then your opponent's unpredictable moves will probably mean they are not defending against your long-term strategy and they are not doing anything useful. Eventually your position will be strong enough that they can't defend themselves because they have too many weaknesses and you can choose which one to exploit. For example, the opening stage focuses on center control, if they do not actively counter your plan on controlling the center, then they will have a very cramped position.
Playing against someone who doesn't have any idea on how to play the position is very boring. But playing against someone in a position both sides have a lot of knowledge in is very satisfying, even if you lose.
He would probably watch the pitcher's body language and the way the ball was thrown to work out what the ball was going to do.
Hey, his name is attached to millions of posts at /, Including yours!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
>You do realize that something 'dated' may provide insights into the time period of the piece. Or it may have fresh insight into the human condition as seen from a different era.
Sure, and those are some of the reasons to keep it around, and even read it occasionally. But that doesn't keep most of it (even the 10% that wasn't crap to begin with per Sturgeon's Law) from being boring.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
the original? the original had it's flaws though.
but it was a pretty great game.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
>Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore (Yes, i know there are exceptions
Damn right there are exceptions. Sure, I listen to some underground hip hop, and I listen to Deadmau5 and Booka Shade and so forth. Last night I went to a Barenaked Ladies concert. But mostly I listen to music from 60s and 70s, with some 80s and a bit of 50s thrown in. I was born in 1982.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I *like* "Never Gonna Give You Up". Good song.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
No, I despise Madonna too. Competitive with Let It Be? Competitive with Dark Side Of The Moon? Competitive with Born In The USA? Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Elton John had the same gimmick-- dress outrageously, but he makes good music. Lady HaHa is nothing BUT an image. The music is only incidental, and it's all Autotuned.
OOOH I want to join the condescending display of knowledge. When did Pink Floyd ever write a modal melody that blossomed into florid counterpoint, or discovered a way to make the D triad follow the C# triad, through a harmonic intensification of a melodic element? (see Beethoven op 18 no 3, for example, first movement). Or when do you see anything even remotely close to the technique of taking a tune or theme and successively chipping it away to motivic nothings? Even a minor composer from 18th century Bohemia, Zdenek Fibich, showed more harmonic creativity than Bruce Springsteen. I mean, have you actually listened to "Born in the USA?" The monotonous repetitions are so tiring.
What's really tiring is people who are condescending about music, especially when the stuff they prefer is just as much trash. Lady Gaga is fun to listen to, that's why people listen to her.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And given many of those songs are so melodically and distinctively different it proves it isn't just about the chords.
There's good stuff to be found whether it's 16 century or 21st century, whether its Mozart or k-pop. Not so keen on most hip hop stuff but different strokes for different folks. Nowadays the great thing is, if you don't like it you can indeed listen to something else AND there's a vast amount of different stuff to listen to. From Dramophone to The Flower Duet. From Sweet Child of Mine to Allegri's Miserere Mei. From Bohemian Rhapsody to Rhapsody in Blue. From Aicha (Cheb Khaled) to Aimo (Macross Frontier/Yoko Kanno).
So the real problem is finding out what new stuff you'd like. And that's where it isn't helpful for people to go saying almost everything is the same crap. Just say what you like and find great. That way if someone likes some of the things on your list they might find new things they like a lot.
My own list would probably not be helpful since I like a lot of different stuff - no sense of taste maybe :).
Not really a grunge person, but Nirvana was pretty good. Plenty of good rap out there too... Mostly the early stuff, and the underground stuff. 90s and 00s mainstream rap is mostly not so good. It just doesn't catch me like classic rock, but it is still good.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
It's not like current game AI is really any more complex with some rare expections. Graphics are prettier, and levels are usually at least semi-3D, but the enemies are still dumb and your own allies dumber automatons.
