"Then, of course, there is faith in science itself."
Science is a method, it requires no faith. In fact it is a method through which provides it's own falsifiable test of itself.
I think you're reading that wrong. The issue is people having faith in science. Not "in science" as in a property of science, but "faith in" as in something they target to reinforce their untestable beliefs.
Right now with the album sale model (and even the iTunes per-song sale model), the more popular a group is, the more money it brings in and the band and label each get a cut. Under this model, the labels get pretty much a flat fee and decide which groups to budget it to. There is absolutely zero incentive for a band who wants to make it big to buy into this load of garbage.
I have to say that I'm not a big fan of a refrigeration device to be used in the dessert that uses water instead of electricity.
True. It seems that in that living situation, sugar extraction might yield the most abundant resource, and consuming the available water might leave the dessert with an unsavory hard texture.
The point I'm making, which your association to GTA3 might reinforce, is that the "Mature" label is a de facto indicator of "This game is mindless, degenerate offensiveness. So no kids allowed." While this is attractive to many game buyers, it does not fit the direction that gamers nor game industry say (or at least give lip service to) they want to go with artistic expression in gaming taken seriously. When games tackle serious well-made content and get the "M" branding, they're automatically associated with being degenerate and virtueless to parents and decisionmakers.
You can't get more adolescent than just a bunch of swearing, nudity, and gore. There's nothing mature or adult about it. While things deemed culturally vulgar can add more bite and reality to good entertainment, they do not make it any more mature or adult-oriented, and the overemphasis of such qualities is solely targeted at adolescence. Dealing with the implications of such things and other complex decisions, catch-22 moral conflicts, clashes of norms, power struggles, destruction that comes with change, and other such things are far more in the realm of those things that would pique the interest and imagination of mature-minded adults in all forms of entertainment.
This is a multifaceted issue. What you do not want to expose to pre-adolescent children, and those things that adult-minded people will understand and enrich their experience, are independent factors. Labeling both as "adult" or "mature" is an oversimplification that really hinders the acceptance of mature-minded games, lumping them in with the well-known tide of those that solely ride on adolescent shock value.
What's wrong with any manual tuning system is that it's impractical to use during a live performance. Off-stage, yeah, it'd just be a luxury convenience to have an automatic tuner.
How much have you actually played MMOs with them? Since my accusation is "They're in denial," you should be basing your judgment on your own observations of how they play and interact, rather than their own accounts of their behavior.
I have played MMOs only in a group setting. I was on for almost a year in Ultima Online back in the day, and played some City of Heroes, Everquest, and a few smaller ones. All of my playing was with other groups of people that I already knew, as they got me into playing/trying them. These people play MMOs for fun, not profit, and most of the groups are really good at breaking down the game mechanics of pretty much anything they see and have incredibly organized team play. I still talk to a number of these people, and they're still talking about their fun in discovering new games and still playing older ones.
I think your position goes deeper than just your accusations, as you've gone crusading all over the replies here. It really looks like you're trying to project yourself on everyone else, because you feel uncomfortable being off the common path. Yeah you're into cutesy stuff, yeah you like representing yourself through your character, and you come across as very defensive and insecure about it, claiming that absolutely everybody shares in your issues but deny it. Suuure. Face it, your handling of your own identity with your game persona is not the common case. Embrace it and quit being defensive, or change and move on, I don't care either way. Just stop complaining and trying to be authoritative using only yourself as your sample set, grasping for a nonexistent conclusion that would make you non-weird.
Avatars are about who you want to pretend to be. A scrawny geek will pick the butch male because he wants to pretend to be, and a guy will pick a female character because that is who he wants to pretend to be. But once the second guy starts dropping the "I just like looking at my avatar" excuse, it's less about pretending in the game and more about pretending in real life; the scrawny geek with the ripped barbarian avatar at least knows he's pretending.
I wholly disagree with this. Especially once you're familiar with any game's mechanics, it's not about "pretending to be" someone or "representing a character". The game devolves into a set of numbers, probabilities, and time to milestones, with fairly irrelevant decoration thrown around. A "Lumbering Orc" turns into "300 HP, gets me 45 XP, good chance to drop Orc Armor, spawn rate is pretty good", which might as well just be "Red Shiny Ball with 300 HP, etc". Other players turn from "Hot elf from far away troubled lands" to "Mid-level archer, make sure to attack during X, etc". Why not decorate your game with something eye-pleasing while grinding the numbers?
