Personally, I'd say if you can't afford a dual core system and a mid range graphics card from a few generations ago, you probably can't afford a new $50 game either.
That's very generous of you to inform other people how they may prioritize their own money. What if Civilizations V is the only game the GGP wants to play this year. Maybe they estimated that a civ game is good for about 300 hours of entertainment, at $0.60 an hour. Surprisingly, even people who think spending more money on computer is a low priority right now might think that entertainment has a certain value.
I actually think it's pretty pathetic that the parent and grandparent got modded insightful for telling people that if their computer is insufficient for a game they need to just suck it up. A lot of people do little more than browse the web, balance their bank account, write documents, play media, sync their ipod, and store digital photographs on their home computers. Why should any of those people feel inclined to upgrade their computer so long as those things they do remain reasonably responsive?
While people love the idea of wireless, it just isn't going to happen for everything. In terms of power, it is impossible basically. You can do inductive charging which is technically wireless, I suppose, but it doesn't really fix anything. You device has to sit directly on the charger, which of course has a wire back to the outlet. It's been around forever, electric toothbrushes use it because having a waterproof system is important, but it just isn't that useful over all. Better to just use a wire, or have exposed connectors in a dock. Cheaper and more efficient.
To be fair, there is one significant advantage to wireless charging. No proprietary plugs. If you've got a tablet, a phone, a watch, a wireless mouse, etc and you only need one pad to charge them all, well some people might find that very convenient.
Also, I guess there may be an advantage to wireless charging because you don't need to touch anything. Getting a charger pad with a wire doesn't help that much, but if my end table has a wireless charger built into it, then the wire can be effectively hidden and will declutter the area. I think the amount of clutter most people live with creates a more stressful environment than they realize.
That said, I'm with you that the strongest proponents of wireless charging seem to be overselling the benefits.
I didn't bother to read most of your drivel, but you should at least firm up your first argument.
The climate is complex. Which means that it is entirely possible for the global climate to warm, while a given local climate becomes cooler or drier or wetter. The term climate change is just an attempt at framing the discussion so people stop wasting time with the argument "I don't know about this global warming, last weekend the high was only 75F".
A real world example is that while much of the US was mired in record heat waves this summer, my hometown in the pacific northwest had high temperatures above 70F for less than 60 days, and highs above 80F for probably fewer than 20 days. The PNW is a drizzly climate, but even the locals got pretty punchy. If I were like most people and assumed the entire world were just the same as my own corner, I could conclude from this summer that global temperatures had cooled nearly 10F on average since 2009!
I understand the sentiment that political framing of scientific questions is fraught ground, but in my country people like to scream at each other until the loudest voice is deemed right. So, some people are trying the approach of screaming about global warming because they think the future state of humanity might depend on it. You can belittle those people if you like, but at least they're arguing over something that might matter rather than how many blocks away from a site of murder you can/should build a mosque.
He's got a good methodology: He takes the skeptic's view, and interviews top theologians, philosophers, and scientists.
I would be very hesitant to use Strobel's books as proof of anything. His actual methodology is to find famous biblical apologists and ask them skeptical sounding (but softball) questions, and then never challenge their first answer.
Let's say a well known atheist interviewed Dawkins or Dennett and they hold this fake interview.
"If there is no god, how did we get here?" "Oh, we've known for a long time that we evolved from other primates." "Wow, that's pretty impressive to have figured that out"
And the interview ends. If you read that, you'd be flummoxed that he didn't follow up with harder questions about abiogenesis or the big bang. You would say the book was a charade. This is how Strobel executes his own interviews. Worse, he tends to ask his interviewees questions they aren't really qualified to answer. Your quote is from William Lane Craig, who is a theologian and philosopher. There are broad differences of opinion in the fields of theology and philosophy, but Craig is at least a qualified expert in those domains. He is not an expert in astrophysics.
That doesn't mean he is unqualified to hold an opinion. Only, that his opinion in those fields is not particularly more valid or interesting than if you asked a random person off the street. Why would Strobel go out of his way to interview people on topics about which they are not experts?
What are the advantages of keeping all those pages open at the same time?
If you're trying to keep your memory usage at it's optimum torque-to-power level of 78%, each of those tabs does a good job chewing up some inconvenient MB. Computer manufacturers have really exacerbated this problem by increasing installed memory of new systems past 2GB.
No, it's for people who want an exception to there precious Fictional stories to seem 'more important' then others. Nothing more.