And that's the way it's going to stay, too, since the gameplay balance depends on it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The word Pattern certainly does have a computer connotation, and that was true in the 1980s as well.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
See also, survivor bias.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
The difference is, 75,000 points vrs. 150,000. Sid didn't just catch one curve ball, he played the analogic equivalent of a whole perfect game of baseball. He could have 'just' memorized all the levels up to 75,000 points, but he kept right on going for that other 75,000 points as well. That means he had to extrapolate from the base data, to project how the system would change at higher levels he hadn't yet seen. (Assuming the game actually kept getting harder - I've never played it, but if the difficulty stops scaling below 75,000 points, I'm sure some people will point that out). So, the question here is not about fancy words, or the social dynamics of intimidation, it's more straightforward. Is it good to use a word such as algorythm instead of a longer phrase where you want to describe "extending what you've memorized from watching to cover the upper half of the game"? I suspect there's no way to stick to simple words, and be reasonably accurate AND not create a pretty long explanation. Personally, if I have to use phrases such as that, I'm likely to use some more complex words to shorten what I'm saying. (Note that it would have made perfect sense to use a word such as 'extrapolate' - in fact I even used it naturally earlier in this post. Probably some readers thought that was hoity-toity, but I doubt most of them did.).
Who is John Cabal?
I am far from a teenager (31), but while I agree most modern bestsellers are junk, I certainly can't say I appreciate most of the "classics" over 100 years old. There are exceptions sure, like say Don Quixote (the first sally, especially). Genre fiction, and usually not from the (general) bestseller list, is usually the best place to go if you want something good to read.
I like music a number of decades old (as well as bit of new stuff), but
>Same thing if you think classical music is boring.
Really? No. Classical music is pretty much the definition of boring. Sure it can sound nice, and it can be good for going to sleep, or for background music at a fancy restaurant or something. But it is definitely boring.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I can memorize the attack patterns etc of early video games. But to say "I memorized the algorithms" is a really douchey way to say "I memorized the patterns."
Well, there might be that underground band around my corner, but in mainstream music companies like EMI, Sony etc. No: there was noting interesting the previous 20 years.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I think a lot of it depends on your definition of "dated". Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare are dated in that the language and some of the situations are anachronistic, and yet either because they're ripping good stories (like many of Doyle's Holmes stories are) or deal with universal themes (as Shakespeare's greatest plays do), the anachronisms almost fade away.
At the same time, it's true that there are no lack of out and out dated works. I watched some old Spitting Image episodes from the 1980s, and while I had a good laugh at Margaret Thatcher and Jeffrey Archer being brutally mocked, I realized that my 20 year old daughter wouldn't find it very funny at all. The humor was firmly planted in that period, so that even 25 years later, at best it's funny in a manic and nostalgic way.
There is a lot of unreadable Victorian pulp, to be sure. It was the first great age of mass market consumer publishing, when literacy levels in Europe and the Americas reached the level that one could make a living publishing trash. At the same time, once I get over the jarring hump of 19th century idiosyncrasies, I can still enjoy Austen or Dickens, and even see in their marvelous and often excruciating characters people I know today. Thus they transcend the period in which they are written and set, and become universal works.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Movies made from old books are outside the scope of the conversation :)
Just as well you can re-write an old book and make it current, but it's no longer the same book, is it?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
There's also the bias that people get from what you listen to as a teen/young adult. Take something I listened to when I was 17-20 years old. I have a lot of life memories that are intertwined with music from that era - not so much the case today.
IOW: you are likely to fondly recall mediocre music from certain periods in your life because it was what was playing (e.g.) the first time you got laid. As you age, you either have to develop a tolerance for listening to crap in order to find the gems, or you have to find someone who has a musical taste similar to yours that is willing to sort through the junk for you.
In the woods...
They were not "famous" (as in "mainstream") but their work (especially "Omnio") is really shining.
Also Haggard, Theatre of Tragedy (up to start of 2000s), even dubstep (as a sub-genre).
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
"Design patterns gained popularity in computer science after the book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software was published in 1994" (my emphasis.)
1994 > 1980s
The Iliad is still a riveting tale. "Dated" has no meaning whatsoever on art. Grow up.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
Civilization Revolution is really great, I have had endless fun with it. It is significantly less nerdy than the mainline Civs. Sid Meier designed it personally, whereas he apparently does not have much to do with the main Civ games any more. He said it was the game he had always wanted to make.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Dude... I was referring to "90% of anything is shit" - and while that shit is played (or read, or listened to, or watched) while it's contemporary, it will lose value fast. The 10% which deserves it will become classic (e.g. Star Wars original trilogy) but even so, after long enough it will still lose value.
