As a game developer, I see a key reason that female characters are hyper-sexualized that has been missed. It's not really that people want huge breasts (though some people argue for that in design meetings, they are usually ignored); the real issue is that we want the characters to be attractive, and modeling a pretty face is damn hard, but a slim waist and large breasts are easy. If it was easy to make a female (or male) character attractive without exagerating their physical characteristics, many would do that instead, but there are several technical issues preventing that. Poly limits and texture resolution create a large problem here, and are compounded by having to present all this on an NTSC screen, which is 640x480 and blurry as hell. Often a face, regardless of the detail you put in, comes out on the screen as a 64x64 pink blob with dark spots for eyes. Also, what makes a face "pretty" is very subjective, while large breasts are (largely) universal. Sure, the fact that most developers are guys has an impact, but when deadlines are tight and the publisher keeps telling you that the lead isn't pretty enough, the temptation to forgo all the hard work of reworking her face again and just stretch some "torso verts" becomes overwhelming.
Not to sound glib, but if your specs (either from your client, or your art assignment) are relatively clear, you can paint your painting and be more-or-less satisfied that you've met them.
You're describing the typical case, where people want code to serve a specific, identifiable purpose, and they want art that they like. (A criteria much harder to evaluate, as the producer of the work.) That's what creates the distenction. There are people who create art and code in very different environments.
I've got a friend who's a creative director in an ad agency, and he churns out art as if it were code: for a specific purpose. He knows when it is done. Sure, there's things he would often like to improve, but they are not needed to serve that purpose, so they're left out. I'm sure many programmers feel the same way about much of their code; it doesn't do it in quite the way I'd like it to, but it does work, so it's good enough.
On the other hand, I write code for video games, where my "spec" is often something like "make movement feel more natural" or "make aiming easier". Of course, this makes it very difficult for me to know when I'm done. How do you write an automated regression test to see if walking feels natural? (I'll grant that this method does lead to a good deal of bugs and expense.)
I think that there's a good bit of creative skill required for programming, and there's also a good bit of analytic abilities required to be a good artist. ("I just saw this new exhibit of Foo's work and it blew me away!" Now figure out what made such an impact and incorporate or modify it for your own work.) The destinction that you're describing comes simply from the different uses, and is not inherent in the two crafts.
Check out the Terrapin CD Video recorder (ThinkGeek link). It's slightly more than your price point at $280, but it has all of the basic features you mentioned, except DVD writing. Never used one myself, but it seems interesting.
Well, all these shader languages are just a higher-level way of generating the assembly instructions for the shaders. The difference between Cg and RenderMonkey is just like the difference between C, C++, , etc. They're all just an easier way than coding for the metal. So multiple high-level shader languages will hurt us exactly as much as multiple high-level programming languages has.
Just because people are proposing different, competing ways of doing things doesn't make them nefarious. Maybe they're just trying to hit different goals.
The big fuss isn't about broadcast; it's about cable and premium channels.
If you share some random Friends rerun, no big deal. (Though they'd still like to stop you.) However, if you start recording and sharing The Sopranos and Sex in the City, HBO would get pretty upset. Same goes for Pay-Per-View.
If we lived in a world where the MPAA, etc. cared about the consumers, this would be the purpose of the broadcast flag; it would indicate a show that was premium content and could not be shared, but the rest of the shows (regular broadcast stuff) would freely distributable. Additionally, the MPAA sees no difference between scenarios 2 & 3 (just as we don't). Only problem is, they think both should be illegal.
From the sidebar to the space.com article: "Colors highlight parts of the debris where chemical elements are glowing. The dark blue fragments, for example, are richest in oxygen. The red material is rich in sulfur. Green areas were originally recorded as orange-red but recolored to visually separate them."
While not spelling everything out, I do think that indicates that the image was recolored, and why.
One simple change that pvr companies could do to improve their relations with advertisers is to give you the ability to record just a commercial. There are some really funny spots that I or my wife have saved an entire show for, so we could show each other, friends, etc. This dovetails beautifully with Replay's ability to send shows over the internet: allow unlimited forwarding of commercials and advertisers would see a dramatic increase in views. It could become the equivalent of those annoying joke fwds that everyone thinks you'll find so amusing. Another option that pvrs give is the capability for highly targeted advertising. Ignoring (for the moment) the privacy concerns, I'm much more likely to watch an ad for a new TV than for a truck. Stations could set up special channels that just show ads continually at off hours, the pvr decides based on your viewing habits which it thinks you would like, records them, and just superimposes them in the ad space the shows provide.
