The third is Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP. They've improved the controls a bit and added a 4th button to the mix, and you get the benefit of the Rock Band library for the music.
Rock Band Unplugged is in many ways similar to Amplitude, and I love that about it. But HMX didn't develop it. Thus in a sense it's not really a successor to Amplitude.
HMX did create "Phase" for the iPod, though, thus completing the trio of waveform-related titles... XD
Yeah.. I just read that. "Frequency" and "Amplitude" are two of my favorite PS2 games of all time and I still pulling for them to make a third in the series (though it's obviously not going to happen). The music licenses weren't were probably the best they could get at the time but saying that they still got same great names like Garbage and David Bowie to participate. Plus I don't think that the gameplay is as obscure as they make out in the article.
Well, I've been following various articles and such by HMX on the matter of FreQ and Amp for some time... After FreQ they were very self-critical, trying to find out what went wrong and why, and how their game design could be made better (i.e. producing a game people would more readily buy and enjoy) - they seemed very pragmatic about it... It really is possible to stand firmly behind what you've created, but at the same time examine it critically, and ask "what went wrong?" They were fortunate to have a second chance with the series.
In their analysis of FreQ they found that there were a lot of large and small issues that made it hard for people to relate to and embrace the game. Simple changes in the viewpoint relative to the beat track made a big difference in playability. Little things like providing a visible 3-D model for the "beat blaster" helped clarify the player's relationship to what was going on. But one thing I remember them saying, even post-Amplitude, was that if they got someone to play their game, they would usually enjoy it... But making a game that's fun to play is useless if people don't buy it in the first place.
That's what they mean when they talk about FreQ and Amp's gameplay being "obscure". It's not as though their audience couldn't handle rhythm games, it was just hard for new players to embrace the game because so much of the experience was abstract.
When people go out for Karaoke no one calls it a waste of time and that they should get REAL singing lessons.
But most people who do Karaoke do need singing lessons.
Well, no. Even if they're not good at singing, they don't need singing lessons... And depending on what kind of venue this karaoke is happening in, poor singing can be entirely acceptable, because it's about letting the singer have a good time.
He's wasting his time then. He could be practising.
Yeah, in the old days the tour bus would bring along a slave-driver - any band members who did anything apart from practicing for their next show while in the tour bus would be flogged.
Nowadays they tend not to bring the slave-driver, and band members indulge in other activities and "relaxation" between the shows. They've gone soft!
Someone did think of it first: Konami. Notice that they mention Beatmania and DDR as inspirations, but curiously omit Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania...
Well, bear in mind, they were talking about a point in their company's history prior to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Prior to any of their games. They saw a few specific rhythm games and realized that this might be a way to reach their goal... What really inspired them, I think, wasn't the specific gameplay of these titles, but rather the fact that people were enjoying these music-oriented games. This was leading into the creation of Frequency.
Their thinking at this point, I think, was that they wanted that sort of a rhythm game but they didn't want the barrier to (player) entry associated with a custom peripheral. Hence, Frequency and Amplitude just use the PS2 controller. But what they found later is that without the "prop" a lot of people had trouble relating to the game.
I don't think there's any question that Guitar Hero was inspired by Guitar Freaks. This was very much in line with what Red Octane was doing back then: a lot of their business was selling dance pads for use with DDR, etc. - but Red Octane also had acted as publisher for In the Groove. I think Guitar Hero, for Red Octane, was a similar idea: they wanted to have a stake in both peripherals and software for a Guitar Freaks-style game.
Regardless of whether the concept was taken from Guitar Freaks, I think the fact that they've been very successful says a lot about the quality of their execution of the concept.
Well, considering that an intranet is just another name for an internet that isn't accesible directly from the Internet (do notice the capitalization), that's a bit redundant.
Well, no, that's not true...
An intranet is a network maintained within one location or organization. An internet is a network that connects such networks, locations, or organizations.
"The Internet" wasn't one 40 years ago today - it wasn't one until they started linking in remote sites.
Ever wonder why doctors have giant libraries sitting around in their offices?