Bzzzzt, wrong. I think it's for people who want to exercise their brain on imagining a world that might actually be. The additional constraints of SF don't mean it's better, but they do mean there's an additional (nontrivial) effort required to fit the genre. In a way, it's not so different than preferring poems that follow iambic pentameter over free-form poems.
Also, your "Name 1 book that is very different from fantasy" challenge is pure fluff. I can't believe you were moderated up for it. Allow me to employ the same logic fallacy.
You think the real world is better or more real than fantasy? Then, name one feature of real life that is very different from fantasy?
Cars could just be replaced with magic carpets. Google isn't so different from divining spirits. Fruit trees are basically the same as magical bushes that produce berries when surrounded by enough love.
Ergo, the real world is no different than fiction.
----- If you haven't noticed, the flaw in your argument is that the term fiction encapsulates literally every conceivable universe. Congrats, you've discovered a Venn diagram where fiction is the biggest circle, SF is within that, and the real world is within the SF circle. A quicker more honest approach might have been simply noting that SF stands for science fiction.
RE - to why SF often doesn't make mass appeal, I believe it's a combination of two things. 1) People like to watch movies that emphasize characters, humor, or explosions. Most 'real' SF emphasizes the science instead. 2) Real SF needs to reference science with ramifications outside what most people are familiar with (otherwise it wouldn't be fiction at all). The group of people who can understand the science involved well enough to enjoy a given story is obviously a smaller subsection of the population than those who can appreciate a "good fights evil" kind of story (like Star Wars).
Anyone who's paying attention already knows that all DRM is crackable for people who are sufficiently cheap. In fact, I'm inlined to believe that excessive DRM only posses a "challenge" for players to crack. Instead of just having a game to play, there's the game of cracking the DRM, with the reward being you get to play a game.
I think social-hacking by game makers would be a much more effective and affordable approach. To do it properly, they'd need some kind of carrot and stick approach. Here's an example, let's say the game takes a good old CD key. When it boots the first time it tries to authenticate with a server. If the server is found, and the key is valid and never before used, the loading screen displays something along the lines of "Thank you for purchasing this game. Your money allows GAME_COMPANY_X to make the best games possible." If it connects and the key is valid but not new, they could select a message based on how recently the key was used by someone else. If very recently, they could splash "It looks like you may be borrowing this game from a friend. We approve of sharing, but hope you'll love this game enough to purchase your own copy." Or, if the last user hasn't loaded in a while, it could display something friendly about reselling the game.
Meanwhile, if the server finds the key is not authentic, or is being used by lots and lots of people at a time it could display "You do not appear to have an authentic copy of our game. We do not believe in punishing people who play our games, so we will not record your IP address or in any other way violate your privacy, but do know that our developers must be paid to produce games of this quality. So, if you like the game, please buy a legal copy or share one with a friend."
My wording might be incorrect, but I think a simple scheme like that might go much further towards encouraging players who like the game to buy it while removing the fun of cracking from those who just like a challenge. Also, if I do purchase a valid copy and for some reason my key is being used by other people or I'm not on a network, I can still play the game and the message itself may even be positive. E.g. we can't authenticate you, but please enjoy our game anyways, and please play a legal copy.
The only problem with this kind of idea is that to CEOs it doesn't look like you're doing anything. They won't realize it's probably more effective at reducing theft than any DRM they can dream up.
For example, I love duck typing. I can write a class that implements read() and pass it to almost any function that expects to receive a file-type object as an argument. I can write def add(x,y): return x+y and know that it will do the right thing whether I pass in ints, floats, or strings. (Side note: dynamic typing is not the same as weak typing; you can't add 1+"2" because those types are incompatible. I can't stand working in languages that attempt to do what I mean by guessing).
You're working too hard to make this an either/or proposition. C++, for instance, has provided statically checked duck typing via templates since it was standardized (it the language, not it templates). I'm not going to argue that C++ templates are the ideal solution, but if a compiler can check the type of arguments to verify they have a "read()" method for me, that is better than me hoping I didn't make a mistake. Or worse, hoping I didn't change the required argument signature some time in the future when requirements change.
Thank you. Why is Microsoft unable to produce a user friendly HTML version of their documentation. I thought they were supposed to copy the competitor to steal market share, not copy and then make the MS version much much worse.
I read the article wanting to know how the Avida developed memory. Basically, the programmer included an instruction that said "Do what you did last time" It is not evolution if the programmer hands them the ability.
