Although probably a bit more expensive then you were probably planning on spending, you might want to consider The Wild Divine Project.
From the site: The Journey to Wild Divine is more than a computer adventure. It integrates a personal spiritual quest with an innovative biofeedback interface and high-end multimedia production. The result is an unparalleled and fulfilling "Inner-Active" experience.
Basically, you explore the virtual world and learn to complete tasks that require you to learn to control your pulse and breathing rate using a biofeedback system.
I haven't played it... but it certainly looks cool
Actually some of the most important psychological experiments in animal behavior would be considered unethical by today's standards. Pavlov's discovery of the classical conditioning process was made possible by surgically removing the skin from dogs throats and replacing it with clear plastic so he could tell when the dogs were salivating.
If you're mostly interested in the arcade games, there's still a few places to go in LA. X-Cape at UCLA stays pretty up to date with its games and has free play every saturday night. Southern Hills Golfland isn't to far of a drive and has a great selection of games and freeplay saturday afternoons.
Check out the tournament listings on Shoryuken. Odds are you'll find an arcade around you that competitive gamers will hang out at. The competitive aspect of arcades has always been the reason I was driven to them. You also have the added satifaction of being able to see the person you were playing against and you have a financial motivation to play your best (your hard earned quarter is on the line).
of course your skill doesn't matter when your title is "Game Tester"
I beg to differ. Game Testers not only have to beat the game on all its difficulties, but also avoid potentially fatal bugs in the process. Playing the game in its clean and polished form is often much easier than trying to make it through the game in early beta.
This is an idea I've been thinking about for a while...
Why not just Open Source the game code but keep the artwork/music/levels/etc. copyrighted? The project would gain all the advantages of the open source development process, but the final product could still be packaged and sold. People would have to buy the game to experience it in full, as the designers intended, but the packaged game would include source code so that modders can hack it to their hearts content. It could also turn a game of partial information into a game of perfect information (all the players know all the rules).
While I'm on the subject, would sourcing such a project be possible under the GPL? Or would a more specific license be necessary?
Really, you could at least search Google on the subject before posting... but anyways...
In 1995, Novell decided to leave the OS market and sold the UNIX source code to SCO. They also sold the UNIX trademark and specification to the Open Group (formerly X/Open).
While I can understand that they would want to keep the game simple enough to appeal to all fans of the series, I thought the Two Towers game was far too short. Furthermore, the uninterruptable insta-kills just reduced the game to Parry, Slay, repeat. Granted you had to "buy" the skill first, but then it took all the sense of danger out the game afterwards. Incoming arrows? Insta-kill someone and watch them fly right through you!
But there's hope. Steve Gray: The levels in The Return of the King are at least twice as big as the levels in The Two Towers. There are nine playable characters and around 70 combinations of two-player co-op.
Bigger levels, probably means more game time. I'm not sure if it means it will be anymore challenging. The co-op sounds like a great addition though, and it'll be interesting to see how they did it.
Summary: Epic book, awesome movie adaptation, run of the mill video game.
I won't argue against the fact that given two products of equal functionality most people would choose the more aesthetically pleasing one.
However, I'm rather disturbed by the "let's make it pretty by adding useless adornments to it" trend. Marketing needs to understand that simplicity can be aesthetic too. Take Slackware for example. While probably not aesthetic in the typical sense, it *is* beautiful in it its minimalism.
The cornered mouse will attack the cat
on
Why Only Music?
·
· Score: 1
While I have no doubts that storage and bandwith cost made sharing music easier than movies and software (as many others here have noted), I can think of several other reasons why the RIAA feels more threatened by file-sharing than the MPAA.
Controlling public consumption:
The MPAA can still control what theaters movies are shown in, which is where most of the public still sees movies. As P2P and Digital Radio replace analog radio stations, the RIAA can't control what music people listen to. If they can't get people to hear their music, no one is going to buy it.
Decreasing Costs of Music Production:
As mentioned earlier, the cost of recording an album has gone down considerable over the past decade. This means less artists will be enlisting the RIAA's service in the future.
