Moore's Law dictates that in 18 months, you should be able to get a significantly more powerful laptop for $100. Even with ridiculously cheap computers out there, there will always be a core that wants power.
Besides, if cost were the biggest issue in computing, than Linux would be the ubiquitous desktop.
That is, in my opinion, the biggest gap between FPS games, for instance, UT2004 and Halo (both of which are very good games imho). UT is all about the frag, taking on your friends, zooming in and sniping their head; it's especially satisfying to see chunks of their skull bounce around on the ground for a while. Halo, on the other hand, is all about competing with your friends against the computers and finishing what is, in my opinion, a decent storyline, enough of one to keep me interested in completing it.
While you are partially correct, there are aspects that can be debated. The argument itself revolves around the definition of art which, while subjective, will often incorporate the same elements from one to another. The argument stems from Ebert's belief that we don't know what art is while gamers believe that he doesn't know enough about games and their potential.
So, while neither side will "win" the argument, we can learn something from the argument itself and gain greater insight as long as we're open to it.
Then he would reply that certain parts of the game may be art (textures, terrain, etc), but not the game as a whole. To extend your analogy, if we were to play tic tac toe on the mona lisa, the game wouldn't be art. The outcome might be, but the game of tic tac toe itself wouldn't.
I personally believe that he's wrong, but it's for more complex reasons dealing with what art is; at its core, that's what all the hubub is about, the lack of a definition of art.
One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art. Since you can choose the ending, it's art just as much as someone slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art. However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art? What if you were to have an expansion to that same game, and you were to play as one of the patriarchs of their respective families, and you find that the only way to save the lives is to make peace, but at the cost of your own? His assertions seem to say that art needs to teach, and to teach you can't have choice in the story. I disagree, I just think there needs to be consistency in the outcomes of the choices.
By the way, he would make a great slashdot interview, don't you think?
The same reason we can all program in 1s and 0s if we wanted to, but we use compilers instead. With a superior tool available that can do everything the inferior one can do, the inferior ability/tool atrophies in favor of the superior one.
Google's trying to make it so that whoever gets the spectrum has a certain price they can't charge above for leasing the spectrum. As it stands now, whoever gets the spectrum can charge whatever they want, or just block someone completely. Right now, the entry barrier is so high that it's almost impossible for smaller companies to get any slice of the spectrum. If Google gets its way, the entry barrier will be much lower, but still there.
Yes, anonymous coward, you've taken many bold stances over the years. However, this act is still not inherently evil or good; it's just google buying up some of the spectrum. And that's after they've petitioned for rules requiring certain parts to be open. Those bastards!
If presented with a sticker on a machine saying you get one play for one dollar and the machine itself saying you get 10 for one dollar, I'd assume the sticker was wrong.
Have they solved the actual problems that plague online book sites? You know, lack of portability, bulkiness, ability to read on the toilet easily, and the ability to lend to friends at the drop of a hat? Are those solved yet?
Actually, I'm going to say that American programmers are generally not going to fit the needs of google. In the job market I'm in right now, there's a shortage of developers of any kind, not just good ones. This can lead to developers not getting as much education as they would have otherwise gotten. However, I also know a programmer from Russia who's getting a master's degree to be able to get a work visa (he's already got an educational one). When he's done, he'll fit the profile of a google developer better than I do.
This isn't to say that foreigners are better than americans, it's to say that foreigners will generally fit the profile of a google developer better. Even if you assume they're equal, Google, with its requirements of advanced mathematics on its search algorithms, will need to hire from a much larger pool to get the qualification they're looking for. It's not a prejudice against Americans, just an understanding of the trends that both groups are going through.
Ironically, if more work visas become available, less immigrants might get advanced degrees. It may be counter productive in the end.
Seriously, just because Google says they hired too many people doesn't mean that they don't also believe there's a shortage of qualified people because of immigration. There are a lot of other jobs at Google that don't involve development, and their statement to wall street might make sense if you view it as, "yeah, we hired too many people, including under-qualified developers."
It was a test of whether or not it drops more emails than other email services. So it was a comparison. Second, while he used a paid account, hotmail is still primarily a free service and more similar to other online services than to an ISP. An ISP services a relatively small geographic location, the free email providers service multiple countries. The sheer numbers of subscribers, volume of use and types of use are also going to be more similar between the free services. Therefore, they would have been a much better comparison.
