I just wonder WTF would buy a 2m tall 2 legged monstrosity, when 6 short legs would be much simpler to control and balance. This thing is rediculously impractical.
Whenever a new design for a 2-legged robot shows up, people immediately complain about how impractical bipedalism is and that the problem can easily be solved with more legs. But if that were the case, if there were no advantage to bipedalism, then bipedal organisms would not have shown up at all, let alone numerous times in separate groups of animals through history.
Once the balance problem has been solved, bipedal robots will be as fast and agile as bipedal humans, dinosaurs (avian and non-), etc. And then Will Smith will have to save us all from them.
My Intel iMac runs HL2 well with medium graphics settings, but it can't handle HD lighting. So . . . maybe BioShock might run . . . maybe? I swore I'd never touch an XBox and I cry a little every time I boot into Windows, but I may be willing to make some small sacrifice.
I think they mean that be eliminating features that everyone does, it forces you to fill that void with something new or different. Take Prey for example. Rather than having the player go into stealth or limited invisibility, they created "spirit walking". This had some novel applications in puzzles where you could essentially be in two places at the same time. Or, how about the upcoming Portal: the FPS with no guns?
The article mentions use of the Quake 3 graphics engine. Are there any games currently out that use this system? They might help estimate the sytem reqs for BioShock.
By the way, people keep comparing this game to System Shock. I don't know much about that, but BioShock does remind me of Deus Ex. Different background themes certainly, but Deus Ex gameplay was driven by character customization choices and those plasmids sound similar.
Yeah, that was a great moment. They were about 5 seconds away from turning the friendly chat into an iPhone demo. Somewhere, deep down inside, you know Gates wanted to see it too.
I see, I see. They were asking Jobs about the iPhone and isn't it basically a small computer. He said there were things in development that they couldn't talk about. And, just like pleading the 5th is basically saying your guilty, he basically told us all that Apple is working on more functional successors to the iPhone. And, that may hurt iPhone sales before the sales start. Leaks coming from the top of the ship instead of the bottom. Cute.
Well, I for one can't wait for those hypothetical super-portable Macs to come out!
I watched the highlight video and, after revelaing that he was in possession of an iPhone, Jobs says something about an old joke at Apple: ". . . isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top." What does that mean?
Well, if I want a "game" that's intended to be a surrogate for social interaction, then I'd want emotionally responsive AI. Or an MMO.
The AI you put into a video game or a vaccum cleaner should not be the same as the AI you put into something that's going to assist the sick or elderly.
. . . do we want in a video game? Do we want game AI that prevents NPC's from running straight into a head shot or AI that causes us to pause out of guilt before making that head shot? Game AI usually refers to the ability of a game to employ varied strategy, adapt to player strategy, and generally be unpredictable without cheating.
What I mean is, what if the book isn't in pdf, ebook, or some other digital format? I suspect that if its not on Oprah's Book Club list or written by Clancy or that Peterson guy, its going to be hard to find the book in digital format.
People forget that one of the cornerstones of science is the sharing of information. Its those last and often forgotten steps in the scientific method: publish and peer review.
I can see electronic textbooks and reference books becoming the standard, but as said elsewhere, part of the literary experience is the physical book. Staring at screens, especially tiny cell phone and PDA screens is a strain on the eyes.
But, most importantly, what if I want to read a book that is not mainstream enough to warrant the distribution of an ebook? Like old books - and by old I mean anything published before 1990. Or books that haven't made it to the NYT bestsellers list.
Books are just too simple, cheap, and portable to be replaced easily.
But, if the "epic feed" can be traded for gold via the AH or individual transactions, then people will simply advertise via the trade channels. Have you ever gotten a whisper telling you to go bid on a stack of arcanite bars? By internalizing the sale of gold, Blizzard could squeeze out the spammers, gold farmers, and other undesireables and still provide the shortcut that some people are looking for. If a server's economy starts to get a little screwy, Blizzard can buy up excess "epic feed" if prices get too low or undercut sellers who are driving up the prices. I wonder if Blizz wasn't experimenting with this when they had us turning in trade goods to open up AQ.
Blizzard is employing real world solutions like litigation to prevent the real world economy from interfering with their virtual world. It would be cheaper and more effective if they employed some virtual world tactics.
I play WoW for over a year until I no longer had the time and money to committ to the game. (I'm still not quite over the withdrawal symptoms.) I've recently been playing around with Puzzle Pirates as an interesting time-waster and they've come up with a really interesting solution to the problem of buying game currency.
