I've seen it on the internet for years, I don't think Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert came up with it. I think it may have originally been "reality has a liberal bias", until maybe a year ago that is how it was usually written.
The one question on this subject was not answered. Instead he talked about CSS and DOD:S - Why has Valve seemingly abandoned HL2DM? It's one of my favorite multiplayer games, it's really well balanced and has some great maps - instead of putting a little effort into promoting it and fixing outstanding bugs they completely ignore it and act like it doesn't exist, even when explicitly asked about it!
I actually did this once. My cell phone provider had all of these weird taxes and fees, including taxes for a state I don't live in. The person I spoke to could not explain them at all beyond "those are fees we have to charge you because the government says so". He couldn't explain why I was being charged a state taxes for a state I do not live in and left me on hold to find out - he came back every 15 minutes or so to check if I was still holding - after more than an hour he got back on the phone and said no one knew why I was being charged the state taxes since there records confirmed I did not live in that state and that they would remove them from my future bills. They finally did this after the second time I had to call about it. So, I am highly skeptical about the validity of those "government taxes and fees" they charge - I'm not convinced they actually go to the government at all.
In my experience it happens usually within about 15 to 20 minutes into a map, I've only seen it happen when a server is pretty full (18+ people) and it seems to happen more often on certain maps and/or when there are a lot of things flying around (orbs in particular). There is a post in the HL2DM forum on the Steam website that has a list of all known HL2DM bugs, this is one of them and is the most annoying (for me anyways).
My biggest problem is the physics going out - everything drops thru the floor and people warp around like they are dropping packets. The only fix is to restart the server. It doesn't happen too often but when it does it sucks a lot because your only hope is to have an admin fix it. There are a lot of others but that is the big one for me. It's been a known issue for a LONG time too.
uh, that would absolutely suck - if it is just HLDM rehashed in the source engine plus HL2DM which isn't new and is still a little buggy then that is stupid and totally disengenous of them to claim "two new multiplayer modes". I was hoping for something actually NEW and maybe even innovative. I really enjoy HL2DM, it is sad that Valve seems to be completely ignoring multiplayer these days - they seem to just assume that Counterstrike is the only multiplayer game in the world, if they would put some effort into projects like HL2DM they would have a lot more people playing their games...
What the hell are they?! I searched everywhere for the answer and can't find it - everywhere has nothing but hype about the HL2 singleplayer plot being advanced, how exciting! HL2DM is suprisingly fun and well balanced so I might be willing to blow the $20, be nice to know what the hell multiplayer content is being added first though... The marketing on this is really crappy, it's all based on "find out what happens next in HL2" - I just want a simple feature list!
I saw in another interview re:ETQW that they expect it to actually perform better than Quake4 did and that MegaTexture doesn't require any special video card support. If you can run Quake4 you shouldn't need a new video card. I'd guess this means a geforce 6600 is going to be the low end for MegaTexture.
Re: multiplayer shooters - I like the mix of skilled and unskilled players and I like game rules which add a little bit of structure so there are clear objectives (e.g. capture the flag). You end up with a variety of challenges - you've got the noob who always gets a certain weapon and always tries to do the same thing with it, you've got the clan guys who team up and try to complete the objective, you've got the campers defending bases, etc. Most shooters these days seem to be pretty balanced as far as weaponry goes too - it's not really a matter of getting the best gun and rushing the enemy with it, that can certainly work but if you use a little strategy you'll be a better player. Which reminds me - another major issue I have with game AI is that more often than not a "harder" enemy is just as stupid as the easiest enemies except they have beefed up attributes. Compare that to a multiplayer FPS where every player has the same attributes and access to the same resources - a "harder" enemy means a smarter opponent and is thus an actual challenge, i.e. you aren't overcoming stacked attributes you are overcoming someone who is actually better than you at what you are doing. To me that is a hell of a lot more fun than beating up on graphical representations of a bunch of stupid scripts that can't tell I am even attacking them most of the time.
Re: Oblivion - I did install that mod, as well as the one which makes takes away guards stupid psychic powers (and a few others which are supposed to improve enemy AI). They definitely help improve the game. I'm not saying Oblivion sucks or anything, I'm not big into RPGs to begin with and the AI in it just doesn't live up to the hype. Also that game is buggy as all hell. All that aside, it is pretty fun and I have spent several hours playing it. I think part of the problem is that they tried to create an open-ended immersive world and succeeded quite a bit which makes the areas where they didn't succeed stand out a lot more so than it would in some oldschool isometric RPG.
