I guess for me it comes from showing things but not over-explaining them. (Of course the Expanded Universe stuff does a good job of that) Grungy ships, lots of different robots, some dropped referenes (Kessel Run, Nerf herder), ESB and RotJ had some big feeling in the battles, etc.
Now of course the prequels undoes a lot of that...we're back on the Tatooine! Again! And this kid MADE 3CP0! And when they do throw in new stuff, sometimes it's amazingly petty-- look! it's a tax dispute on a random fringe world!
I absolutely agree that it doesn't feel like a whole-Galaxy-dominating Empire though, despite a # of throwaway lines, I'd buy like...300 or 400 worlds, tops. And "small moon"...yeah yeah yeah.
Anyway, maybe I was just a dumb kid, but the original trilogy felt pretty wide open to me. People raised on better scifi than I was may differ.
Death Star had...lessee, conference room, big laser room, big landing bay, a few random hallways, control room, prison level, trash compactor, room outside of landing bay, pit to swing through, pit to disable tractor beam, place for Emperor to sit around and watch things...not too bad for an hour or so of movie. Oh and outside it had gun emplacements, a trench, a big laser dish, and a little hole to make it go boom. And a big glowing core to make it go boom again.
To be fair, "???" involves make up some fantastic action-y special effects with a whole new FX studio, this whole cool "boiler plate" style of modeling and special camera control, and figure out how to show just enough of a universe so it looks tantalizingly huge and like the audience is just seeing a part of it...give the man some credit, the first movie really broke some new ground in a lot of ways.
With the cost of IC's, sensors, microcontrollers, and PC's falling through the floor, we've entered a time where the barriers to entry on hacking neat projects are lower than they've ever been.
Kind of...on the other hand, the way electronics are hidden in blackbox-chips now makes a lot of gadgets hard to tinker with, and that used to be a good entryway to more DIY...though maybe I'm just lazy and just need to force it so I can hookup a PC to real world hardware...
I doubt it's an aborted Crimson Skies license, knowing what we do about the movie's background.
I think it's just a captivating idea...WW2 plans always seems to be one of the "coolest" eras, not quite as primitive and "knights of the air" as WWI, but not so electronic and jet powered as Korea and beyond. Making a retrofuture of it might just be a natural fit.
Crimson Skies actually played a lot like Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2...a LOT of gameplay parallels. And WC was indeed modeled on WW2 type stuff as well, so it all fits together.
I saw my first preview for this movie this past Holiday season, when I was also playing through "Crimson Skies", the Xbox port. Both have a similar vibe, a retrofuture that never quite was, lots of planes, exploding dirigibles, etc. I'm really looking forward to this flick...
Why doesn't somebody make a game based off of a fictional game?
Someone implemented "emulators" of Degenatron gmaes based on the sketchy descriptions in the "radio ad" in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City...pretty cool idea...
Cool...hope it keeps on workin' out for ya'...I've had my "safety job" taken out from me at least once, so as long as you know there are no final guarantees, you can probably have a good long stay there...
Hope you don't get tons of people sending you resumes now:-)
I wonder how big of a salary cut it's ok to take, if you think you'll like the new work better, or if the company sees more stable, or has other intangible benefits...
If the American Heart Association wants you to have a good heart, and the American Lung Association to have good lungs, what's up with the American Cancer Society?
First, there's nothing wrong with a language being easy to learn and easy to use. Power and ease of use are not mutally exclusive.
True. But sometimes "ease of use" runs into "quick and dirty", and all the difficulty in maintaining and extending that that implies. VB and Perl lend themselves to quick and dirty and require more self-discipline to stay well-engineered. Java usually pushes you to more forethought, and while crap code is certainly possible, it's somewhat less likely.
Second, what's with this stuff about languages "for the masses"? VB programmers are programmers. No one's running down to the local curb store for a loaf a bread and a $400 box of VB.net. MS hasn't included Basic, Visual or otherwise, with its operating systems since,I dunno, DOS 3.3?
Yes, currently VB is just another language.
But I grew up with built-in BASICS, and when I got introduced to it, VB3 seemed to be positioned in a similar role. I got a student edition for cheap and had a lot of fun.
As for the "for the masses", that could also be "for the non-techie, business-knowledge people in your company". I don't know if VB (especially the Office-centric versions) still do that well or not.
I do think that we who grew up with computers that booted into BASIC have an edge over people who get the start button. Making goofy, kiddie programs had a much lower barrier to entry back then...now it's almost certain you'll have to install something, or go nuts with the Javascript.