The problem with WoW is that you have people with time and skill, but not a lot of money. They hate people who buy gold because, to them, they're cheating. Then, you have people with money but not a lot of time and/or skill. They're willing to spend $50 on gold that might have taken days or weeks to collect in-game. Blizzard wants to keep the former happy AND they want to get as much money from the latter as possible.
Puzzle Pirates has what they call "doubloon servers" that utilize two types of currency. In-game "pieces of eight"(PoE) that you get from just playing the game, like gold in WoW. Doubloons are a special currency that you use to buy access to more advanced parts of the game, better clothing, equipment, etc. You can buy doubloons from Three Rings (game dev) directly for about $.20 to $.25 a piece depending on volume. Or, you can trade PoE's for doubloons and vice-versa in the game with players.
If Blizzard implemented something like this in WoW, it would essentially legalize buying gold, but it would eliminate spamming and other account abuses. Say, for example, you have an epic mount. Blizzard implements "Epic Feed" that can be purchased for $.20 a day by anyone. The people who have money to burn can buy extra feed and sell it at the AH. People who balk at the idea of spending extra money on the game can buy feed at the AH. The people who can afford neither probably don't have an epic mount.
This goes for the NYC area too. I'm in north Jersey, about 30mins outside of the city. If a station isn't outright being used, the signal from a neighboring station leaks into it. 92.3 can be heard on 92.1 and 92.5, for example.
As a last-ditch attempt, I found a website that shows you how to pry open a Griffin iTrip and pull the antenna (a 2 inch copper wire) outside the casing in hopes of boosting the signal output. By the time I was done with it, the iTrip looked about as good as it worked.
Sci-Fi channel basically perfected the act of giving fans the finger, but CBS seems to have done a pretty good job too. You can't expect a network to keep a show with low ratings (Jericho) or one that isn't popular with its 14-yr old, WWE-watching, illiterate target audience (Farscape) on the air. But they can at least have the decency to give the people who were watching some closure.
In a perfect world, I'd be happy to pay a cent or two for sending email if it meant the death of spam, UCE, or chain-letters!
Unfortunately, it won't. Postage doesn't keep credit card companies, sweepstakes, and other junk mailers from sending you stuff. In fact, the USPS makes it easier/cheaper for them with the bulk mail rate. If the govt tries to enact a digital stamp, you can be sure there'll be a big discount for corporate e-mailers.
I bet they could sell the rotary dialing with the analogue stick as a retro-style feature.
But seriously, if you use this as your main phone you're going to have to download contacts from a computer (and by computer I mean a PC with clunky proprietary software) onto the phone. You won't be able to update or add to your contacts very easily. This is exactly why I don't use the calendar/datebook function on my iPod: its read-only.
2) How do you dial a PSP? No touch screen, no keypad. Are you supposed to move a cursor around on an on-screen keyboard? Kind of like naming your main character in old rpg's.
Seconded! I'm an adjunct professor, but K-12 and college teaching pay is similar. Both salaries/wages factor in the work you're doing outside the classroom. Remember how they used to tell you that you should study for 1-2 hours for every hour of class you have? Well, teachers/professors end up doing the same thing.
While we're on the subject of teaching, math and science teachers are in demand. Sure, the starting salary may be a bit low but if you're good at what you do and you accumulate some grad credits while you're teaching (many schools/school systems will pay your tuition) you'll move up on the pay scale.
My dad was on the Board of Ed while I was in high school (in NJ) so I have some idea of what the pay scales look like. A BA might start at maybe 30k, but a BA plus 15 masters credits will start higher and a full MA will start higher than that. There were teachers at my school at the top of the pay scale making about 100k a year. If you want more than that, why did you go into math/science in the first place?
I'm all for protecting children and I may quite literally be playing devil's advocate here, but there are some problems with this kind of disclosure.
1) What if MySpace decides to hand over the personal information of people who they suspect of drug abuse, underage drinking, etc. to the government and justice system? The road to fascism is paved with good intentions.
2) If we want to restrict where sex offenders live, what kinds of jobs they can have, who they can talk to, and to what extent they may access the internet; if we don't want to bother reforming them (and yes I know there's evidence that they simply can't be reformed), then why don't we just leave them in jail? It'd be a lot safer for everyone.
Actually, I think its the opposite problem. A person with a short attention span is more likely to absorb or at least tolerate rapid changes in background, setting, context. This might actually be a good way to teach children with attention problems to focus.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever a new design for a 2-legged robot shows up, people immediately complain about how impractical bipedalism is and that the problem can easily be solved with more legs. But if that were the case, if there were no advantage to bipedalism, then bipedal organisms would not have shown up at all, let alone numerous times in separate groups of animals through history.
