If you take the literal words of it - yes - All video games are Alternate reality games. However, thats not really its meaning. Kind of like "Falling in love" doesn't really mean you accelerate downwards. Alternate Reality Games are "Games" or "Puzzles" to solve based on clues or mysteries presented in a variety of manners.
It has become quite popular, they had one for a season premiere of lost (Not to mention JJ Ambrams and Newell are good friends) - The first Portal Game, they had one for Cloverfield. There was a short video a while ago on Youtube called Whats in the Box that was done by some European film makers.
It's a viral marketting technique, and it has been shown to work EXTREMELY well. If you take a look at the thread, notice how much work has been deciphered in no more than 3 DAYS. People have decoded images, cleaned them up, uploaded them, and linked them. They've managed to tie in theories from past stories in the game, previous ARG's, and other sources.
One man drove out to Kirkland Washington, because one of the decoded messages was a phone landline that whois showed to be at a certain address in Kirkland washington. The landline turned out to be a BBS - and his trip showed nothing truly out of the ordinary. But it just shows you how much it involves people, and it makes everyone else constantly refresh the thread for updates.
They've shown in the games that Portal and Half-life are in the same universe.
Players have modded the original Half Life 2 to allow you to use the Portal gun in the game. It works very much like you'd expect - so your possibilities ARE endless.
The only issues are that current Half Life 2 AI don't fall through portals (dang!) - don't see through portals - and on occaison you can bug out the engine or fall through the map if you place your portals in weird places.
So - given that the community managed to pull that off (withouth Portal Source code, I might add, this was maybe a month after Orange Box was released). I don't doubt that Valve -COULD- easily pull it off. The question merely remains on whether they will or not.
This hopefully suggests that cross-platform, multiplayer mobile shooters aren't far behind.
I wouldn't hope that on anybody. Last thing you need is getting BOOM HEADSHOT 'd so hard that you rage and throw your 300 dollar phone to the pavement.
The actually funny part about this is that most users find that they hit F1 triggering help files on accident - Windows help has long such been little to no help at all, offering nothing you didn't already know. Most of the time you are meaning to press F2 to rename something.
We acknowledge your concern about the new Net Tax proposal, and would like to take a few moments to clarify our thoughts with you and other Microsoft product users. It has come to our understanding that there are many bad things on the internet. As you can tell from the last two decades, we here have been completely incapable at stopping these threats from manifesting. As such, our competitors are doing better and our profits are down. This usually means smaller bonuses for us in the Vice Presidency positions.
In order to keep our yachts and mercedes, I have come up with a new way to get money flowing back into our accounts, via the legal system. This means that we can take your money, without question, and that not doing so will be punishable by law. I hope this clears up any confusing misconceptions you may have had.
Thats exactly the kind of attitude I'd expect from someone who has never worked for fun.
The idea of "working for fun" is in most cases, a "you are your own boss", kind of situation. All entertainment industries are highly based on this premise. A developer has an idea for a game, a director has an Idea for a movie, an Artist has an Idea for a song. Their paycheck might come from the CEO of the Game company, the movie studios, or the music label, but for the most part they have complete and utter freedom to do things as they see fit.
On occaison you'll see a band terminate their contract because they had "artistic differences" with the music label. Meaning the label wanted to force the kind of music a band makes. In semi rare cases, they'll start their own music label (See Jay-Z).
This is simply a reflection of that. Infinity Ward Developers had some artistic differences with Activision. They can just as easily get a job anywhere else, but in all honesty, I could see those 2 guys, and a handful of guys in infinity ward leaving Activision for a fulfilling new career in a brand new startup, led by these 2 devs.
That's extrapolating a bit much, isn't it? And scanning through the article, they don't even name the sample size, just percentages.
And yes, they mention that its only the stuff that they test, "so imagine what the rest is like". Well - thats it though, if someone is professionally developing with security in mind, they probably know how to test it in office or know somebody who can. Thus - no need to pay this corporation to test something you can do yourself. If you are developing with security in mind - but aren't sure exactly what you're looking to protect against - THATS when you go to companies like these.
This is a pretty much skewed data source (probably a slashvertisement for them, too), and is the only study of its type. Take it with a weeks worth of salt.
See, the last time we upgraded we put everything on eleven hundred windows 95 machines with 1 gig hard drives. That did pretty good for a spell, all things considered. Now we're thinking about one of them pointy computers... whaddya call em? Blade servers? Yeah, we hear good things about those.
You are misunderstanding the concepts - its not that your cells are multiplying less fast, its that your atoms and molecules themselves are moving at a different reference of time.
It's hard to explain without having prior knowledge. Just know that we've observed this change in action - a satellite in orbit will read 1:00 and so will a clock on Earth. However after a long amount of time, the satellite will be a minute behind.
I'd get into the nitty gritty of it, but I don't have time. You should google "Fabric of Space-time" and blow your mind.
What else can you measure time against, or what else can you measure change against? Because you can measure a change in distance, a change in volume, a change in temperature, the list goes on.
As for measuring time - you can have instances where nothing changes BUT the time - so thus begs the question, what is time if nothing changes?