While it would be more impressive for the program to develop the "do it again" function on its own, it's not quite fair to dismiss this either. If I understood the article correctly, they provided the do it again instruction, but the program had to both learn about the instruction, and develop the knowledge of when to apply it.
Imagine an ant in the real world. Their algorithm is usually something along the lines of - "is an ant bringing food back from that direction? then I should go where they came from and see if I can find some food too". If I read the article correctly, what they really did was teach the avida's to do the following - "did I just find food? then go further in that direction". They then made the path to the food curvy, so always heading "north" wouldn't work, it really had to know that the last time it went a certain way it found food, so now it should prefer doing that again.
I would imagine that the next step might be removing the "do it again" instruction and seeing if avida's can learn that for themselves.
Really, this seems more likely to back up the assertion that soccer is "the beautiful game". I think you could argue that any game where the real world behavior is emergent has a particular elegance to it.
FWIW, if you've ever watched 5 year olds play soccer (3 to a side), this simulation reached a similar level of sophistication somewhat after generation 100 but prior to 500. Four to five years old is about the point most children know enough to flock to the ball and kick at it intending it to go closer to the other team's goal.
While one could conceivably prove P=NP without producing the algorithm, that would probably be the most difficult route. It is probably easier (as well as more useful) to produce an example (just one will do) of an NP complete algorithm which can be translated (in polynomial time) to a polynomial complexity algorithm. Such a proof would, undoubtedly be shorter than this suggested proof that P!=NP.
I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm saying that the answer to the Fermi "Paradox" could be as simple as: Maybe the assumption that civilizations will engage in exponential galactic colonization endeavors is wrong.
Except...it only takes one civilization willing to engage in colonization. Humanity is notoriously exploratory. We go places (like the moon) that have literally no conceivable value at the time. I'm always amazed how places like Hawaii were originally settled. The odds of getting there were infinitesimal. Anyone setting sale for Hawaii could not have known it was there, and even if they had they could not have expected it would contain edible plants. Setting out on the journey at all would almost certainly mean you would never see your family again. And yet, people felt the need to go out there as a strong enough force, that they went.
I have little doubt that when we have the technology to fly to alien worlds (which probably means we can make them habitable on some level), then some small group of people will go.
But, even if our culture changes by then, and we become less interested in expansion, that doesn't mean alien societies would follow the same path. It's just as likely that an alien race would be more expansive than it is they would be less expansive.
That explains why Nintendo is hemorrhaging money with their lineup of single player games like Zelda, local only multiplayer games like the New Super Mario Bros, and online enabled games which are predominantly intended for home play like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros.
Actually, on second thought they might be doing alright.
At least a good multi-player experience has the advantage of being different each play.
Does it? I'm not so sure of that. At first, most multiplayer games are different each time, but very very few are well enough balanced that a large set of strategies are equally likely to result in winning. Once the community has had time to figure that one winning strategy out, everyone who is still around starts playing the game that way. Sure, real people are going to be more surprising than bots, but often times not by much.
Before anyone mods me down because they think their favorite game has limitless options, think about a few real world games. NFL football is a good example, let's break down formations for a second. The rules of the game require a certain number of offensive lineman positioned "in the box", someone must take the snap (though it could be shotgunned), and nobody can lineup on the other teams side of scrimmage. Other than that, players can start anywhere on the field and in any position they like. Players could lay down before each snap. Wideouts could start in a hands down stance. Everyone could line up backwards. the offense could put all five non-fixed players out left, in a long line. The center doesn't even have to be the guy snapping the ball. Defenses don't actually have to line up anyone on the line of scrimmage at all.
Despite all that, when you watch a game you'll find a surprisingly small number of alignments. Almost all defenses line up either a 3-4 or a 4-3, with a few backfield variations like Nickel or Dime. Offenses almost always (in the NFL) use either a single back, a two back (I-Back), or no back backfield, with between three and five receivers (counting tight ends) near the line of scrimmage. For 97% of plays, that's about it. Even in the real world, most games are generally limited to a few successful strategies at a time, and when a better strategy is discovered it usually renders an old one obsolete.
