I think they do get it much better than most... mod teams aren't getting it.
The problem Valve has reiterated time and time again is that the current batch of mods are trying to be AAA games. So they take an eternity to release and update, they care more about art assets than core gameplay, and they dont prototype in public, so no communities evolve around an idea/concept. They noted this trend fairly shortly after the HL2 SDK was released.
If you look at the one mod that has done great things under teh source engine, its garrysmod... . Someone mentioned Little Big Planet, well Garrysmod is a lot like that except with far more flexibility. In fact this may even be an avenue for someone like yourself, msimm, to get into prototypeing gamemodes... it has lots of GUI and lua implemented if you want to go the high-level coding route.
What made garrysmod a success; constant releases... sometimes multiple times per month even now that its a steam-distributed-costs-money-game. Shortly after the SDK was released, Gmod started out doing one thing very crudely, letting you use the 'manipulator' weapon from HL2 SP, it evolved into a complex sandbox gamemode. It has progressively added functions over the last year or two, and now has a huge and creative community, which feed off of Garrysmod and take it in new directions.
So i think mod teams need to better exploit their situation... like TFC, CS, DoD, NS and now Gmod, release(d) frequently, prototype in public, get as much real world feedback and let your game evolve and reflect this input.
I am guessing this is an attempt by Adobe to remove the desire for all the kiddies who download CS2, just to make a little ditty for their myspace or somesuch website.
If all they need is a gif or jpeg/png at low res (compared to what PS is intended for) then a free and relatively feature rich web app could well be the ticket.
And if the web alternative is popular then perhaps the torrents will dry up or become impossibly slow... minimising the piracy of their apps as much as is realistically possible.
And yea, its good for linux if it aint bound to ActiveX or whatever, also i hope it will be QA'd across a number of browsers not just IE and FF.
James Lovelock in his 2006 book, the Revenge of Gaia (i found it fascinating) mentions that there are at least 6 forms of positive feedback known to science. Ice melting exposing dark soils beneath, ice melting releasing ancient methane, algae and tropical forests dieing, less cloud cover, expanding arctic dark forests -> absorb more heat, as well as others that haven't been identified by scientists.
It was even proposed that cleaning up particulate pollution over Europe could reveal a truer extent of regional warming, by 1-2 degrees. It is thought that pollution across Europe actually causes regional cooling.
Along these lines stop gap measures have been proposed, including adding 0.5-1% sulphur to jet fuel, in the hope the pollution caused would actually cool the planet. Or artificially seeding clouds over the Pacific, or even launching a giant shield into space blocking something like 2% of the suns heat(?). These are serious proposals as far as i could tell from the book.
But the problem with these solutions is that we are undertaking the problem of managing the earths climate, something Gaia has happily managed for the past billions of years.
We'll also have to figure out how to get along with each other, at least better than we are now.
I think the report mentions there could be as many as 200 million refugees as a result of climate change and the various ramifications, that's mind blowing stuff!
So taxes are all well and good, but we also need to prime our societies for massive influxes of environmental refugees that will probably be coming from poorer parts of the world, predominantly Africa(?).
I think you're only half right here.....nothing is bad with reducing taxes!!!
Firstly, I have to say that i don't really believe in absolutes, there may be some fundamental physical absolute... but i don't know anything about all that. I think Plato went on about forms, kinda like an asymptote, he was onto something ^^. But in these discussions its hard not to contradict yourself, lols.
As for taxes.
Doesn't the whole "at least in the US" add credence to the gist of the initial statement, that tax cuts, or anything for that matter, are likely to affect different groups or individuals differently, on a scale of good to bad.
What if you live in a small country like new zealand, and you give people more take home money through tax cuts, so they go and spend the bulk of it on imports (dvd's, plasma screens, cars, clothes, those sorts of things) all that money goes overseas (this could even apply to the US). There could be a case made that it will eventually be reinvested or a strengthened international economy is good for new zealand but in the short term it could have a negative impact. If that was the case then would that not be more toward the bad end of the spectrum?
Slashdot Mirror
I think they do get it much better than most... mod teams aren't getting it.
