There are a few reasons to shelve it in favor of a new one. The absolute biggest of those is that the current rover is already WAY past its projected fail date. The last year or two has been completely bonus information. The upside of that is, bonus information from mars; the downside is that the projected budget for the rover for the last year or two wasn't ever factored in. NASA has been pulling funding from other projects to keep the rover afloat since it was deemed more important than some other areas. But, you can only keep robbing Peter to pay Paul for so long. At some point, and it looks like that point is now.. they had to stop funding on it completely and put funding back into areas they'd been neglecting, especially for something they aren't sure will stay in working order past the first day the new budget goes into effect. Its pretty much counted as one of the signs that a god does exist, that the rover has lasted this long.
His point, and its a good one is... The average consumer doesn't know that. If you look at it as a checkbox, the intel based oem graphics cards should work.. But since intel is a crap graphics company, and normally only give lip service to graphics standards, or implement them in a totally non standard way... its not. Most people don't know, and don't want the headache. They want to go to a store, buy a computer with a 3d graphics card, and have it work. The man's point is valid if you don't take it out of context.
Thats nothing new, only one bleeding edge game to push the market forward. The last time I went through a serious hardware change was Doom 3, summer 2004. I updated everything to top of the line to play that game, because to get the most out of it, you had to. And for the last 3 years, I was happy with it. It wasn't bleeding edge anymore and it was starting to show its age, but it played everything acceptably well without downgrading below default setup. Then Crysis came out, I've spent a few grand upgrading again. And for the next year, it'll play near everything at max graphics, and for the next 2 years at default graphics levels. At the end of that time I'll have to upgrade again because some new game which pushes the bar higher comes out. Its the nature of the business, every 2-3 years, you upgrade.
Its not really a radical departure. He's been saying it for years. He said it when GalCiv 1 came out, he said it when GalCiv II came out, and now that Sins is out. He's saying it again. Hell, Slashdot covered it back when GalCiv 1 came out as well. So really.. this falls into the "no news here, more of the same."
Microsoft killed Java. I can still, to this day, walk into a B&N and buy a book on Java which lists M$ specific code. It might be out of date, but a code language is a code language is a code language, to anyone who doesn't know better, how are they going to know which book to buy? Do you think the average CS freshman in college understands what happened there, and that the project took a massive fork and later reconsolidated? They just see a book on Java, which there prof told them they had to learn. And it doesn't have to be B&N, I can order them online from amazon, or a dozen other places.
Not that I particularly like java, I've hated it since the day Sun spawned it. But a large reason for why Java never became what sun promised was the two competing standards during the heyday when it still had buzzword appeal. A lot of the development that could have went into java apps instead went into tech that made the whole "web2.0" possible instead. Java is still used all over the place much to my dismay and loathing.. but the largest reason for Java being nothing more than a quick way to build a frontend.. falls directly at M$'s feet.
Yes, anything with Death is good. But my favorite.. is Neverwhere.
As for what they are testing... The idea goes like this.. if more people are aware of an authors work.. more people will in turn buy that authors work. The reason for this is because while a lot of people may not buy Unknown Author A's book, they are more than willing to take it for free to see if they like it and then buy more by that author if they did. Unfortunately, choosing someone like Niel Gaiman for the test case sorta fouls the entire experiment. If I want to see if something like this actually works.. I'd choose one of my lesser known authors who has a back catalog of 3-4 books I can tie into it. Not an author who's had his books turned into TV Shows and Movies. The Baen Free Library is a much better test of this model.. and for them it works well. But.. they also built an entire business model around it. Instead of just sorta dabbling, they made it a major effort. Get the book for free, but there are also easy to find, yet not huge eyesore links, to other works by the author. The percent amount of their catalog which is available for purchase in e-book format to buy directly from them, the publisher, dwarfs every other publishing house I know of. Their pricing scheme actually makes some sense, because all books are discounted heavily from their actual paper books, where most e-retailers charging the same or very close for an electronic copy instead of a print copy. Its also all DRM free.
Re:AMD has done what it has always done...
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Its not the driver I was talking about, but the specs and hooks for the hardware itself. The driver is open source, its completely bare bones and only supports 2d render path so much as I know. That was open sourced yes, but the important thing was hardware specs and hooks for the hardware which is being made available to all without an NDA. Which means anyone can look at it, its not complete 100% transparency, but its a very large step in that direction. And yes, I agree Nvidia has better driver support, IMHO, its why they have more market share than ATI in the first place.
Re:AMD has done what it has always done...