The most obvious way to add multiplayer would be to have a co-op mode, but it seems that co-ops modes are pretty rare these days (I'm not entirely sure why)
It's because they are hard to do right, especially in 3D. Think about the games with co-op mode in years past. Double Dragon, Final Fight, TMNT, etc, are the best I can think of and they were all 2D side-scrolling fighting games. Most didn't have much of a level design beyond walking to the right. Yet, even in this space it was challenging balancing the game for 1-2 (or 1-4 in arcade) players. Can human players harm each other? Should more baddies pop out in 2 player mode? Do players share lives? Those were about the only design choices remaining, and developers still often screwed them up (cough, cough, Battletoads).
The only recent co-op game I can think of that was generally well reviewed was the New Super Mario Bros Wii, which was side-scrolling 2D. And, even with Nintendo's magic touch, many players found the multiplayer was not balanced quite correctly.
I got a beta invite to Starcraft2 and ran into the exact same problem. Having never played the original I definitely wanted to give it a test run before purchasing. The beta doesn't include campaign mode, which is understandable, but doesn't have even the first mission of the tutorial where you learn to just move units around and what your resources are. I'm glad for serious players that Blizzard had the wisdom to tier their players so I never play someone who's been playing Starcraft for a decade, but I was still an annoying scrub to another beginning player who could have been just one not-so-god-awful-player- away from the next tier up. Given the awful zerging I got, I've very little interest in buying the game.
If it makes you feel any better, getting reamed on SC2 isn't just for total noobs like yourself. I last played a lot of SC about 8 years ago, and I got owned pretty seriously by all comers. What seems to be ignored is that, when the challenge of a game is too great, why even play. I mean, it took 5 games on the beta to get ranked, and even once ranked the system often couldn't find an appropriate match (beta was smaller after all).
I absolutely loved SC, but I'm a busy guy. Why should I play that 7th game if I didn't last five minutes the first 6? Where's the fun in that? As someone who enjoys video games, but doesn't live for them, I am only interested in multiplayer if the people I am playing with are in the same room as me. Otherwise, to me they are just bots who I don't have a difficulty knob for.
You are correct about the replay, and I did try that. I think I'm just not dedicated enough at this point in time for a game like Starcraft II, which is aimed at professional gamers to a degree no other game ever has been. I exaggerated above, but realistically, I often lost games in less than four minutes (with it taking another minute to be finalized).
Given that, I didn't expect to win a lot of games during the beta. I think the real challenge was that there are so many more ways to rush now than in the original. Used to be, that if you survived a ling rush, you knew you'd at least get to play a 15 minute game. This time around, it seemed like there were about a dozen different styles of rushes and the key to surviving one didn't necessarily translate to surviving another.
I don't mean to disparage that, of course. In tournament settings, this is exactly what you want in a game; something that can be won or lost at any minute of the game (excluding perhaps the first 3). I just happen to think the learning curve from noob to low-level novice might be much higher this time around, and I think that might turn off a number of people from getting good enough to at least have some fun.
About the only thing the beta made me look forward to was going back and playing the original Starcraft.
I'm sure, that some of the problem was related to the learning curve. In Starcraft, if you don't already have a plan when the clock starts, you've already lost, and in the beta it was impossible to have a plan if you were a noob. My typical game went something like this.
0:00 Start mining 0:10 Start building peons 0:50 Start building a building (like barracks) 1:05 Get attacked 1:10 Finish building barracks 1:12 Die
Obviously, I had missed some crucial build order requirement, but what was it? Was I building too many peons first? Or was my barracks in the wrong place? Maybe it was my gas mining that happened too soon. Needless to say, games like these were discouraging.
Seemingly to overlook the obvious extra white space required between multiple columns that isn't normally wasted--multiple columns add length.
FYI, white space is a major boon to reading retention. YesIcouldwriteallmysentenceswithnowhitespace orpunctuationasthatwouldminimizethetotal spacerequiredbutitseemstomelikeitmightbeabadidea.
Just to prove my point,/. would not allow me to type the last sentence with no spaces. So, I had to add two just to pass their filter. For additional fun, try reading ancient Hebrew, where they understood that not only were spaces unnecessary, but so were vowels and punctuation.
FYI, unified search/URL bars do exactly what your asking. The user types something in, the browser tries the following
if isURL?
Open URL else
Open Search.
You're complaint is basically that you prefer having to click between two separate text boxes based on what type of text you are entering. That's just a crazy thing to be so upset over. Would you prefer a car with a different ignition slot for reverse than drive? After all, you know which direction you want to be going!
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'd say if you can't afford a dual core system and a mid range graphics card from a few generations ago, you probably can't afford a new $50 game either.