Take Dante's "Inferno", for example. It's good, but not mainstream at all. It's not even easy to read. A more extreme example is Homer's "Odyssey" which is barely readable unless you're a scholar.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
That doesn't make it any less dated.
Yeah, it's useful for scholars, but it is valueless to Average Joe. The same Average Joe who liked it 100 years ago would not touch it with a 10 foot pole right now. It's fact.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I completely agree. Most people that dismiss "old music" are nothing more than luddite trolls that simply feel they don't have the time to broaden their horizons. And right now I'm listening to a record from 1 year ago by a band barely known outside of my city. People with real reverence for music don't "stagnate".
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
I love Doyle, and not only the Sherlock Holmes series. As a matter of fact, i firmly believe that the Professor Challenger stories are much, MUCH better.
But they're dated regardless. The "poisonous ether" from the "Poison Belt" story makes the whole thing dated. Still good, because I'm able to dive into suspension disbelief and focus on people's reactions and vivid end-of-the-world descriptions (which simply ROCK). But fact remains: the "ether" idea is now proven as childish.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I love Golden Age scifi, but it's obsession with atomic power is sometimes jarring. I reread Asimov's Foundation trilogy and while it's still really damned good storytelling, you do have to get over the atom obsession of the period.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Apparently you need to go back and read my link. Pay specific attention to the line Patterns originated as an architectural concept by Christopher Alexander (1977/79). [Emphasis Added]
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm not saying humans would act randomly.
If they notice that you are using a certain strategy they will change their own strategy.
Whereas a computer program will react in exactly the same way every single time.
(they could add in randomness, but just adding randomness might cause very bad decisions)
If humans always reacted exactly the same way from memorized patterns, each game would end exactly the same.
Probably the vast majority of ANYTHING coming out - movies, music, books, etc is not very good. The stuff that survives is tried and tested good. A lot a good things are popular (Beatles, Sinatra, Nirvana, Stravinski, etc), but not all popular stuff is good (Brittany Spears, etc). The same goes for anything old, and the notion that they don't build them like they used too- well the hardy ones survived, and the crap broke.
..........FULL STOP.
The fact you don't understand the difference says even more about you than calling someone 'douchey'.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
On behalf of the kind of guy that puts his name front and center on the hard work of a hundred talented people.. "Genius" ?
he puts it there because people pay him for the right to do so.. for some reason it's considered a brand.
I seriously doubt hundred talented people worked on any of his games though. pirates!, the first game to use it apparently had just sid doing the programming and design and a graphics guy and a third guy who I guess checked some facts for the setting - plus couple of people for box art & art included in the box.
seriously, sid was involved with at least 3 out of first 20 games I played. strike eagle II, pirates! and gunship. dunno if he was involved with silent service II and not bored enough to check.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Jazz music is played and enjoyed back to, as you suggest, the limits of recordings with any fidelity. You can really go back to the 30s, because the style for a while was very clean, elegant sound that, not coincidentally, would still sound right with the very limited recordings of the time.
I doubt Sid had much creative input into some of the recent stuff with his name on it. I can't begrudge him making a few bucks off his name that way, either.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The Iliad is pretty bad - very little actually happens, and the gods intervene in most of the fights.
The Odyssey, OTOH, is still a good adventure story, if you don't find it too trite that most of the encounters (and the overall story) are metaphors for Ulysses's need to conquer his sexual promiscuity enough to settle down with his wife.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Barely readable ? You probably read a bad translation of it.
The best stuff from the 70s is great because it has been pre-filtered. Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin and so on are great (well, their better songs are) after many years of listening to them - they don't get old.
There are likely more bands of that quality playing today than in the 70s, but it's hard to know who yet. As the years go by the filter of time will apply itself to the bands of today, but at the moment it's a lot easier to find the best music of the 70s than the best music of the teens.
And some bands are in both groups of course. You mentioned Bowie. Rush is still doing new and interesting stuff, that sounds like no one else I've heard. And of course the jazz masters often just get better with age.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There is not a single likable character in the Iliad. It is all antagonists. That is why even though people still buy it, based on the author's reputation, few people read even half of it.