I guess I haven't noticed how smart the enemy AI is because I always sneak around and snipe people long distance with arrows. Most of the time they just stand there and take it like they don't even notice - the few who figure out that they are being killed charge right at me, sometimes they might throw some spells at me first but it seems like they always end up charging. I have not noticed different behaviors from companion NPCs, I haven't had many so far but the ones I have had seemed to rush and attack even when I'm trying to sneak around and snipe with my arrows.
You hit the nail on the head - this is exactly the reason I prefer playing multiplayer first person shooters over RPGs - chances are if I've got a rocket launcher and my opponent is out of ammo they are going to make a calculation: Can I take him with my melee weapon, get more ammo quick, or escape before I get blasted to hell. They are actually assessing what kind of a threat I am and responding to it in a realistic way. Even better, you can't really predict that response because every person is unique and there are a lot of other variables to account for. And even better than that they are going to try to survive as long as possible UNLESS they decide to go kamikaze - it's not like with AI where as you point out, the typical response is to fight to the death every single time, even when death is assured and the best the AI can do is scratch you. Playing against the "AI" in games just doesn't compare to an actual human opponent - it's like playing Chess against a mentally disabled child most of the time. The sad thing is it really hasn't gotten any better - compare the AI in an old NES game to even something as recent as Oblivion - NPC conversations are just as inane, NPC behaviors are usually just as stupid. The great advance in Oblivion: Most non-enemy NPCs have schedules - they go to sleep at a certain time or stand in a specific location at a certain time (often that location is staring at a wall).
I can't find any info about this - everything I see says it was called off temporarily after the 9/11 attacks and then called off permanently awhile after that because it wasn't making any money. I can't find anything about people taking it too seriously.
Well, I think pretty much all of your questions/problems are in fact answered or explained by the end of the trilogy and/or are the kind of ambiguity that is intentional and beneficial to the overall quality of a story. Playing with these questions become central to the later elements of the plot and are, in my opinion, what really pushes the Golden Age from just being good to being great. It's not just mindless action SF - it's dealing with fundamental questions about morality, justice, and progress.
Re: implausibly smart vs. implausibly dumb - I took it more as Phaethon being naive in many ways, he is a product of a sheltered existence (in his own weird way). A great example of this is when he is exiled and is climbing a giant staircase because his society has denied him use of the elevator - he thinks nothing of spending his finite supplies on what is, from our perspective, an insane and weirdly extravagant campsite - to him though he is slumming it because he has never experienced scarcity or real adversity. Imagine how Bill Gates' kid will react the first time he gets a flat tire driving alone in his $200K sports car...
I would say Golden Age is better than Revelation Space, although I have read Revelation Space twice so it may be that it's issues or more glaring to me. Gold Age took a lot of effort to understand - it's in such a weird setting with so many weird things and ideas and people, I think it is a very unforgiving work - it doesn't cut the reader any slack. Once I had a solid understanding of wtf was happening though...
Re:Haldeman deserves it for sure...
on
2006 Nebula Awards
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Try Chasm City - I think it's his most polished novel (if not Century Rain). Reynolds is one of my favorite authors but he seriously does need a new editor, I'm convinced his current editor only edits every other 10 pages or so because way too many mistakes are getting through but then big chucks of the book are completely error free). His short stories are consistently excellent so you may want to check those out too.
The Golden Age takes a bit to get into - but once you do, it is seriously some of the best SF of the past decade (or more). I strongly urge you to give it a second chance - I am not sure what you are talking about re:writing quality or inconsistency - as much as I love Alastair Reynolds' work I think he is a better target for your allegations. Absolution Gap in particular could have used another round of editing - that said I do highly recommend Reynolds to anyone, he has a fair number of short stories on the web so google his name and check some of them out - Spidey and the Queen and a Spy in Europa are his two best (in my opinion). Diamond Dogs is damn clever too even though it's self-consciously based on a classic SF premise.