Once the balance problem has been solved, bipedal robots will be as fast and agile as bipedal humans, dinosaurs (avian and non-), etc. And then Will Smith will have to save us all from them.
Huzah for modest hardware!
My Intel iMac runs HL2 well with medium graphics settings, but it can't handle HD lighting. So . . . maybe BioShock might run . . . maybe? I swore I'd never touch an XBox and I cry a little every time I boot into Windows, but I may be willing to make some small sacrifice.
I think they mean that be eliminating features that everyone does, it forces you to fill that void with something new or different. Take Prey for example. Rather than having the player go into stealth or limited invisibility, they created "spirit walking". This had some novel applications in puzzles where you could essentially be in two places at the same time. Or, how about the upcoming Portal: the FPS with no guns?
. . . will it run on my computer!?!
The article mentions use of the Quake 3 graphics engine. Are there any games currently out that use this system? They might help estimate the sytem reqs for BioShock.
By the way, people keep comparing this game to System Shock. I don't know much about that, but BioShock does remind me of Deus Ex. Different background themes certainly, but Deus Ex gameplay was driven by character customization choices and those plasmids sound similar.
My middle finger is an inch longer than my index finger. What does that mean?
Yeah, that was a great moment. They were about 5 seconds away from turning the friendly chat into an iPhone demo. Somewhere, deep down inside, you know Gates wanted to see it too.
I see, I see. They were asking Jobs about the iPhone and isn't it basically a small computer. He said there were things in development that they couldn't talk about. And, just like pleading the 5th is basically saying your guilty, he basically told us all that Apple is working on more functional successors to the iPhone. And, that may hurt iPhone sales before the sales start. Leaks coming from the top of the ship instead of the bottom. Cute.
Well, I for one can't wait for those hypothetical super-portable Macs to come out!
I watched the highlight video and, after revelaing that he was in possession of an iPhone, Jobs says something about an old joke at Apple: ". . . isn't it funny, a ship that leaks from the top." What does that mean?
Well, if I want a "game" that's intended to be a surrogate for social interaction, then I'd want emotionally responsive AI. Or an MMO.
The AI you put into a video game or a vaccum cleaner should not be the same as the AI you put into something that's going to assist the sick or elderly.
. . . do we want in a video game? Do we want game AI that prevents NPC's from running straight into a head shot or AI that causes us to pause out of guilt before making that head shot? Game AI usually refers to the ability of a game to employ varied strategy, adapt to player strategy, and generally be unpredictable without cheating.
What I mean is, what if the book isn't in pdf, ebook, or some other digital format? I suspect that if its not on Oprah's Book Club list or written by Clancy or that Peterson guy, its going to be hard to find the book in digital format.
People forget that one of the cornerstones of science is the sharing of information. Its those last and often forgotten steps in the scientific method: publish and peer review.
I can see electronic textbooks and reference books becoming the standard, but as said elsewhere, part of the literary experience is the physical book. Staring at screens, especially tiny cell phone and PDA screens is a strain on the eyes.
But, most importantly, what if I want to read a book that is not mainstream enough to warrant the distribution of an ebook? Like old books - and by old I mean anything published before 1990. Or books that haven't made it to the NYT bestsellers list.
Books are just too simple, cheap, and portable to be replaced easily.
Now we know what an MMO run by the Republican party would look like.
Sorry, that's not constructive, I know.
But, if the "epic feed" can be traded for gold via the AH or individual transactions, then people will simply advertise via the trade channels. Have you ever gotten a whisper telling you to go bid on a stack of arcanite bars? By internalizing the sale of gold, Blizzard could squeeze out the spammers, gold farmers, and other undesireables and still provide the shortcut that some people are looking for. If a server's economy starts to get a little screwy, Blizzard can buy up excess "epic feed" if prices get too low or undercut sellers who are driving up the prices. I wonder if Blizz wasn't experimenting with this when they had us turning in trade goods to open up AQ.
Blizzard is employing real world solutions like litigation to prevent the real world economy from interfering with their virtual world. It would be cheaper and more effective if they employed some virtual world tactics.
I play WoW for over a year until I no longer had the time and money to committ to the game. (I'm still not quite over the withdrawal symptoms.) I've recently been playing around with Puzzle Pirates as an interesting time-waster and they've come up with a really interesting solution to the problem of buying game currency.