Cookie-Cutter-Singles are on the way out
The RIAA has made a lot of their money off albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs on them and 13 tracks of filler. Furthermore, it isn't that hard to make music that is aesthetically pleasing if you know even a little bit about music theory. Just follow the standard cycle of chord progression and it will come out fine. The two patterns we hear most often come straight from this cycle (I,V,I,IV,V) or by cycling backwards (I,IV,I,V,IV : the blues progression). If you think about it, 90% of the music we hear is infringing on the work of 17th Century Monks.
Live Performances are on the uprise:
This is a good thing. This means the artists are going to be getting the money, and the fans get to hear it live. But it's bad for the RIAA because they're put out of the loop.
The RIAA is dying and knows it. We're just witnessing their final *gasp*.
1. SGI owns Alias Wavefront (read the fine print) 2. Maya for Linux is still closed source and expensive. 3. SGI's machines are more expensive that a home built PC of similar specs.
I think the general trend of the article was that Studios save money using Open Source solutions, and have the freedom to customize that software. This is why the studios are slowly moving away from SGI systems for graphics rendering.
A copy of Maya runs from $2000 to $6000 (alias.com) and is _closed_ source. On the other hand, several applications like Blender (blender3d.org) are free and _open_ source. The richness of features present in Maya secures SGI's position in the 3D animation market, but the pricetag is a little high for an indie studio trying to break into the film industry. Eventually, the Open Source animation programs out there will approach Maya in quality and SGI will have to keep adding features to stay on top.
If your problem is really with the author giving too much press attention to CinePaint, then lighten up! It's based on the GIMP, what more could you want?
But people just want their hero... and then they get dissapointed when Linus adds bitkeeper or adds DRM to the kernel. Because these Linux users only see what they want to see.
Possibly flamebait, but whatever...
I'm sorry, but the only thing linux users want to see is the source. If bitkeeper or DRM gets added to the kernel, it's completely within your right under the GPL to go into the source and remove it. That's the beauty of open source development.
People use Linux because (A) it works and (B) it gives them the assurance that if they want to change the way their system works they can.
This reminded me of an old joke... Googling for "Microsoft GM" will return numerous sources:
What would happen if Microsoft decided to
make cars?
At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and said, "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
(1) For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
(2) Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
(3) Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart it, and drive on.
(4) Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your carto shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstallthe engine.
(5) Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or(CarNT) but still you would have to pay extra to buy more seats.
(6) Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, fivetimes as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5% of theroads.
(7) The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replacedby a single "general car fault" warning light.
(8) New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
(9) The airbag system would say, "Are you Sure?" before going off.
(10) Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out andrefuse to let you in until you simultaneously lift the door handle, turn thekey, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
(11) Every time GM introduced a new model car, buyers would have to learn howto drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the samemanner as the old car.
(12) You would have to press the "start" button to shut off the engine."
I'm beginning to think what the world really needs is a development program for a weapon that destroys military installations and leaves people standing.
/* begin obligatory back story */
Back in high school, some one broke into my car and stole my stereo, speakers, and a collection of about 50 audio CDs. The police department expressed their condolences, but told me that there wasn't really anything they could do about it. My insurance didn't cover it either, and the whole incident ended up costing me over $1000 in property. /* end obligatory back story */
My questions to the DoJ are these:
Are intellectual property rights more difficult to enforce than physical property rights, or vice versa? Are the punishments for IP theft fair in comparison to those of PP theft? Are works of art in a physical medium considered primarily as intellectual or physical property (or both) with respect to the law?
Name the last album you listend to that had a theme, thematic or musical, through the whole album...soundtacks don't count!
I can name lots of them:
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd - The Wall
The Art of Noise - Seduction of Claude Debussy
Bush - 16Stone
Dream Theater - Scenes from a Memory
the music industry has worked hard to kill songs that tell stories...song that make you think. With no songs that tell a story, the songwriting paradign that comes to us from the dawn of time, through the Celtic Bards and Troubadors, and into our time, there is no need for albums...for albums are for stories that are longer than one song.