The books are there to look impressive. Otherwise they wouldn't be so neatly arranged. Books you actually use would be reshelved out-of-order, some volumes would be taken down and left open to some page on any available surface, etc...
The Vulcans and Romulans are the same species, only separated by 2000 years divergence on separate planets.
Well, yeah... I mean the idea that two different alien races not sharing a common genetic ancestry could mate and produce children - that's just silly...
Ooops I forgot. There was the Q-Link graphical service, which eventually evolved into America Online. Its drawback was that it only worked with Commodore's CASCII set, not IBMs or Apples or Ataris. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link
The other drawback to the service was that if you wanted to do anything interesting at all on it, you had to pay per-minute "plus time" charges - which could be spent waiting for your floppy drive to load data or waiting for your modem to get information from the server...
Immediately followed by FW: FW: Fw: Fw: Re: THIS IS FUNNY (CATS ON A PIANO)
Text of the message was simply "There were totally some cats on a piano just now. I took a video of it, if you send me a self-addressed, postage-paid video tape mailer I'll send you a copy."
From the article: VOICEOVER (English) no name given: "In the 70s, the silicone chip became the basis of a new generation of computerized devices . Following the silicone chip, came games and e-mail, creating a social and industrial revolution.
Wow, I want a computer with one of those silicone chips, mine only has a silicon chip.
I have a friend who got silicon breast implants... I think it's fair to say that didn't work out too well...
And while you're at it, you might as well read How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis. Without multithreading, of course, since multithreading is the biggest and most hideous abomination of them all.
Parallel programming is a concept I can stand behind - I haven't done anything with it yet but I've learned a bit about Erlang and it seems like a good thing.
One of the things that bugs me about the way you apply parallel programming to your concept is that you appear to apply it to every level of the language design. Even the most trivial operations are parallel by default... That seems like a bad idea to me for any number of reasons. First off, the sequentiality of operations is useful for the programmer to develop a clear idea of what the program does: parallelism doesn't help people understand a program when you're dealing with a small unit of code, and I would even argue that it hinders understanding. Second, on anything remotely similar to today's hardware, execution is more efficient when dealing with either a single sequence of operations, or multiple sequences of operations running in parallel (and not interacting too much). The former is the strength of traditional imperative programming, and the latter is the model being advanced by parallel languages like Erlang: write a fairly self-contained module that does a job, and have it communicate with other modules via a system of message queues.
One point that I didn't really get was how synchronization was supposed to work between those program nodes. If this were a digital electronic circuit one would expect a clock pulse to go to all the nodes to tell them when to update themselves... I'm not entirely sure what your solution was in this thing...
The whole visual programming stuff just seems very, very cryptic. Everywhere you had a mass of nodes and the "equivalent" traditional imperative code, it seemed like the plain old code was both clearer in what it did and more informative about the details... But, then, guess which of the two I spend most of my time dealing with? Perhaps if I took more time to understand the node graphs it it might be less so, I'm not sure. Have you taken a crack at actually writing this thing yet? It's important to remember that all the brainstorming in the world doesn't really get you anywhere... The project doesn't really exist until there's working code of some kind. This is something I'm currently dealing with myself - something I've been brainstorming for a while now but haven't yet coded...
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing
on
Coders At Work
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· Score: 1
As for Perl... Whether or not people have said bad things about Perl before, whether or not people do good work in Perl, I can't find fault in anyone who feels it's still worth mentioning that Perl is a horrible jumble of a computer language.
People do lots of good work in English too, including writing computer code (all the syntax, keywords, etc. are in English), doing aviation, and many other thing. But English is a horrible jumble of a language.
See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. That there is a fair criticism.
But it's DRM that has been completely inoffensive and pain-free. That's the difference. I don't have a problem with copy protection. I wouldn't mind nailed down DRM on my pc, if it simply stopped games from being copied. The problem with DRM on the pc is that it goes further than that... it tracks you, it breaks things, it modifies your setup, it takes away legitimate functionality, it hinders free development... It ends up being the Sony rootkit, which should have put some Sony execs in jail.
