In another universe God set up, froodling is a deadly sin. In this universe, it is impossible to froodle. In both universes, free will exists. If you accept the possibility of this premise, then you must accept the possibility that God could have set up a universe where free exists, but sin is impossible.
Just be thankful we don't live in the universe where every possible action is a sin.
As to your point about free will and proof, I simply don't understand how you can say that proof and free will are mutually exclusive. Are you saying that proof in mathematics doesn't exist, or that free will doesn't?
Nature reproduces sound and video in our heads pretty damn well.
As for long distance travel, many animals are capable of traveling much further without refueling/maintenance than any machine (outside of a space craft) can.
We do 'great speeds' better than nature, given.
Any process based on plant energy conversion can not beat the efficiency of plants themselves. However, plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into usable energy. With PV, we have them beat by an order of magnitude in efficiency. As far as total calories converted per year, plants have us beat, though.
Blow shit up: given, but some animals do use explosives (bombardier beetles) or mechanical shock-waves (mantis shrimp ) to attack or defend.
Survive a variety of harsh environments: not even close. Nature has us beat, hands down. Just look at extremophiles.
Build shelter, debatable.
Massive energy densities, given.
Heat and cool our environment. Bees and termites do this in very sophisticated ways.
Simulation. Not even close, nature has us beat. Oh, what, you think that's actually reality you are witnessing inside your own head?
No, it's the most sophisticated simulation ever built. Or rather, two simulations, an expressive one and a predictive one. The first is built up out of raw sense data, the second creates the same type of output stream, but based on predictions not sense data. The two streams are compared up to sixty times per second, and when they don't match, the experienced is raised up to conscious awareness.
If they get their power like other living things, they will be quite limited in what they can actually do. No sci-fi melting the planet into grey goo.
I challenge you to find examples of things that man has engineered significantly better than what we see in nature. In almost all cases, the natural example is lighter, more flexible, self repairing, certainly cheaper, and at least as strong. What we do better is 'bigger' and 'more powerful' but that is easy. What nature does is hard, and the smaller you get, the harder it is to find examples that can compete with what nature does.
No one is saying that the linear, author directed narrative has to disappear from video games. For one thing, it's the most economical.
The only reason that sandbox games are disconnecting and unempathic is because they are built that way. You should check out the work of Brenda Laurel, she is a pioneer in the field of computer/human interaction and started a game company for girls that focused on realistic emotional situations and responses. Way ahead of its time, unfortunately.
Written correctly, even single player games can help players become more empathic and socially clueful.
That is the beauty of video games as an art form. Not only can they recreate and re-express all other forms of media, they can do things no other form of media has done. TV never killed movies, which didn't kill radio, which didn't stop writing. New forms of narrative in video games won't ever kill off the older forms. People are still making interactive text adventures, you know.
No, what I am suggesting broadens the realm of possibility of creation, allowing new forms of creativity, participation and interaction. It allows a creator to be more like a game master in a table top RPG than like a mere writer of linear plots. It gives the creator and audience the ability to explore many different possibilities, not just one.
In some sense, in a video game, the player is the performer and the author is the composer.
I think your interpretation is incorrect. The creator is still intimately connected to the plot. There is no mathematical formula. The creator simply creates on a higher level. Rather than specifying the details, the creator is free to specify the meaning, the theme, the pace, and the types of dramatic questions posed. The game does the boring work of filling in the details based on the previous experiences of the players.
Some creators want to dictate to their audience the exact nature of the experience. Other creators are happier co-creating the experience with audience participation. The strength of video games lies in that audience participation. Video games are not simply another form of story telling, they are a form of story making.
I see linear game play is an attempt by creators, fundamentally uncomfortable with the loss of control inherent in the new media, to shoehorn old story telling conventions into a new form. Creators want to be Gods, not mere guides. But the future of video games is most certainly closer to the art of improv than it is to the art of writing.
The monomyth, as appropriate for RPGs and as universal as it is, is only one (Daring Enterprise) basic dramatic situation, of which there are thirty six.
If the game play mechanics are open ended enough, and the elements contain enough individualized characteristics, and there are enough connections between elements, then the elements will be unique. For instance, the author specifies 'big dumb fighter' as a necessary character for a scene in a tavern. The game searches through instantiated characters for one meeting the criteria, and it turns out that not only has the player interacted with a 'big dumb fighter' before, the fighter has a brother who is commander of the watch. This was not specified by the author, it just happens to be true in this particular instance of the game. Suddenly, the upcoming bar fight becomes a lot more interesting.