The point is that advertisers are too scared of the potential dangers to see the potential advantages.
*Some* of Microsoft is in Redmond. Some is also in Bellevue, Seattle, and no doubt many of the other suburbs in the area. Read the article; Microsoft is obviously worried about the legislation.
Yes, we can all agree that throwing "blowfish" into google will give any computer-savy person all the resources he or she needs to have secure encryption. Yes, the shoe bomber was stupid for not employing stronger measures than export-strength crypto, but he's not the only stupid person out there.
There are likely plenty of people who don't bother/know enough to get stronger crypto; they could be people you're counting on, and you can bet the terrorists can crack 40-bit just as fast as we can. Foreign police departments, airlines, companies you do business with, that have access to your trade secrets, all could be exposed. As has been repeatedly pointed out, terrorism is a global problem. Given the assumption that governments have more resources than a terrorist network, it is therefore more likely that they will be able to break stronger encryption than the terrorists will, therefore all resources (domestic or foreign) that could be of use to the terrorists should be protected by crypto as strong as possible. If this results in the terrorists gaining access to strong crypto, well, that's what the NSA is for.
The bottom line is that export restrictions don't *stop* anyone from using strong crypto, but it does put up some significant barriers, and not everyone held back by those barriers will be terrorists.
Here in Seattle, Gameworks had a nice solution to the problem of violent video games: When they brought in Silent Scope (very bloody sniper game), they put it in the bar. Since no minors could go in that area anyway, problem solved. No legal mess, no fuss.
I'm not a lawyer, and am unaware of the legal definition of expression, but whenever the "code is/is not speech" argument comes up, I keep thinking of one question:
Would speech in Esperanto be protected?
The answer is obviously yes, which begs the follow-up question:
Why is C different than Esperanto?
(I choose Experanto since both are created languages.)
Should it matter if the language is usually used to communicate with a device, rather than other people? And published code (like DeCSS) is certainly intended to communicate to other people anyway. The authors could have expressed themselves in a lengthy explanation in english (or another national language), but by using C they were able to express their ideas concisely, clearly, and in a form which breaks traditional language barriers. (All of which are arguably among the main goals of poetry.)
It doesn't seem like we should have to prove that code can be expressive anymore than we should have to prove that Ginsburg's The Howl, or a NYT article, or any other piece of speech is expressive. A language, almost by definition, is a medium for expression.
As to poetic or beautiful composition, you would have to ask a speaker of the language. If you showed me a poem in a language I don't speak I would be unable to determine a poetic component; in the same way, the judges should not expect to be able to recognize the poetry in a piece of code themselves. If they asked almost anyone fluent in C, the speaker could go on for hours about beautiful pieces of code they had seen. We could also point out things that are commonly considered poetic: much like english poetry has a focus on rhyme and meter, we could point to line length, conservation of memory, execution time, etc. (If someone wants to argue that execution time only comes into play when actually running the code, I'd counter that rhyme only exists as the poem is being read aloud; just as, in reading a poem, you note what would rhyme, in reading code you note what would be fast.)
In short, though it might seem different to a non-speaker, C is a language like any other, and there is no reason for making special rules about whether or not it is speech.
To clarify a bit, the Dreamcast *can* function using winCE, but it can also use its proprietary system. Most game developers, in fact, have choosen the latter route, which would not make emulation as easy as you indicate. In fact, the majority (only?) that use the winCE do so because they are PC ports, where the path to X-Box would be easier by just porting directly.
In time, we might even see a console that drops the DVD-ROM drive and goes entirely through a network plug for remote storage. This is exactly what the PS2 is trying to do. See: http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_pa ge_21_3.html and http://cx667314-a.chnd1.az.home.com/1394Informer/9 90914A.htm">Article 2 for info on their online marketing strategy and the broadband modem they plan on using. (Also see article in this month's Wired on PS2's marketing.) They also plan on offering a 50 gig HD for US$100.
Slashdot Mirror
Speeking as a game developer who had to "port" SSX Tricky into a web-based game (in 3 months): Yes. That is exactly how you do it.
