You might not like it because it's less Sim-y and more arcadey, but you owe it to yourself to try and play "Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron" on the GameCube...the graphics are finally enough of % as good as the movies that you hardly notice the difference. (Yeah, there are some things, but still.)
I was a fan of X-wing back in the day (though my friends laughed before I got a 486 and had to try it on my 386) but never came back to it much.
And man...it's the first Star Wars game I know to do justice to anything like the battle of Endor, with swarms of TIEs...
Beautiful game. Perhaps I did myself a dis-service by FAQing my way through it. But I loved the combat.
Star Control 1...actually there was a puny port to the C64 that I hunted down after seeing it on my friend's Amiga. Had like half the ships and not all that much of the fun, alas.
Of course, I have also come upon the secret of life once or twice in my sleep, but can never seem to remember it when I wake up... That is the meaning of life, I think.
Oh, and a 3 day marathon of DK64 made everything look...different. Real life seemed rendered wrong, cars shrunk to quickly as they passed, the buildings beside the streets seemed too tall.
Currently I'm really into Starcraft for the first time, one player mode (I know, I'm a late bloomer.) And I find it coloring my thinking to an extent that few other games have. I look at situations now, just random things, in terms of units and resource gathering. Like, oh out my window is a squirrel. I guess he's a different unit than the bunny I saw earlier, even though you can tell by the general form they're probably on the same side...
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City changed the way I saw driving a little bit, hard to remember that pedestrians aren't disposable, and I've also seen Tetris Attack block patterns while drifting to sleep. But neither were quite as pervasive as starcraft.
You know, I don't remember this happening to me when I was younger (I'm pushing 30 now.) I was certainly obsessed by the ocassional game, but don't remember its effect on my presleep states so much.
I always thought we liked it depite Keeanu, not because of.
Seriously, I don't think his appeal is that in the Matrix he was a geek who broke into systems, it's more that he's an everyman who learns there's more behind the scenes, and he learns to master that.
Seriously, it's odd. I don't want to overplay it, because relative to people with diagnosed dyslexia and what not, it's really a minor thing, a "shadow syndrome" at most. But it is interesting.
One thing, though...first off, is it meaningful to describe people as "visually oriented" vs "sound oriented"? And if so, does that mean we're probably in the latter category, even if I always thought of myself in the first?
I tend to think not. Really, the visual is so much more important to me, and so much more useful for hanging my thoughts together, that I can't see where this kind of crosswiring would make the difference...but you often learn more about a system in how it's breaking down and the mistakes it makes than when it's working perfectly, whether it's computer programs or people. So it does interest me, and is fun to think about.
Huh, I thought I responded to this... anyway, it's interesting that for you, 4 goes to F, for me it's R.
(And I made a small joke about 6s and 9s don't do anything for me, no innuendo intended)
It's actually relatively rare for me as well. Maybe I'll catch it happening once a month or so. Not generally when I'm typing words, but I'm more succeptable when transcribing #s or abstract letters (like if someone is reciting a phone number or some kind of code to me that I'm trying to record.)
After taking a longer look at the article, I'd say it probably is a different flavor of synesthesia--and I wouldn't be surprised if more severe dyslexia ties into it as well, a similar cross wiring across letters. In some ways not as "interesting" because it doesn't cross the gap between colors/symbols/sounds etc, but still.
Actually, interestingly, I think 1337-speak goes pretty tightly with related letter/number shapes, whereas I tend to match the sounds of the letters and numbers. (which is why "mu5t" was a joke for must, but I saw it as muft)
I think I must have borderline synesthesia or borderline dysliexia...I've always had a strong association with certain numbers with certain letters, and it goes back a while, I found where when I was young I spelled "kirk" as "ki4k"--I think because of the r sound in "four". And 5 is linked to f, again because of the sound (so when I saw a promotional poster for "The Fifth Element" that said "it mu5t be found" I was confused... "muft?")
I wonder what kind of condition this is. It's not a big deal, rarely interferes with my life. A little worse now that i'm typing quickly;-)
My favorite (now defunct) Jakob irony was how for years and years, "useit.com" would not resolve to his site, you had to type the damn "www".
