This won't level the playing field in the way you imagine. In fact, it may actually hurt the lower classes even more than the upper classes. This free wheeling net ecomony gives no advantage to any class, except the convience of not having to drive to the local store to pick up the goods. After all, it creates thousands of cash strapped companies, who have to sell at just above the prices they buy or make their products at, in order to stay at competive pricing. Many thousands of net companies have great difficulties showing a profit at all. Has Amazon yet? I don't know. Then, high shipping prices utterly annihilate the savings made from purchasing the product from the cheapest dealer. What this situation creates is the following: Broke financial backers. Fatter upper class people, since they don't even have to walk up and down the front steps anymore. And uncounted infrastructure jobs. Somebody has to pack the goods, somebody has to ship them, somebody has to keep track of inventory for these companies... and guess what? They're all low level, unskilled jobs, many of which even pay near living wages. Remember the UPS strike and the subsequent raises for how many thousands of low class individuals? All this comes at the expense of the store across town, mind you, which, if like the average department store, employs a handful of career individuals, a few desperate folks, and a whole lot of kids in school. A good number of the people who don't fit in, and those who are using it as a 'play' job for Friday's date money get fired as the store knuckles down for competition. Now, add a bunch of taxes to the situation. I think a fairly low yet reasonable figure is, oh, 10%. After all, the American and European governments show little moderation once they start charging taxes. The people's pockets are infinitely deep. Now, suddenly the prices online are just about the same as the prices on the shelves at the store across town. With shipping, that makes those online prices more expensive, and less convient, since it's not anwhere near as fast as the run across town this afternoon. Bang, the internet companies can't compete anymore. They start to fold left and right as the wealthy return to purchasing the cumulatively cheaper items in their hometown, and the internet gets stripped in terms of commerce, as the weaker companies die off between the double blow of less business, and profit stripping taxes. This super culling process would leave a handful of AOL size behemoths, probably net monopolies, and nothing else... Not the best sort of thing for a capitalistic system, neh? Not every field should be level. After all, water couldn't do anything but stagnate if all the world were perfectly flat.
Historically, the taxes and tariffs on international trade have taken place at two points, entrance and exit. and it is at one of these points that internet tariffs are most likely to occur, simply for enforcement reasons. By tradition, and probably international law, a nation can tariff goods coming in to it, and going out of it. Goods on the way out are the easiest to catch, by simply requiring all internet sellers to register, and pay up a certain percentage of total sales value per year. This means that taxes would be paid to what ever nation the company is formed in, and registered as a business or corporation in. I don't have a lot of knowledge of business law, but I seem to recall that any corporation or company, especially one that operates internationally, must be registered as coming from a certain nation. It would logically follow that that nation to ne the one that benefits from the taxes on that company, but we all know how rare logic is in a bureaucracy. Entrance taxes are also viable, but would be a nightmare to implement, due to value determinations, etc. Any other country has about as much enforceable reason to tax as Urbugooistakistan has to put tariffs on the goods on the plane overflying Gropestia on it's trip from Rome to Tokyo. However, I don't really see how any other scheme can be enforced reasonably, and I'd like to believe that most international gov'ts are at least mildly reluctant to bring out the black helicopters and MIB's for deliquent taxes.
Ok, we have a bunch of people complaining about the lack of features in an early implementation of a GPL program. Now, I'm a relative newcomer to the world of Linux, and certainly not all knowing, but it seems to me that all the benefits of GPL and open source come from the snowball effect. Once a decent program gets put out, the decent coders start modding it into what they need, and passing that new version into to the next guy, who adds a little more..
Therefore, it's likely that this new program will sprout the wings and halo of 3d capability relatively soon, especially compared to a totally commercial, closed source deal.
So, don't try to put the nails in the coffin of what might be a healthy program, before it has time to stand on its own. If the base of the program is worthwhile, the rest of the features will come... and I'm also betting that about a third of the biggest complaints are from people with the experience and skill to add what they need to the program. Why not try it? If you're good, you'll end up with a 3dCAD with the ablities and interface you need, rather than some piece of bloated, commerical junk, that you had to buy a few thousand worth of expansions for, just to make it serve your purpose. Don't just let the newcomer die a-birthing.. Or GPL software won't ever become a viable alternative to monopolies, such as M$, or near monopolies, like ACAD.