Imagine a single Molecule, Well if you can imagine it moving you know it has speed and then you just take the change in distance to find the amount of time that had passed.
Well, imagine if it didn't have a speed - it wasn't moving. How would you calculate the change in time?
But this only works towards future. Nevertheless, if it works towards future it must also work towards past.
This is where you lost me. How did you arrive at that conclusoin? Most people would say that what happens in our timeline are heading in one direction and can't be reversed. The cooking of an egg, the stirring of sugar into water, no matter how much you stir that water or "unheat" that egg is it ever going to return to its original state. You drop a glass and it shatters. No matter how much you put the pieces back together, it is still broken until you apply some force that wasn't in the original occaison.
I think the plain movement speed isn't what's causing the differences in passing time, but it triggers something else. We as humans have (admittedly bad) memory of everything that has happened in the past.
We have pretty good memory, or so I like to think. You ask me where I was a month ago, I could work it out and tell you. You tell me where I was last year, it'd take longer, and perhaps conversing with someone else would jog my memory. Point is its all in there, and some people have freakishly good photographic memory.
There is our own state and time. Why there couldn't be global state and time, a timeline? A timeline you could warp within, even if you did exactly the same things again.
Okay you lost me again. I think you are trying to wonder why something like what you describe couldn't happen if time were capable of flowing both ways? But all evidence we have produced so far counters that.
Most well-known P2P software is deliberately installed. And users are told where their shared files will be.
So how would P2P software be installed without consent?
Happens at work all the time. The users are not authorized to install P2P Software, but it happens. Managers get administrative rights to the computers under their controls, they get lazy with permissions and give their underlings local admins... And before you know it we get a few hundred calls to ISOHunt.
Then we drop in a couple canisters of Tear Gas, have the exits swarmed with armed IT Technicians, and shove the offenders into the back of our Van. Hellz yeah....
Slashdot Mirror
And my friends called me an idealist.
Most of the greats admit that they aren't as good as the originals. They agree that they just took something amazing, and put their own spin on it.
Then you get people like Kanye (let me finish) who think they are the most amazing person on the planet.
If you take the literal words of it - yes - All video games are Alternate reality games. However, thats not really its meaning. Kind of like "Falling in love" doesn't really mean you accelerate downwards. Alternate Reality Games are "Games" or "Puzzles" to solve based on clues or mysteries presented in a variety of manners.
It has become quite popular, they had one for a season premiere of lost (Not to mention JJ Ambrams and Newell are good friends) - The first Portal Game, they had one for Cloverfield. There was a short video a while ago on Youtube called Whats in the Box that was done by some European film makers.
It's a viral marketting technique, and it has been shown to work EXTREMELY well. If you take a look at the thread, notice how much work has been deciphered in no more than 3 DAYS. People have decoded images, cleaned them up, uploaded them, and linked them. They've managed to tie in theories from past stories in the game, previous ARG's, and other sources.
One man drove out to Kirkland Washington, because one of the decoded messages was a phone landline that whois showed to be at a certain address in Kirkland washington. The landline turned out to be a BBS - and his trip showed nothing truly out of the ordinary. But it just shows you how much it involves people, and it makes everyone else constantly refresh the thread for updates.
They've shown in the games that Portal and Half-life are in the same universe.
Players have modded the original Half Life 2 to allow you to use the Portal gun in the game. It works very much like you'd expect - so your possibilities ARE endless.
The only issues are that current Half Life 2 AI don't fall through portals (dang!) - don't see through portals - and on occaison you can bug out the engine or fall through the map if you place your portals in weird places.
So - given that the community managed to pull that off (withouth Portal Source code, I might add, this was maybe a month after Orange Box was released). I don't doubt that Valve -COULD- easily pull it off. The question merely remains on whether they will or not.
This hopefully suggests that cross-platform, multiplayer mobile shooters aren't far behind.
I wouldn't hope that on anybody. Last thing you need is getting BOOM HEADSHOT 'd so hard that you rage and throw your 300 dollar phone to the pavement.
So now you see why they switched.
The actually funny part about this is that most users find that they hit F1 triggering help files on accident - Windows help has long such been little to no help at all, offering nothing you didn't already know. Most of the time you are meaning to press F2 to rename something.
Yeah. Did you hear about that idea the Microsoft VP had? A way to improve internet security, you should vote yes!
Dear Thinboy,
We acknowledge your concern about the new Net Tax proposal, and would like to take a few moments to clarify our thoughts with you and other Microsoft product users. It has come to our understanding that there are many bad things on the internet. As you can tell from the last two decades, we here have been completely incapable at stopping these threats from manifesting. As such, our competitors are doing better and our profits are down. This usually means smaller bonuses for us in the Vice Presidency positions.
In order to keep our yachts and mercedes, I have come up with a new way to get money flowing back into our accounts, via the legal system. This means that we can take your money, without question, and that not doing so will be punishable by law. I hope this clears up any confusing misconceptions you may have had.
Thank you for your continued support,
-Microsoft Vice Presidents Committee
Thats exactly the kind of attitude I'd expect from someone who has never worked for fun.