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Open-sourcing the performace library matters to people using Windows and Mac. Why? Well, just because you may not plan on writing the drivers themselves, doesn't mean you can't get an understanding of how the chip works from those libraries becoming open. Which can then be turned into code optimized for that render path. What that means is.. Valve, Epic, ID, Crytech, or whomever else, gets a direct look at how and why AMD/ATI did some things, which they can then turn around and add in AMD/ATI only code to make things work smoother on that hardware than on Nvidia hardware. In the CPU market this has been the defacto practice for ages long since past, its only in the GPU market that its a new practice. It may not look like much, and it may not sound like a whole hell of a lot... But to a developer who wants to work on GPU hardware, in any form... that was the single most important announcement of the year.
Ethics change, which was the point of the second paragraph. Ethically, that vote cast by Jeanette Rankin.. was wrong according to the vast majority of Americans. It ended her political career, and almost started a riot on the Congressional steps. 60 years later though, its considered one of the most ethically important things ever done by a member of Congress. It is vitally important to be able to look at something from a step in removal; to say an action was either taken, or not taken, for whatever reason were given or not given. To remove yourself from the controversy of the times, and the long view of history. Its only then that you are able to decide for yourself, if something is right, or wrong.
Everyone here, is one form or another of geek. Science geek, math geek, computer geek, what have you. What is the first thing we do when given a problem? We study the problem. We don't look for answers, we don't make judgement calls on if the problem is solvable, we don't even try to solve it. We want all the data we can get on the problem itself, before we start trying to figure out how to solve or fix the problem.
Our Constitution isn't interpreted. Its forgotten and ignored. Which is a completely different thing. The Constitution for the United States of America is exactly four hand-written pages long. It is one of, if not the, shortest overall governing set of laws in the entire world. For the most part its fairly simple and straight forward to understand. And it gets lost in the absolute avalanche of laws which fall below it. No one quotes Constitutional passages from the house or senate when trying to get a bill passed. They simply don't mention it, and hope everyone else forgets those absolutely tiny four pages as well. In the overall grand scheme of things, four pages is a relatively easy thing to let slip from your mind.
I understand the world isn't mostly black and white, that the vast majority is gray. At some level of removal though, it doesn't matter why a person, or a country, does something. They either did something, or they didn't do something. They made a choice, for either good or bad, and for whatever reasons given; the choice was still made. It doesn't matter why you did it, doesn't matter what internal and external pressures were involved, doesn't matter if most of the people involved really wanted it. It only matters that you did it... or in this case... Are doing it.
Nifty peace of American History. When Congress voted to go into WWII, every sitting member of the house voted for the war.. except one. Its probably the most famous congressional vote ever made. Fist fights broke out over this vote, letters got sent in anger to the representative. It didn't matter why she did it, only that she voted against fighting the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, and sunk the Lusitania. Personally, I think it was one of the more noble votes ever cast in the history of the US political system. She voted against it because by her beliefs, no country should ever decide unanimously to send its sons to die in a war. But no one cared about why at the time, only that it was done.
God I hate this debate. Are we as a nation arrogant. Probably, yes. Are we as individuals, arrogant. Nope. Most of us have long ago learned we've lost our edge in several areas, if we ever had an edge to begin with in those areas is still under debate. But if we aren't world leading... why is so much of the world bound and determined to follow our lead? Iraq? Guess who Europe followed there. Afganastan. Guess who Europe followed there, again. Patent laws? Well, the rest of the world seems hell bent on adopting American versions there of. Copyright? Same thing.
If you want us to stop thinking we are world leaders, simply stop following. Its that simple. Our research base may not be what it was, our education system may be in the crapper, and our manufacturing may as not well exist. But if the rest of the world keeps following us into our doom... Then like as not, we are world leading. You got a couple choices, China and India have the potential to be, hell, for that matter Russia still has the potential to be.. But you keep choosing America. Its your own damn fault.
Exchange isn't going to die anytime soon. No matter how good Google Aps is, no one with half a brain and a medium to large buisness.. is going to give Google power over their email severs. Too many sensitive documents go out and come in, through email. No one wants someone else to have power over their business by controlling access to those documents. Sure, we geeks can tout it as a triumph of innovation or whatever the buzz word is this week, but you'll never see google aps as a replacement for Exchange and Outlook. And those two products really should be called one product, because its not till you put them together that either really shines. Its a symbiotic relationship. You can't build a better open source exchange server and have it succeed without a better open source version of outlook. Want to see Exchange die? Lock the writers of Qmail and Thunderbird in a room for a few months, and keep delivering them beer and pizza through a mail slot.
I just want to point out, Israel is a very very bad example. The amount of money the rest of the world poured into that country after WWII is awe inspiring, and its still happening on a lesser scale to this day. I cannot think of any country in the world that has had as much given to it as Israel. Its easier to look better than your neighbors when you know you are going to get a few billion in gifts you'll never have to pay back.