Re: Camouflage - it was very well written, although the ending was a tiny bit on the cliche side of things. It's definitely above the average quality of most contempory SF.
The whole issue makes me question whether their quality is declining as their volume goes up - overloading thermal paste is such a completely and totally obvious thing, it speaks volumes about the "attention to detail". I suspect we may see a significant decline in how high they are rated, at least until the second or third generation of CORE based Macs.
I do agree this is a clever method and puts some hurt on the spammers (and is fully legal under the stupid CANSPAM opt-out provision) - but does it actually reduce spam? To me it looks more like BS has poked a hornets nest here, do we have any evidence the spammers have really been hurt at all?
I've seen similiar things on lots of comment/forum systems - they've either got the process automated or have some third-world spammer sweatshops running (which would explain how they seem to get around captcha systems these days)
This reminds me of the first time I went to Las Vegas, I was like 12 or 13 I think. The streets were literally blowing with pornography. Everywhere you went there were these cheap (but full color) flyers and booklets advertising sex workers with very graphic depictions of various sexual activities. One of the most surreal things I ever saw in my life was a huge dust devil of this pornography blowing down a street and then coming apart and flinging all of that porn onto a big group of people standing on a sidewalk. Las Vegas is such an insane place.
I must be retarded because that sounds like the stupidest thing I have ever heard. You really thought his WMD slideshow was funny? You didn't think it was, at the very least, in poor taste? You didn't think it was disrespectful to the troops who have put their lives on the line in Iraq? If I were shipped to the other side of the world to fight a dictator because I had been told he had WMD and was a clear and present danger against my nation and then the next year I saw my commander at some fancy party joking about it I would not take that as an expression of his "confidence".
After the time when Bush played his "Searching for WMD" slideshow he is fair game to mock and insult by any means necessary. The fact that he would make such a disgusting joke about the "flawed intelligence" that has cost thousands of lives was so completely fucked up - any respect he still deserved as President went right out the window. Colbert could have literally taken a crap on Bush's dinner plate, that is fine by me at this point. Bush and the media elite at the event deserved everything Colbert gave them and then some.
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what new multiplayer modes?
I've seen it on the internet for years, I don't think Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert came up with it. I think it may have originally been "reality has a liberal bias", until maybe a year ago that is how it was usually written.
The one question on this subject was not answered. Instead he talked about CSS and DOD:S - Why has Valve seemingly abandoned HL2DM? It's one of my favorite multiplayer games, it's really well balanced and has some great maps - instead of putting a little effort into promoting it and fixing outstanding bugs they completely ignore it and act like it doesn't exist, even when explicitly asked about it!
I'm finally playing through FEAR and ran into this - the stupid flashlight runs out of power after a minute! It doesn't make any sense...
I actually did this once. My cell phone provider had all of these weird taxes and fees, including taxes for a state I don't live in. The person I spoke to could not explain them at all beyond "those are fees we have to charge you because the government says so". He couldn't explain why I was being charged a state taxes for a state I do not live in and left me on hold to find out - he came back every 15 minutes or so to check if I was still holding - after more than an hour he got back on the phone and said no one knew why I was being charged the state taxes since there records confirmed I did not live in that state and that they would remove them from my future bills. They finally did this after the second time I had to call about it. So, I am highly skeptical about the validity of those "government taxes and fees" they charge - I'm not convinced they actually go to the government at all.
In my experience it happens usually within about 15 to 20 minutes into a map, I've only seen it happen when a server is pretty full (18+ people) and it seems to happen more often on certain maps and/or when there are a lot of things flying around (orbs in particular). There is a post in the HL2DM forum on the Steam website that has a list of all known HL2DM bugs, this is one of them and is the most annoying (for me anyways).
My biggest problem is the physics going out - everything drops thru the floor and people warp around like they are dropping packets. The only fix is to restart the server. It doesn't happen too often but when it does it sucks a lot because your only hope is to have an admin fix it. There are a lot of others but that is the big one for me. It's been a known issue for a LONG time too.
uh, that would absolutely suck - if it is just HLDM rehashed in the source engine plus HL2DM which isn't new and is still a little buggy then that is stupid and totally disengenous of them to claim "two new multiplayer modes". I was hoping for something actually NEW and maybe even innovative. I really enjoy HL2DM, it is sad that Valve seems to be completely ignoring multiplayer these days - they seem to just assume that Counterstrike is the only multiplayer game in the world, if they would put some effort into projects like HL2DM they would have a lot more people playing their games...