That's very generous of you to inform other people how they may prioritize their own money. What if Civilizations V is the only game the GGP wants to play this year. Maybe they estimated that a civ game is good for about 300 hours of entertainment, at $0.60 an hour. Surprisingly, even people who think spending more money on computer is a low priority right now might think that entertainment has a certain value.
I actually think it's pretty pathetic that the parent and grandparent got modded insightful for telling people that if their computer is insufficient for a game they need to just suck it up. A lot of people do little more than browse the web, balance their bank account, write documents, play media, sync their ipod, and store digital photographs on their home computers. Why should any of those people feel inclined to upgrade their computer so long as those things they do remain reasonably responsive?
The sad thing, is that a few people out there read your comment and agreed with every word in a nonfacetious way.
While people love the idea of wireless, it just isn't going to happen for everything. In terms of power, it is impossible basically. You can do inductive charging which is technically wireless, I suppose, but it doesn't really fix anything. You device has to sit directly on the charger, which of course has a wire back to the outlet. It's been around forever, electric toothbrushes use it because having a waterproof system is important, but it just isn't that useful over all. Better to just use a wire, or have exposed connectors in a dock. Cheaper and more efficient.
To be fair, there is one significant advantage to wireless charging. No proprietary plugs. If you've got a tablet, a phone, a watch, a wireless mouse, etc and you only need one pad to charge them all, well some people might find that very convenient.
Also, I guess there may be an advantage to wireless charging because you don't need to touch anything. Getting a charger pad with a wire doesn't help that much, but if my end table has a wireless charger built into it, then the wire can be effectively hidden and will declutter the area. I think the amount of clutter most people live with creates a more stressful environment than they realize.
That said, I'm with you that the strongest proponents of wireless charging seem to be overselling the benefits.
I didn't bother to read most of your drivel, but you should at least firm up your first argument.
The climate is complex. Which means that it is entirely possible for the global climate to warm, while a given local climate becomes cooler or drier or wetter. The term climate change is just an attempt at framing the discussion so people stop wasting time with the argument "I don't know about this global warming, last weekend the high was only 75F".
A real world example is that while much of the US was mired in record heat waves this summer, my hometown in the pacific northwest had high temperatures above 70F for less than 60 days, and highs above 80F for probably fewer than 20 days. The PNW is a drizzly climate, but even the locals got pretty punchy. If I were like most people and assumed the entire world were just the same as my own corner, I could conclude from this summer that global temperatures had cooled nearly 10F on average since 2009!
I understand the sentiment that political framing of scientific questions is fraught ground, but in my country people like to scream at each other until the loudest voice is deemed right. So, some people are trying the approach of screaming about global warming because they think the future state of humanity might depend on it. You can belittle those people if you like, but at least they're arguing over something that might matter rather than how many blocks away from a site of murder you can/should build a mosque.
He's got a good methodology: He takes the skeptic's view, and interviews top theologians, philosophers, and scientists.
I would be very hesitant to use Strobel's books as proof of anything. His actual methodology is to find famous biblical apologists and ask them skeptical sounding (but softball) questions, and then never challenge their first answer.
Let's say a well known atheist interviewed Dawkins or Dennett and they hold this fake interview.
"If there is no god, how did we get here?"
"Oh, we've known for a long time that we evolved from other primates."
"Wow, that's pretty impressive to have figured that out"
And the interview ends. If you read that, you'd be flummoxed that he didn't follow up with harder questions about abiogenesis or the big bang. You would say the book was a charade. This is how Strobel executes his own interviews. Worse, he tends to ask his interviewees questions they aren't really qualified to answer. Your quote is from William Lane Craig, who is a theologian and philosopher. There are broad differences of opinion in the fields of theology and philosophy, but Craig is at least a qualified expert in those domains. He is not an expert in astrophysics.
That doesn't mean he is unqualified to hold an opinion. Only, that his opinion in those fields is not particularly more valid or interesting than if you asked a random person off the street. Why would Strobel go out of his way to interview people on topics about which they are not experts?
That sounds pretty dire, unless rare earth metals aren't actually all that rare.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/15/are_rare_earth_minerals_actually_rare
What are the advantages of keeping all those pages open at the same time?
If you're trying to keep your memory usage at it's optimum torque-to-power level of 78%, each of those tabs does a good job chewing up some inconvenient MB. Computer manufacturers have really exacerbated this problem by increasing installed memory of new systems past 2GB.
No, it's for people who want an exception to there precious Fictional stories to seem 'more important' then others. Nothing more.