Some men.... you just can't reach. Your assertion that "Strauss Shultz-Evler Blue Danube Lhevinne Ampico" is the best piano intro ever has a lot more going for it than trying to defend GagMe. Classical music is called exactly that partially because it has survived for hundreds of years and is still played today. Not all of it though, just the stuff that was considered good enough to hand down to subsequent generations. I seriously doubt that lady HaHa will be spoken of in the same reverent tones in 300 years. Just because something's popular doesn't make it good. Jersey Shore was popular. The Jerry Springer show is popular.
It's absurd to suggest that Lady Gaga has no musical ability
Local coffee shops and bars all over the world have performers "musical ability." That is an exceptionally low standard.
It is as if somebody complained about the quality of newspapers, and you pointed out, "the writers are all literate."
I'm so not impressed.
Some men.... you just can't reach. Your assertion that "Strauss Shultz-Evler Blue Danube Lhevinne Ampico" is the best piano intro
Do you have a better one? I'd love to hear it.
I seriously doubt that lady HaHa will be spoken of in the same reverent tones in 300 years.
Agreed, it's doubtful she'll be remembered even as much as Liberace. But Born in the USA? Please, the only thing interesting about that's an instrumentation that manages to be listenable on a cheap car radio.
than trying to defend GagMe.
You misunderstand, I'm not defending her, I'm mocking you.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, I actually read a scholar's edition, which aimed at keeping the exact verse pace and style. Sure, if you Hollywoodize it, it would sound much better.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
If you can't find your ball on the golf court, it most likely bounced behind the bleachers. And if not there, try the hallway to the locker rooms.
Clearly your ignorance of chess and your dislike of it are related. Memorization is not effective. Actual chess players learn this quickly while studying chess books. There is too much information. Trying to memorize it is worthless, the subset you memorize isn't effective without all the stuff you didn't memorize. The only chance of getting better is to increase your understanding of the positional elements of the game.
And the pattern matching you have to actually employ is nothing like memorization at all.
Architectural concept as in buildings.
My dad had pac-man patterns memorized up to the second apple. And he was pretty good at the game just playing from there out. I didn't memorize any of the patterns, and it was always the one video game he could beat me at.
That's still true today. The essence of being a skilled reader is to drop the crap within the first few pages, and move on. Try Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. More recently (but not that recent), try the Skylark series by E.E. "doc" Smith. Try Journey to the Center of the Earth. There's plenty of great stuff out there of various flavors: per Sturgeon's law, as quoted above, your job as a reader is to find the 10%. If you can't do that, it's not the material. it's you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Proctologist's law: EVERYTHING is crap.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's somewhat effective; sure, it's not how Grand Masters play. But when I was learning chess, at a certain level, everyone was encouraged to start memorising positions and rote responses to those positions - not the underlying positional play, just "in this situation, do this". I found that boring, didn't do it, and quickly started losing. Sure, if I'd had the natural ability to skip that step and go straight to an understanding of positional play, maybe I'd have found it more enjoyable, but as it is, rote memorisation of position and response gives a player a large advantage at a low skill level, and I never had the motivation to get over that hump.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
What does this have to do with anything?
I'm not discussing wrong or right, I'm saying times change and older products don't keep up.
this doesn't mean they don't have historical value, they simply lose mainstream value, which is a different thing.
But yeah, ad hominem attacks are cool... keep using them.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Arghh. See, you're ALL arguing taste. Some taste derives from rhythm; some from melody; some from lyrics; some from technical expertise (either shared or recognized); some from a preference for a particular instrument; some from emotion; some because the goal is dance or other rhythmic engagement; probably an unending list of those examples, and then there are those who form their interest from a combination of these things.
For instance, I despise most (not all) lyrics, because I typically find them repetitive, trite, and (lately) whiney. So when I say that I prefer a large subset of Joe Satriani's music, a fellow who is a technical virtuoso but rarely engages at the level of the lyric... that's just me. It doesn't mean that lyrics suck, it means that they don't reach me personally. It doesn't mean that guitar is the be-all and end-all of musical instruments, it's just one I know (I play) and that I really enjoy. I have other tastes based on other metrics (and other distastes as well.) Zeppelin kicks up my endorphins the most when they shut the hell up, except for quite a few tracks on the first two albums. But in the end, it's just me. It's not them; it's not you.