I know there are some obscure and, IMO, obsolete reasons for not having the non www. version of your domain resolve to your webserver, but from a usability standpoint, it's terrible to have not supported that for so long.
Huh. On the one hand, since my 'Net seems to be unmetered, I wouldn't mind sharing. But I'm not crazy about the eavesdropping idea; yeah, I know we're all sending "postcards" when we connect anyway that anyone in between can see, but this makes it too easy for a would be badguy (not that we're doing would be of that kind of general interest, but still) It's too bad there's no mode for "encrypt, but only w/ Public Keys" ala SSL.
On the other hand, unless maybe you were bringing a laptop to the playground across the street, what's the point in me sharing?
And are PCs w/ wireless card also more vulnerable to intrustion? Or is it mostly just eavesdropping and use of the bandwidth people are worried about?
I guess widearea WiFi is the crossroads of a couple longstanding dreams of geeks; ubiquitous connectivity, and bandwidth "too cheap to meter". I'm not sure if it's the right technology for the job though.
This is like accusing your friend who is watching Cable TV with you, and then accusing him of stealing your cable, because you paid for it.. Yeah, well, I'm sure some marketeer somewhere would like to install a pay-per-viewer model for cable tv...
I've set up a little Wireless LAN at home, wifey's laptop plus the PS2, Linksys, and it seems like I have to put in the an identifier for the...workgroup? Something, I forget the technical word, but I changed it from the default "Linksys" to something specific to my house...and I had to make sure everything that was connecting to the Router used the same ID.
So, setting aside that there are probably tons of home Wifi installs that still use "Linksys", and assuming lots of people don't use the encryption that requires a true password, how does wardriving work? Does it "wardial" the ID, or is my network broadcasting the ID to use? (I guess the latter is more likely)
And if I'm NOT using the password, is everything my wife is doing on her laptop being sent in the clear to the nearby neighbood?
Re:Guards, Seize Him!
on
The Cg Tutorial
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Yeah - chapter 17 of Das Kapital is entitled "On Creating A Card Independent Graphics Programming Language". This sort of call for standards is one of the founding tenets of Communism!
Remember, you can't have Communism without the "C"!
As you get more people, the laziness tends to cancel out. It's not that you've found one person who seems to like the stuff you do, but 20 or 30 people, and of those, X% also listened to these songs as well.
It also helps to crank up the granularity. Albums and Artists might yield better hits than just tracks alone.
Re:"Young lady, in this house we obey the laws...
on
Energy From Vibrations
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot laziness takes an all time low - now people aren't even bothering to read the post itself. What next, just read the headline? The first word of the headline? The first letter?
E! I know some folks who took that stuff. They were really into textures, and kissing.
I know my listening habits aren't what I want them to be, per se...my playlist is either the songs I'be pre-assembled onto a mix of some kind, or else entire CDs, half the songs of which I don't care about that much, but I'm too lazy.
I guess it could learn something from my mixes. But overall, this sounds like a much less useful technology than those previous "find out what other people who really like this song listen to" programs...firefly was one I think, way back in the day? Sort of like Amazon's "people who bought this CD also bought..." but on a per-song basis.
My theory was that the humans served as an unlimited supply of entropy. The theory is that the machines tried to evolve themselves without humans and lacked the creativeness (entropy) of humans. They are after all machines and there is nothing random in a machine.
Heh, the general concept is an old chestnut of sci-fi, how the intuitive "random" humans can beat the mechanistic, "stirctly logical" machines. Though it seems that machines that advanced could hook themselves up to quantum random number generators if randomness was all they needed.
Personally, I always kind of bought into a generic touchy feely "bioenergy" explanation, ala protoculture or whatever from Robotech. Though the article did a nice job of handwaving for their "humans as parallel processing fusion control panels" idea.
Re:Article helps with suspension of disbelief
on
The Science of the Matrix
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This all seems really poorly thought out beyond the desire to make some cash.