I for one welcome our apathetic first posting overlords, and remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground overlord welcoming centers.
It's hard enough for a human game master to keep up with his players' creativity and keep the story flowing. To truly integrate good story with open ended game play is hard. I'm not saying it will require true AI, but it will require rethinking the way stories are written.
The key, I believe, is to write generic stories, and fill in the blanks with details generated during game play. For instance, instead of specifying a specific location where a scene takes place, specify what type of location and other elements necessary to trigger the scene, then when the players meet the criteria, the scene is triggered with the specific details coming from the environment, not the author.
Same goes for characters, write them generically, and use appropriate game-generated character that meet the plot criteria instead of saying it has to be a certain person.
As for plot, multi branching plot structures aren't really that hard, people have been doing it since the 50s in romance novels. The big publishers had a flowchart outlining the accepted plot possibilities and stables full of mediocre writers to fill in the details.
The key is in understanding dramatic tension. You raise tension by posing meaningful questions and you lower it by answering them. In some sense, it doesn't matter what the questions are or how they are answered, only that they are meaningful to the reader. By using game generated specifics to ask the questions, and player choices to answer them, it becomes more likely the player will find the questions meaningful.
So in a basic sense, one can look at a plot element as consisting of entry conditions, scene, props, characters, questions, and exit conditions. You specify what has to be true for the element to become active, what types of scene, characters and props are involved, what questions are asked, and what the possible outcomes are.
But this is much harder than simply dictating what will happen in a story. And it guarantees that every player is going to miss some content. No writer likes to think they are writing something that might not even get read, but for dynamic stories to work, that is what has to happen.
It is a problem today that people don't know what the law of the jungle is. In America, not 60 years ago, it was *not* a rare occurance that a hyena killed an infant or a baby. Keep in mind that there are still hyena's, and they *still* try to eat babies. There is a reason that they are wiped out in cities. Hyenas live in Africa and Asia, not America. over the last 100 years, there have been less than 200 fatal animal attacks in America. Not only does this paragraph have little or nothing to do with the rest of your informative and insightful post, it is factually incorrect. Just saying...
I was at Novell Brainshare recently with thousands of other people from all over the world. I'd have to say your assessment of Novel's position is way out in left field. You really have no idea what you are talking about, sorry.
I was at Novell Brainshare this year and I can say firsthand that their commitment to open source seems genuine. I was impressed with the amount of work they are doing, not only moving to a Linux based platform and phasing out Netware as an OS altogether, but in taking their partners with them. There were some very good seminars on porting Netware applications to Linux, using the GNU tools like autoconf, and Linux security.
I thought the quote was appropriate. Somebody obviously got out their Big Jar of Large, Important Words and sprinkled liberally. The piece was especially brilliant because it almost made sense. But not quite. It's obvious copypasta, but I wonder if the original is even about John McCain? In any case, it gave me a good laugh.
I don't want to go on a rant here, but this screed makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam. I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate.
Why would the employees be out of a job just because the corporate charter is dissolved? The board, officers and stockholders would be rightfully fucked, but all that infrastructure isn't going to just disappear. The infrastructure that was the assets of the corporation? You expect to dissolve a corporate charter and have the employees of the ex-corporation just continue on? How exactly would that work? They get their own, new charter and the business carries on as an ESOP. Most employees know far better than management how their company really runs.
If you think that wouldn't work, the burden of proof is on you to show why.
Reading comprehension: you fail it. That's a rhetorical device, as in "You mess with the bull, you get the horns." Most English speakers over the age of five understand that phrases like this do not literally refer to "you" or to real, actual bulls, for that matter. The "if" is implied, and most people with an IQ over 80 can fill in the blanks where needed. Sorry to hear about your mental disability, but it explains a lot about your attitude.
I heard back then that it was being deployed more and more. The stories then read exactly like the story now. But whatever, its not worth arguing over, I'm sure you are right and I am wrong and this is new and exciting and totally different and this time it will catch on for sure, any day now, buy buy buy, new and improved, now with more photons per square inch, guaranteed to satisfy.