Bzzzzt, wrong. I think it's for people who want to exercise their brain on imagining a world that might actually be. The additional constraints of SF don't mean it's better, but they do mean there's an additional (nontrivial) effort required to fit the genre. In a way, it's not so different than preferring poems that follow iambic pentameter over free-form poems.
Also, your "Name 1 book that is very different from fantasy" challenge is pure fluff. I can't believe you were moderated up for it. Allow me to employ the same logic fallacy.
You think the real world is better or more real than fantasy? Then, name one feature of real life that is very different from fantasy?
Cars could just be replaced with magic carpets.
Google isn't so different from divining spirits.
Fruit trees are basically the same as magical bushes that produce berries when surrounded by enough love.
Ergo, the real world is no different than fiction.
-----
If you haven't noticed, the flaw in your argument is that the term fiction encapsulates literally every conceivable universe. Congrats, you've discovered a Venn diagram where fiction is the biggest circle, SF is within that, and the real world is within the SF circle. A quicker more honest approach might have been simply noting that SF stands for science fiction.
RE - to why SF often doesn't make mass appeal, I believe it's a combination of two things. 1) People like to watch movies that emphasize characters, humor, or explosions. Most 'real' SF emphasizes the science instead. 2) Real SF needs to reference science with ramifications outside what most people are familiar with (otherwise it wouldn't be fiction at all). The group of people who can understand the science involved well enough to enjoy a given story is obviously a smaller subsection of the population than those who can appreciate a "good fights evil" kind of story (like Star Wars).
Spider-man.
Anyone who's paying attention already knows that all DRM is crackable for people who are sufficiently cheap. In fact, I'm inlined to believe that excessive DRM only posses a "challenge" for players to crack. Instead of just having a game to play, there's the game of cracking the DRM, with the reward being you get to play a game.
I think social-hacking by game makers would be a much more effective and affordable approach. To do it properly, they'd need some kind of carrot and stick approach. Here's an example, let's say the game takes a good old CD key. When it boots the first time it tries to authenticate with a server. If the server is found, and the key is valid and never before used, the loading screen displays something along the lines of "Thank you for purchasing this game. Your money allows GAME_COMPANY_X to make the best games possible." If it connects and the key is valid but not new, they could select a message based on how recently the key was used by someone else. If very recently, they could splash "It looks like you may be borrowing this game from a friend. We approve of sharing, but hope you'll love this game enough to purchase your own copy." Or, if the last user hasn't loaded in a while, it could display something friendly about reselling the game.
Meanwhile, if the server finds the key is not authentic, or is being used by lots and lots of people at a time it could display "You do not appear to have an authentic copy of our game. We do not believe in punishing people who play our games, so we will not record your IP address or in any other way violate your privacy, but do know that our developers must be paid to produce games of this quality. So, if you like the game, please buy a legal copy or share one with a friend."
My wording might be incorrect, but I think a simple scheme like that might go much further towards encouraging players who like the game to buy it while removing the fun of cracking from those who just like a challenge. Also, if I do purchase a valid copy and for some reason my key is being used by other people or I'm not on a network, I can still play the game and the message itself may even be positive. E.g. we can't authenticate you, but please enjoy our game anyways, and please play a legal copy.
The only problem with this kind of idea is that to CEOs it doesn't look like you're doing anything. They won't realize it's probably more effective at reducing theft than any DRM they can dream up.
For example, I love duck typing. I can write a class that implements read() and pass it to almost any function that expects to receive a file-type object as an argument. I can write def add(x,y): return x+y and know that it will do the right thing whether I pass in ints, floats, or strings. (Side note: dynamic typing is not the same as weak typing; you can't add 1+"2" because those types are incompatible. I can't stand working in languages that attempt to do what I mean by guessing).
You're working too hard to make this an either/or proposition. C++, for instance, has provided statically checked duck typing via templates since it was standardized (it the language, not it templates). I'm not going to argue that C++ templates are the ideal solution, but if a compiler can check the type of arguments to verify they have a "read()" method for me, that is better than me hoping I didn't make a mistake. Or worse, hoping I didn't change the required argument signature some time in the future when requirements change.
- Javadoc format much more readable that .Nets
Thank you. Why is Microsoft unable to produce a user friendly HTML version of their documentation. I thought they were supposed to copy the competitor to steal market share, not copy and then make the MS version much much worse.