Now, I'm not familiar with TFA's specific game, but stat-grind, level up, get to the new quest/area/raid/drop type of games which are the most popular ATM are what I'm talking about; more social-oriented MMOs would have more actual character roleplay and might touch upon the issues you brought up, but I would not consider it the common case.
I'm not a MMO player (tried some in the past), but this is the style of everybody I know who plays or has played them (most of them being non-technical people), as well as my play style when playing offline CRPGs: Figure out how the game works, focus in on the best return on time/effort/resources so you can advance to further content. All else is decoration and ambiance, which are separate enjoyment factors and a level of disconnection from the gameplay.
I don't care if Vista will run "extremely well", it will take up far more resources than any other option, and I'm running very CPU and memory intensive applications. I'm getting a powerful machine to run my applications, not just to run a lumbering OS.
I have a bunch of peripherals and don't want to risk driver problems.
I do not want to be encumbered with DRM and other "trusted computing" issues with basic system configuration, troubleshooting, and software development, nor in my media recording, archives, and playback.
I run a lot of not-very-mainstream software that doesn't explicitly support Vista yet, but does support Win32 and Linux.
In the little that I've played around with doing simple things on Vista on store display boxes, it has either crashed or thrown security exceptions at me. I think it reflects a lot of the negative responses I've seen here from Vista users here and elsewhere as consistent usability, stability, and access problems.
Why not just change the UI back to what made Windows "Windows", make some resource requirement adjustments, work with major companies on driver support for a a year, and release it like an entirely new OS.
You're missing the most critical part: Get rid of the broken security, DRM, and Trusted Computing misfeatures.
I need to buy a new system (current motherboard got damaged, might as well upgrade), and I've been weighing my options. Vista is simply not an option at all. XP Pro 64-bit is orphaned, with virtually nonexistent driver support. XP is 32-bit, and I already was running Win2k with 4GB of RAM (well, as much as it will use of that) and need to grow.
After all these years of Windows desktop and Linux here & there on servers and VMs, I'm going to finally make the jump the Linux desktop, VMWare'ing Windows where I need it. I don't play PC games anymore (besides minesweeper), I'm going to get a quad CPU with 8GB of RAM, and Microsoft simply isn't offering anything viable for that configuration.
Of course it is a rant. It's also very egotistical. What a person is "comfortable with" depends solely on their prior interactions with similar systems. If somebody has no prior interaction with similar systems, they will draw on parallels from dissimilar systems or just plain learn something new. There is no objective way to measure how comfortable, intuitive, or easy-to-use something is. The closest thing we have is to drop something in the hands of testers or customers and see how they like it.
"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
Forget your CPU. More importantly, they're using your bandwidth which is a much more limited resource. But my real impetus is the danger of exposing yourself to arbitrary code & data that some virtually anonymous Joe Schmoe somewhere in the world paid a fraction of a penny to download & run on your machine.
Absolutely, I fully agree with you. I am an AdBlock user and if sites that are bent on pushing ads into everybody's face (not just those who would be actually willing to click) start blocking me, I will be more than happy to go elsewhere. These are exactly the same capitalistic marketing forces; it would drive positive change to the internet if both clients blocked selected servers, and servers blocked selected clients.
However, this will only occur if AMD's newest quad-core is able to outperform the Intel alternatives clock for clock by a decent margin.
I really dislike this whole "tuner" mentality from most reviewers. This is a server chip, so not just clock for clock, but also dollar for dollar, and watt for watt will be big issues. Plus, Intel still generally releases larger caches, so that weighs in.
Besides that, a Robotech live-action with today's 3D animation will absolutely rock!
Have you seen the prequel Macross Zero? They used modern 3D animation for all the mechs and ships and it was absolutely beautiful. The story was better than the 'meh' of Macross Plus et al, and definitely something a fan should see.
Umm, no offense, but if your brain has to actively adapt to the language syntax, I wouldn't call it easy-to-understand.:) Further, while your mind may be able to conceptualize the program more easily as time goes by, you still need an editor to help match braces, particularly if you're trying to read code you haven't written.