"--You know what my first big problem with [the Matrix] was? Why use only humans as your energy source? Why didn't we see pods with elk, or some higher-metabolism life form that's easier to please, like puppy dogs? They wouldn't even need some fancy-pants simulated world; just give 'em a loop of chasing rabbits and having their bellies scratched and you've quelled all possible chance of rebellion!" --Hsu and Chan
But seriously...it's not so much they were out to make cash, but they wanted to have a world where superpowers had some kind of better explanation. In that trailer, Keanu Reeves is looking a lot like 70s era Christopher Reeve...
You know, I would pay $30-$40 for an online version of DOOM or DOOM II that ran on PS2... (preferably supporting the headset for talking...) SOCOM and Tribes just doesn't cut it.
I wonder if he might be too pessimistic in terms of thinking how much programming then will look like programming today. I wonder if artificial intelligence might be able to play a huge role, letting people describe the program they're looking for, seeing models appear on screen, editing them, and running simple tests.
This might not be as far fetched as it sounds. Computers in 1980s were able to run a decent parser in games like Zork. If you limit the scope of what a program needs to know about the world (and I'm not saying programming will be "write me an accounting system", these programmers will talk in terms of screens, what's stored, what caluclation is done, etc, in a very high level way) then parsing and understanding enlglish is pretty much a solved problem.
Maybe casual programmers would right like that, and then experts would be able to check in on the generated "real code".
This type of programming won't be usable for everything, but I certainly can see it in place of Office VBA and even COBOL (which was an attempt at the same thing, letting businessmen describe their problem in something like English, and a lot better at it than people give it credit for. Computers used to be divided into "business machines" (that would often work in packed decimal format, and other currency and integer friendly things) and "scientific machines" (that used floats and had different priorities) I think the same gap happened in programming, but the "scientific" paradigm became dominant, partially because it was more effecient on the limited hardware available.
Slashdot Mirror
You might not like it because it's less Sim-y and more arcadey, but you owe it to yourself to try and play "Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron" on the GameCube...the graphics are finally enough of % as good as the movies that you hardly notice the difference. (Yeah, there are some things, but still.)
I was a fan of X-wing back in the day (though my friends laughed before I got a 486 and had to try it on my 386) but never came back to it much.
And man...it's the first Star Wars game I know to do justice to anything like the battle of Endor, with swarms of TIEs...
Beautiful game. Perhaps I did myself a dis-service by FAQing my way through it. But I loved the combat.
Star Control 1...actually there was a puny port to the C64 that I hunted down after seeing it on my friend's Amiga. Had like half the ships and not all that much of the fun, alas.
Of course, I have also come upon the secret of life once or twice in my sleep, but can never seem to remember it when I wake up...
That is the meaning of life, I think.
Oh, and a 3 day marathon of DK64 made everything look...different. Real life seemed rendered wrong, cars shrunk to quickly as they passed, the buildings beside the streets seemed too tall.
Interesting topic!
(And interesting color scheme.
Currently I'm really into Starcraft for the first time, one player mode (I know, I'm a late bloomer.) And I find it coloring my thinking to an extent that few other games have. I look at situations now, just random things, in terms of units and resource gathering. Like, oh out my window is a squirrel. I guess he's a different unit than the bunny I saw earlier, even though you can tell by the general form they're probably on the same side...
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City changed the way I saw driving a little bit, hard to remember that pedestrians aren't disposable, and I've also seen Tetris Attack block patterns while drifting to sleep. But neither were quite as pervasive as starcraft.
You know, I don't remember this happening to me when I was younger (I'm pushing 30 now.) I was certainly obsessed by the ocassional game, but don't remember its effect on my presleep states so much.
I always thought we liked it depite Keeanu, not because of.
Seriously, I don't think his appeal is that in the Matrix he was a geek who broke into systems, it's more that he's an everyman who learns there's more behind the scenes, and he learns to master that.
We should start a support group!
Seriously, it's odd. I don't want to overplay it, because relative to people with diagnosed dyslexia and what not, it's really a minor thing, a "shadow syndrome" at most. But it is interesting.