But I want a story! I want to think! And damn the record industry to hell for trying to take that away from me! Artist should take a hint from this new medium, and realize that if the whole album is good, and coherent as a whole, we (the consumers) have no problem with going out to buy it. Record Companies, on the other hand, need to learn (possibly the hard way) that we're not going to drop $20 on an album that has one pop-formula chart topper and 15 other tracks of filler. If it takes iTunes to do that to them, then by all means: download away!
it seems that a combination of ritalin and operant therapy has been the most successful. But rather than sending you to a clinical psychologist, I'd just suggest that you find a job where the act of working is rewarding to you.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by modern 'philosophy' but I think you have some misconceptions:
"Modern Philosophy" is a movement in the literature that reflects a more mathematical and scientific approach to the philosophical ideas originating back in ancient Greece. Philosophers usually credit Rene Descartes for the transition, but Descartes is a bad example of good philosophy because his arguments go in logical circles. David Hume is a little better because did take an empirical approach to philosophy. I'll bet you'd enjoy Hume's writing, he insists that the problems in philosophy would all just disappear when the philosophers finally define their terms.
"Post-Modern Philosophy" has developed more recently (perhaps what you meant by 'modern'?) and rejects anything not based on empirical evidence. The goal is to eliminate the underlying universalist assumptions of philosophy in order to bring philosophy closer to reality.
That being said, 90% of all philosophy is "drivel" (as you put it) but the ability to distinguish the remaining 10% is priceless. Secondly, none of it is impossible to disprove. You have several ways to disprove philosophical "drivel":
1: Attack the soundness of the argument. Check that that each step logically follows from the previous. Look for circular reasoning, statements that try to prove themselves.
2: Attack the validity of the argument. Sometimes philosophers say things that downright aren't true.
3: Attack the assumptions. Every argument has them, and if you can destroy them then the rest of the argument will crumble after.
Basically, if you want to challenge philosophy you're going to have to do so in the philosophical arena. When you combat overgeneralizations about reality with overgeneralizations about philosophy you're just making more problems than you began with.
Slashdot Mirror
Although probably a bit more expensive then you were probably planning on spending, you might want to consider The Wild Divine Project.
From the site: The Journey to Wild Divine is more than a computer adventure. It integrates a personal spiritual quest with an innovative biofeedback interface and high-end multimedia production. The result is an unparalleled and fulfilling "Inner-Active" experience.
Basically, you explore the virtual world and learn to complete tasks that require you to learn to control your pulse and breathing rate using a biofeedback system.
I haven't played it... but it certainly looks cool
Actually some of the most important psychological experiments in animal behavior would be considered unethical by today's standards. Pavlov's discovery of the classical conditioning process was made possible by surgically removing the skin from dogs throats and replacing it with clear plastic so he could tell when the dogs were salivating.
If you're mostly interested in the arcade games, there's still a few places to go in LA. X-Cape at UCLA stays pretty up to date with its games and has free play every saturday night. Southern Hills Golfland isn't to far of a drive and has a great selection of games and freeplay saturday afternoons.
Check out the tournament listings on Shoryuken. Odds are you'll find an arcade around you that competitive gamers will hang out at. The competitive aspect of arcades has always been the reason I was driven to them. You also have the added satifaction of being able to see the person you were playing against and you have a financial motivation to play your best (your hard earned quarter is on the line).
of course your skill doesn't matter when your title is "Game Tester"
I beg to differ. Game Testers not only have to beat the game on all its difficulties, but also avoid potentially fatal bugs in the process. Playing the game in its clean and polished form is often much easier than trying to make it through the game in early beta.
This is an idea I've been thinking about for a while...
Why not just Open Source the game code but keep the artwork/music/levels/etc. copyrighted? The project would gain all the advantages of the open source development process, but the final product could still be packaged and sold. People would have to buy the game to experience it in full, as the designers intended, but the packaged game would include source code so that modders can hack it to their hearts content. It could also turn a game of partial information into a game of perfect information (all the players know all the rules).
While I'm on the subject, would sourcing such a project be possible under the GPL? Or would a more specific license be necessary?