Or more than 4 email accounts. With something as easily tested as this, any actual research would be laughed out of the journal for using so few test subjects.
Comparing and ISP's mail service to Hotmail is like comparing apples to oranges; they're both email suppliers, but ISP's charge you lots of money a month and have significantly lower amounts of email.
Also, the article takes a lot of pains to say how perfect the experiment is. A perfect experiment would have included at least a handful of other free email services.
if your response falls along the lines of "who cares about it being illegal" . . . it only shows that you still don't get it If you're telling me that the average person in America cares about pirating intellectual property, you're an idiot. I've known a lot of people who go to china and come back with spindles of DVDs that are pirated and they don't care. The vast majority of people who have high speed internet access use it to pirate. Some of your other points are valid, but saying that the average person cares about intellectual property rights and that slashdotters are sociopaths because they don't is both stupid and trolling.
Taking the gameplay out of the equation, Command and Conquer is a "B" movie. Einstein going back in time, shooting hitler, and then stalin invading anyway; giant towers that shoot electricity with vicious guard dogs; even a hot, buxom woman with two pistols that likes to blow things up. All these things are a formula for a bad movie plot, and yet Red Alert is one of the great RTS games.
Rockstar makes games that don't often appeal to me, but at the same time, games do receive a lot of undeserved flak. As has been said many times before, what makes this game worse than Hostel or Turistas? Do games deserve to be judged more harshly than any other medium?
I want to see them re-release it for the PS3. The tech demo they released a few years ago was, in my opinion, the most compelling thing about the PS3 to date, and it wasn't even a game. If they have FF7 come out again with gorgeous graphics, you'll see the PS3 really take off in sales.
Tolkien says in the foreword that he heard that it was symbolic of something a lot, and that it was simply untrue. Basically, he says that Lord of the Rings not allegorical. It's quoted here, although reading it yourself is very enlightening.
From what I understand, and I'm probably wrong, Mexico has gone through a few government iterations since the last time we were at war so the comparison wouldn't be all that good anyway. As for whether or not the US is helping the economy of Mexico and vice versa is up for debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Moore's Law dictates that in 18 months, you should be able to get a significantly more powerful laptop for $100. Even with ridiculously cheap computers out there, there will always be a core that wants power.
Besides, if cost were the biggest issue in computing, than Linux would be the ubiquitous desktop.
That is, in my opinion, the biggest gap between FPS games, for instance, UT2004 and Halo (both of which are very good games imho). UT is all about the frag, taking on your friends, zooming in and sniping their head; it's especially satisfying to see chunks of their skull bounce around on the ground for a while. Halo, on the other hand, is all about competing with your friends against the computers and finishing what is, in my opinion, a decent storyline, enough of one to keep me interested in completing it.
By that definition, Daikatana was definitely art.
While you are partially correct, there are aspects that can be debated. The argument itself revolves around the definition of art which, while subjective, will often incorporate the same elements from one to another. The argument stems from Ebert's belief that we don't know what art is while gamers believe that he doesn't know enough about games and their potential.
So, while neither side will "win" the argument, we can learn something from the argument itself and gain greater insight as long as we're open to it.
Then he would reply that certain parts of the game may be art (textures, terrain, etc), but not the game as a whole. To extend your analogy, if we were to play tic tac toe on the mona lisa, the game wouldn't be art. The outcome might be, but the game of tic tac toe itself wouldn't.
I personally believe that he's wrong, but it's for more complex reasons dealing with what art is; at its core, that's what all the hubub is about, the lack of a definition of art.
One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art. Since you can choose the ending, it's art just as much as someone slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art. However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art? What if you were to have an expansion to that same game, and you were to play as one of the patriarchs of their respective families, and you find that the only way to save the lives is to make peace, but at the cost of your own? His assertions seem to say that art needs to teach, and to teach you can't have choice in the story. I disagree, I just think there needs to be consistency in the outcomes of the choices. By the way, he would make a great slashdot interview, don't you think?
The same reason we can all program in 1s and 0s if we wanted to, but we use compilers instead. With a superior tool available that can do everything the inferior one can do, the inferior ability/tool atrophies in favor of the superior one.