The difference is that you're dealing with DRM on a highly restricted platform (one you have already accepted as being highly restricted) versus DRM on a relatively unrestricted platform. The DRM on consoles does all the same things (and more, perhaps), you just don't see it because most people don't use their consoles in ways other than intended by the manufacturer.
The Well of Uncomfortable Truths
on
Coders At Work
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Perl is an abomination as a language
LOL. From my perspective, all computer programming languages are abominations. They are ancient primitive relics of what I call the Babbage and Lovelace era. They should all be placed in the Smithsonian right next to the buggy whip and the slide rule. I live for the day when a constitutional amendment is passed to ban them all.:-D
So your solution is a concurrent language using diagrams in place of syntax?
I'm not about to tell you the COSA approach is a bad idea, and I'd hate to discourage someone who's obviously got a lot of interest in making a system that really is better... But I have my doubts about visual programming languages in general. Mainly because it bypasses the established mechanisms humans have developed for conveying complex ideas (i.e. writing) in favor of visual diagrams - you lose the capability to convey a large volume of information effectively in a reasonably small space - or at least it seems you would. At any rate I can't figure out how those node graphs work...
And your statements about reliability? In what sense can a logic circuit be "guaranteed" free of defects? Did Intel know about this method of quality assurance back when they were designing the Pentium? It seems to me that simple logic circuits can be guaranteed free of defects because the human mind can readily model the whole system and intuitively decide it is correct. When the system is complex, that is no longer true.
I donâ(TM)t want to know about how to implement loops, tree structures, search algorithms and all that other jazz. If I want my program to save an audio recording to a file, I donâ(TM)t want to learn about frequency ranges, formats, fidelity, file library interface, audio library interface and so forth. This stuff really gets in the way.
It seems as though you've just said you want someone else to solve your problems for you.
To a certain extent this is quite reasonable. If you want to save an audio recording, it's reasonable to expect someone else to have come up with a program that will make it easy for you. This is why we have "sound recorder" applications and the like.
But what if you're the first person to write such a program? Or what if, for whatever reason (i.e. licensing issues, etc.) you can't use the work that's already been done? Then it seems to me that there's no way around it: you simply must understand about audio formats and deal with them on their own terms.
Likewise, suppose you want a program that can calculate a route to drive from Baltimore to Chicago. Of course it's been done: you can go ask Google for the route... But what if you want your own program that does this? Like if you wanted to compete with Google and get in the computer-map business? Then you'd need one of those pesky algorithms to turn that big pile of data into a usable route. The problem's not practically solvable unless you approach it with the right kind of strategy, that's exactly what an algorithm is. It's not practical to expect that all the problems in the world have already been solved by whoever created your language toolkit - if it were, then I'd be out of a job.
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing
on
Coders At Work
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· Score: 1
(And if you want to take the line that the CS attitude is correct, how would you prove that it's correct? Writing working code is evidently not relevant. And if you can't prove it, then what does the "S" stand for in "CS"?)
As for Perl... Whether or not people have said bad things about Perl before, whether or not people do good work in Perl, I can't find fault in anyone who feels it's still worth mentioning that Perl is a horrible jumble of a computer language.
Nuclear weapons would be far more entertaining; kind of a near-Earth fireworks display ("ooooh, aahhhh"). Besides, one more used up there is one less that may be used down here.
It wouldn't be much of a fireworks display: without an atmosphere to carry a shockwave or absorb radiation to produce light and heat, a nuclear weapon detonated in open space would just be a release of radiation, invisible to the eye. Detonated on, or within an asteroid, the blast would have some material to work with, but the blast (as well as the surviving chunks of asteroid) would dissipate quickly...
maybe its "This asteroid that wont destroy the earth but will destroy a sizable chunk of land is headed for earth. Whatever country that pays us the least amount of money (in %age of GDP) is going to get it. this will be a blind auction, cash only, upfront. (if multiple countries bit the same amount we will redirect more asteroids) Muhahahahahaha!
Cash, huh?