I read the article wanting to know how the Avida developed memory. Basically, the programmer included an instruction that said "Do what you did last time" It is not evolution if the programmer hands them the ability.
While it would be more impressive for the program to develop the "do it again" function on its own, it's not quite fair to dismiss this either. If I understood the article correctly, they provided the do it again instruction, but the program had to both learn about the instruction, and develop the knowledge of when to apply it.
Imagine an ant in the real world. Their algorithm is usually something along the lines of - "is an ant bringing food back from that direction? then I should go where they came from and see if I can find some food too". If I read the article correctly, what they really did was teach the avida's to do the following - "did I just find food? then go further in that direction". They then made the path to the food curvy, so always heading "north" wouldn't work, it really had to know that the last time it went a certain way it found food, so now it should prefer doing that again.
I would imagine that the next step might be removing the "do it again" instruction and seeing if avida's can learn that for themselves.
Really, this seems more likely to back up the assertion that soccer is "the beautiful game". I think you could argue that any game where the real world behavior is emergent has a particular elegance to it.
FWIW, if you've ever watched 5 year olds play soccer (3 to a side), this simulation reached a similar level of sophistication somewhat after generation 100 but prior to 500. Four to five years old is about the point most children know enough to flock to the ball and kick at it intending it to go closer to the other team's goal.
Well...kind of.
While one could conceivably prove P=NP without producing the algorithm, that would probably be the most difficult route. It is probably easier (as well as more useful) to produce an example (just one will do) of an NP complete algorithm which can be translated (in polynomial time) to a polynomial complexity algorithm. Such a proof would, undoubtedly be shorter than this suggested proof that P!=NP.
I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm saying that the answer to the Fermi "Paradox" could be as simple as: Maybe the assumption that civilizations will engage in exponential galactic colonization endeavors is wrong.
Except...it only takes one civilization willing to engage in colonization. Humanity is notoriously exploratory. We go places (like the moon) that have literally no conceivable value at the time. I'm always amazed how places like Hawaii were originally settled. The odds of getting there were infinitesimal. Anyone setting sale for Hawaii could not have known it was there, and even if they had they could not have expected it would contain edible plants. Setting out on the journey at all would almost certainly mean you would never see your family again. And yet, people felt the need to go out there as a strong enough force, that they went.
I have little doubt that when we have the technology to fly to alien worlds (which probably means we can make them habitable on some level), then some small group of people will go.
But, even if our culture changes by then, and we become less interested in expansion, that doesn't mean alien societies would follow the same path. It's just as likely that an alien race would be more expansive than it is they would be less expansive.
That explains why Nintendo is hemorrhaging money with their lineup of single player games like Zelda, local only multiplayer games like the New Super Mario Bros, and online enabled games which are predominantly intended for home play like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros.
Actually, on second thought they might be doing alright.
At least a good multi-player experience has the advantage of being different each play.
Does it? I'm not so sure of that. At first, most multiplayer games are different each time, but very very few are well enough balanced that a large set of strategies are equally likely to result in winning. Once the community has had time to figure that one winning strategy out, everyone who is still around starts playing the game that way. Sure, real people are going to be more surprising than bots, but often times not by much.
Before anyone mods me down because they think their favorite game has limitless options, think about a few real world games. NFL football is a good example, let's break down formations for a second. The rules of the game require a certain number of offensive lineman positioned "in the box", someone must take the snap (though it could be shotgunned), and nobody can lineup on the other teams side of scrimmage. Other than that, players can start anywhere on the field and in any position they like. Players could lay down before each snap. Wideouts could start in a hands down stance. Everyone could line up backwards. the offense could put all five non-fixed players out left, in a long line. The center doesn't even have to be the guy snapping the ball. Defenses don't actually have to line up anyone on the line of scrimmage at all.
Despite all that, when you watch a game you'll find a surprisingly small number of alignments. Almost all defenses line up either a 3-4 or a 4-3, with a few backfield variations like Nickel or Dime. Offenses almost always (in the NFL) use either a single back, a two back (I-Back), or no back backfield, with between three and five receivers (counting tight ends) near the line of scrimmage. For 97% of plays, that's about it. Even in the real world, most games are generally limited to a few successful strategies at a time, and when a better strategy is discovered it usually renders an old one obsolete.