What the hell are they?! I searched everywhere for the answer and can't find it - everywhere has nothing but hype about the HL2 singleplayer plot being advanced, how exciting!
HL2DM is suprisingly fun and well balanced so I might be willing to blow the $20, be nice to know what the hell multiplayer content is being added first though... The marketing on this is really crappy, it's all based on "find out what happens next in HL2" - I just want a simple feature list!
I saw in another interview re:ETQW that they expect it to actually perform better than Quake4 did and that MegaTexture doesn't require any special video card support. If you can run Quake4 you shouldn't need a new video card. I'd guess this means a geforce 6600 is going to be the low end for MegaTexture.
Re: multiplayer shooters - I like the mix of skilled and unskilled players and I like game rules which add a little bit of structure so there are clear objectives (e.g. capture the flag). You end up with a variety of challenges - you've got the noob who always gets a certain weapon and always tries to do the same thing with it, you've got the clan guys who team up and try to complete the objective, you've got the campers defending bases, etc. Most shooters these days seem to be pretty balanced as far as weaponry goes too - it's not really a matter of getting the best gun and rushing the enemy with it, that can certainly work but if you use a little strategy you'll be a better player.
Which reminds me - another major issue I have with game AI is that more often than not a "harder" enemy is just as stupid as the easiest enemies except they have beefed up attributes. Compare that to a multiplayer FPS where every player has the same attributes and access to the same resources - a "harder" enemy means a smarter opponent and is thus an actual challenge, i.e. you aren't overcoming stacked attributes you are overcoming someone who is actually better than you at what you are doing. To me that is a hell of a lot more fun than beating up on graphical representations of a bunch of stupid scripts that can't tell I am even attacking them most of the time.
Re: Oblivion - I did install that mod, as well as the one which makes takes away guards stupid psychic powers (and a few others which are supposed to improve enemy AI). They definitely help improve the game. I'm not saying Oblivion sucks or anything, I'm not big into RPGs to begin with and the AI in it just doesn't live up to the hype. Also that game is buggy as all hell. All that aside, it is pretty fun and I have spent several hours playing it. I think part of the problem is that they tried to create an open-ended immersive world and succeeded quite a bit which makes the areas where they didn't succeed stand out a lot more so than it would in some oldschool isometric RPG.
I guess I haven't noticed how smart the enemy AI is because I always sneak around and snipe people long distance with arrows. Most of the time they just stand there and take it like they don't even notice - the few who figure out that they are being killed charge right at me, sometimes they might throw some spells at me first but it seems like they always end up charging.
I have not noticed different behaviors from companion NPCs, I haven't had many so far but the ones I have had seemed to rush and attack even when I'm trying to sneak around and snipe with my arrows.
You hit the nail on the head - this is exactly the reason I prefer playing multiplayer first person shooters over RPGs - chances are if I've got a rocket launcher and my opponent is out of ammo they are going to make a calculation: Can I take him with my melee weapon, get more ammo quick, or escape before I get blasted to hell. They are actually assessing what kind of a threat I am and responding to it in a realistic way. Even better, you can't really predict that response because every person is unique and there are a lot of other variables to account for. And even better than that they are going to try to survive as long as possible UNLESS they decide to go kamikaze - it's not like with AI where as you point out, the typical response is to fight to the death every single time, even when death is assured and the best the AI can do is scratch you. Playing against the "AI" in games just doesn't compare to an actual human opponent - it's like playing Chess against a mentally disabled child most of the time. The sad thing is it really hasn't gotten any better - compare the AI in an old NES game to even something as recent as Oblivion - NPC conversations are just as inane, NPC behaviors are usually just as stupid. The great advance in Oblivion: Most non-enemy NPCs have schedules - they go to sleep at a certain time or stand in a specific location at a certain time (often that location is staring at a wall).
I can't find any info about this - everything I see says it was called off temporarily after the 9/11 attacks and then called off permanently awhile after that because it wasn't making any money. I can't find anything about people taking it too seriously.