As long as we argue absolutes -- and I used to be guilty of this myself, so I am speaking from experience, not just in an accusatory manner -- we're arguing apples and oranges and a meeting of the minds is not possible except with those so like-minded, there's little to be gained by discussing anything with them.
Lighten up.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'd just like to point something out. We have recordings now. She is more likely to be known because of that; you'll be able to hear her, see her (re-)judge her, perform her music yourself, whatever, in 300 (or 3,000) years. Of the classics, we have written scores, and to a lesser extent, a tradition that finds life through various orchestras, to the degree that the actual music managed to propagate in that manner (pretty limited, and even then, only for the masters.) The fact that we have these recordings, starting in the early 1900's, is likely to change the face of who is known, what for, and in what periods or trends of musical taste as they cascade through society over time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Pearl Jam's album "Ten" was amazing. Pretty much everything after that was shit, though, and unfortunately they had so much inertia it ended up getting airplay.
You've made me sad. Almost all my music is now 30 years old or more in origin - the last 30 years have been mostly bad followed by worse. Very few notable new artists have come out in that 30 year period. Most of those in your list that I listen to were already performing by the early 80s..... Or rather the number post 80s and pre 80s is hugely skewed to pre 80s, even if they are still releasing records now. We beed another CBGBs or the like.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
...it's definitely not good for the masses.
Well, that's about as elitist as you can get.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
with wow it just boils down as a social problem of getting everyone in the place - so that becomes the actual game. it's like ballet practice every fucking saturday, the mobs lack initiative totally. that's why I stopped playing - it does a very poor simulation of going to fight a dragon, or giant or whatever.
At launch, going through Deadmines for the first time was very fun, because you had to do the analysis and formulate strategies yourself, on the fly.
These days, before you ever get to try content, it's been done a hundred times by top-tier guilds, the behaviour has been pulled apart, an optimal strategy devised, and all you do it follow someone else's playbook.
I don't think people play tower defense games over and over again too much.
Replayability might be a good metric for measuring value-for-money, but not necessarily good for measuring the quality of a game. Whole genres have zero replayability (like tower defence, as you say, but also puzzle games and adventure games - like the Sierra Quest lines) and yet are popular and enjoyable.
my original comment was simply about that people who can predict how mobs act by knowing their algorithm inside and out don't need to be super geniuses. but a game where you can see it plainly usually get to be boring form purely gameplay perspective. of course games have stories etc to follow and to hook you as well.
And my point was that that's true of some games, where the main element is defeating the AI, but there can be other elements to games (resource management, puzzle solving, twitch reflexes, team co-operation, etc) that don't depend on the AI algorithm being unknown to generate fun.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
If you are only into reading the latest trends in writing styles, *everything* is dated.
However, while you may not be able to read the Iliad without becoming bored, a lot of the people who are writing literature today have read it, and are including pieces of it, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and other "dated" works into what you are reading. And they didn't do that because they thought people would find it boring, they did it because this stuff is what sells books, whether it is now or a hundred years ago.
Scratch the surface of the "new" and you will find a great deal of the old. Sometimes the old is much, much better, and I say this as someone who likes up to date hard science-fiction as much as anyone.
Why? I didn't like it either :)
I'm definitely an Average Joe in this regard. I don't get all wet from Picasso, Bach, Dostoievski either. And yes, I read/watched/listened to them all.
TASTE. learn to get it. Not everyone should automatically love an art product just because it's considered to be "the best". And I seriously doubt someone who says "I love X" without being able to say "because...".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Cities in Motion 2 is probably one of the best tycoon games available. Highly recommended.
Well I've got a 14 hour day time flight next week, so I'm tempted to buy a game for the first time in years.
Looks like I can buy it online at http://store.steampowered.com/app/225420, rather than find a store here in whatever city I'm in today.
This concerns me though:
Other Requirements: Broadband Internet connection
Obviously I don't have a Broadband Internet connection when I'm 40,000 foot above the indian ocean somewhere south-west of Australia.
no it's really not. The first one was awful, and the second was no better. The games were buggy and broken and remained so. The company did little more than pay lip service to it's customers while shovelling DLC at them.