I can't really deny the fact that Win98/IE is a relatively stable combination, and much more so than in the past. Microsoft does have a number of well executed ideas, and my, and many others major objection to the winblows operating system is merely that if you expect it to run stably, you can only run M$ products on it. This is primarily rumor mill feed, but I've been told that there are bits and pieces involving the way win98 works, and interfaces with programs, (Can't remember what they're called. I'm a science geek, not a computer geek.) that are heavily useful for compiling things like browsers that M$ refuses to allow other companies to have information on, thereby destabilizing 3rd party apps. Yes, what Microsoft has is damn stable, if you only use Microsoft, but that deprives you of choice, and is economically unfeasable for an NC. After all, what's the cost of Office and Win for use in a commercial environment? I know it cost me $200 for my student editions last year...
But, as has been pointed out in other places, there are conditions where Linux/Netscape are an extremely stable pair, and these conditions are replicable. With some four star apps, like Quicken and office(Honestly, a secretary is *not* going to want vim, as nice as it is.), and an intelligent set up at the beginning, a Linux NC could be more useful, faster, stabler, and far more inutitive than any Winblows box. I don't know about you, but I find the Explorer interface to be the clunkiest, and most non-inutitive I have ever ever worked with..
We're all forgetting the nasty little realities that will make such things as instant sex changes, freedom from all disease, perfect replication through nanobots, etc, impossible. They're too small. A nanobot, by definition, is little more than a single molecule, or, in some cases, two or three. This means that all tradtional manipulation tools are have been long abandoned, leaving us with little more than some fancy enzymes and proteins. Yes, fancy proteins can replicate them selves, and make more enzymes, but, fine control is extremely hard to exert, and if I send some of these fancy molecules into you to start tearing apart cancer cells, how do they tell those from the rest of your cells? What's to stop them from rampaging through your entire body, ripping every cell in your body to shreds, and moving onto the next host, and the next, as the man-made virus from hell?
Nanobots and tailored enzymes are best put into use to relatively simple, single purpose jobs, such as endlessly replicating a chemical, say insulin. Machines on this scale can never be multipurpose, and that's what prevents them from doing such things as building cars from blocks of steel and aluminum. They don't know how or where to stop. And a HK Nano could never be programmed to do anything more than destroy all nano's of one, or all types, making them very limited in use.
Furthermore, items on a molecular scale are affected far more by force fields than tools used in modern engineering. They will be extremely vulerable to electromagnetics, especially so if any sort of polar imbalance exists along the molecule composing the nanobot. Anything above this scale begins to become invasive, and can't travel a body without wreaking all kinds of havoc.
Nanites may be the stuff of sci-fi dreams, but there are cold hard realities to consider, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever become the mother of all solutions to humanities problems.
I'm not trying to dispute the vaule of the old sounds, and in the long run, would probably prefer the older methods, on older intruments. Say, Back played on the original instuments of the day. In fact, I don't think musical and mathematical perfection have much to do with each other at all regularly, just that they might interact in intriguing ways.
Actually, I think that a tune free from mathematical chaos would sound and feel truly alien. It's so far beyond human experience that we can't really understand it. Discord and harmony in their own measures are major part of tradtional music, as is the tension in the mood of the music. Music is as much a play with the human psyche as it is anything else. A mathematically perfect would would probably worm it's way into you in a way that's totally unlike anything you've ever experienced before.
Anyway, I don't think a non-chaotic sound is better for music, I just think it might sound wierd, and possibly worth hearing, once, just to experience what it's likely to do to the psyche. You'd have to totally abandon current musical theory to create something listenable. After all, music is an art, and math is much more like a science.. or a language, depending on how you look at it.
To begin with, all sounds can be described in terms of a differential equation. When it comes to music, these equations begin to get really ugly, and unsolvable. By a mathematically perfect song, I mean one that's been carefully calculated in order to take into account the accoustic properties of the room, the the tone, timbre, and placement of intruments, etc, etc. Theoretically, these additional bits of data can make the sound equations solvable by available calculus.
Beyond that, there is the additional fact that such a carefully calculated sound could have subtle effects well beyond concious human capability, much like flashing a singe image occasionally in a motion picture. This sort of calcuation could lead music into a whole new realm.
Of course, I could just be spouting a load of crap, which is proably a little more likely.:) You be the judge.
A non-intelligent computer probably won't ever be able to compose on the level of the greats, no, but on the level of a lot of the mass produced trash thrown out there today, sure. Pop music is amazingly devoid of tradional musical elements, having little more than rhythm, and the occasional bit of harmony. A few algorithms, and some random word generation, belted out incoherently, and you have a hit!