Isn't that sort of a problem? I mean, the government which gives you that cash is also the government whose existence gives that cash value. After you've taken payment, they could go into inflation overdrive, severely devaluing the currency they've given you (with hefty tax cuts and spending programs for their own population to ease the blow)...
It seems to me that if you're extorting money from major governments, you've got to take payment in forms that have more inherent value. Gold could be an option, simply because its value seems to be consistently and universally respected... Weapons systems would be another option (and quite valuable given that the governments will almost certainly want to flatten your little operation as soon as they find you) - nuclear fuel and reactor equipment could be a good form of payment as well, assuming you have the means to operate and defend them...
Land is another option: though the obvious problem there is that the land is worthless unless you can exploit it, and prevent them from stealing it back by force. Plus, if they give you land, they're always going to know where it is...
It seems like a significant problem to me: assuming one has the power to hold the world hostage, what terms can one set which would truly be worthy of the threat you pose? How can that value be conveyed upon you in such a way that you can retain that value over time? After all, in the end what counts is power: even if an evil genius manages to get leverage over the world governments by trickery, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to then stand against those world governments over the years following - after your existence has been revealed, after your defeat has become a true priority for an organization which holds a substantial chunk of the world's overall resources...
I know, but all the Germans on Star Trek were Nazis, so nobody on Star Trek ever claimed anything was German.
Well, except for that one guy who felt that the Nazis had been really quite good at what they did, and decided to re-shape an alien society in their image (down to the most minute details) because it seemed the most effective way to get them to be productive and also what could possibly go wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what I need to get to that next Flight of the Conchords show!
The third is Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP. They've improved the controls a bit and added a 4th button to the mix, and you get the benefit of the Rock Band library for the music.
Rock Band Unplugged is in many ways similar to Amplitude, and I love that about it. But HMX didn't develop it. Thus in a sense it's not really a successor to Amplitude.
HMX did create "Phase" for the iPod, though, thus completing the trio of waveform-related titles... XD
Yeah.. I just read that. "Frequency" and "Amplitude" are two of my favorite PS2 games of all time and I still pulling for them to make a third in the series (though it's obviously not going to happen). The music licenses weren't were probably the best they could get at the time but saying that they still got same great names like Garbage and David Bowie to participate. Plus I don't think that the gameplay is as obscure as they make out in the article.
Well, I've been following various articles and such by HMX on the matter of FreQ and Amp for some time... After FreQ they were very self-critical, trying to find out what went wrong and why, and how their game design could be made better (i.e. producing a game people would more readily buy and enjoy) - they seemed very pragmatic about it... It really is possible to stand firmly behind what you've created, but at the same time examine it critically, and ask "what went wrong?" They were fortunate to have a second chance with the series.
In their analysis of FreQ they found that there were a lot of large and small issues that made it hard for people to relate to and embrace the game. Simple changes in the viewpoint relative to the beat track made a big difference in playability. Little things like providing a visible 3-D model for the "beat blaster" helped clarify the player's relationship to what was going on. But one thing I remember them saying, even post-Amplitude, was that if they got someone to play their game, they would usually enjoy it... But making a game that's fun to play is useless if people don't buy it in the first place.
That's what they mean when they talk about FreQ and Amp's gameplay being "obscure". It's not as though their audience couldn't handle rhythm games, it was just hard for new players to embrace the game because so much of the experience was abstract.
1-4-4
When people go out for Karaoke no one calls it a waste of time and that they should get REAL singing lessons.
But most people who do Karaoke do need singing lessons.
Well, no. Even if they're not good at singing, they don't need singing lessons... And depending on what kind of venue this karaoke is happening in, poor singing can be entirely acceptable, because it's about letting the singer have a good time.
He's wasting his time then. He could be practising.
Yeah, in the old days the tour bus would bring along a slave-driver - any band members who did anything apart from practicing for their next show while in the tour bus would be flogged.
Nowadays they tend not to bring the slave-driver, and band members indulge in other activities and "relaxation" between the shows. They've gone soft!
Someone did think of it first: Konami. Notice that they mention Beatmania and DDR as inspirations, but curiously omit Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania...