The problem with WoW is that you have people with time and skill, but not a lot of money. They hate people who buy gold because, to them, they're cheating. Then, you have people with money but not a lot of time and/or skill. They're willing to spend $50 on gold that might have taken days or weeks to collect in-game. Blizzard wants to keep the former happy AND they want to get as much money from the latter as possible.
Puzzle Pirates has what they call "doubloon servers" that utilize two types of currency. In-game "pieces of eight"(PoE) that you get from just playing the game, like gold in WoW. Doubloons are a special currency that you use to buy access to more advanced parts of the game, better clothing, equipment, etc. You can buy doubloons from Three Rings (game dev) directly for about $.20 to $.25 a piece depending on volume. Or, you can trade PoE's for doubloons and vice-versa in the game with players.
If Blizzard implemented something like this in WoW, it would essentially legalize buying gold, but it would eliminate spamming and other account abuses. Say, for example, you have an epic mount. Blizzard implements "Epic Feed" that can be purchased for $.20 a day by anyone. The people who have money to burn can buy extra feed and sell it at the AH. People who balk at the idea of spending extra money on the game can buy feed at the AH. The people who can afford neither probably don't have an epic mount.
This goes for the NYC area too. I'm in north Jersey, about 30mins outside of the city. If a station isn't outright being used, the signal from a neighboring station leaks into it. 92.3 can be heard on 92.1 and 92.5, for example.
As a last-ditch attempt, I found a website that shows you how to pry open a Griffin iTrip and pull the antenna (a 2 inch copper wire) outside the casing in hopes of boosting the signal output. By the time I was done with it, the iTrip looked about as good as it worked.
OMG! You mean, that wasn't just a Simpson bit? That means they did a word-for-word parody of this commerical on the show. Wow.
Sci-Fi channel basically perfected the act of giving fans the finger, but CBS seems to have done a pretty good job too. You can't expect a network to keep a show with low ratings (Jericho) or one that isn't popular with its 14-yr old, WWE-watching, illiterate target audience (Farscape) on the air. But they can at least have the decency to give the people who were watching some closure.
Unfortunately, it won't. Postage doesn't keep credit card companies, sweepstakes, and other junk mailers from sending you stuff. In fact, the USPS makes it easier/cheaper for them with the bulk mail rate. If the govt tries to enact a digital stamp, you can be sure there'll be a big discount for corporate e-mailers.
I bet they could sell the rotary dialing with the analogue stick as a retro-style feature.
But seriously, if you use this as your main phone you're going to have to download contacts from a computer (and by computer I mean a PC with clunky proprietary software) onto the phone. You won't be able to update or add to your contacts very easily. This is exactly why I don't use the calendar/datebook function on my iPod: its read-only.
1) What is "the BT"?
2) How do you dial a PSP? No touch screen, no keypad. Are you supposed to move a cursor around on an on-screen keyboard? Kind of like naming your main character in old rpg's.
Seconded! I'm an adjunct professor, but K-12 and college teaching pay is similar. Both salaries/wages factor in the work you're doing outside the classroom. Remember how they used to tell you that you should study for 1-2 hours for every hour of class you have? Well, teachers/professors end up doing the same thing.
While we're on the subject of teaching, math and science teachers are in demand. Sure, the starting salary may be a bit low but if you're good at what you do and you accumulate some grad credits while you're teaching (many schools/school systems will pay your tuition) you'll move up on the pay scale.
My dad was on the Board of Ed while I was in high school (in NJ) so I have some idea of what the pay scales look like. A BA might start at maybe 30k, but a BA plus 15 masters credits will start higher and a full MA will start higher than that. There were teachers at my school at the top of the pay scale making about 100k a year. If you want more than that, why did you go into math/science in the first place?
I'm all for protecting children and I may quite literally be playing devil's advocate here, but there are some problems with this kind of disclosure. 1) What if MySpace decides to hand over the personal information of people who they suspect of drug abuse, underage drinking, etc. to the government and justice system? The road to fascism is paved with good intentions. 2) If we want to restrict where sex offenders live, what kinds of jobs they can have, who they can talk to, and to what extent they may access the internet; if we don't want to bother reforming them (and yes I know there's evidence that they simply can't be reformed), then why don't we just leave them in jail? It'd be a lot safer for everyone.
Actually, I think its the opposite problem. A person with a short attention span is more likely to absorb or at least tolerate rapid changes in background, setting, context. This might actually be a good way to teach children with attention problems to focus.