To be fair, I don't think theres a lot Gibson likes in the cyberpunk area of fiction. To totally butcher Clark. He used to say something like... Whatever you write, is normally what you enjoyed as a child/teenager, its your well of ideas, the thing that captivated your interest. But, once you start to write professionally, you move on, you stop reading things in those areas, and go to other areas. Once your job becomes creating a certain type of world. You no longer want to spend your free time living in them. Or something like that....
RTFA, your mis-interpreting this study, in light of those comments. The study doesn't say that violent media have an adverse affect on people. It says violent media HAVE AN AFFECT, period. Those are two totally different things. Watching porn probably has an affect on the area of my brain involving sex drive, this doesn't make me want to have... wait.. it does.. but! I've never gone out and raped someone after watching porn. Maybe after watching porn, and violent media back to back in a burst.. wait.. nope nope.. did that too, still haven't ever went out and raped anyone. Um.. well, crap. Evidently while both forms of media had an effect on my brain, it wasn't an adverse effect, or something bad would have happened.
Just to be fair, its not always the writers fault. In print media the writer has pretty much full creative control over their work, not so in film. In the end they have to conform to what the director/producer/actor want. A director may take a beautifully written sequence and pair it with music that doesn't match, or odd camera angels that subtract from the scene. Producers may want certain things because of a product placement or promotion that ties into the film. Actors are famous for wanting to adlib a few lines because all of the greats did it, it puts a feather into their cap to feel they know how to write, instead of just pretend. Then you have mother nature to deal with, what happens if you get a week of rain when you were schedualed to shoot a sunny day sequence? A lot of faults in film can fall directly at the writers, but a lot more of it is completely out of their control.
If you want multiplayer in Deux Ex... the only way I'd go for it is if the developers hosted the games, with record keeping and everything that entails added in. Then add in the same progression system from the game for skill points, a kill is worth so many points, then after a round you may be able to buy a skill if you have enough points, if not, more rounds. At the end of the round if your team won, you're allowed to buy a weapon mod off the severs, or shelve the point and buy a more expensive biomod later. Space it all out so it takes awhile to top off a character, add in a skill point cap so everyone specializes. Large spacious levels with lots of choke points and several stealthy was in, some of which can only be used if you have the right skills or mods.
In short, I want my character in multiplayer to mean just as much to me as my character in the single player game did, with just as much thought planning and care given to advancement.
Few things. It is a tax, just like a road tax. At least it would be here in the US. There are two types of taxes; taxes on all goods and services(sales tax), and taxes you pay on specific goods(road tax that you pay for each gallon of gas you buy, on top of sales tax). The first is the pay to play tax, its there to keep general government services running so you can live happily. The second is a tax you only have to pay if you decide to use a particular service, its there to subsidize that specific service without charging the people who don't choose to use the service. There is a third type of tax in the US, but we won't go into it as its completely illegal for us to be charged it, even though we still pay it.
Next up, blank media means they are getting something for nothing, and did for years. If it is legal to copy a copyrighted work for personal use(copy onto a VHS tape from TV), without a blank media tax being instituted(as it was for awhile before the blank media tax came into being). Then it means every time someone bought a VHS tape or a cassette tape, people were paying for the privilege of doing something they were legally allowed to do without paying for in the first place. Ya, you can claim pirates selling illegal copies, but last I checked Canada wasn't a big pirate haven, back then it was hongkong and chinese knockoffs flooding the markets, not Canada. Which means the blank media tax was never payed on that media to begin with.
I'm willing to go along with the media hurting the war effort. Hell, I'll even come out and say the media is the single largest problem with a war effort. But to say its all a plot by the Democrats bypasses sane rational logic and takes a turn down Ludicrous Boulevard.
Here's the truth about this. Reporters report, if they see a US Soldier shooting a kid holding onto his mothers leg while crying, they take a picture of it and write up a story about it because its a strong visual and emotional image. If they see a suicide bomber running into a crowd of US Soldiers and passers-by, they take a picture and write up another story for the same reasoning. Its what they do, sometimes they'll shade a story because an editor thinks it plays better one way over another, hell, they've even been known to outright lie. But for the most part, the news is accurate enough that between a few conflicting accounts from the different outlets, you can usually figure out what is actually going on. Which brings us to the ugly truth of why the media hurts a war effort
Mothers and Fathers don't want to think about their sons and daughters shooting the child in the first scenario any more than they want, say.. to think about their child being blown up by the suicide bomber in the second . Nevermind thats what war is. Also nevermind that its how wars get won.