Really, you could at least search Google on the subject before posting... but anyways...
In 1995, Novell decided to leave the OS market and sold the UNIX source code to SCO. They also sold the UNIX trademark and specification to the Open Group (formerly X/Open).
While I can understand that they would want to keep the game simple enough to appeal to all fans of the series, I thought the Two Towers game was far too short. Furthermore, the uninterruptable insta-kills just reduced the game to Parry, Slay, repeat. Granted you had to "buy" the skill first, but then it took all the sense of danger out the game afterwards. Incoming arrows? Insta-kill someone and watch them fly right through you!
But there's hope.
Steve Gray: The levels in The Return of the King are at least twice as big as the levels in The Two Towers. There are nine playable characters and around 70 combinations of two-player co-op.
Bigger levels, probably means more game time. I'm not sure if it means it will be anymore challenging. The co-op sounds like a great addition though, and it'll be interesting to see how they did it.
Summary: Epic book, awesome movie adaptation, run of the mill video game.
...can be found here
I won't argue against the fact that given two products of equal functionality most people would choose the more aesthetically pleasing one.
However, I'm rather disturbed by the "let's make it pretty by adding useless adornments to it" trend. Marketing needs to understand that simplicity can be aesthetic too. Take Slackware for example. While probably not aesthetic in the typical sense, it *is* beautiful in it its minimalism.
While I have no doubts that storage and bandwith cost made sharing music easier than movies and software (as many others here have noted), I can think of several other reasons why the RIAA feels more threatened by file-sharing than the MPAA.
Controlling public consumption:
The MPAA can still control what theaters movies are shown in, which is where most of the public still sees movies. As P2P and Digital Radio replace analog radio stations, the RIAA can't control what music people listen to. If they can't get people to hear their music, no one is going to buy it.
Decreasing Costs of Music Production:
As mentioned earlier, the cost of recording an album has gone down considerable over the past decade. This means less artists will be enlisting the RIAA's service in the future.
Cookie-Cutter-Singles are on the way out
The RIAA has made a lot of their money off albums that only have 1 or 2 good songs on them and 13 tracks of filler. Furthermore, it isn't that hard to make music that is aesthetically pleasing if you know even a little bit about music theory. Just follow the standard cycle of chord progression and it will come out fine. The two patterns we hear most often come straight from this cycle (I,V,I,IV,V) or by cycling backwards (I,IV,I,V,IV : the blues progression). If you think about it, 90% of the music we hear is infringing on the work of 17th Century Monks.
Live Performances are on the uprise:
This is a good thing. This means the artists are going to be getting the money, and the fans get to hear it live. But it's bad for the RIAA because they're put out of the loop.
The RIAA is dying and knows it. We're just witnessing their final *gasp*.
3 Counter Points
1. SGI owns Alias Wavefront (read the fine print)
2. Maya for Linux is still closed source and expensive.
3. SGI's machines are more expensive that a home built PC of similar specs.
I think the general trend of the article was that Studios save money using Open Source solutions, and have the freedom to customize that software. This is why the studios are slowly moving away from SGI systems for graphics rendering.
A copy of Maya runs from $2000 to $6000 (alias.com) and is _closed_ source. On the other hand, several applications like Blender (blender3d.org) are free and _open_ source. The richness of features present in Maya secures SGI's position in the 3D animation market, but the pricetag is a little high for an indie studio trying to break into the film industry. Eventually, the Open Source animation programs out there will approach Maya in quality and SGI will have to keep adding features to stay on top.
If your problem is really with the author giving too much press attention to CinePaint, then lighten up! It's based on the GIMP, what more could you want?
As I recall, none of the absentee ballots made any difference in the 2000 presidential election.
Someone must have thought, "Lets let absentee voters vote electronically, we're just going to throw out their votes anyway!"
Nothing lost, nothing gained.
But people just want their hero... and then they get dissapointed when Linus adds bitkeeper or adds DRM to the kernel. Because these Linux users only see what they want to see.
Possibly flamebait, but whatever...