Well, I think pretty much all of your questions/problems are in fact answered or explained by the end of the trilogy and/or are the kind of ambiguity that is intentional and beneficial to the overall quality of a story. Playing with these questions become central to the later elements of the plot and are, in my opinion, what really pushes the Golden Age from just being good to being great. It's not just mindless action SF - it's dealing with fundamental questions about morality, justice, and progress.
Re: implausibly smart vs. implausibly dumb - I took it more as Phaethon being naive in many ways, he is a product of a sheltered existence (in his own weird way). A great example of this is when he is exiled and is climbing a giant staircase because his society has denied him use of the elevator - he thinks nothing of spending his finite supplies on what is, from our perspective, an insane and weirdly extravagant campsite - to him though he is slumming it because he has never experienced scarcity or real adversity. Imagine how Bill Gates' kid will react the first time he gets a flat tire driving alone in his $200K sports car...
I'd suggest The Scar - it's far superior to PSS, a lot more consistently paced.
I would say Golden Age is better than Revelation Space, although I have read Revelation Space twice so it may be that it's issues or more glaring to me. Gold Age took a lot of effort to understand - it's in such a weird setting with so many weird things and ideas and people, I think it is a very unforgiving work - it doesn't cut the reader any slack. Once I had a solid understanding of wtf was happening though...
Try Chasm City - I think it's his most polished novel (if not Century Rain). Reynolds is one of my favorite authors but he seriously does need a new editor, I'm convinced his current editor only edits every other 10 pages or so because way too many mistakes are getting through but then big chucks of the book are completely error free). His short stories are consistently excellent so you may want to check those out too.
The Golden Age takes a bit to get into - but once you do, it is seriously some of the best SF of the past decade (or more). I strongly urge you to give it a second chance - I am not sure what you are talking about re:writing quality or inconsistency - as much as I love Alastair Reynolds' work I think he is a better target for your allegations. Absolution Gap in particular could have used another round of editing - that said I do highly recommend Reynolds to anyone, he has a fair number of short stories on the web so google his name and check some of them out - Spidey and the Queen and a Spy in Europa are his two best (in my opinion). Diamond Dogs is damn clever too even though it's self-consciously based on a classic SF premise.
Re: Camouflage - it was very well written, although the ending was a tiny bit on the cliche side of things. It's definitely above the average quality of most contempory SF.
The whole issue makes me question whether their quality is declining as their volume goes up - overloading thermal paste is such a completely and totally obvious thing, it speaks volumes about the "attention to detail". I suspect we may see a significant decline in how high they are rated, at least until the second or third generation of CORE based Macs.
I do agree this is a clever method and puts some hurt on the spammers (and is fully legal under the stupid CANSPAM opt-out provision) - but does it actually reduce spam? To me it looks more like BS has poked a hornets nest here, do we have any evidence the spammers have really been hurt at all?
I've seen similiar things on lots of comment/forum systems - they've either got the process automated or have some third-world spammer sweatshops running (which would explain how they seem to get around captcha systems these days)
This reminds me of the first time I went to Las Vegas, I was like 12 or 13 I think. The streets were literally blowing with pornography. Everywhere you went there were these cheap (but full color) flyers and booklets advertising sex workers with very graphic depictions of various sexual activities. One of the most surreal things I ever saw in my life was a huge dust devil of this pornography blowing down a street and then coming apart and flinging all of that porn onto a big group of people standing on a sidewalk. Las Vegas is such an insane place.
I must be retarded because that sounds like the stupidest thing I have ever heard. You really thought his WMD slideshow was funny? You didn't think it was, at the very least, in poor taste? You didn't think it was disrespectful to the troops who have put their lives on the line in Iraq? If I were shipped to the other side of the world to fight a dictator because I had been told he had WMD and was a clear and present danger against my nation and then the next year I saw my commander at some fancy party joking about it I would not take that as an expression of his "confidence".
After the time when Bush played his "Searching for WMD" slideshow he is fair game to mock and insult by any means necessary. The fact that he would make such a disgusting joke about the "flawed intelligence" that has cost thousands of lives was so completely fucked up - any respect he still deserved as President went right out the window. Colbert could have literally taken a crap on Bush's dinner plate, that is fine by me at this point. Bush and the media elite at the event deserved everything Colbert gave them and then some.