You know what the really funny thing is? Most of what Microsoft says is true, in a fashion. Funnier still is that this is hardly a bad thing.
Let's start with MS's vague assertions that Open Source/Free Software is anti-Capitalistic, and anti-American.
You're damn right it is.
If the economic system of the US today is "capitalism," then what is that? An anti-comptetive nightmare world of corporate conglamerates that the government barely controls or cares about, is what it is. How can a Congressman attack the very people that paid his way into office? And "American?!" The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, pop culture dominates our lives through subtle slogans thought up by Madison Avenue ad axecs, and, every day, we march one step closer to a police state, too complacent to give a shit.
Fun, huh?
Calling Open Source anti-American is kinda like calling Ralph Nader a Communist. He's not, but he is Socialist. Similarly, I'd call Open Source/Free Software at the very least communal. We ARE in this together, and it's the fact that this is a movement of the people that makes it strong. Be wary of IBM, guys.
Microsoft talks of Capitalism and the "American Way" as if these are good things. You, the informed citizen, should know better.
Microsoft attacks the GPL because it threatens their exsistence. The "death of the software industry" Microsoft speaks of may well happen; however, it would only be a death of the industry AS WE KNOW IT. Let Microsoft, and anyone else who is to slow to change fall by the wayside. The old business model of the software industry is becoming irrelevant. We don't need propietary software anymore. As the Borg would say, "resistance is futile."
The obvious parallel here is to the early 80's, and the dawning of the Personal Computer as we know it today. Open designs and standards led to a revolution. Perhaps one day, it'll become possible for people to build their own computers again, and we'll see another revolution.
Did you hear? PPK recently got signed with Perfecto (Paul Oakenfold's record label). Regardless of one's opinion of Oakie, I'd call that a break-through.
Re:NY Times register != TRUE
on
HP Buys Compaq
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· Score: 1
Delete the space between the 0 and the 1. Slashdot still breaks up long URL's, it looks like.
It's been voted the best book of the century by quite an number of people. And plus, the Silmarillion is way above a "childs" head (in writing style alone).
There's another funny thing about this "research." Two things jump out at me:
1) In japan, the literacy rate is quite high, and the schools are incredibly demanding. Anybody who gets all the way through high school is far "smarter" than Joe Average American high school student.
2) As a whole, Japanese youth play a LOT of games.
If most japanese kids spend large chunks of their youth glued to their Super Nintendo, then why aren't they so dumb, as this "research" seems to suggest they should be?
I find the commentary you linked to a bit sad. Does this guy have to be on the cutting edge to have any fun at all? I mean, crap, I get way more kicks out of good ol' Quake 1 than this shiny new Quake 3 thing, and that's 5 years old this month. I don't feel much pity for the guy either.
Yup, it was in NeXTWorld magazine, circa 1993. I probably have the magazine that the article was featured in, somewhere...
Re:Carmack had issues with locker-room showers.
on
Quake 4 Announced
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· Score: 1
Well, for one, Quake 4 is gonna be on Stroggos again, which means no medieval/demonic stuff.
Just industrial/demonic stuff instead. -_^
There are plenty of people who find the pristine labratories of Half Life utterly boring, and revel in Quake's other-dimensional weirdness. Thankfully, the world is big enough for both types of games. So come on down, join the Morlocks, we're running the show in the end!
Perhaps, but if I wanted unmatched 1 on 1 play, give me QuakeWorld and Headshot's Dead Bodies Everywhere anyday. Maybe CPM.
Before Q3, shooters were about aim and item management. Number three introduced technique as an integral game element.
I think that's a nice way of saying that Quake 3 is way slower than Quake 1.
Pertaining to the actual topic of this article (Quake 4), well, forgive me as I stifle a laugh. I don't think there is any new ground left to cover to in the Quake series. I expect that, unlike DooM 3, this Quake 4 will be just fast enough to deathmatch with, to throw the pro players a bone.
Except that 4 and 5 are vaguely joined. I think Cecil is supposed to be Butz's great-grandfather. The Final Fantasy anime OAV binds the two together somewhat.
Very true, bu I got one small correction: On the PSX, Sony gave their developers fairly standard high-level libraries and tools (C/C++ I assume), but then, after a few years, they released tools that allowed developers to write directly to the hardware.
The developers loved it.
Sony decided to do the same right from the start on the PS2, and gave the developers assembly-level tools right from the start. Keep in mind the wacky architecture of the PS2. This, as we have seen, possibly scared a few potential developers away. Regardless, with the system being out for almost a year in Japan, it matters little; most dev houses will have learned the hardware through and through by now.