I'm sorry, but the only thing linux users want to see is the source. If bitkeeper or DRM gets added to the kernel, it's completely within your right under the GPL to go into the source and remove it. That's the beauty of open source development.
People use Linux because (A) it works and (B) it gives them the assurance that if they want to change the way their system works they can.
End of line
Seems not a lot has changed since then...
this reminds me of the awful Hough tranforms...
I'm beginning to think what the world really needs is a development program for a weapon that destroys military installations and leaves people standing.
Yeah, like the Vash the Stampede!
games pose a problem that highlights the inadequacy of a purely scientific, mathematical, objectivist, positivist approach.
Anyone who doesn't realize that games are an object of mathematics doesn't deserve my time.
/* begin obligatory back story */
/* end obligatory back story */
Back in high school, some one broke into my car and stole my stereo, speakers, and a collection of about 50 audio CDs. The police department expressed their condolences, but told me that there wasn't really anything they could do about it. My insurance didn't cover it either, and the whole incident ended up costing me over $1000 in property.
My questions to the DoJ are these:
Are intellectual property rights more difficult to enforce than physical property rights, or vice versa? Are the punishments for IP theft fair in comparison to those of PP theft? Are works of art in a physical medium considered primarily as intellectual or physical property (or both) with respect to the law?
I can name lots of them:
the music industry has worked hard to kill songs that tell stories...song that make you think. With no songs that tell a story, the songwriting paradign that comes to us from the dawn of time, through the Celtic Bards and Troubadors, and into our time, there is no need for albums...for albums are for stories that are longer than one song.
But I want a story! I want to think! And damn the record industry to hell for trying to take that away from me! Artist should take a hint from this new medium, and realize that if the whole album is good, and coherent as a whole, we (the consumers) have no problem with going out to buy it. Record Companies, on the other hand, need to learn (possibly the hard way) that we're not going to drop $20 on an album that has one pop-formula chart topper and 15 other tracks of filler. If it takes iTunes to do that to them, then by all means: download away!
Good-bye zion orgy! Helloooo fight scenes!
In a recent test the QuesTec system judged that 32.1 percent of pitches were within the "strike zone", while the umpire called 31.4 percent as strikes
Excuse me, but where are the statistics that actually matter here?
I don't need to know what percentage of pitches are called strikes, I want a two-way analysis of variance!
...someone installs linux on it?
it seems that a combination of ritalin and operant therapy has been the most successful. But rather than sending you to a clinical psychologist, I'd just suggest that you find a job where the act of working is rewarding to you.
heck, that's what we're all trying to do...
I'm not quite sure what you mean by modern 'philosophy' but I think you have some misconceptions:
"Modern Philosophy" is a movement in the literature that reflects a more mathematical and scientific approach to the philosophical ideas originating back in ancient Greece. Philosophers usually credit Rene Descartes for the transition, but Descartes is a bad example of good philosophy because his arguments go in logical circles. David Hume is a little better because did take an empirical approach to philosophy. I'll bet you'd enjoy Hume's writing, he insists that the problems in philosophy would all just disappear when the philosophers finally define their terms.
"Post-Modern Philosophy" has developed more recently (perhaps what you meant by 'modern'?) and rejects anything not based on empirical evidence. The goal is to eliminate the underlying universalist assumptions of philosophy in order to bring philosophy closer to reality.
That being said, 90% of all philosophy is "drivel" (as you put it) but the ability to distinguish the remaining 10% is priceless. Secondly, none of it is impossible to disprove. You have several ways to disprove philosophical "drivel":
1: Attack the soundness of the argument. Check that that each step logically follows from the previous. Look for circular reasoning, statements that try to prove themselves.
2: Attack the validity of the argument. Sometimes philosophers say things that downright aren't true.
3: Attack the assumptions. Every argument has them, and if you can destroy them then the rest of the argument will crumble after.
Basically, if you want to challenge philosophy you're going to have to do so in the philosophical arena. When you combat overgeneralizations about reality with overgeneralizations about philosophy you're just making more problems than you began with.