Unfortunately, there is more to music than maths, but I'm sure some interesting stuff could come from this.. If nothing else, it could be interesting to see what kind of emotions a mathematically perfect song can evoke in a a human being... I have the feeling that it would be a little spine chilling.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we shouldn't be looking at emulation of older genres, but perhaps a little more at a whole new field of musical possibilities.
Honestly, from what I've seen, very little makes Q3 different from Q2 when you ask the questions you have. However, the one thing I place above all others when looking at a game and it's improvements over it's predecessors is sheer fun value. I play Q3test, and see something far better in those terms than Q2. The sweet graphics and the jettisoning of any pretense at a single player game allow certain improvements in other ares. For example, new graphics and physics engines allow for a far smoother and precise gameplay than existed in Q2. The player's pure skill and reflexes can no longer be blotted out due to a handful of ugly nasty tricks due to flaws in said engines, ala all the trick jumps in Q2's The Edge. You remember, the ones in which you triple rocket jumped off indiviual texture pixels? Further, that boring weapon balance lets a fine melee remain going indefintely, not ruined by some jerk with a room clearing weapon like the older BFG's.
Also, elements of strategy and tactics do exist, though at a slightly different level. I spend alot of my game time in duels, rather than 30 person melees, and they are a refinement of tactics, especially maneuvering. Granted, it's not much of a level of tactics, but that level of gameplay isn't totally ignored.
I did try Unreal, but for some reason, the gameplay in it just left me cold, where as I began to love Q3, as soon as my stiff old mind adapted to the unaccustomed speed of the game.
Perhaps the best comparison I can think of lies in the world of automobiles. Doom was a Pinto. Q2 was an early Mustang, and Q3 is a modern one. On the surface, Q2 and Q3 are almost the same, in weight, horsepower, etc, but when you actually get behind the wheel, there's a world of handling difference, and that handling makes all the difference.
The simplest answer as to what to sell is new, and better bots. Chances are that any bots put into the game at this stage of development will be very poorly implemented, and in a few weeks, those of us with out the major net connections needed to use certain weapons well online will be tired of camping bots with infinite accuracy. Also, new maps will alo be a selling point. The vast majority of homemade maps really are inferior. The Id team's experience in making maps really is a major factor.
Perhaps more important though, many people will purchase a full copy for these reasons. a: Gratitude. Id has allowed us to be involved in the devlopment and testing of this game, and I for one, have gotten well more than 40 or 50 bucks worth of fun out of just q3test. I'll shell out that amount just out of appreciation of the effort that the Id crew has put into the game. b: Server compatibilty. The same people who will buy the game out of gratitude tend to be the same people who run dedicated servers for other's enjoyment. If you'll remember Q2, the demo was incompatible in a multiplayer with the full version, or at least I never could get it to run. So, I went out and bought a copy of Q2, just so everyone else with the full copy could smear me across the Edge. If that same incompatbility exists here, thousands will purchase the full version of Q3A, just so they can get out to try to shave their neighbor with a rail slug.
In short, Id, by letting the demo out, in near full version, will actually increase their sales, by giving everyone that intoxicating taste of success. Then, everyone rushes out to buy it, so that they can have more fun fragging their friends, who are running that silly full version of the game out of respect for the people who made it.
While I hate M$ about as much as the man, I'm afraid I have to actually side with them on general prinicples. While the major MS product, Window$ is little more than a poorly executed port of MacOS, they have put a tremendous effort into development, marketing, software support, and all those other things that make a fairly incompetent end user happy. They do have a right to realize a profit from the work they have placed into a product, provided it sells, and not to have the end product stolen from them.
Therefore, rather than simple pirating, we must use other methods to bring the evil empire to it's knees. Support emulation projects along the line of WINE, and ports of third party commercial software, so that windows loses it it's lock on extremely easy to use, mildy versatile software, that runs on all those Intel chips that someone bought for some reason. As this particular AC pointed out, M$ cannot survive without it's profit. Let's take that profit away from them, but let's do in the way that's not only legal, but has the additional effect of grinding the notion that not only do we not need the shoddy M$ OS, we don't want it either. Pirating sends the message that we do want it, but not on M$'s terms.
Simply put, I think we should stop spitting in Billy boy's eye, in order to punch that same eye.