Well, it's not that much more than the ~$50 USD you pay for a linux distro on CD. So, yeah, there's a markup, but heck, I'd rather pay $75 than 200 or so for Win2k!;)
Potential? Oh god yes. Start thinking Diamond Age. No, seriously. The BBC article only hits on a small proportion of the real story here. At the bottom of the VoodooExtreme page, some kind soul gave a link to this EETimes story:
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010313S0113
In short: by 2004/2005, IBM, Sony, and Toshiba will have developed the Cell processor, fabbed at.10 micron and running at 1 teraflops. It's fully scalable and will form the backbone for a true broadband internet.
Neal Stephenson's science fiction does seem to be self-fullfilling, doesn't it?
Ken Kutaragi speaks of this massively parallel beast in biological terms, alludes to peer to peer-ness on several levels, and says the OS that will run on the processors will be Linux-like.
Now if that's not a made-for-Slashdot story, I don't know what is.
The Playstation 3 is never directly mentioned, but given the very similar BBC story, we can assume that the PS3 will be one of the Cell processor's main uses.
Bah. If I'm holding a big stick, not only will I claim it's mine, but I will beat you on the head with it to PROVE it's mine.
The problem is that our technologically enriched society has moved away from such a primal way of defining property, but is that not still the definition? Consider John Locke's (and Rousseau's) argument for the reason and the need for organized society; that man voluntarily submitted himself into an organized society for the good of himself and others. Now, in the real world, we don't ask our kids if they want to join society when they turn 16, but Locke's concepts remain the basis of democracy.
Also, money and banks exist because theoretically, you can go to a bank and get cold, hard cash/gold for any ephemeral worthless paper money.
Yes... One could say that the internet itself was better back in, say, 1995, when Yahoo and porn sites were the only commercial entities out there, but would you really want to go back, just because of a better signal-to-noise ratio?
Sure it'd be nice to nuke AOL and all its users off the face of this planet, but that's pretty elitist, you have to admit. Just because you perceive someone as being dumb, does that mean they don't deserve the same access as you, whether to the Net, the Web, or Usenet?
Hmmmm... What about that whole "all your base" craze that was circling around and around the net a few months ago? There were no corporations promoting Zero Wing or anything of the sort, but I guarantee you that millions of teenagers were walking around inserting badly translated Japanese video game quotes into their everyday conversation whenever possible.
Now what if some underground, independent animated cyberpunk flick got the same exposure? OK, so demographically, the internet is self selecting, but at the very least, most of the "wired" high school and college students would see it, and that' pretty good exposure.
Don't underestimate the internet. There's more people on than you think, and even if they're on AOL, they are still reachable.
Yes, except that gravitons have pretty much been ruled out as a dumb idea, while most physicists seem to think gravity waves are pretty close to the right solution. Hell, my high school physics teacher taught a class about them, so they must almost be accepted science.;)
If you want to do programming, make a good mod for Quake, Half-Life, UT, etc. A lot of companies looking for coders give mod making virtually as a requirement. A lot of the guys already "in the industry" got there through mod-making. Mr Elusive, id's bot AI coder made the Omicron Bot for Quake 1, and Steven Polge, Epic's bot programmer, made the Reaper Bot, also for Q1. There's tons of other people out there who became first popular in amateur circles.
For level design, and probably all other aspects of the gaming industry, the path is largely the same. Make custom content, make it good, and hope somebody notices. Also, submit your work to companies when they're looking for new blood. Ion Storm Austin and Ritual Entertainment have both gone looking for new mappers in the past few months.
I don't think it's easy to get into the industry. Far more people want to work at id software than actually do work at id software. Part of the problem are the legions of people who are innacurate judges of their own work. The other problem is that many companies do in fact seem to look for people who've already done work in the industry before looking elsewhere for talent.
In the end, don't make mods, or maps, or textures, or music, or anything with the sole intent of getting into the industry, because it's a pretty rare occurance to actually "make it." Create for yourself, and yourself only, and be pleasantly surprised when you get a job in the gaming industry.
The mappers, coders, and reviewers hosted on Gamespy's networks feel about the same way. The news on any of their sites, even the venerable PlanetQuake, sucks.
Fileplanet? Dear god, don't get me started. The redeeming value of fileplanet is that they have a stranglehold on content, namely, everything that used to be hosted on cdrom.com and its many mirrors. Now it's hosted on what, 2-3 servers worldwide? One isn't a full mirror, one is in Italy (great for Italians, bad for USians like me), and the last is GS's own server. I can rarely coax a resumable, non-redirected, ftp download out of Gamespy's server, so I generally download from Italy (fileplanet.ngi.it). Problem is, it looks like many other people have the same idea as me, because NGI's ftp server is almost always full.
Yes, I am on a lowly modem. I don't think Gamespy gives a rat's ass that I am, though.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what the really funny thing is? Most of what Microsoft says is true, in a fashion. Funnier still is that this is hardly a bad thing.