Google's trying to make it so that whoever gets the spectrum has a certain price they can't charge above for leasing the spectrum. As it stands now, whoever gets the spectrum can charge whatever they want, or just block someone completely. Right now, the entry barrier is so high that it's almost impossible for smaller companies to get any slice of the spectrum. If Google gets its way, the entry barrier will be much lower, but still there.
Yes, anonymous coward, you've taken many bold stances over the years. However, this act is still not inherently evil or good; it's just google buying up some of the spectrum. And that's after they've petitioned for rules requiring certain parts to be open. Those bastards!
If presented with a sticker on a machine saying you get one play for one dollar and the machine itself saying you get 10 for one dollar, I'd assume the sticker was wrong.
Have they solved the actual problems that plague online book sites? You know, lack of portability, bulkiness, ability to read on the toilet easily, and the ability to lend to friends at the drop of a hat? Are those solved yet?
Actually, I'm going to say that American programmers are generally not going to fit the needs of google. In the job market I'm in right now, there's a shortage of developers of any kind, not just good ones. This can lead to developers not getting as much education as they would have otherwise gotten. However, I also know a programmer from Russia who's getting a master's degree to be able to get a work visa (he's already got an educational one). When he's done, he'll fit the profile of a google developer better than I do.
This isn't to say that foreigners are better than americans, it's to say that foreigners will generally fit the profile of a google developer better. Even if you assume they're equal, Google, with its requirements of advanced mathematics on its search algorithms, will need to hire from a much larger pool to get the qualification they're looking for. It's not a prejudice against Americans, just an understanding of the trends that both groups are going through.
Ironically, if more work visas become available, less immigrants might get advanced degrees. It may be counter productive in the end.
Actually, by "qualifications" they mean "people who have Ph.D.s"; they're similar to what you were saying, I know, but the difference is there.
Seriously, just because Google says they hired too many people doesn't mean that they don't also believe there's a shortage of qualified people because of immigration. There are a lot of other jobs at Google that don't involve development, and their statement to wall street might make sense if you view it as, "yeah, we hired too many people, including under-qualified developers."
It was a test of whether or not it drops more emails than other email services. So it was a comparison. Second, while he used a paid account, hotmail is still primarily a free service and more similar to other online services than to an ISP. An ISP services a relatively small geographic location, the free email providers service multiple countries. The sheer numbers of subscribers, volume of use and types of use are also going to be more similar between the free services. Therefore, they would have been a much better comparison.
Or more than 4 email accounts. With something as easily tested as this, any actual research would be laughed out of the journal for using so few test subjects.
Comparing and ISP's mail service to Hotmail is like comparing apples to oranges; they're both email suppliers, but ISP's charge you lots of money a month and have significantly lower amounts of email.
Also, the article takes a lot of pains to say how perfect the experiment is. A perfect experiment would have included at least a handful of other free email services.
So all we have to do to crash the eventual skynet is move in a direction that isn't diagonal? This is going to be easy.
Taking the gameplay out of the equation, Command and Conquer is a "B" movie. Einstein going back in time, shooting hitler, and then stalin invading anyway; giant towers that shoot electricity with vicious guard dogs; even a hot, buxom woman with two pistols that likes to blow things up. All these things are a formula for a bad movie plot, and yet Red Alert is one of the great RTS games.
To be honest, I don't seem to recall anything saying it was definitive rape.
Rockstar makes games that don't often appeal to me, but at the same time, games do receive a lot of undeserved flak. As has been said many times before, what makes this game worse than Hostel or Turistas? Do games deserve to be judged more harshly than any other medium?
I want to see them re-release it for the PS3. The tech demo they released a few years ago was, in my opinion, the most compelling thing about the PS3 to date, and it wasn't even a game. If they have FF7 come out again with gorgeous graphics, you'll see the PS3 really take off in sales.
Tolkien says in the foreword that he heard that it was symbolic of something a lot, and that it was simply untrue. Basically, he says that Lord of the Rings not allegorical. It's quoted here, although reading it yourself is very enlightening.
From what I understand, and I'm probably wrong, Mexico has gone through a few government iterations since the last time we were at war so the comparison wouldn't be all that good anyway. As for whether or not the US is helping the economy of Mexico and vice versa is up for debate.