Regardless of what side is argued, this is 100% linked to prior experience with languages. You had to "actively adapt" to your first programming language no matter what it was. And if your background is VB and HTML, both Lisp and Prolog-derived matching styles need mental adaptation, so it's no indicator of how "easy-to-understand" a language is.
Re:Full-time Erlang programmer gives his view :]
on
Programming Erlang
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· Score: 1
Native threads are a significant limitation, generally requiring manually tuned threadpooling, shared work queues and synchronization states, and other garbage in other languages to keep them running. Erlang is meant to run thousands to hundreds of thousands of processes in parallel in a single VM, with super fast process creation, destruction, and switching. An implementation using native threads for Erlang processes would choke and thrash so horribly it would be unusable. The VM runs enough native threads to match the SMP core count as it drives its Erlang processes, so you get the full parallelism gains of your hardware.
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I think you're reading that wrong. The issue is people having faith in science. Not "in science" as in a property of science, but "faith in" as in something they target to reinforce their untestable beliefs.
Maybe you missed the part in TFA (and TFS) where it's designed to go tumbling down via parachute, roll cages, and crush pads?
Right now with the album sale model (and even the iTunes per-song sale model), the more popular a group is, the more money it brings in and the band and label each get a cut. Under this model, the labels get pretty much a flat fee and decide which groups to budget it to. There is absolutely zero incentive for a band who wants to make it big to buy into this load of garbage.
True. It seems that in that living situation, sugar extraction might yield the most abundant resource, and consuming the available water might leave the dessert with an unsavory hard texture.
The point I'm making, which your association to GTA3 might reinforce, is that the "Mature" label is a de facto indicator of "This game is mindless, degenerate offensiveness. So no kids allowed." While this is attractive to many game buyers, it does not fit the direction that gamers nor game industry say (or at least give lip service to) they want to go with artistic expression in gaming taken seriously. When games tackle serious well-made content and get the "M" branding, they're automatically associated with being degenerate and virtueless to parents and decisionmakers.
I agree that we should have our sights on Mars as it can theoretically be more "naturally" sustainable, but the moon is an important staging ground.
You can't get more adolescent than just a bunch of swearing, nudity, and gore. There's nothing mature or adult about it. While things deemed culturally vulgar can add more bite and reality to good entertainment, they do not make it any more mature or adult-oriented, and the overemphasis of such qualities is solely targeted at adolescence. Dealing with the implications of such things and other complex decisions, catch-22 moral conflicts, clashes of norms, power struggles, destruction that comes with change, and other such things are far more in the realm of those things that would pique the interest and imagination of mature-minded adults in all forms of entertainment.
This is a multifaceted issue. What you do not want to expose to pre-adolescent children, and those things that adult-minded people will understand and enrich their experience, are independent factors. Labeling both as "adult" or "mature" is an oversimplification that really hinders the acceptance of mature-minded games, lumping them in with the well-known tide of those that solely ride on adolescent shock value.
I see a flaw in your plans: Patents don't actually bring in money.
What's wrong with any manual tuning system is that it's impractical to use during a live performance. Off-stage, yeah, it'd just be a luxury convenience to have an automatic tuner.
I have played MMOs only in a group setting. I was on for almost a year in Ultima Online back in the day, and played some City of Heroes, Everquest, and a few smaller ones. All of my playing was with other groups of people that I already knew, as they got me into playing/trying them. These people play MMOs for fun, not profit, and most of the groups are really good at breaking down the game mechanics of pretty much anything they see and have incredibly organized team play. I still talk to a number of these people, and they're still talking about their fun in discovering new games and still playing older ones.
I think your position goes deeper than just your accusations, as you've gone crusading all over the replies here. It really looks like you're trying to project yourself on everyone else, because you feel uncomfortable being off the common path. Yeah you're into cutesy stuff, yeah you like representing yourself through your character, and you come across as very defensive and insecure about it, claiming that absolutely everybody shares in your issues but deny it. Suuure. Face it, your handling of your own identity with your game persona is not the common case. Embrace it and quit being defensive, or change and move on, I don't care either way. Just stop complaining and trying to be authoritative using only yourself as your sample set, grasping for a nonexistent conclusion that would make you non-weird.