As a game developer, I see a key reason that female characters are hyper-sexualized that has been missed. It's not really that people want huge breasts (though some people argue for that in design meetings, they are usually ignored); the real issue is that we want the characters to be attractive, and modeling a pretty face is damn hard, but a slim waist and large breasts are easy. If it was easy to make a female (or male) character attractive without exagerating their physical characteristics, many would do that instead, but there are several technical issues preventing that. Poly limits and texture resolution create a large problem here, and are compounded by having to present all this on an NTSC screen, which is 640x480 and blurry as hell. Often a face, regardless of the detail you put in, comes out on the screen as a 64x64 pink blob with dark spots for eyes. Also, what makes a face "pretty" is very subjective, while large breasts are (largely) universal.
Sure, the fact that most developers are guys has an impact, but when deadlines are tight and the publisher keeps telling you that the lead isn't pretty enough, the temptation to forgo all the hard work of reworking her face again and just stretch some "torso verts" becomes overwhelming.
Umm, wake up (soon)a se/root/ public/tv451619.htm
http://customersupport.tivo.com/tivoknowb
Not to sound glib, but if your specs (either from your client, or your art assignment) are relatively clear, you can paint your painting and be more-or-less satisfied that you've met them.
You're describing the typical case, where people want code to serve a specific, identifiable purpose, and they want art that they like. (A criteria much harder to evaluate, as the producer of the work.) That's what creates the distenction. There are people who create art and code in very different environments.
I've got a friend who's a creative director in an ad agency, and he churns out art as if it were code: for a specific purpose. He knows when it is done. Sure, there's things he would often like to improve, but they are not needed to serve that purpose, so they're left out. I'm sure many programmers feel the same way about much of their code; it doesn't do it in quite the way I'd like it to, but it does work, so it's good enough.
On the other hand, I write code for video games, where my "spec" is often something like "make movement feel more natural" or "make aiming easier". Of course, this makes it very difficult for me to know when I'm done. How do you write an automated regression test to see if walking feels natural? (I'll grant that this method does lead to a good deal of bugs and expense.)
I think that there's a good bit of creative skill required for programming, and there's also a good bit of analytic abilities required to be a good artist. ("I just saw this new exhibit of Foo's work and it blew me away!" Now figure out what made such an impact and incorporate or modify it for your own work.) The destinction that you're describing comes simply from the different uses, and is not inherent in the two crafts.
Check out the Terrapin CD Video recorder (ThinkGeek link). It's slightly more than your price point at $280, but it has all of the basic features you mentioned, except DVD writing. Never used one myself, but it seems interesting.
Well, all these shader languages are just a higher-level way of generating the assembly instructions for the shaders. The difference between Cg and RenderMonkey is just like the difference between C, C++, , etc. They're all just an easier way than coding for the metal. So multiple high-level shader languages will hurt us exactly as much as multiple high-level programming languages has.
Just because people are proposing different, competing ways of doing things doesn't make them nefarious. Maybe they're just trying to hit different goals.
The big fuss isn't about broadcast; it's about cable and premium channels.
If you share some random Friends rerun, no big deal. (Though they'd still like to stop you.) However, if you start recording and sharing The Sopranos and Sex in the City, HBO would get pretty upset. Same goes for Pay-Per-View.
If we lived in a world where the MPAA, etc. cared about the consumers, this would be the purpose of the broadcast flag; it would indicate a show that was premium content and could not be shared, but the rest of the shows (regular broadcast stuff) would freely distributable.
Additionally, the MPAA sees no difference between scenarios 2 & 3 (just as we don't). Only problem is, they think both should be illegal.
From the sidebar to the space.com article:
"Colors highlight parts of the debris where chemical elements are glowing. The dark blue fragments, for example, are richest in oxygen. The red material is rich in sulfur. Green areas were originally recorded as orange-red but recolored to visually separate them."
While not spelling everything out, I do think that indicates that the image was recolored, and why.
One simple change that pvr companies could do to improve their relations with advertisers is to give you the ability to record just a commercial.
There are some really funny spots that I or my wife have saved an entire show for, so we could show each other, friends, etc. This dovetails beautifully with Replay's ability to send shows over the internet: allow unlimited forwarding of commercials and advertisers would see a dramatic increase in views. It could become the equivalent of those annoying joke fwds that everyone thinks you'll find so amusing.
Another option that pvrs give is the capability for highly targeted advertising. Ignoring (for the moment) the privacy concerns, I'm much more likely to watch an ad for a new TV than for a truck. Stations could set up special channels that just show ads continually at off hours, the pvr decides based on your viewing habits which it thinks you would like, records them, and just superimposes them in the ad space the shows provide.