Slashdot Mirror
In another universe God set up, froodling is a deadly sin. In this universe, it is impossible to froodle. In both universes, free will exists. If you accept the possibility of this premise, then you must accept the possibility that God could have set up a universe where free exists, but sin is impossible.
Just be thankful we don't live in the universe where every possible action is a sin.
As to your point about free will and proof, I simply don't understand how you can say that proof and free will are mutually exclusive. Are you saying that proof in mathematics doesn't exist, or that free will doesn't?
Nature reproduces sound and video in our heads pretty damn well.
As for long distance travel, many animals are capable of traveling much further without refueling/maintenance than any machine (outside of a space craft) can.
We do 'great speeds' better than nature, given.
Any process based on plant energy conversion can not beat the efficiency of plants themselves. However, plants convert less than 1% of sunlight into usable energy. With PV, we have them beat by an order of magnitude in efficiency. As far as total calories converted per year, plants have us beat, though.
Blow shit up: given, but some animals do use explosives (bombardier beetles) or mechanical shock-waves (mantis shrimp ) to attack or defend.
Survive a variety of harsh environments: not even close. Nature has us beat, hands down. Just look at extremophiles.
Build shelter, debatable.
Massive energy densities, given.
Heat and cool our environment. Bees and termites do this in very sophisticated ways.
Simulation. Not even close, nature has us beat. Oh, what, you think that's actually reality you are witnessing inside your own head?
No, it's the most sophisticated simulation ever built. Or rather, two simulations, an expressive one and a predictive one. The first is built up out of raw sense data, the second creates the same type of output stream, but based on predictions not sense data. The two streams are compared up to sixty times per second, and when they don't match, the experienced is raised up to conscious awareness.
If they get their power like other living things, they will be quite limited in what they can actually do. No sci-fi melting the planet into grey goo.
I challenge you to find examples of things that man has engineered significantly better than what we see in nature. In almost all cases, the natural example is lighter, more flexible, self repairing, certainly cheaper, and at least as strong. What we do better is 'bigger' and 'more powerful' but that is easy. What nature does is hard, and the smaller you get, the harder it is to find examples that can compete with what nature does.
No one is saying that the linear, author directed narrative has to disappear from video games. For one thing, it's the most economical.
The only reason that sandbox games are disconnecting and unempathic is because they are built that way. You should check out the work of Brenda Laurel, she is a pioneer in the field of computer/human interaction and started a game company for girls that focused on realistic emotional situations and responses. Way ahead of its time, unfortunately.
Written correctly, even single player games can help players become more empathic and socially clueful.
That is the beauty of video games as an art form. Not only can they recreate and re-express all other forms of media, they can do things no other form of media has done. TV never killed movies, which didn't kill radio, which didn't stop writing. New forms of narrative in video games won't ever kill off the older forms. People are still making interactive text adventures, you know.
No, what I am suggesting broadens the realm of possibility of creation, allowing new forms of creativity, participation and interaction. It allows a creator to be more like a game master in a table top RPG than like a mere writer of linear plots. It gives the creator and audience the ability to explore many different possibilities, not just one.
In some sense, in a video game, the player is the performer and the author is the composer.
I think your interpretation is incorrect. The creator is still intimately connected to the plot. There is no mathematical formula. The creator simply creates on a higher level. Rather than specifying the details, the creator is free to specify the meaning, the theme, the pace, and the types of dramatic questions posed. The game does the boring work of filling in the details based on the previous experiences of the players.
Some creators want to dictate to their audience the exact nature of the experience. Other creators are happier co-creating the experience with audience participation. The strength of video games lies in that audience participation. Video games are not simply another form of story telling, they are a form of story making.
I see linear game play is an attempt by creators, fundamentally uncomfortable with the loss of control inherent in the new media, to shoehorn old story telling conventions into a new form. Creators want to be Gods, not mere guides. But the future of video games is most certainly closer to the art of improv than it is to the art of writing.
How would those nanobots get power? How would they dissipate the heat necessarily created in disassembling massive quantities of matter?
The monomyth, as appropriate for RPGs and as universal as it is, is only one (Daring Enterprise) basic dramatic situation, of which there are thirty six.