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This won't level the playing field in the way you imagine. In fact, it may actually hurt the lower classes even more than the upper classes. This free wheeling net ecomony gives no advantage to any class, except the convience of not having to drive to the local store to pick up the goods. After all, it creates thousands of cash strapped companies, who have to sell at just above the prices they buy or make their products at, in order to stay at competive pricing. Many thousands of net companies have great difficulties showing a profit at all. Has Amazon yet? I don't know. Then, high shipping prices utterly annihilate the savings made from purchasing the product from the cheapest dealer. What this situation creates is the following: Broke financial backers. Fatter upper class people, since they don't even have to walk up and down the front steps anymore. And uncounted infrastructure jobs. Somebody has to pack the goods, somebody has to ship them, somebody has to keep track of inventory for these companies... and guess what? They're all low level, unskilled jobs, many of which even pay near living wages. Remember the UPS strike and the subsequent raises for how many thousands of low class individuals?
All this comes at the expense of the store across town, mind you, which, if like the average department store, employs a handful of career individuals, a few desperate folks, and a whole lot of kids in school. A good number of the people who don't fit in, and those who are using it as a 'play' job for Friday's date money get fired as the store knuckles down for competition.
Now, add a bunch of taxes to the situation. I think a fairly low yet reasonable figure is, oh, 10%. After all, the American and European governments show little moderation once they start charging taxes. The people's pockets are infinitely deep. Now, suddenly the prices online are just about the same as the prices on the shelves at the store across town. With shipping, that makes those online prices more expensive, and less convient, since it's not anwhere near as fast as the run across town this afternoon. Bang, the internet companies can't compete anymore. They start to fold left and right as the wealthy return to purchasing the cumulatively cheaper items in their hometown, and the internet gets stripped in terms of commerce, as the weaker companies die off between the double blow of less business, and profit stripping taxes. This super culling process would leave a handful of AOL size behemoths, probably net monopolies, and nothing else... Not the best sort of thing for a capitalistic system, neh?
Not every field should be level. After all, water couldn't do anything but stagnate if all the world were perfectly flat.
Historically, the taxes and tariffs on international trade have taken place at two points, entrance and exit. and it is at one of these points that internet tariffs are most likely to occur, simply for enforcement reasons. By tradition, and probably international law, a nation can tariff goods coming in to it, and going out of it. Goods on the way out are the easiest to catch, by simply requiring all internet sellers to register, and pay up a certain percentage of total sales value per year. This means that taxes would be paid to what ever nation the company is formed in, and registered as a business or corporation in. I don't have a lot of knowledge of business law, but I seem to recall that any corporation or company, especially one that operates internationally, must be registered as coming from a certain nation. It would logically follow that that nation to ne the one that benefits from the taxes on that company, but we all know how rare logic is in a bureaucracy. Entrance taxes are also viable, but would be a nightmare to implement, due to value determinations, etc. Any other country has about as much enforceable reason to tax as Urbugooistakistan has to put tariffs on the goods on the plane overflying Gropestia on it's trip from Rome to Tokyo. However, I don't really see how any other scheme can be enforced reasonably, and I'd like to believe that most international gov'ts are at least mildly reluctant to bring out the black helicopters and MIB's for deliquent taxes.
Therefore, it's likely that this new program will sprout the wings and halo of 3d capability relatively soon, especially compared to a totally commercial, closed source deal.
So, don't try to put the nails in the coffin of what might be a healthy program, before it has time to stand on its own. If the base of the program is worthwhile, the rest of the features will come... and I'm also betting that about a third of the biggest complaints are from people with the experience and skill to add what they need to the program. Why not try it? If you're good, you'll end up with a 3dCAD with the ablities and interface you need, rather than some piece of bloated, commerical junk, that you had to buy a few thousand worth of expansions for, just to make it serve your purpose. Don't just let the newcomer die a-birthing.. Or GPL software won't ever become a viable alternative to monopolies, such as M$, or near monopolies, like ACAD.
But, as has been pointed out in other places, there are conditions where Linux/Netscape are an extremely stable pair, and these conditions are replicable. With some four star apps, like Quicken and office(Honestly, a secretary is *not* going to want vim, as nice as it is.), and an intelligent set up at the beginning, a Linux NC could be more useful, faster, stabler, and far more inutitive than any Winblows box. I don't know about you, but I find the Explorer interface to be the clunkiest, and most non-inutitive I have ever ever worked with..