Are you saying that VB is cool? I would consider this language as one of the most un-cool language ever.
Well, my experience is different than most folks...I started using VB3 back in the day, just for kicks...in fact, I made up and taught a class at Tufts in it, in 1995 or so, in their "Experimental College" (Prolly the first MS language taught at Tufts). And you know what? It WAS fun, and maybe even cool...at least not the un-coolest language ever. I could make a cheap and cheerful paint/sketch program in 2 lines of code...literally. I could put little graphics on the form and move 'em around, and in general do some nifty event-driven-model stuff. So there are at least some forms of VB that I think qualify as reasonably cool.
Anecdotally, I'd say: the Java editors/IDEs I've seen that were written in Java were all dog-slow (Jbuilder, I'm looking at you...and Forte, you haven't been forgotten.) And that's the biggest most complex app a lot of programmers interact with ALOT... so I'm not surprised programmers think Java is slow...
Visual Basic was meant to be easy, for the masses.
Java...it was meant to be secure, and multiplatform. Historically, I never saw "easy" entering into it, for the masses... (Heh...especially now with J2EE and that whole EJB mess.)
Processing on the other hand...that is meant to be easy and fun, and feels like Java meets great old school BASIC, back when we'd make little toys on our Atari 8bits and C=64s...
Oh right...he was that Lisp dude...I forgot about that.
I only encountered Lisp in college for a while, and it NEVER seemed like a good "real world" tool. Its mix of data and code and love of recursion seemed excellent for certain cherry picked tasks...
Eh, I dunno. maybe I was just using too limited an environment. I have no idea what a "Visual Lisp" would be like.
I'm worried that Rockstar might be thinking GTA would be improved by a leveling up treadmill, diminishing the games great pick up and play qualities a bit. (If I want to just tool around, I don't care what save game I use, just so long as all parts of the world are free...)
There were one or two very minor points that seemed European to me...in particular, I think "Yardies" and "Triads" are both group names I've only seen in British media. I'm sure someone can come up with examples of both showing up in USA media, but I don't think either is that prevelant...
I was kind of bummed that KOTOR was so traditionally RPG-y. I found the # of character creation options at the outset pretty intimidating, I was worried about doing the "wrong thing", and then I got ticked at the combat, that LOOKS like it should be Zelda-esque action, but really is just a pretty-ized version of traditional turnbased dicerolls. (The combat really annoyed me -- look, I'll duck behind this couch! no wait, it just reset my "time 'til fire"...)
What appalled me in your link was the fact that this woman *is* in fact intermarried with a white guy and she fears and have nightmares with black folks. This is a sign IMHO that *she* has serious problems.
Ok, this could get ugly quick, but: Right now, there is a correlation with young black people and a violent, not-very-educated street culture. There are violent, undeucated people of all colors, of course, and you're doing yourself and the culture at large a disservice if you "profile" someone exclusively on skin tone, and there are tons of historical reasons why that subset of black culture exists and is such a noticable cultural force, but what she's getting at is it's sometimes hard to get in a reasonable conversation about the kind of phenomenon with the term "RACIST!" being slung around and shutting down productive conversation.
The fact is, given some reasonable definitions of racism, most people are racist to greater or less degrees: often concerned about the well-being of their subset social group (like, heh, Geeks on slashdot...), and also using a variety of visual and audio cues to make at least a first best guess about what that person is all about. (and like in the case of a bunch urban-looking youths or redneck-looking bikers, if they're likely to be some kind of threat.) Really worrisome racism is when people can't get past their subgroup concerns and first impressions and preconceived notions; to damn everyone who has any twinges of that feeling is not helpful.
Today's Slate featured piece was by a black woman lawyer called Racist Like Me...it raises some interesting points about how the accusation of racism tends to be a conversation- (and thought-) stopper, and how as a culture we should probably be more engaged in this kind of discussion.
And yet cars are going to be doing this soon anyways. I suspect that in 20 years, all cars will be "drive by wire," and you could install either a stick or a wheel.
Kinda sucks...I had to push some cars around w/ dead batteries the other week. At least we could get some steering capability....
Slashdot Mirror
I guess for me it comes from showing things but not over-explaining them. (Of course the Expanded Universe stuff does a good job of that) Grungy ships, lots of different robots, some dropped referenes (Kessel Run, Nerf herder), ESB and RotJ had some big feeling in the battles, etc.