If the game play mechanics are open ended enough, and the elements contain enough individualized characteristics, and there are enough connections between elements, then the elements will be unique. For instance, the author specifies 'big dumb fighter' as a necessary character for a scene in a tavern. The game searches through instantiated characters for one meeting the criteria, and it turns out that not only has the player interacted with a 'big dumb fighter' before, the fighter has a brother who is commander of the watch. This was not specified by the author, it just happens to be true in this particular instance of the game. Suddenly, the upcoming bar fight becomes a lot more interesting.
I for one welcome our apathetic first posting overlords, and remind them that as a trusted slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground overlord welcoming centers.
It's hard enough for a human game master to keep up with his players' creativity and keep the story flowing. To truly integrate good story with open ended game play is hard. I'm not saying it will require true AI, but it will require rethinking the way stories are written.
The key, I believe, is to write generic stories, and fill in the blanks with details generated during game play. For instance, instead of specifying a specific location where a scene takes place, specify what type of location and other elements necessary to trigger the scene, then when the players meet the criteria, the scene is triggered with the specific details coming from the environment, not the author.
Same goes for characters, write them generically, and use appropriate game-generated character that meet the plot criteria instead of saying it has to be a certain person.
As for plot, multi branching plot structures aren't really that hard, people have been doing it since the 50s in romance novels. The big publishers had a flowchart outlining the accepted plot possibilities and stables full of mediocre writers to fill in the details.
The key is in understanding dramatic tension. You raise tension by posing meaningful questions and you lower it by answering them. In some sense, it doesn't matter what the questions are or how they are answered, only that they are meaningful to the reader. By using game generated specifics to ask the questions, and player choices to answer them, it becomes more likely the player will find the questions meaningful.
So in a basic sense, one can look at a plot element as consisting of entry conditions, scene, props, characters, questions, and exit conditions. You specify what has to be true for the element to become active, what types of scene, characters and props are involved, what questions are asked, and what the possible outcomes are.
But this is much harder than simply dictating what will happen in a story. And it guarantees that every player is going to miss some content. No writer likes to think they are writing something that might not even get read, but for dynamic stories to work, that is what has to happen.
I'm a twitter-shitter!
You, sir, are an idiot. You don't understand how science works.
Haha. Damn, that makes my day. You didn't have to admit how much I pissed you off. But thanks, it really makes it all worth while.
I like Apparmor because it is much much easier to configure and use than SELinux. It also creates less of a performance drain.
I was at Novell Brainshare recently with thousands of other people from all over the world. I'd have to say your assessment of Novel's position is way out in left field. You really have no idea what you are talking about, sorry.
I was at Novell Brainshare this year and I can say firsthand that their commitment to open source seems genuine. I was impressed with the amount of work they are doing, not only moving to a Linux based platform and phasing out Netware as an OS altogether, but in taking their partners with them. There were some very good seminars on porting Netware applications to Linux, using the GNU tools like autoconf, and Linux security.
I thought the quote was appropriate. Somebody obviously got out their Big Jar of Large, Important Words and sprinkled liberally. The piece was especially brilliant because it almost made sense. But not quite. It's obvious copypasta, but I wonder if the original is even about John McCain? In any case, it gave me a good laugh.
It's a "Family Guy" quote poking fun at Dennis Miller, actually.
I don't want to go on a rant here, but this screed makes about as much sense as Beowulf having sex with Robert Fulton at the first battle of Antietam.
I mean when a neo-conservative defenestrates it's like Raskolnikov filibuster deoxymonohydroxinate.
If you think that wouldn't work, the burden of proof is on you to show why.
Reading comprehension: you fail it. That's a rhetorical device, as in "You mess with the bull, you get the horns." Most English speakers over the age of five understand that phrases like this do not literally refer to "you" or to real, actual bulls, for that matter. The "if" is implied, and most people with an IQ over 80 can fill in the blanks where needed. Sorry to hear about your mental disability, but it explains a lot about your attitude.
I heard back then that it was being deployed more and more. The stories then read exactly like the story now. But whatever, its not worth arguing over, I'm sure you are right and I am wrong and this is new and exciting and totally different and this time it will catch on for sure, any day now, buy buy buy, new and improved, now with more photons per square inch, guaranteed to satisfy.
I certainly heard of it from several sources during that time. Popular science, popular mechanics, sci-am, and nova, at the very least.