The problem Valve has reiterated time and time again is that the current batch of mods are trying to be AAA games. So they take an eternity to release and update, they care more about art assets than core gameplay, and they dont prototype in public, so no communities evolve around an idea/concept. They noted this trend fairly shortly after the HL2 SDK was released.
If you look at the one mod that has done great things under teh source engine, its garrysmod... . Someone mentioned Little Big Planet, well Garrysmod is a lot like that except with far more flexibility. In fact this may even be an avenue for someone like yourself, msimm, to get into prototypeing gamemodes... it has lots of GUI and lua implemented if you want to go the high-level coding route.
What made garrysmod a success; constant releases... sometimes multiple times per month even now that its a steam-distributed-costs-money-game. Shortly after the SDK was released, Gmod started out doing one thing very crudely, letting you use the 'manipulator' weapon from HL2 SP, it evolved into a complex sandbox gamemode. It has progressively added functions over the last year or two, and now has a huge and creative community, which feed off of Garrysmod and take it in new directions.
So i think mod teams need to better exploit their situation... like TFC, CS, DoD, NS and now Gmod, release(d) frequently, prototype in public, get as much real world feedback and let your game evolve and reflect this input.
I am guessing this is an attempt by Adobe to remove the desire for all the kiddies who download CS2, just to make a little ditty for their myspace or somesuch website.
If all they need is a gif or jpeg/png at low res (compared to what PS is intended for) then a free and relatively feature rich web app could well be the ticket.
And if the web alternative is popular then perhaps the torrents will dry up or become impossibly slow... minimising the piracy of their apps as much as is realistically possible.
And yea, its good for linux if it aint bound to ActiveX or whatever, also i hope it will be QA'd across a number of browsers not just IE and FF.
I still enjoy radio allot, and i think its daylight robbery how Apple makes you pay for an FM radio addon!
Anyways regarding this Google thing, my only hope is that audio advertisments never make it to the internet in a big way, that would be horrible.
You are probably right regarding the caring part, but then again 200 million people could cause allot of trouble if we did just ignore them.
James Lovelock in his 2006 book, the Revenge of Gaia (i found it fascinating) mentions that there are at least 6 forms of positive feedback known to science. Ice melting exposing dark soils beneath, ice melting releasing ancient methane, algae and tropical forests dieing, less cloud cover, expanding arctic dark forests -> absorb more heat, as well as others that haven't been identified by scientists.
It was even proposed that cleaning up particulate pollution over Europe could reveal a truer extent of regional warming, by 1-2 degrees. It is thought that pollution across Europe actually causes regional cooling.
Along these lines stop gap measures have been proposed, including adding 0.5-1% sulphur to jet fuel, in the hope the pollution caused would actually cool the planet. Or artificially seeding clouds over the Pacific, or even launching a giant shield into space blocking something like 2% of the suns heat(?). These are serious proposals as far as i could tell from the book.
But the problem with these solutions is that we are undertaking the problem of managing the earths climate, something Gaia has happily managed for the past billions of years.
We'll also have to figure out how to get along with each other, at least better than we are now. I think the report mentions there could be as many as 200 million refugees as a result of climate change and the various ramifications, that's mind blowing stuff! So taxes are all well and good, but we also need to prime our societies for massive influxes of environmental refugees that will probably be coming from poorer parts of the world, predominantly Africa(?).
Firstly, I have to say that i don't really believe in absolutes, there may be some fundamental physical absolute
As for taxes.
Doesn't the whole "at least in the US" add credence to the gist of the initial statement, that tax cuts, or anything for that matter, are likely to affect different groups or individuals differently, on a scale of good to bad.
What if you live in a small country like new zealand, and you give people more take home money through tax cuts, so they go and spend the bulk of it on imports (dvd's, plasma screens, cars, clothes, those sorts of things) all that money goes overseas (this could even apply to the US). There could be a case made that it will eventually be reinvested or a strengthened international economy is good for new zealand but in the short term it could have a negative impact. If that was the case then would that not be more toward the bad end of the spectrum?