Now of course the prequels undoes a lot of that...we're back on the Tatooine! Again! And this kid MADE 3CP0! And when they do throw in new stuff, sometimes it's amazingly petty-- look! it's a tax dispute on a random fringe world!
I absolutely agree that it doesn't feel like a whole-Galaxy-dominating Empire though, despite a # of throwaway lines, I'd buy like...300 or 400 worlds, tops. And "small moon"...yeah yeah yeah.
Anyway, maybe I was just a dumb kid, but the original trilogy felt pretty wide open to me. People raised on better scifi than I was may differ.
Death Star had...lessee, conference room, big laser room, big landing bay, a few random hallways, control room, prison level, trash compactor, room outside of landing bay, pit to swing through, pit to disable tractor beam, place for Emperor to sit around and watch things...not too bad for an hour or so of movie. Oh and outside it had gun emplacements, a trench, a big laser dish, and a little hole to make it go boom. And a big glowing core to make it go boom again.
To be fair, "???" involves make up some fantastic action-y special effects with a whole new FX studio, this whole cool "boiler plate" style of modeling and special camera control, and figure out how to show just enough of a universe so it looks tantalizingly huge and like the audience is just seeing a part of it...give the man some credit, the first movie really broke some new ground in a lot of ways.
With the cost of IC's, sensors, microcontrollers, and PC's falling through the floor, we've entered a time where the barriers to entry on hacking neat projects are lower than they've ever been.
Kind of...on the other hand, the way electronics are hidden in blackbox-chips now makes a lot of gadgets hard to tinker with, and that used to be a good entryway to more DIY...though maybe I'm just lazy and just need to force it so I can hookup a PC to real world hardware...
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was a proper sequel or a remake.
And Crimson Skies has fewer talking rodents in it, mercifully.
I doubt it's an aborted Crimson Skies license, knowing what we do about the movie's background.
I think it's just a captivating idea...WW2 plans always seems to be one of the "coolest" eras, not quite as primitive and "knights of the air" as WWI, but not so electronic and jet powered as Korea and beyond. Making a retrofuture of it might just be a natural fit.
Crimson Skies actually played a lot like Wing Commander and Wing Commander 2...a LOT of gameplay parallels. And WC was indeed modeled on WW2 type stuff as well, so it all fits together.
I saw my first preview for this movie this past Holiday season, when I was also playing through "Crimson Skies", the Xbox port. Both have a similar vibe, a retrofuture that never quite was, lots of planes, exploding dirigibles, etc. I'm really looking forward to this flick...
Why doesn't somebody make a game based off of a fictional game?
Someone implemented "emulators" of Degenatron gmaes based on the sketchy descriptions in the "radio ad" in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City...pretty cool idea...
Cool...hope it keeps on workin' out for ya'...I've had my "safety job" taken out from me at least once, so as long as you know there are no final guarantees, you can probably have a good long stay there...
:-)
Hope you don't get tons of people sending you resumes now
So what's the secure, solid pay, good benefits job?
Just wondering...
I wonder how big of a salary cut it's ok to take, if you think you'll like the new work better, or if the company sees more stable, or has other intangible benefits...
We come from the Planet "Vernacular". We have much to teach you and the other residents of Pedantica.
Dumbass.
Cool, I gotta check it out...
:-)
but looks like I gotta upgrade my JVM/SDK first
If the American Heart Association wants you to have a good heart, and the American Lung Association to have good lungs, what's up with the American Cancer Society?
First, there's nothing wrong with a language being easy to learn and easy to use. Power and ease of use are not mutally exclusive.
True. But sometimes "ease of use" runs into "quick and dirty", and all the difficulty in maintaining and extending that that implies. VB and Perl lend themselves to quick and dirty and require more self-discipline to stay well-engineered. Java usually pushes you to more forethought, and while crap code is certainly possible, it's somewhat less likely.
Second, what's with this stuff about languages "for the masses"? VB programmers are programmers. No one's running down to the local curb store for a loaf a bread and a $400 box of VB.net. MS hasn't included Basic, Visual or otherwise, with its operating systems since,I dunno, DOS 3.3?
Yes, currently VB is just another language.
But I grew up with built-in BASICS, and when I got introduced to it, VB3 seemed to be positioned in a similar role. I got a student edition for cheap and had a lot of fun.
As for the "for the masses", that could also be "for the non-techie, business-knowledge people in your company". I don't know if VB (especially the Office-centric versions) still do that well or not.