4. The person whining about this on a Sunday morning is a virgin
Or married, either or the sex is the same.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's usually because people in their 50s and 60s have been listening almost exclusively to the same music for 30-40 years.
Speaking as a 50-something grandfather. There's about 10-15 years where you are forced to listen to your kids music, it's only after they leave home that you can go back to exclusively listening to the good stuff.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I doubt Sid had much creative input into some of the recent stuff with his name on it. I can't begrudge him making a few bucks off his name that way, either.
It's kind of sleazy.
According to Wikipedia (I never played the game; it came out somewhat before I was born), the game adapted its difficulty based on a running average of game length. My guess is that, if Sid Meyer's friend got a "good" score in the game, he probably exceeded the old average and thus was encountering more difficult waves. The fact that Sid Meyer could then double that score strongly suggests he had observed how the game increased its difficulty, and was simply able to keep going until he made a mistake that he knew was wrong, or human reaction time failed him. Either way, to get that far past the average, he must have had a very good understanding of how to pass each level, as they would have started becoming very difficult indeed.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
But a Shakespeare play staged today is still a Shakespeare play?
That's a really difficult question. Most of the old, classic stories survived because they were told and retold all over, keeping them "modern". A painting, on the other hand, is finished when it's done.
Books are somewhere inbetween. Some are good because of a unique writing style, but others tell universal stories that won't suffer from modernizing language.
bickerdyke
profile of Civilization creator Sid Meier...
Wait.... what? This is a massive piece of gaming culture. An important fact to remember about history. How could you get this wrong?
Civilization is stolen IP. Straight up stolen. Sid Meiers took a board game, and made a video game out of it. He didn't credit it, weaseled around questions about it, and straight up lied about it. The game is fantastic, and honestly, better suited for a computer. But as far as "Sid Meir master game designer of Civilization" goes, that's bullshit. And this is an important lesson kiddies: STEAL. And if your field is new and hip and not yet quite mainstream and free of regulation, you can be famous for it.
The answer is: if it's staged exactly as it was intended to be by its author, it would probably not make a lot of sense, or it would be very difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, you can "adapt" it, making it easier to comprehend, but it would lose its original value. The new value might be good as well, though, but it's going to be different.
After all, most art deals with immortal subjects (love, hate, betrayal, war, etc). However, the way they're expressed (or waged) vastly depends on their era. Rough example: why would you have to wait weeks for a letter to be delivered when you can send a text message? A teenager nowadays would have great difficulty understanding the way of things from even 100 years ago, when everything was much, much slower.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Best flaw was this:
Run yourself into the hole for -$32M and make sure you have negative income. You'll see it start to bounce between -$32M in red, and +$32M in black. Hit the save game key when it's black, and then reload, and when the next tick of expense comes off, you'll be at 31M and change.
Yay for unsigned variables!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
... Most literature no older than 100 years looks now dated and plain boring (yes, even golden classics). Music from 2 decades ago is mostly stuff that nobody listens anymore (Yes, i know there are exceptions, but few and far between)...
The reason that young people claim not to like old stuff, is not that it is bad. It is that they are scared of the opinion of their peers. They are terrified that they might not be "first and newest", so they cut down the older things. They usually grow out of it eventually...
... But fact remains: the "ether" idea is now proven as childish.
Don't kid yourself, the terms are no better known than they were then. The "Luminiferous Aether" was basically a description of the "Space-Time Continuum", except with fewer than 12 dimensions.The terms were not wrong, they just were struggling to describe the concepts. But our math is more complete now...
Thought I read a random thing somewhere that said people generally stop finding new music into their 30's... we just listen to what we grew up...most anyway, I still get new stuff occasionally, but it never does have a place in my collection like what you grew up with.
I have heard also that younger people today also tend to listen to music that is all over the place in terms of the time it was released, but that is probably a trend of mp3's and digital music, a good song is a good song no matter when it was written, and it is easier than ever to just have good songs now a days.
The Cranberries is one of my favorite bands (along with The Beatles & Squirrel Nut Zippers)..
But The Killers? (First album 9 years ago.) Fun.? Most well known album less than 1.5 years old.