Well, bear in mind, they were talking about a point in their company's history prior to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Prior to any of their games. They saw a few specific rhythm games and realized that this might be a way to reach their goal... What really inspired them, I think, wasn't the specific gameplay of these titles, but rather the fact that people were enjoying these music-oriented games. This was leading into the creation of Frequency.
Their thinking at this point, I think, was that they wanted that sort of a rhythm game but they didn't want the barrier to (player) entry associated with a custom peripheral. Hence, Frequency and Amplitude just use the PS2 controller. But what they found later is that without the "prop" a lot of people had trouble relating to the game.
I don't think there's any question that Guitar Hero was inspired by Guitar Freaks. This was very much in line with what Red Octane was doing back then: a lot of their business was selling dance pads for use with DDR, etc. - but Red Octane also had acted as publisher for In the Groove. I think Guitar Hero, for Red Octane, was a similar idea: they wanted to have a stake in both peripherals and software for a Guitar Freaks-style game.
Regardless of whether the concept was taken from Guitar Freaks, I think the fact that they've been very successful says a lot about the quality of their execution of the concept.
Here is a site that may be of use to you:
http://www.kindtree.org/
Ooh, what a burn.
Does this mean Guitar Hero-Abba edition isn't coming out?
Since Harmonix no longer develops Guitar Hero, I'd say the information in the interview has no bearing on that question.
Well, considering that an intranet is just another name for an internet that isn't accesible directly from the Internet (do notice the capitalization), that's a bit redundant.
Well, no, that's not true...
An intranet is a network maintained within one location or organization.
An internet is a network that connects such networks, locations, or organizations.
"The Internet" wasn't one 40 years ago today - it wasn't one until they started linking in remote sites.
Ever wonder why doctors have giant libraries sitting around in their offices?
The books are there to look impressive. Otherwise they wouldn't be so neatly arranged. Books you actually use would be reshelved out-of-order, some volumes would be taken down and left open to some page on any available surface, etc...
- telepresence: I see you, you see me, in HD, anytime, wherever you and I are. Maybe we can even shake hands. Definitely coming in the next decade.
It's called meeting someone in person.
That's not an exciting-enough term... How about "colocation presence technology"?
The Vulcans and Romulans are the same species, only separated by 2000 years divergence on separate planets.
Well, yeah... I mean the idea that two different alien races not sharing a common genetic ancestry could mate and produce children - that's just silly...
>>>little more than vector-based graphics
Ooops I forgot. There was the Q-Link graphical service, which eventually evolved into America Online. Its drawback was that it only worked with Commodore's CASCII set, not IBMs or Apples or Ataris. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link
The other drawback to the service was that if you wanted to do anything interesting at all on it, you had to pay per-minute "plus time" charges - which could be spent waiting for your floppy drive to load data or waiting for your modem to get information from the server...
Immediately followed by FW: FW: Fw: Fw: Re: THIS IS FUNNY (CATS ON A PIANO)
Text of the message was simply "There were totally some cats on a piano just now. I took a video of it, if you send me a self-addressed, postage-paid video tape mailer I'll send you a copy."
From the article: VOICEOVER (English) no name given: "In the 70s, the silicone chip became the basis of a new generation of computerized devices .
Following the silicone chip, came games and e-mail, creating a social and industrial revolution.
Wow, I want a computer with one of those silicone chips, mine only has a silicon chip.
I have a friend who got silicon breast implants... I think it's fair to say that didn't work out too well...
So 40 years ago two computers passed data on a 15 foot cable, right...?
Now, maybe they used early internet protocols to do it, but is this really an internet? Wouldn't it be an intranet, or a LAN?
The "one month later" when some remote systems were added onto the network, that sounds to me like the birth of the internet...
I see your points but I think you should read Parallel Computing: Why the Future is Compositional... and hierarchical... and non-algorithmic... and deterministic... etc.
And while you're at it, you might as well read How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis. Without multithreading, of course, since multithreading is the biggest and most hideous abomination of them all.