As the old saw goes: War is the continuation of Diplomatic Negotiations through Non-Diplomatic means. Everyone knows that adage, everyone has heard some form of it. But, no one wants it to be real to them. They don't want to think about how their family members may have to do things that aren't considered good, and just, and wholesome; just to break the other sides will or ability to fight. Nor do they want to think about what the other side tries to do to their family members to achieve the same goal.
Everyone wants to think that war is some god damn morality play. Good against evil, over-writing injustices, keeping the world safe for all mankind, and other such derivative bullshit non-sense. Well, guess what, its not. War is exactly what the old saying says it is; brutal, bloody, nightmarish, and yes, evil. The damnable thing about it is, its a necessary evil. Sure, I wish we could all live in a world singing kumbaya and put all of our differences behind us, thats an unreasonable request though.
And whether you want to believe it or not, its an unreasonable request to keep a group of people from trying to capitalize on the emotional backlash of the situation. You call them democrats, but there are a lot of republicans doing the same thing. Why? Because of another sad fact. That is how you get elected. You find an emotional charged issue, in this case; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends.. of people who are out on the front lines, and then speak about their fears.
You tell them its wrong that their loved ones have to face the things they do, when everyone knew damn well going in that it was wrong before the war started, if only everyone had stopped and treated at it as a real issue instead of relating it to a Sunday Matinee. You tell them that you understand their plight, and that you'll do everything in your power to put an end to it then you throw a few pieces of work out to prove that your serious about this, when everyone knows that if as many politicians truly gave a damn about it as they are saying.. the issue wouldn't exist anymore.
So please spare me your political crackpot theory about "Why Things Are The Way They Are". There are no grand conspiracies, no plot by one party or another to destroy us all. Just a self involved apathetic population, who doesn't have quite enough foresight to think about tomorrow; a news industry who wants to get paid, and move everyone to their way of thinking so they'll have an audience down the road; and some politicians who want to get re-elected, so they can continue to do whatever it is politicians do. Thats all, the same as it ever was, and the same as it will always be.
I could be remembering this completely wrong, its been a few years since I've looked at JavaScript, much less payed attention to it. But...
Netscape incorporated Java Script, I don't think they ever actually "owned" it though, in so much as Java Script was more of an idea out in the wild long before it was a formal language. The inventor of Java Script came up with the idea while working for Netscape, he's the lead developer for Mozilla now(I think?). The whole JS idea was really a clever hack that he cludged together that tricked browsers into handling some information in ways it normally wouldn't. Over time it got added to and browsers started officially supporting the hack because it was useful.
I do the same thing, except I run it under Cedega. I really do wonder what sort of numbers we'd show if valve offered it as an option in the survey. I really don't care if anyone ever develops for linux or not, but it is an interesting question because if Steam shows me as running WinXp, when I'm running Ubuntu.. How many other wrong answers is it getting in its survey?
For the record, I don't care about the state of linux gaming. The only reason I have steam installed is for the legacy sales, games which are no longer on the market that I can't find anywhere else. I'd much rather developers put time and effort into porting their backlog of games into digital distribution so I'm able to find copies legally, than spend time developing a shiny new rendering engine for linux. On top of that, all the old games work pretty much 100% with no tinkering in Linux. Its a win win situation, I get more games for my Linux box, and everyone gets access to stuff they want to play. There are a crapload of games that for whatever reason, I didn't play when they came out, that I'd love to play now.
If Transgaming is the answer to this tiny niche, shoot me now. Even when working with a developer and access to the source code, they can't get games to run 100% of the time. I'm not asking for a miracle, I just want it to A: Run, and B: Be Somewhat Stable. Transgaming just released a developer port of Eve a week or two ago and you know what? I'm still using Wine. Why? Because it breaks Cedega for all other uses except Eve. I can get Eve to run, or I can get Cedega to run. I can't get both Cedega and Eve to run, because thats the way they chose to code it for whatever reason. What happens if I want to run multiple games like Eve that all use the.cedega folder? Will I get the same problems I have now? Even if I take Cedega itself out of the picture?
God I wish Sony hadn't messed Planetside up. As an idea, it was beautiful. But they rushed it to the door instead of taking time to really polish it. The controls never did "feel right" after coming from much twitchier and tighter controlling games like Quake and Unreal. Half the things they announced at launch still aren't in the game to this day. They then added in things no-one wanted, and worse yet, that broke existing play mechanics. But the worst, the absolute worst thing about the game, is the sameness. They had an entire world with a decent backstory to play with, and what do they do? They build 2-3 bases and then simply copy them over and over again for every control and capture point in the game. No matter where you were at, or what you were doing, it always felt the same, and you always knew exactly where to go. They completely missed giving players a since of wonder and exploration. Even if its something as simple as finding out you can jump from point A to B and then finally to C to get to a very good sniping position. Planetside completely missed it.