There was always "bad" pop music.
The Archies? The Monkees?
I'm not purposely picking on two 'made up' bands/virtual bands, but they're the ones that came to mind first.. Yes, I know many of the Monkees songs were written by now incredibly well known songwriters, and I like some of their music and The Archies' big hit too.. But I still think it's analogous to the pop stuff of today.
Saying that something is "good, but not for the masses," is elitism; even if you take the rather odd tack that you consider yourself in the group of the masses when you make that pronouncement.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Civ VI improvements, now you can build the PRISM wonder and spy on all other players.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
If you rewatch some of the Monkees episodes, especially ones from after the first season you'll find that a lot of them are pretty intelligently written. They were fully aware of their own image as being manufactured, and poked fun at themselves mercilessly. "Head" is one of the greatest psychedelic movies ever made.
I'm surprised nobody called you on this
When did Pink Floyd ever write a modal melody that blossomed into florid counterpoint
The Great Gig in the Sky is in dorian mode that wonderfully mirrors the dorian in one of the previous songs in the album, Breathe, but then, towards the end, it seamlessly turns into a sweet ionian melody that ends the otherwise conflicted piece in a soothing tone.
or discovered a way to make the D triad follow the C# triad, through a harmonic intensification of a melodic element
While I wouldn't say they 'discovered' it, a succession of triads in that interval is not that uncommon. You'll find it in Money on the same album for example
Or when do you see anything even remotely close to the technique of taking a tune or theme and successively chipping it away to motivic nothings?
Too many examples. The whole Dark Side of the Moon is variations on the same tune. The tune is especially aggressively deconstructed in the song Money.
Even a minor composer from 18th century Bohemia, Zdenek Fibich, showed more harmonic creativity than Bruce Springsteen. I mean, have you actually listened to "Born in the USA?" The monotonous repetitions are so tiring.
Yes, as far as I know, Bruce Springsteen is musically not very interesting. But if you can't see the difference between him and Lady Gaga and Pink Floyd, then you know nothing about modern music
But while we are at it - when was the last time your Beethoven integrated ambient sounds seamlessly into his music, like Pink Floyd did with cash register sounds that they wowed sublimely into a 7/4 beat of the song Money (that later erupts in a 4/4 swing guitar solo)? When did he play with the color and the texture of the sound the way modern artists do ever since the early jazz times? When did he use intricate polyrythms with counter-beats - did he even use ONE syncopation in his work? His music is just flat!
WHAT!
You seem to think that everything is for the masses?
Racing, boxing, porn, horror movies, disturbing art to name a few. They're all for the masses?
Is it elitism if I say Lamborghini is not for the masses? It's a fact.
Geez.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I'm 34. I came to have this opinion AFTER I read a lot of "old" stuff, starting with great classics and ending with pretty obscure stuff. I liked some of it, but I found others to be impossible to digest. A matter of taste, perhaps, but a large part of it was played by anachronisms.
Jules Verne is much easier to digest than Dostoievski, for example, both as style and subject.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Looks like I'll be listening to Pink Floyd this weekend.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just one more note - 'to make a D triad follow a C# triad' is quite an unremarkable feat. It's just a half-tone interval between two chords - same as following an E chord with an F chord. The important information missing is - what key is the piece in? Making a C# triad followed by a D triad work is much harder in some keys than in others...
Look at the piece, it's leading-tone to tonic, which is naturally a weak transition (ie, doesn't sound very good). Also, it's not really fair to pick on Beethoven for his poor instrumentation (ie lack of creative sounds), he was going deaf right at the time when he started experimenting with that. Hard to experiment with new sounds if you can't hear them. Berlioz was much more creative in introducing new sounds.
I do agree that modern music has much more variety in sounds. That is the primary innovation of the last century. The musical tragedy of the last century is we haven't done much with it. Imagine what Bach would have done if he'd had even half the sound-palate we have today.
But syncopation? Really? Have you ever even listened to Beethoven (symphony 7 for example, and the rhythmic complexity really comes out when you listen to all the parts)? And I'm not sure you know what florid counterpoint is, I sure don't remember hearing any of it in Dark Side of the Moon.......but I'll check again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."