Parallel programming is a concept I can stand behind - I haven't done anything with it yet but I've learned a bit about Erlang and it seems like a good thing.
One of the things that bugs me about the way you apply parallel programming to your concept is that you appear to apply it to every level of the language design. Even the most trivial operations are parallel by default... That seems like a bad idea to me for any number of reasons. First off, the sequentiality of operations is useful for the programmer to develop a clear idea of what the program does: parallelism doesn't help people understand a program when you're dealing with a small unit of code, and I would even argue that it hinders understanding. Second, on anything remotely similar to today's hardware, execution is more efficient when dealing with either a single sequence of operations, or multiple sequences of operations running in parallel (and not interacting too much). The former is the strength of traditional imperative programming, and the latter is the model being advanced by parallel languages like Erlang: write a fairly self-contained module that does a job, and have it communicate with other modules via a system of message queues.
One point that I didn't really get was how synchronization was supposed to work between those program nodes. If this were a digital electronic circuit one would expect a clock pulse to go to all the nodes to tell them when to update themselves... I'm not entirely sure what your solution was in this thing...
The whole visual programming stuff just seems very, very cryptic. Everywhere you had a mass of nodes and the "equivalent" traditional imperative code, it seemed like the plain old code was both clearer in what it did and more informative about the details... But, then, guess which of the two I spend most of my time dealing with? Perhaps if I took more time to understand the node graphs it it might be less so, I'm not sure. Have you taken a crack at actually writing this thing yet? It's important to remember that all the brainstorming in the world doesn't really get you anywhere... The project doesn't really exist until there's working code of some kind. This is something I'm currently dealing with myself - something I've been brainstorming for a while now but haven't yet coded...
As for Perl... Whether or not people have said bad things about Perl before, whether or not people do good work in Perl, I can't find fault in anyone who feels it's still worth mentioning that Perl is a horrible jumble of a computer language.
People do lots of good work in English too, including writing computer code (all the syntax, keywords, etc. are in English), doing aviation, and many other thing. But English is a horrible jumble of a language.
See? That's exactly what I'm talking about. That there is a fair criticism.
But it's DRM that has been completely inoffensive and pain-free. That's the difference. I don't have a problem with copy protection. I wouldn't mind nailed down DRM on my pc, if it simply stopped games from being copied. The problem with DRM on the pc is that it goes further than that... it tracks you, it breaks things, it modifies your setup, it takes away legitimate functionality, it hinders free development... It ends up being the Sony rootkit, which should have put some Sony execs in jail.
The difference is that you're dealing with DRM on a highly restricted platform (one you have already accepted as being highly restricted) versus DRM on a relatively unrestricted platform. The DRM on consoles does all the same things (and more, perhaps), you just don't see it because most people don't use their consoles in ways other than intended by the manufacturer.
LOL. From my perspective, all computer programming languages are abominations. They are ancient primitive relics of what I call the Babbage and Lovelace era. They should all be placed in the Smithsonian right next to the buggy whip and the slide rule. I live for the day when a constitutional amendment is passed to ban them all. :-D
So your solution is a concurrent language using diagrams in place of syntax?
I'm not about to tell you the COSA approach is a bad idea, and I'd hate to discourage someone who's obviously got a lot of interest in making a system that really is better... But I have my doubts about visual programming languages in general. Mainly because it bypasses the established mechanisms humans have developed for conveying complex ideas (i.e. writing) in favor of visual diagrams - you lose the capability to convey a large volume of information effectively in a reasonably small space - or at least it seems you would. At any rate I can't figure out how those node graphs work...
And your statements about reliability? In what sense can a logic circuit be "guaranteed" free of defects? Did Intel know about this method of quality assurance back when they were designing the Pentium? It seems to me that simple logic circuits can be guaranteed free of defects because the human mind can readily model the whole system and intuitively decide it is correct. When the system is complex, that is no longer true.
I donâ(TM)t want to know about how to implement loops, tree structures, search algorithms and all that other jazz. If I want my program to save an audio recording to a file, I donâ(TM)t want to learn about frequency ranges, formats, fidelity, file library interface, audio library interface and so forth. This stuff really gets in the way.