The point is that advertisers are too scared of the potential dangers to see the potential advantages.
From the doc:
Proposed requirements for advancing audio capabilities include:
Removal of the analog signal path for CD audio.
*Some* of Microsoft is in Redmond. Some is also in Bellevue, Seattle, and no doubt many of the other suburbs in the area. Read the article; Microsoft is obviously worried about the legislation.
TimeWarner is a big DRM player, they own one of the most popular MP3 players (winamp), so it's only natural to assume that Winamp is full of DRM.
Only it isn't. And there don't seem to be any plans to cripple it. So while I understand the worry, it's not supported by the evidence.
Yes, we can all agree that throwing "blowfish" into google will give any computer-savy person all the resources he or she needs to have secure encryption. Yes, the shoe bomber was stupid for not employing stronger measures than export-strength crypto, but he's not the only stupid person out there.
There are likely plenty of people who don't bother/know enough to get stronger crypto; they could be people you're counting on, and you can bet the terrorists can crack 40-bit just as fast as we can. Foreign police departments, airlines, companies you do business with, that have access to your trade secrets, all could be exposed. As has been repeatedly pointed out, terrorism is a global problem. Given the assumption that governments have more resources than a terrorist network, it is therefore more likely that they will be able to break stronger encryption than the terrorists will, therefore all resources (domestic or foreign) that could be of use to the terrorists should be protected by crypto as strong as possible. If this results in the terrorists gaining access to strong crypto, well, that's what the NSA is for.
The bottom line is that export restrictions don't *stop* anyone from using strong crypto, but it does put up some significant barriers, and not everyone held back by those barriers will be terrorists.
Here in Seattle, Gameworks had a nice solution to the problem of violent video games:
When they brought in Silent Scope (very bloody sniper game), they put it in the bar. Since no minors could go in that area anyway, problem solved.
No legal mess, no fuss.
I'm not a lawyer, and am unaware of the legal definition of expression, but whenever the "code is/is not speech" argument comes up, I keep thinking of one question: Would speech in Esperanto be protected? The answer is obviously yes, which begs the follow-up question: Why is C different than Esperanto? (I choose Experanto since both are created languages.) Should it matter if the language is usually used to communicate with a device, rather than other people? And published code (like DeCSS) is certainly intended to communicate to other people anyway. The authors could have expressed themselves in a lengthy explanation in english (or another national language), but by using C they were able to express their ideas concisely, clearly, and in a form which breaks traditional language barriers. (All of which are arguably among the main goals of poetry.) It doesn't seem like we should have to prove that code can be expressive anymore than we should have to prove that Ginsburg's The Howl, or a NYT article, or any other piece of speech is expressive. A language, almost by definition, is a medium for expression. As to poetic or beautiful composition, you would have to ask a speaker of the language. If you showed me a poem in a language I don't speak I would be unable to determine a poetic component; in the same way, the judges should not expect to be able to recognize the poetry in a piece of code themselves. If they asked almost anyone fluent in C, the speaker could go on for hours about beautiful pieces of code they had seen. We could also point out things that are commonly considered poetic: much like english poetry has a focus on rhyme and meter, we could point to line length, conservation of memory, execution time, etc. (If someone wants to argue that execution time only comes into play when actually running the code, I'd counter that rhyme only exists as the poem is being read aloud; just as, in reading a poem, you note what would rhyme, in reading code you note what would be fast.) In short, though it might seem different to a non-speaker, C is a language like any other, and there is no reason for making special rules about whether or not it is speech.
To clarify a bit, the Dreamcast *can* function using winCE, but it can also use its proprietary system. Most game developers, in fact, have choosen the latter route, which would not make emulation as easy as you indicate. In fact, the majority (only?) that use the winCE do so because they are PC ports, where the path to X-Box would be easier by just porting directly.
In time, we might even see a console that drops the DVD-ROM drive and goes entirely through a network plug for remote storage. This is exactly what the PS2 is trying to do. See: http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_pa ge_21_3.html and http://cx667314-a.chnd1.az.home.com/1394Informer/9 90914A.htm">Article 2 for info on their online marketing strategy and the broadband modem they plan on using. (Also see article in this month's Wired on PS2's marketing.) They also plan on offering a 50 gig HD for US$100.