Let's start with MS's vague assertions that Open Source/Free Software is anti-Capitalistic, and anti-American.
You're damn right it is.
If the economic system of the US today is "capitalism," then what is that? An anti-comptetive nightmare world of corporate conglamerates that the government barely controls or cares about, is what it is. How can a Congressman attack the very people that paid his way into office? And "American?!" The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, pop culture dominates our lives through subtle slogans thought up by Madison Avenue ad axecs, and, every day, we march one step closer to a police state, too complacent to give a shit.
Fun, huh?
Calling Open Source anti-American is kinda like calling Ralph Nader a Communist. He's not, but he is Socialist. Similarly, I'd call Open Source/Free Software at the very least communal. We ARE in this together, and it's the fact that this is a movement of the people that makes it strong. Be wary of IBM, guys.
Microsoft talks of Capitalism and the "American Way" as if these are good things. You, the informed citizen, should know better.
Microsoft attacks the GPL because it threatens their exsistence. The "death of the software industry" Microsoft speaks of may well happen; however, it would only be a death of the industry AS WE KNOW IT. Let Microsoft, and anyone else who is to slow to change fall by the wayside. The old business model of the software industry is becoming irrelevant. We don't need propietary software anymore. As the Borg would say, "resistance is futile."
The obvious parallel here is to the early 80's, and the dawning of the Personal Computer as we know it today. Open designs and standards led to a revolution. Perhaps one day, it'll become possible for people to build their own computers again, and we'll see another revolution.
Two words for ya: restraining order.
Don't forget about Trance Control, they rock too.
Did you hear? PPK recently got signed with Perfecto (Paul Oakenfold's record label). Regardless of one's opinion of Oakie, I'd call that a break-through.
Delete the space between the 0 and the 1. Slashdot still breaks up long URL's, it looks like.
It's been voted the best book of the century by quite an number of people. And plus, the Silmarillion is way above a "childs" head (in writing style alone).
There's another funny thing about this "research." Two things jump out at me:
1) In japan, the literacy rate is quite high, and the schools are incredibly demanding. Anybody who gets all the way through high school is far "smarter" than Joe Average American high school student.
2) As a whole, Japanese youth play a LOT of games.
If most japanese kids spend large chunks of their youth glued to their Super Nintendo, then why aren't they so dumb, as this "research" seems to suggest they should be?
Food for thought...
I find the commentary you linked to a bit sad. Does this guy have to be on the cutting edge to have any fun at all? I mean, crap, I get way more kicks out of good ol' Quake 1 than this shiny new Quake 3 thing, and that's 5 years old this month. I don't feel much pity for the guy either.
Yup, it was in NeXTWorld magazine, circa 1993. I probably have the magazine that the article was featured in, somewhere...
Well, for one, Quake 4 is gonna be on Stroggos again, which means no medieval/demonic stuff.
Just industrial/demonic stuff instead. -_^
There are plenty of people who find the pristine labratories of Half Life utterly boring, and revel in Quake's other-dimensional weirdness. Thankfully, the world is big enough for both types of games. So come on down, join the Morlocks, we're running the show in the end!
Perhaps, but if I wanted unmatched 1 on 1 play, give me QuakeWorld and Headshot's Dead Bodies Everywhere anyday. Maybe CPM. Before Q3, shooters were about aim and item management. Number three introduced technique as an integral game element. I think that's a nice way of saying that Quake 3 is way slower than Quake 1. Pertaining to the actual topic of this article (Quake 4), well, forgive me as I stifle a laugh. I don't think there is any new ground left to cover to in the Quake series. I expect that, unlike DooM 3, this Quake 4 will be just fast enough to deathmatch with, to throw the pro players a bone.
Except that 4 and 5 are vaguely joined. I think Cecil is supposed to be Butz's great-grandfather. The Final Fantasy anime OAV binds the two together somewhat.
Very true, bu I got one small correction: On the PSX, Sony gave their developers fairly standard high-level libraries and tools (C/C++ I assume), but then, after a few years, they released tools that allowed developers to write directly to the hardware.
The developers loved it.
Sony decided to do the same right from the start on the PS2, and gave the developers assembly-level tools right from the start. Keep in mind the wacky architecture of the PS2. This, as we have seen, possibly scared a few potential developers away. Regardless, with the system being out for almost a year in Japan, it matters little; most dev houses will have learned the hardware through and through by now.
Well, it's not that much more than the ~$50 USD you pay for a linux distro on CD. So, yeah, there's a markup, but heck, I'd rather pay $75 than 200 or so for Win2k! ;)
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010313S0113
.10 micron and running at 1 teraflops. It's fully scalable and will form the backbone for a true broadband internet.