I'll never really forgive SOE for Planetside because they bet small on it. They figured if they built it to the lowest common denominator of FPS gaming, and just added in alot more bodies, that it would be a success. Because of that the hardcore FPS player never took it seriously. If Sony would have just bet bigger, if they would have made a game for FPS players first and foremost, it would have been beautiful, they would have made millions. But by betting small, they ruined the entire idea for anyone else who wanted to try it afterwards because of the horrible returns it generated. I thought then, and I still think now that the idea of Planetside could work if a company took it seriously. I guess we'll have to wait for Valve, ID, or Epic to give it a try, because no-one not already inside the FPS genra will ever take it seriously enough to merit the attention it deserves after Sony's absolutely huge fail at it.
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There are a few reasons to shelve it in favor of a new one. The absolute biggest of those is that the current rover is already WAY past its projected fail date. The last year or two has been completely bonus information. The upside of that is, bonus information from mars; the downside is that the projected budget for the rover for the last year or two wasn't ever factored in. NASA has been pulling funding from other projects to keep the rover afloat since it was deemed more important than some other areas. But, you can only keep robbing Peter to pay Paul for so long. At some point, and it looks like that point is now.. they had to stop funding on it completely and put funding back into areas they'd been neglecting, especially for something they aren't sure will stay in working order past the first day the new budget goes into effect. Its pretty much counted as one of the signs that a god does exist, that the rover has lasted this long.
His point, and its a good one is... The average consumer doesn't know that. If you look at it as a checkbox, the intel based oem graphics cards should work.. But since intel is a crap graphics company, and normally only give lip service to graphics standards, or implement them in a totally non standard way... its not. Most people don't know, and don't want the headache. They want to go to a store, buy a computer with a 3d graphics card, and have it work. The man's point is valid if you don't take it out of context.
Thats nothing new, only one bleeding edge game to push the market forward. The last time I went through a serious hardware change was Doom 3, summer 2004. I updated everything to top of the line to play that game, because to get the most out of it, you had to. And for the last 3 years, I was happy with it. It wasn't bleeding edge anymore and it was starting to show its age, but it played everything acceptably well without downgrading below default setup. Then Crysis came out, I've spent a few grand upgrading again. And for the next year, it'll play near everything at max graphics, and for the next 2 years at default graphics levels. At the end of that time I'll have to upgrade again because some new game which pushes the bar higher comes out. Its the nature of the business, every 2-3 years, you upgrade.
Its not really a radical departure. He's been saying it for years. He said it when GalCiv 1 came out, he said it when GalCiv II came out, and now that Sins is out. He's saying it again. Hell, Slashdot covered it back when GalCiv 1 came out as well. So really.. this falls into the "no news here, more of the same."
Not that I particularly like java, I've hated it since the day Sun spawned it. But a large reason for why Java never became what sun promised was the two competing standards during the heyday when it still had buzzword appeal. A lot of the development that could have went into java apps instead went into tech that made the whole "web2.0" possible instead. Java is still used all over the place much to my dismay and loathing.. but the largest reason for Java being nothing more than a quick way to build a frontend.. falls directly at M$'s feet.
As for what they are testing... The idea goes like this.. if more people are aware of an authors work.. more people will in turn buy that authors work. The reason for this is because while a lot of people may not buy Unknown Author A's book, they are more than willing to take it for free to see if they like it and then buy more by that author if they did. Unfortunately, choosing someone like Niel Gaiman for the test case sorta fouls the entire experiment. If I want to see if something like this actually works.. I'd choose one of my lesser known authors who has a back catalog of 3-4 books I can tie into it. Not an author who's had his books turned into TV Shows and Movies. The Baen Free Library is a much better test of this model.. and for them it works well. But.. they also built an entire business model around it. Instead of just sorta dabbling, they made it a major effort. Get the book for free, but there are also easy to find, yet not huge eyesore links, to other works by the author. The percent amount of their catalog which is available for purchase in e-book format to buy directly from them, the publisher, dwarfs every other publishing house I know of. Their pricing scheme actually makes some sense, because all books are discounted heavily from their actual paper books, where most e-retailers charging the same or very close for an electronic copy instead of a print copy. Its also all DRM free.
Its not the driver I was talking about, but the specs and hooks for the hardware itself. The driver is open source, its completely bare bones and only supports 2d render path so much as I know. That was open sourced yes, but the important thing was hardware specs and hooks for the hardware which is being made available to all without an NDA. Which means anyone can look at it, its not complete 100% transparency, but its a very large step in that direction. And yes, I agree Nvidia has better driver support, IMHO, its why they have more market share than ATI in the first place.