I do think that we who grew up with computers that booted into BASIC have an edge over people who get the start button. Making goofy, kiddie programs had a much lower barrier to entry back then...now it's almost certain you'll have to install something, or go nuts with the Javascript.
Are you saying that VB is cool? I would consider this language as one of the most un-cool language ever.
Well, my experience is different than most folks...I started using VB3 back in the day, just for kicks...in fact, I made up and taught a class at Tufts in it, in 1995 or so, in their "Experimental College" (Prolly the first MS language taught at Tufts). And you know what? It WAS fun, and maybe even cool...at least not the un-coolest language ever. I could make a cheap and cheerful paint/sketch program in 2 lines of code...literally. I could put little graphics on the form and move 'em around, and in general do some nifty event-driven-model stuff. So there are at least some forms of VB that I think qualify as reasonably cool.
- there's a lot to be said about enterprise Java. Whether it's cool or not, it works.
Not when your "enterprise Java" is EJBs. IMHO. YMMV.
Anecdotally, I'd say: the Java editors/IDEs I've seen that were written in Java were all dog-slow (Jbuilder, I'm looking at you...and Forte, you haven't been forgotten.) And that's the biggest most complex app a lot of programmers interact with ALOT... so I'm not surprised programmers think Java is slow...
I don't get this "Java was meant to be easy".
Visual Basic was meant to be easy, for the masses.
Java...it was meant to be secure, and multiplatform. Historically, I never saw "easy" entering into it, for the masses... (Heh...especially now with J2EE and that whole EJB mess.)
Processing on the other hand...that is meant to be easy and fun, and feels like Java meets great old school BASIC, back when we'd make little toys on our Atari 8bits and C=64s...
Oh right...he was that Lisp dude...I forgot about that.
I only encountered Lisp in college for a while, and it NEVER seemed like a good "real world" tool. Its mix of data and code and love of recursion seemed excellent for certain cherry picked tasks...
Eh, I dunno. maybe I was just using too limited an environment. I have no idea what a "Visual Lisp" would be like.
I'm worried that Rockstar might be thinking GTA would be improved by a leveling up treadmill, diminishing the games great pick up and play qualities a bit. (If I want to just tool around, I don't care what save game I use, just so long as all parts of the world are free...)
There were one or two very minor points that seemed European to me...in particular, I think "Yardies" and "Triads" are both group names I've only seen in British media. I'm sure someone can come up with examples of both showing up in USA media, but I don't think either is that prevelant...
I was kind of bummed that KOTOR was so traditionally RPG-y. I found the # of character creation options at the outset pretty intimidating, I was worried about doing the "wrong thing", and then I got ticked at the combat, that LOOKS like it should be Zelda-esque action, but really is just a pretty-ized version of traditional turnbased dicerolls. (The combat really annoyed me -- look, I'll duck behind this couch! no wait, it just reset my "time 'til fire"...)
What appalled me in your link was the fact that this woman *is* in fact intermarried with a white guy and she fears and have nightmares with black folks. This is a sign IMHO that *she* has serious problems.
Ok, this could get ugly quick, but:
Right now, there is a correlation with young black people and a violent, not-very-educated street culture. There are violent, undeucated people of all colors, of course, and you're doing yourself and the culture at large a disservice if you "profile" someone exclusively on skin tone, and there are tons of historical reasons why that subset of black culture exists and is such a noticable cultural force, but what she's getting at is it's sometimes hard to get in a reasonable conversation about the kind of phenomenon with the term "RACIST!" being slung around and shutting down productive conversation.
The fact is, given some reasonable definitions of racism, most people are racist to greater or less degrees: often concerned about the well-being of their subset social group (like, heh, Geeks on slashdot...), and also using a variety of visual and audio cues to make at least a first best guess about what that person is all about. (and like in the case of a bunch urban-looking youths or redneck-looking bikers, if they're likely to be some kind of threat.) Really worrisome racism is when people can't get past their subgroup concerns and first impressions and preconceived notions; to damn everyone who has any twinges of that feeling is not helpful.
Today's Slate featured piece was by a black woman lawyer called Racist Like Me...it raises some interesting points about how the accusation of racism tends to be a conversation- (and thought-) stopper, and how as a culture we should probably be more engaged in this kind of discussion.
And yet cars are going to be doing this soon anyways. I suspect that in 20 years, all cars will be "drive by wire," and you could install either a stick or a wheel.
Kinda sucks...I had to push some cars around w/ dead batteries the other week. At least we could get some steering capability....