In short: by 2004/2005, IBM, Sony, and Toshiba will have developed the Cell processor, fabbed at
Neal Stephenson's science fiction does seem to be self-fullfilling, doesn't it?
Ken Kutaragi speaks of this massively parallel beast in biological terms, alludes to peer to peer-ness on several levels, and says the OS that will run on the processors will be Linux-like.
Now if that's not a made-for-Slashdot story, I don't know what is.
The Playstation 3 is never directly mentioned, but given the very similar BBC story, we can assume that the PS3 will be one of the Cell processor's main uses.
Bah. If I'm holding a big stick, not only will I claim it's mine, but I will beat you on the head with it to PROVE it's mine.
The problem is that our technologically enriched society has moved away from such a primal way of defining property, but is that not still the definition? Consider John Locke's (and Rousseau's) argument for the reason and the need for organized society; that man voluntarily submitted himself into an organized society for the good of himself and others. Now, in the real world, we don't ask our kids if they want to join society when they turn 16, but Locke's concepts remain the basis of democracy.
Also, money and banks exist because theoretically, you can go to a bank and get cold, hard cash/gold for any ephemeral worthless paper money.
Yes... One could say that the internet itself was better back in, say, 1995, when Yahoo and porn sites were the only commercial entities out there, but would you really want to go back, just because of a better signal-to-noise ratio?
Sure it'd be nice to nuke AOL and all its users off the face of this planet, but that's pretty elitist, you have to admit. Just because you perceive someone as being dumb, does that mean they don't deserve the same access as you, whether to the Net, the Web, or Usenet?
Newsweek?
if they weren't fatal, they wouldn't be deaths!
It's a joke, f00...
I once saw a bumper sticker that said "90% of all people are caused by accidents."
Hmmmm... What about that whole "all your base" craze that was circling around and around the net a few months ago? There were no corporations promoting Zero Wing or anything of the sort, but I guarantee you that millions of teenagers were walking around inserting badly translated Japanese video game quotes into their everyday conversation whenever possible.
Now what if some underground, independent animated cyberpunk flick got the same exposure? OK, so demographically, the internet is self selecting, but at the very least, most of the "wired" high school and college students would see it, and that' pretty good exposure.
Don't underestimate the internet. There's more people on than you think, and even if they're on AOL, they are still reachable.
Yes, except that gravitons have pretty much been ruled out as a dumb idea, while most physicists seem to think gravity waves are pretty close to the right solution. Hell, my high school physics teacher taught a class about them, so they must almost be accepted science. ;)
You can type "fov" and a number in the q1 console, but anything past fov 120 is too distorted to be playable.
Offtopic!? Someone have a sense of humor, and mod this +1 Funny.
Stevie Case =! Steve Case, I hope you know...
Stevie Case is Killkreek.
If you want to do programming, make a good mod for Quake, Half-Life, UT, etc. A lot of companies looking for coders give mod making virtually as a requirement. A lot of the guys already "in the industry" got there through mod-making. Mr Elusive, id's bot AI coder made the Omicron Bot for Quake 1, and Steven Polge, Epic's bot programmer, made the Reaper Bot, also for Q1. There's tons of other people out there who became first popular in amateur circles.
For level design, and probably all other aspects of the gaming industry, the path is largely the same. Make custom content, make it good, and hope somebody notices. Also, submit your work to companies when they're looking for new blood. Ion Storm Austin and Ritual Entertainment have both gone looking for new mappers in the past few months.
I don't think it's easy to get into the industry. Far more people want to work at id software than actually do work at id software. Part of the problem are the legions of people who are innacurate judges of their own work. The other problem is that many companies do in fact seem to look for people who've already done work in the industry before looking elsewhere for talent.
In the end, don't make mods, or maps, or textures, or music, or anything with the sole intent of getting into the industry, because it's a pretty rare occurance to actually "make it." Create for yourself, and yourself only, and be pleasantly surprised when you get a job in the gaming industry.
The mappers, coders, and reviewers hosted on Gamespy's networks feel about the same way. The news on any of their sites, even the venerable PlanetQuake, sucks.
Fileplanet? Dear god, don't get me started. The redeeming value of fileplanet is that they have a stranglehold on content, namely, everything that used to be hosted on cdrom.com and its many mirrors. Now it's hosted on what, 2-3 servers worldwide? One isn't a full mirror, one is in Italy (great for Italians, bad for USians like me), and the last is GS's own server. I can rarely coax a resumable, non-redirected, ftp download out of Gamespy's server, so I generally download from Italy (fileplanet.ngi.it). Problem is, it looks like many other people have the same idea as me, because NGI's ftp server is almost always full.
Yes, I am on a lowly modem. I don't think Gamespy gives a rat's ass that I am, though.