Open-sourcing the performace library matters to people using Windows and Mac. Why? Well, just because you may not plan on writing the drivers themselves, doesn't mean you can't get an understanding of how the chip works from those libraries becoming open. Which can then be turned into code optimized for that render path. What that means is.. Valve, Epic, ID, Crytech, or whomever else, gets a direct look at how and why AMD/ATI did some things, which they can then turn around and add in AMD/ATI only code to make things work smoother on that hardware than on Nvidia hardware. In the CPU market this has been the defacto practice for ages long since past, its only in the GPU market that its a new practice. It may not look like much, and it may not sound like a whole hell of a lot... But to a developer who wants to work on GPU hardware, in any form... that was the single most important announcement of the year.
Everyone here, is one form or another of geek. Science geek, math geek, computer geek, what have you. What is the first thing we do when given a problem? We study the problem. We don't look for answers, we don't make judgement calls on if the problem is solvable, we don't even try to solve it. We want all the data we can get on the problem itself, before we start trying to figure out how to solve or fix the problem.
Same thing.
Our Constitution isn't interpreted. Its forgotten and ignored. Which is a completely different thing. The Constitution for the United States of America is exactly four hand-written pages long. It is one of, if not the, shortest overall governing set of laws in the entire world. For the most part its fairly simple and straight forward to understand. And it gets lost in the absolute avalanche of laws which fall below it. No one quotes Constitutional passages from the house or senate when trying to get a bill passed. They simply don't mention it, and hope everyone else forgets those absolutely tiny four pages as well. In the overall grand scheme of things, four pages is a relatively easy thing to let slip from your mind.
Nifty peace of American History. When Congress voted to go into WWII, every sitting member of the house voted for the war.. except one. Its probably the most famous congressional vote ever made. Fist fights broke out over this vote, letters got sent in anger to the representative. It didn't matter why she did it, only that she voted against fighting the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, and sunk the Lusitania. Personally, I think it was one of the more noble votes ever cast in the history of the US political system. She voted against it because by her beliefs, no country should ever decide unanimously to send its sons to die in a war. But no one cared about why at the time, only that it was done.
God I hate this debate. Are we as a nation arrogant. Probably, yes. Are we as individuals, arrogant. Nope. Most of us have long ago learned we've lost our edge in several areas, if we ever had an edge to begin with in those areas is still under debate. But if we aren't world leading... why is so much of the world bound and determined to follow our lead? Iraq? Guess who Europe followed there. Afganastan. Guess who Europe followed there, again. Patent laws? Well, the rest of the world seems hell bent on adopting American versions there of. Copyright? Same thing. If you want us to stop thinking we are world leaders, simply stop following. Its that simple. Our research base may not be what it was, our education system may be in the crapper, and our manufacturing may as not well exist. But if the rest of the world keeps following us into our doom... Then like as not, we are world leading. You got a couple choices, China and India have the potential to be, hell, for that matter Russia still has the potential to be.. But you keep choosing America. Its your own damn fault.
Exchange isn't going to die anytime soon. No matter how good Google Aps is, no one with half a brain and a medium to large buisness.. is going to give Google power over their email severs. Too many sensitive documents go out and come in, through email. No one wants someone else to have power over their business by controlling access to those documents. Sure, we geeks can tout it as a triumph of innovation or whatever the buzz word is this week, but you'll never see google aps as a replacement for Exchange and Outlook. And those two products really should be called one product, because its not till you put them together that either really shines. Its a symbiotic relationship. You can't build a better open source exchange server and have it succeed without a better open source version of outlook. Want to see Exchange die? Lock the writers of Qmail and Thunderbird in a room for a few months, and keep delivering them beer and pizza through a mail slot.
I just want to point out, Israel is a very very bad example. The amount of money the rest of the world poured into that country after WWII is awe inspiring, and its still happening on a lesser scale to this day. I cannot think of any country in the world that has had as much given to it as Israel. Its easier to look better than your neighbors when you know you are going to get a few billion in gifts you'll never have to pay back.
To be fair, I don't think theres a lot Gibson likes in the cyberpunk area of fiction. To totally butcher Clark. He used to say something like... Whatever you write, is normally what you enjoyed as a child/teenager, its your well of ideas, the thing that captivated your interest. But, once you start to write professionally, you move on, you stop reading things in those areas, and go to other areas. Once your job becomes creating a certain type of world. You no longer want to spend your free time living in them. Or something like that....
RTFA, your mis-interpreting this study, in light of those comments. The study doesn't say that violent media have an adverse affect on people. It says violent media HAVE AN AFFECT, period. Those are two totally different things. Watching porn probably has an affect on the area of my brain involving sex drive, this doesn't make me want to have... wait.. it does.. but! I've never gone out and raped someone after watching porn. Maybe after watching porn, and violent media back to back in a burst.. wait.. nope nope.. did that too, still haven't ever went out and raped anyone. Um.. well, crap. Evidently while both forms of media had an effect on my brain, it wasn't an adverse effect, or something bad would have happened.