The most obvious way to add multiplayer would be to have a co-op mode, but it seems that co-ops modes are pretty rare these days (I'm not entirely sure why)
It's because they are hard to do right, especially in 3D. Think about the games with co-op mode in years past. Double Dragon, Final Fight, TMNT, etc, are the best I can think of and they were all 2D side-scrolling fighting games. Most didn't have much of a level design beyond walking to the right. Yet, even in this space it was challenging balancing the game for 1-2 (or 1-4 in arcade) players. Can human players harm each other? Should more baddies pop out in 2 player mode? Do players share lives? Those were about the only design choices remaining, and developers still often screwed them up (cough, cough, Battletoads).
The only recent co-op game I can think of that was generally well reviewed was the New Super Mario Bros Wii, which was side-scrolling 2D. And, even with Nintendo's magic touch, many players found the multiplayer was not balanced quite correctly.
I got a beta invite to Starcraft2 and ran into the exact same problem. Having never played the original I definitely wanted to give it a test run before purchasing. The beta doesn't include campaign mode, which is understandable, but doesn't have even the first mission of the tutorial where you learn to just move units around and what your resources are. I'm glad for serious players that Blizzard had the wisdom to tier their players so I never play someone who's been playing Starcraft for a decade, but I was still an annoying scrub to another beginning player who could have been just one not-so-god-awful-player- away from the next tier up. Given the awful zerging I got, I've very little interest in buying the game.
If it makes you feel any better, getting reamed on SC2 isn't just for total noobs like yourself. I last played a lot of SC about 8 years ago, and I got owned pretty seriously by all comers. What seems to be ignored is that, when the challenge of a game is too great, why even play. I mean, it took 5 games on the beta to get ranked, and even once ranked the system often couldn't find an appropriate match (beta was smaller after all).
I absolutely loved SC, but I'm a busy guy. Why should I play that 7th game if I didn't last five minutes the first 6? Where's the fun in that? As someone who enjoys video games, but doesn't live for them, I am only interested in multiplayer if the people I am playing with are in the same room as me. Otherwise, to me they are just bots who I don't have a difficulty knob for.
And what about peak-molten-core?
You are correct about the replay, and I did try that. I think I'm just not dedicated enough at this point in time for a game like Starcraft II, which is aimed at professional gamers to a degree no other game ever has been. I exaggerated above, but realistically, I often lost games in less than four minutes (with it taking another minute to be finalized).
Given that, I didn't expect to win a lot of games during the beta. I think the real challenge was that there are so many more ways to rush now than in the original. Used to be, that if you survived a ling rush, you knew you'd at least get to play a 15 minute game. This time around, it seemed like there were about a dozen different styles of rushes and the key to surviving one didn't necessarily translate to surviving another.
I don't mean to disparage that, of course. In tournament settings, this is exactly what you want in a game; something that can be won or lost at any minute of the game (excluding perhaps the first 3). I just happen to think the learning curve from noob to low-level novice might be much higher this time around, and I think that might turn off a number of people from getting good enough to at least have some fun.
Ditto.
About the only thing the beta made me look forward to was going back and playing the original Starcraft.
I'm sure, that some of the problem was related to the learning curve. In Starcraft, if you don't already have a plan when the clock starts, you've already lost, and in the beta it was impossible to have a plan if you were a noob. My typical game went something like this.
0:00 Start mining
0:10 Start building peons
0:50 Start building a building (like barracks)
1:05 Get attacked
1:10 Finish building barracks
1:12 Die
Obviously, I had missed some crucial build order requirement, but what was it? Was I building too many peons first? Or was my barracks in the wrong place? Maybe it was my gas mining that happened too soon. Needless to say, games like these were discouraging.
Seemingly to overlook the obvious extra white space required between multiple columns that isn't normally wasted--multiple columns add length.
FYI, white space is a major boon to reading retention. YesIcouldwriteallmysentenceswithnowhitespace orpunctuationasthatwouldminimizethetotal spacerequiredbutitseemstomelikeitmightbeabadidea.
Just to prove my point, /. would not allow me to type the last sentence with no spaces. So, I had to add two just to pass their filter. For additional fun, try reading ancient Hebrew, where they understood that not only were spaces unnecessary, but so were vowels and punctuation.
FYI, unified search/URL bars do exactly what your asking. The user types something in, the browser tries the following
if isURL?
Open URL
else
Open Search.
You're complaint is basically that you prefer having to click between two separate text boxes based on what type of text you are entering. That's just a crazy thing to be so upset over. Would you prefer a car with a different ignition slot for reverse than drive? After all, you know which direction you want to be going!