One thing, though...first off, is it meaningful to describe people as "visually oriented" vs "sound oriented"? And if so, does that mean we're probably in the latter category, even if I always thought of myself in the first?
I tend to think not. Really, the visual is so much more important to me, and so much more useful for hanging my thoughts together, that I can't see where this kind of crosswiring would make the difference...but you often learn more about a system in how it's breaking down and the mistakes it makes than when it's working perfectly, whether it's computer programs or people. So it does interest me, and is fun to think about.
Huh, I thought I responded to this...
anyway, it's interesting that for you, 4 goes to F, for me it's R.
(And I made a small joke about 6s and 9s don't do anything for me, no innuendo intended)
It's actually relatively rare for me as well. Maybe I'll catch it happening once a month or so. Not generally when I'm typing words, but I'm more succeptable when transcribing #s or abstract letters (like if someone is reciting a phone number or some kind of code to me that I'm trying to record.)
After taking a longer look at the article, I'd say it probably is a different flavor of synesthesia--and I wouldn't be surprised if more severe dyslexia ties into it as well, a similar cross wiring across letters. In some ways not as "interesting" because it doesn't cross the gap between colors/symbols/sounds etc, but still.
Actually, interestingly, I think 1337-speak goes pretty tightly with related letter/number shapes, whereas I tend to match the sounds of the letters and numbers. (which is why "mu5t" was a joke for must, but I saw it as muft)
I think I must have borderline synesthesia or borderline dysliexia...I've always had a strong association with certain numbers with certain letters, and it goes back a while, I found where when I was young I spelled "kirk" as "ki4k"--I think because of the r sound in "four". And 5 is linked to f, again because of the sound (so when I saw a promotional poster for "The Fifth Element" that said "it mu5t be found" I was confused... "muft?")
;-)
I wonder what kind of condition this is. It's not a big deal, rarely interferes with my life. A little worse now that i'm typing quickly
My favorite (now defunct) Jakob irony was how for years and years, "useit.com" would not resolve to his site, you had to type the damn "www".
I know there are some obscure and, IMO, obsolete reasons for not having the non www. version of your domain resolve to your webserver, but from a usability standpoint, it's terrible to have not supported that for so long.
Huh. On the one hand, since my 'Net seems to be unmetered, I wouldn't mind sharing. But I'm not crazy about the eavesdropping idea; yeah, I know we're all sending "postcards" when we connect anyway that anyone in between can see, but this makes it too easy for a would be badguy (not that we're doing would be of that kind of general interest, but still) It's too bad there's no mode for "encrypt, but only w/ Public Keys" ala SSL.
On the other hand, unless maybe you were bringing a laptop to the playground across the street, what's the point in me sharing?
And are PCs w/ wireless card also more vulnerable to intrustion? Or is it mostly just eavesdropping and use of the bandwidth people are worried about?
I guess widearea WiFi is the crossroads of a couple longstanding dreams of geeks; ubiquitous connectivity, and bandwidth "too cheap to meter". I'm not sure if it's the right technology for the job though.
This is like accusing your friend who is watching Cable TV with you, and then accusing him of stealing your cable, because you paid for it..
Yeah, well, I'm sure some marketeer somewhere would like to install a pay-per-viewer model for cable tv...
I've set up a little Wireless LAN at home, wifey's laptop plus the PS2, Linksys, and it seems like I have to put in the an identifier for the...workgroup? Something, I forget the technical word, but I changed it from the default "Linksys" to something specific to my house...and I had to make sure everything that was connecting to the Router used the same ID.
So, setting aside that there are probably tons of home Wifi installs that still use "Linksys", and assuming lots of people don't use the encryption that requires a true password, how does wardriving work? Does it "wardial" the ID, or is my network broadcasting the ID to use? (I guess the latter is more likely)
And if I'm NOT using the password, is everything my wife is doing on her laptop being sent in the clear to the nearby neighbood?