Just to be fair, its not always the writers fault. In print media the writer has pretty much full creative control over their work, not so in film. In the end they have to conform to what the director/producer/actor want. A director may take a beautifully written sequence and pair it with music that doesn't match, or odd camera angels that subtract from the scene. Producers may want certain things because of a product placement or promotion that ties into the film. Actors are famous for wanting to adlib a few lines because all of the greats did it, it puts a feather into their cap to feel they know how to write, instead of just pretend. Then you have mother nature to deal with, what happens if you get a week of rain when you were schedualed to shoot a sunny day sequence? A lot of faults in film can fall directly at the writers, but a lot more of it is completely out of their control.
Nah, I'm only an armchair expert on alcohol absorption rates in varying metabolisms.
If you want multiplayer in Deux Ex... the only way I'd go for it is if the developers hosted the games, with record keeping and everything that entails added in. Then add in the same progression system from the game for skill points, a kill is worth so many points, then after a round you may be able to buy a skill if you have enough points, if not, more rounds. At the end of the round if your team won, you're allowed to buy a weapon mod off the severs, or shelve the point and buy a more expensive biomod later. Space it all out so it takes awhile to top off a character, add in a skill point cap so everyone specializes. Large spacious levels with lots of choke points and several stealthy was in, some of which can only be used if you have the right skills or mods.
In short, I want my character in multiplayer to mean just as much to me as my character in the single player game did, with just as much thought planning and care given to advancement.
Few things. It is a tax, just like a road tax. At least it would be here in the US. There are two types of taxes; taxes on all goods and services(sales tax), and taxes you pay on specific goods(road tax that you pay for each gallon of gas you buy, on top of sales tax). The first is the pay to play tax, its there to keep general government services running so you can live happily. The second is a tax you only have to pay if you decide to use a particular service, its there to subsidize that specific service without charging the people who don't choose to use the service. There is a third type of tax in the US, but we won't go into it as its completely illegal for us to be charged it, even though we still pay it.
Next up, blank media means they are getting something for nothing, and did for years. If it is legal to copy a copyrighted work for personal use(copy onto a VHS tape from TV), without a blank media tax being instituted(as it was for awhile before the blank media tax came into being). Then it means every time someone bought a VHS tape or a cassette tape, people were paying for the privilege of doing something they were legally allowed to do without paying for in the first place. Ya, you can claim pirates selling illegal copies, but last I checked Canada wasn't a big pirate haven, back then it was hongkong and chinese knockoffs flooding the markets, not Canada. Which means the blank media tax was never payed on that media to begin with.
Is more, but my boss calls.
I'm willing to go along with the media hurting the war effort. Hell, I'll even come out and say the media is the single largest problem with a war effort. But to say its all a plot by the Democrats bypasses sane rational logic and takes a turn down Ludicrous Boulevard.
Here's the truth about this. Reporters report, if they see a US Soldier shooting a kid holding onto his mothers leg while crying, they take a picture of it and write up a story about it because its a strong visual and emotional image. If they see a suicide bomber running into a crowd of US Soldiers and passers-by, they take a picture and write up another story for the same reasoning. Its what they do, sometimes they'll shade a story because an editor thinks it plays better one way over another, hell, they've even been known to outright lie. But for the most part, the news is accurate enough that between a few conflicting accounts from the different outlets, you can usually figure out what is actually going on. Which brings us to the ugly truth of why the media hurts a war effort
Mothers and Fathers don't want to think about their sons and daughters shooting the child in the first scenario any more than they want, say.. to think about their child being blown up by the suicide bomber in the second . Nevermind thats what war is. Also nevermind that its how wars get won.
As the old saw goes: War is the continuation of Diplomatic Negotiations through Non-Diplomatic means. Everyone knows that adage, everyone has heard some form of it. But, no one wants it to be real to them. They don't want to think about how their family members may have to do things that aren't considered good, and just, and wholesome; just to break the other sides will or ability to fight. Nor do they want to think about what the other side tries to do to their family members to achieve the same goal.
Everyone wants to think that war is some god damn morality play. Good against evil, over-writing injustices, keeping the world safe for all mankind, and other such derivative bullshit non-sense. Well, guess what, its not. War is exactly what the old saying says it is; brutal, bloody, nightmarish, and yes, evil. The damnable thing about it is, its a necessary evil. Sure, I wish we could all live in a world singing kumbaya and put all of our differences behind us, thats an unreasonable request though.