I wholly disagree with this. Especially once you're familiar with any game's mechanics, it's not about "pretending to be" someone or "representing a character". The game devolves into a set of numbers, probabilities, and time to milestones, with fairly irrelevant decoration thrown around. A "Lumbering Orc" turns into "300 HP, gets me 45 XP, good chance to drop Orc Armor, spawn rate is pretty good", which might as well just be "Red Shiny Ball with 300 HP, etc". Other players turn from "Hot elf from far away troubled lands" to "Mid-level archer, make sure to attack during X, etc". Why not decorate your game with something eye-pleasing while grinding the numbers?
Now, I'm not familiar with TFA's specific game, but stat-grind, level up, get to the new quest/area/raid/drop type of games which are the most popular ATM are what I'm talking about; more social-oriented MMOs would have more actual character roleplay and might touch upon the issues you brought up, but I would not consider it the common case.
I'm not a MMO player (tried some in the past), but this is the style of everybody I know who plays or has played them (most of them being non-technical people), as well as my play style when playing offline CRPGs: Figure out how the game works, focus in on the best return on time/effort/resources so you can advance to further content. All else is decoration and ambiance, which are separate enjoyment factors and a level of disconnection from the gameplay.
"The love of money is a root of many evils."
They just need to amp up their public image a bit, and all will be fine.
You're missing the most critical part: Get rid of the broken security, DRM, and Trusted Computing misfeatures.
I need to buy a new system (current motherboard got damaged, might as well upgrade), and I've been weighing my options. Vista is simply not an option at all. XP Pro 64-bit is orphaned, with virtually nonexistent driver support. XP is 32-bit, and I already was running Win2k with 4GB of RAM (well, as much as it will use of that) and need to grow.
After all these years of Windows desktop and Linux here & there on servers and VMs, I'm going to finally make the jump the Linux desktop, VMWare'ing Windows where I need it. I don't play PC games anymore (besides minesweeper), I'm going to get a quad CPU with 8GB of RAM, and Microsoft simply isn't offering anything viable for that configuration.
Of course it is a rant. It's also very egotistical. What a person is "comfortable with" depends solely on their prior interactions with similar systems. If somebody has no prior interaction with similar systems, they will draw on parallels from dissimilar systems or just plain learn something new. There is no objective way to measure how comfortable, intuitive, or easy-to-use something is. The closest thing we have is to drop something in the hands of testers or customers and see how they like it.
"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
Time to build a drill-train out of unobtainium and fix it with nukes!
Forget your CPU. More importantly, they're using your bandwidth which is a much more limited resource. But my real impetus is the danger of exposing yourself to arbitrary code & data that some virtually anonymous Joe Schmoe somewhere in the world paid a fraction of a penny to download & run on your machine.
Absolutely, I fully agree with you. I am an AdBlock user and if sites that are bent on pushing ads into everybody's face (not just those who would be actually willing to click) start blocking me, I will be more than happy to go elsewhere. These are exactly the same capitalistic marketing forces; it would drive positive change to the internet if both clients blocked selected servers, and servers blocked selected clients.
I really dislike this whole "tuner" mentality from most reviewers. This is a server chip, so not just clock for clock, but also dollar for dollar, and watt for watt will be big issues. Plus, Intel still generally releases larger caches, so that weighs in.
Have you seen the prequel Macross Zero? They used modern 3D animation for all the mechs and ships and it was absolutely beautiful. The story was better than the 'meh' of Macross Plus et al, and definitely something a fan should see.
Regardless of what side is argued, this is 100% linked to prior experience with languages. You had to "actively adapt" to your first programming language no matter what it was. And if your background is VB and HTML, both Lisp and Prolog-derived matching styles need mental adaptation, so it's no indicator of how "easy-to-understand" a language is.
Native threads are a significant limitation, generally requiring manually tuned threadpooling, shared work queues and synchronization states, and other garbage in other languages to keep them running. Erlang is meant to run thousands to hundreds of thousands of processes in parallel in a single VM, with super fast process creation, destruction, and switching. An implementation using native threads for Erlang processes would choke and thrash so horribly it would be unusable. The VM runs enough native threads to match the SMP core count as it drives its Erlang processes, so you get the full parallelism gains of your hardware.
But hey, robots are still freaking cool and can pave the way for remotely constructing habitats.