The idea of "working for fun" is in most cases, a "you are your own boss", kind of situation. All entertainment industries are highly based on this premise. A developer has an idea for a game, a director has an Idea for a movie, an Artist has an Idea for a song. Their paycheck might come from the CEO of the Game company, the movie studios, or the music label, but for the most part they have complete and utter freedom to do things as they see fit.
On occaison you'll see a band terminate their contract because they had "artistic differences" with the music label. Meaning the label wanted to force the kind of music a band makes. In semi rare cases, they'll start their own music label (See Jay-Z).
This is simply a reflection of that. Infinity Ward Developers had some artistic differences with Activision. They can just as easily get a job anywhere else, but in all honesty, I could see those 2 guys, and a handful of guys in infinity ward leaving Activision for a fulfilling new career in a brand new startup, led by these 2 devs.
Yes. And then April 2nd they'll provide instructions for reassembly via their PS3 online network.
No problem, right?
I'm sure the guys who made Iron took a good long look at it.
That's extrapolating a bit much, isn't it? And scanning through the article, they don't even name the sample size, just percentages.
And yes, they mention that its only the stuff that they test, "so imagine what the rest is like". Well - thats it though, if someone is professionally developing with security in mind, they probably know how to test it in office or know somebody who can. Thus - no need to pay this corporation to test something you can do yourself.
If you are developing with security in mind - but aren't sure exactly what you're looking to protect against - THATS when you go to companies like these.
This is a pretty much skewed data source (probably a slashvertisement for them, too), and is the only study of its type. Take it with a weeks worth of salt.
You don't have to depend on your own programming skills to understand the source.
If Chromium includes some huge privacy issue - don't you think someone who HAS gone through the source might have mentioned it?
I took the Calculator App and put it online. Sadly - it still has not been purchased.
I'm thinking I'll try Volume control next.
exciting stories
Not even you sound like your quite sick yet.
Wow - so who here is still a Cobol programmer?
I was trying to be funny.
I don't think COBOL was a systems language. It was for business logic.
No, it wasn't a systems language.
THATS how amazing COBOL is.
See, the last time we upgraded we put everything on eleven hundred windows 95 machines with 1 gig hard drives. That did pretty good for a spell, all things considered. Now we're thinking about one of them pointy computers... whaddya call em? Blade servers? Yeah, we hear good things about those.
It's because there is no need for a new systems language. Everyone knows that COBOL does everything you need it to and will last forever.
At least he'll have amazing Cell coverage in his house.
You are misunderstanding the concepts - its not that your cells are multiplying less fast, its that your atoms and molecules themselves are moving at a different reference of time.
It's hard to explain without having prior knowledge. Just know that we've observed this change in action - a satellite in orbit will read 1:00 and so will a clock on Earth. However after a long amount of time, the satellite will be a minute behind.
I'd get into the nitty gritty of it, but I don't have time. You should google "Fabric of Space-time" and blow your mind.
What else can you measure time against, or what else can you measure change against? Because you can measure a change in distance, a change in volume, a change in temperature, the list goes on.
As for measuring time - you can have instances where nothing changes BUT the time - so thus begs the question, what is time if nothing changes?
Imagine a single Molecule, Well if you can imagine it moving you know it has speed and then you just take the change in distance to find the amount of time that had passed.
Well, imagine if it didn't have a speed - it wasn't moving. How would you calculate the change in time?
But this only works towards future. Nevertheless, if it works towards future it must also work towards past.
This is where you lost me. How did you arrive at that conclusoin? Most people would say that what happens in our timeline are heading in one direction and can't be reversed. The cooking of an egg, the stirring of sugar into water, no matter how much you stir that water or "unheat" that egg is it ever going to return to its original state. You drop a glass and it shatters. No matter how much you put the pieces back together, it is still broken until you apply some force that wasn't in the original occaison.
I think the plain movement speed isn't what's causing the differences in passing time, but it triggers something else. We as humans have (admittedly bad) memory of everything that has happened in the past.
We have pretty good memory, or so I like to think. You ask me where I was a month ago, I could work it out and tell you. You tell me where I was last year, it'd take longer, and perhaps conversing with someone else would jog my memory. Point is its all in there, and some people have freakishly good photographic memory.
There is our own state and time. Why there couldn't be global state and time, a timeline? A timeline you could warp within, even if you did exactly the same things again.
Okay you lost me again. I think you are trying to wonder why something like what you describe couldn't happen if time were capable of flowing both ways? But all evidence we have produced so far counters that.
Most well-known P2P software is deliberately installed. And users are told where their shared files will be.
So how would P2P software be installed without consent?
Happens at work all the time. The users are not authorized to install P2P Software, but it happens. Managers get administrative rights to the computers under their controls, they get lazy with permissions and give their underlings local admins... And before you know it we get a few hundred calls to ISOHunt.
Then we drop in a couple canisters of Tear Gas, have the exits swarmed with armed IT Technicians, and shove the offenders into the back of our Van. Hellz yeah. ...
Sigh... Do you fantasize about your job?