And whether you want to believe it or not, its an unreasonable request to keep a group of people from trying to capitalize on the emotional backlash of the situation. You call them democrats, but there are a lot of republicans doing the same thing. Why? Because of another sad fact. That is how you get elected. You find an emotional charged issue, in this case; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends.. of people who are out on the front lines, and then speak about their fears.
You tell them its wrong that their loved ones have to face the things they do, when everyone knew damn well going in that it was wrong before the war started, if only everyone had stopped and treated at it as a real issue instead of relating it to a Sunday Matinee. You tell them that you understand their plight, and that you'll do everything in your power to put an end to it then you throw a few pieces of work out to prove that your serious about this, when everyone knows that if as many politicians truly gave a damn about it as they are saying.. the issue wouldn't exist anymore.
So please spare me your political crackpot theory about "Why Things Are The Way They Are". There are no grand conspiracies, no plot by one party or another to destroy us all. Just a self involved apathetic population, who doesn't have quite enough foresight to think about tomorrow; a news industry who wants to get paid, and move everyone to their way of thinking so they'll have an audience down the road; and some politicians who want to get re-elected, so they can continue to do whatever it is politicians do. Thats all, the same as it ever was, and the same as it will always be.
I could be remembering this completely wrong, its been a few years since I've looked at JavaScript, much less payed attention to it. But...
Netscape incorporated Java Script, I don't think they ever actually "owned" it though, in so much as Java Script was more of an idea out in the wild long before it was a formal language. The inventor of Java Script came up with the idea while working for Netscape, he's the lead developer for Mozilla now(I think?). The whole JS idea was really a clever hack that he cludged together that tricked browsers into handling some information in ways it normally wouldn't. Over time it got added to and browsers started officially supporting the hack because it was useful.
I do the same thing, except I run it under Cedega. I really do wonder what sort of numbers we'd show if valve offered it as an option in the survey. I really don't care if anyone ever develops for linux or not, but it is an interesting question because if Steam shows me as running WinXp, when I'm running Ubuntu.. How many other wrong answers is it getting in its survey?
For the record, I don't care about the state of linux gaming. The only reason I have steam installed is for the legacy sales, games which are no longer on the market that I can't find anywhere else. I'd much rather developers put time and effort into porting their backlog of games into digital distribution so I'm able to find copies legally, than spend time developing a shiny new rendering engine for linux. On top of that, all the old games work pretty much 100% with no tinkering in Linux. Its a win win situation, I get more games for my Linux box, and everyone gets access to stuff they want to play. There are a crapload of games that for whatever reason, I didn't play when they came out, that I'd love to play now.
If Transgaming is the answer to this tiny niche, shoot me now. Even when working with a developer and access to the source code, they can't get games to run 100% of the time. I'm not asking for a miracle, I just want it to A: Run, and B: Be Somewhat Stable. Transgaming just released a developer port of Eve a week or two ago and you know what? I'm still using Wine. Why? Because it breaks Cedega for all other uses except Eve. I can get Eve to run, or I can get Cedega to run. I can't get both Cedega and Eve to run, because thats the way they chose to code it for whatever reason. What happens if I want to run multiple games like Eve that all use the .cedega folder? Will I get the same problems I have now? Even if I take Cedega itself out of the picture?
God I wish Sony hadn't messed Planetside up. As an idea, it was beautiful. But they rushed it to the door instead of taking time to really polish it. The controls never did "feel right" after coming from much twitchier and tighter controlling games like Quake and Unreal. Half the things they announced at launch still aren't in the game to this day. They then added in things no-one wanted, and worse yet, that broke existing play mechanics. But the worst, the absolute worst thing about the game, is the sameness. They had an entire world with a decent backstory to play with, and what do they do? They build 2-3 bases and then simply copy them over and over again for every control and capture point in the game. No matter where you were at, or what you were doing, it always felt the same, and you always knew exactly where to go. They completely missed giving players a since of wonder and exploration. Even if its something as simple as finding out you can jump from point A to B and then finally to C to get to a very good sniping position. Planetside completely missed it.
I'll never really forgive SOE for Planetside because they bet small on it. They figured if they built it to the lowest common denominator of FPS gaming, and just added in alot more bodies, that it would be a success. Because of that the hardcore FPS player never took it seriously. If Sony would have just bet bigger, if they would have made a game for FPS players first and foremost, it would have been beautiful, they would have made millions. But by betting small, they ruined the entire idea for anyone else who wanted to try it afterwards because of the horrible returns it generated. I thought then, and I still think now that the idea of Planetside could work if a company took it seriously. I guess we'll have to wait for Valve, ID, or Epic to give it a try, because no-one not already inside the FPS genra will ever take it seriously enough to merit the attention it deserves after Sony's absolutely huge fail at it.