It seems as though you've just said you want someone else to solve your problems for you.
To a certain extent this is quite reasonable. If you want to save an audio recording, it's reasonable to expect someone else to have come up with a program that will make it easy for you. This is why we have "sound recorder" applications and the like.
But what if you're the first person to write such a program? Or what if, for whatever reason (i.e. licensing issues, etc.) you can't use the work that's already been done? Then it seems to me that there's no way around it: you simply must understand about audio formats and deal with them on their own terms.
Likewise, suppose you want a program that can calculate a route to drive from Baltimore to Chicago. Of course it's been done: you can go ask Google for the route... But what if you want your own program that does this? Like if you wanted to compete with Google and get in the computer-map business? Then you'd need one of those pesky algorithms to turn that big pile of data into a usable route. The problem's not practically solvable unless you approach it with the right kind of strategy, that's exactly what an algorithm is. It's not practical to expect that all the problems in the world have already been solved by whoever created your language toolkit - if it were, then I'd be out of a job.
(And if you want to take the line that the CS attitude is correct, how would you prove that it's correct? Writing working code is evidently not relevant. And if you can't prove it, then what does the "S" stand for in "CS"?)
Hal Abelson says Computer Science isn't really a Science, nor is it about Computers. It's more like magic!
As for Perl... Whether or not people have said bad things about Perl before, whether or not people do good work in Perl, I can't find fault in anyone who feels it's still worth mentioning that Perl is a horrible jumble of a computer language.
Amateur.
Everybody knows you've got to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Nuclear weapons would be far more entertaining; kind of a near-Earth fireworks display ("ooooh, aahhhh"). Besides, one more used up there is one less that may be used down here.
It wouldn't be much of a fireworks display: without an atmosphere to carry a shockwave or absorb radiation to produce light and heat, a nuclear weapon detonated in open space would just be a release of radiation, invisible to the eye. Detonated on, or within an asteroid, the blast would have some material to work with, but the blast (as well as the surviving chunks of asteroid) would dissipate quickly...
maybe its "This asteroid that wont destroy the earth but will destroy a sizable chunk of land is headed for earth. Whatever country that pays us the least amount of money (in %age of GDP) is going to get it. this will be a blind auction, cash only, upfront. (if multiple countries bit the same amount we will redirect more asteroids) Muhahahahahaha!
Cash, huh?
Isn't that sort of a problem? I mean, the government which gives you that cash is also the government whose existence gives that cash value. After you've taken payment, they could go into inflation overdrive, severely devaluing the currency they've given you (with hefty tax cuts and spending programs for their own population to ease the blow)...
It seems to me that if you're extorting money from major governments, you've got to take payment in forms that have more inherent value. Gold could be an option, simply because its value seems to be consistently and universally respected... Weapons systems would be another option (and quite valuable given that the governments will almost certainly want to flatten your little operation as soon as they find you) - nuclear fuel and reactor equipment could be a good form of payment as well, assuming you have the means to operate and defend them...
Land is another option: though the obvious problem there is that the land is worthless unless you can exploit it, and prevent them from stealing it back by force. Plus, if they give you land, they're always going to know where it is...
It seems like a significant problem to me: assuming one has the power to hold the world hostage, what terms can one set which would truly be worthy of the threat you pose? How can that value be conveyed upon you in such a way that you can retain that value over time? After all, in the end what counts is power: even if an evil genius manages to get leverage over the world governments by trickery, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to then stand against those world governments over the years following - after your existence has been revealed, after your defeat has become a true priority for an organization which holds a substantial chunk of the world's overall resources...
Zhey vurr ein German inwention you insensitive Klodd.
I know, but all the Germans on Star Trek were Nazis, so nobody on Star Trek ever claimed anything was German.
Well, except for that one guy who felt that the Nazis had been really quite good at what they did, and decided to re-shape an alien society in their image (down to the most minute details) because it seemed the most effective way to get them to be productive and also what could possibly go wrong?