Nanobots and tailored enzymes are best put into use to relatively simple, single purpose jobs, such as endlessly replicating a chemical, say insulin. Machines on this scale can never be multipurpose, and that's what prevents them from doing such things as building cars from blocks of steel and aluminum. They don't know how or where to stop. And a HK Nano could never be programmed to do anything more than destroy all nano's of one, or all types, making them very limited in use.
Furthermore, items on a molecular scale are affected far more by force fields than tools used in modern engineering. They will be extremely vulerable to electromagnetics, especially so if any sort of polar imbalance exists along the molecule composing the nanobot. Anything above this scale begins to become invasive, and can't travel a body without wreaking all kinds of havoc.
Nanites may be the stuff of sci-fi dreams, but there are cold hard realities to consider, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever become the mother of all solutions to humanities problems.
Actually, I think that a tune free from mathematical chaos would sound and feel truly alien. It's so far beyond human experience that we can't really understand it. Discord and harmony in their own measures are major part of tradtional music, as is the tension in the mood of the music. Music is as much a play with the human psyche as it is anything else. A mathematically perfect would would probably worm it's way into you in a way that's totally unlike anything you've ever experienced before.
Anyway, I don't think a non-chaotic sound is better for music, I just think it might sound wierd, and possibly worth hearing, once, just to experience what it's likely to do to the psyche. You'd have to totally abandon current musical theory to create something listenable. After all, music is an art, and math is much more like a science.. or a language, depending on how you look at it.
Beyond that, there is the additional fact that such a carefully calculated sound could have subtle effects well beyond concious human capability, much like flashing a singe image occasionally in a motion picture. This sort of calcuation could lead music into a whole new realm.
Of course, I could just be spouting a load of crap, which is proably a little more likely. :) You be the judge.
Unfortunately, there is more to music than maths, but I'm sure some interesting stuff could come from this.. If nothing else, it could be interesting to see what kind of emotions a mathematically perfect song can evoke in a a human being... I have the feeling that it would be a little spine chilling.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that we shouldn't be looking at emulation of older genres, but perhaps a little more at a whole new field of musical possibilities.
Also, elements of strategy and tactics do exist, though at a slightly different level. I spend alot of my game time in duels, rather than 30 person melees, and they are a refinement of tactics, especially maneuvering. Granted, it's not much of a level of tactics, but that level of gameplay isn't totally ignored.
I did try Unreal, but for some reason, the gameplay in it just left me cold, where as I began to love Q3, as soon as my stiff old mind adapted to the unaccustomed speed of the game.
Perhaps the best comparison I can think of lies in the world of automobiles. Doom was a Pinto. Q2 was an early Mustang, and Q3 is a modern one. On the surface, Q2 and Q3 are almost the same, in weight, horsepower, etc, but when you actually get behind the wheel, there's a world of handling difference, and that handling makes all the difference.
Perhaps more important though, many people will purchase a full copy for these reasons. a: Gratitude. Id has allowed us to be involved in the devlopment and testing of this game, and I for one, have gotten well more than 40 or 50 bucks worth of fun out of just q3test. I'll shell out that amount just out of appreciation of the effort that the Id crew has put into the game. b: Server compatibilty. The same people who will buy the game out of gratitude tend to be the same people who run dedicated servers for other's enjoyment. If you'll remember Q2, the demo was incompatible in a multiplayer with the full version, or at least I never could get it to run. So, I went out and bought a copy of Q2, just so everyone else with the full copy could smear me across the Edge. If that same incompatbility exists here, thousands will purchase the full version of Q3A, just so they can get out to try to shave their neighbor with a rail slug.
In short, Id, by letting the demo out, in near full version, will actually increase their sales, by giving everyone that intoxicating taste of success. Then, everyone rushes out to buy it, so that they can have more fun fragging their friends, who are running that silly full version of the game out of respect for the people who made it.
Therefore, rather than simple pirating, we must use other methods to bring the evil empire to it's knees. Support emulation projects along the line of WINE, and ports of third party commercial software, so that windows loses it it's lock on extremely easy to use, mildy versatile software, that runs on all those Intel chips that someone bought for some reason. As this particular AC pointed out, M$ cannot survive without it's profit. Let's take that profit away from them, but let's do in the way that's not only legal, but has the additional effect of grinding the notion that not only do we not need the shoddy M$ OS, we don't want it either. Pirating sends the message that we do want it, but not on M$'s terms.
Simply put, I think we should stop spitting in Billy boy's eye, in order to punch that same eye.