Yeah - chapter 17 of Das Kapital is entitled "On Creating A Card Independent Graphics Programming Language". This sort of call for standards is one of the founding tenets of Communism!
Remember, you can't have Communism without the "C"!
Yeah, it's kinda too bad you'd need to make 3 or 4 different decks of play cards...
Nonono, it's all about "Grand Theft Auto".
I guess I potentially can get the hardware implementation of that, but I'm kinda scared.
Though I am more waterproof than the stuff in the game.
As you get more people, the laziness tends to cancel out. It's not that you've found one person who seems to like the stuff you do, but 20 or 30 people, and of those, X% also listened to these songs as well.
It also helps to crank up the granularity. Albums and Artists might yield better hits than just tracks alone.
Slashdot laziness takes an all time low - now people aren't even bothering to read the post itself. What next, just read the headline? The first word of the headline? The first letter?
E! I know some folks who took that stuff. They were really into textures, and kissing.
I know my listening habits aren't what I want them to be, per se...my playlist is either the songs I'be pre-assembled onto a mix of some kind, or else entire CDs, half the songs of which I don't care about that much, but I'm too lazy.
I guess it could learn something from my mixes. But overall, this sounds like a much less useful technology than those previous "find out what other people who really like this song listen to" programs...firefly was one I think, way back in the day? Sort of like Amazon's "people who bought this CD also bought..." but on a per-song basis.
My theory was that the humans served as an unlimited supply of entropy. The theory is that the machines tried to evolve themselves without humans and lacked the creativeness (entropy) of humans. They are after all machines and there is nothing random in a machine.
Heh, the general concept is an old chestnut of sci-fi, how the intuitive "random" humans can beat the mechanistic, "stirctly logical" machines. Though it seems that machines that advanced could hook themselves up to quantum random number generators if randomness was all they needed.
Personally, I always kind of bought into a generic touchy feely "bioenergy" explanation, ala protoculture or whatever from Robotech. Though the article did a nice job of handwaving for their "humans as parallel processing fusion control panels" idea.
This all seems really poorly thought out beyond the desire to make some cash.
"--You know what my first big problem with [the Matrix] was? Why use only humans as your energy source? Why didn't we see pods with elk, or some higher-metabolism life form that's easier to please, like puppy dogs? They wouldn't even need some fancy-pants simulated world; just give 'em a loop of chasing rabbits and having their bellies scratched and you've quelled all possible chance of rebellion!"
--Hsu and Chan
But seriously...it's not so much they were out to make cash, but they wanted to have a world where superpowers had some kind of better explanation. In that trailer, Keanu Reeves is looking a lot like 70s era Christopher Reeve...
Gimlet-eyed? Had to go look it up at. What an odd expression, especially given the second definition of gimlet as given by. (It means "having keen vision")
You know, I would pay $30-$40 for an online version of DOOM or DOOM II that ran on PS2... (preferably supporting the headset for talking...) SOCOM and Tribes just doesn't cut it.
I wonder if he might be too pessimistic in terms of thinking how much programming then will look like programming today. I wonder if artificial intelligence might be able to play a huge role, letting people describe the program they're looking for, seeing models appear on screen, editing them, and running simple tests.
This might not be as far fetched as it sounds. Computers in 1980s were able to run a decent parser in games like Zork. If you limit the scope of what a program needs to know about the world (and I'm not saying programming will be "write me an accounting system", these programmers will talk in terms of screens, what's stored, what caluclation is done, etc, in a very high level way) then parsing and understanding enlglish is pretty much a solved problem.
Maybe casual programmers would right like that, and then experts would be able to check in on the generated "real code".
This type of programming won't be usable for everything, but I certainly can see it in place of Office VBA and even COBOL (which was an attempt at the same thing, letting businessmen describe their problem in something like English, and a lot better at it than people give it credit for. Computers used to be divided into "business machines" (that would often work in packed decimal format, and other currency and integer friendly things) and "scientific machines" (that used floats and had different priorities) I think the same gap happened in programming, but the "scientific" paradigm became dominant, partially because it was more effecient on the limited hardware available.