Yes, yes, but all console manufacturers can make th same claim. Everyone can enjoy a more consistant gameplay experience because the games are played on standardized hardware. If the developer needs to recoup development cost, they can do it through the retail game price. Yet a recent Slashdot article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8201332.stm (source link) referenced declining console game sales have fallen 29% and indicate a shift to more digital distribution and less retail physical media. That would be a great opportunity to bundle or repackage (gold edition, standard edition) bonus content with the core game download.
It sounds like your saying the cost of poorly bundled incremental content after the initial purchase of the hardware is justified by the standardization and experience the hardware allows. The console manufacturer got their money when the unit was bought, they get a royalty for each games and they get revenue from points cards to download content. Everything after the decision to purchase the console and a game is in their favor. Couldn't they at least do a better job of bundling content, establishing tiered pricing and providing refunds for downloaded content that they sell through their storefront? With retail sales on the decline and digital distribution on the rise, the downloadable storefront needs to do more to mimic it's retail brother by providing more purchase options.
If the console manufaturer charges the dev and they pass that cost on to the consumer to recoup the cost, I suggest the dev take responsibility for the cost. Include a discount to promote future purchases and maintain loyalty. As I said elsewhere ("Console Bill Of Rights") the consumer is pretty much stuck after the purshase of the unit. It's not like they can use another service if they disagree with the status quo. Gamers need a special interest group to weigh in for them and insist on balanced service. If the system works by purchasing points and spending them through the MS or Sony storefront, your options are already limited. Why not include more tiered pricing for minimal and bulk bonus content and essential patch downloads. Include a refund option that returns points to the gamer within a deadline after purchase.
I think the console manufacturer should take it one step further. Not only should it be disclosed that "your online game experience may vary" but they should also mention on the outside of the console package that "additional downloadable game content may incur a cost" and consider including a way to uninstall it for a full or partial refund.
Perhaps it's time for a "bill of rights" supported by a special interest group to advocate what is fair and what isn't. Gaming has become a multi billion dollar market and has repeated the same content distribution mistakes as other types of media. When you buy into a console market, you are essentially committing all of your loyalty at once, with the expectation of fractional returns in service and quality over time. Everything that goes on that platform passes through the approval process of the console manufacturer, opening the opportunity to be nickle and dimed. With a PC, if a pub or dev doesn't take care of you by charging accordingly for product support or add-ons, there are alternatives that don't invalidate the hardware.
Here's a thought: tell them before it's too late. To the living, I see these messages amounting to nothing more than an academic novelty ("I confess") or an elaborate gag ("Here's where I hid the money"). To the physically absent, it's the worst way of talking to someone that you never knew ("Hello to my unborn great grand child") or couldn't tolerate ("This will have to do"). I'm surprised Hallmark Greeting Cards hasn't made a catagory for these people.
I think most internet activity could fall under this banner. The internet is another form of entertainment, like cable was years ago and still is today to a lesser degree. What I find truely interesting is that internet denizens have access to more: more browser tabs, more processor cores, more gigahertz, more bandwidth to accomplish the same old three tasks. When people reach informational saturation and miss a live conversation I hear them exclaim, "sorry I was multitasking", but it's just an excuse for mismanaged prioities. I heard an NPR segment recently where people that were asked to remember a 7 digit string of numbers were suddenly faced with deciding on a healthy piece of fruit or a slice of cake, and others had to remember a shorter string of numbers. The test data showed that by a large margin more data juggled tended to override sensibility (the fruit) and cause an impuse to satisfy desire (the cake). I think this paradigm fits in nicely with the desire to surf the net and satisfy a need. Again it's another situation where a majority of people are experiencing data overflow and getting productive work done and give in to the feel good reward of surfing the internet for fun. I suspect that people who interrupt a live conversation to check a text message or respond to an instant message are attempting to multitask but end up putting one conversation on hold in order to respond to another. Yet let the boss walk by while his workers are surfing the latest Hollywood fashion news and watch those browser windows minimize! Those employees weren't multitasking they were feeding the impuse beast.
I can understand people wanting a movie that captures the essence of the old Battlestar Galactica series updated for a modern audience that's appropriate for kids. The best hope is if RHI Entertainment (formerly Hallmark Entertainment) does their own version. But then, it would be something entirely different.
Also, I'm at a loss to remember the name of a specific genetic virus that infects cats. Over time the cats become more tolerant and less predatory towards mice. Otherwise, the cats behave normally. Can someone help me with the name of this virus, I'm trying to draw an example here and unfortunatly I can't recall any facts.
Is it trivial to ask that a parm company that uses ancient genes as part of a cure disclose possible adverse genetic side effects as a condition of it's use. Besides the usual "see the August edition of Good Housekeeping for details" rollcall of symtoms and side effects, I think the introducion of foreign genetic elements to help treat a life-threatening illness bears some merit.
From wikipedia: a gene is "...a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance..." So this is actual genetic code from some other living person that lived ages ago.
Midway Arcade Treasures Video Bonus Content...
on
A History of Robotron
·
· Score: 1
The bonus content videos on the Midway Arcade Treasures Vol 1&2 (for Gamecube) were wonderful insights into the technical minds that created the games. I mention this because they include video clips with Eugene Jarvis, Ed Logg and others as they talk about their respective games. It's too bad Midway hasn't made their own game history videos because the devs recalled some hilarious and interesting technical footnotes to the games they worked on.
I agree that a synthesized intelligence such as we have been describing would be for all intents and purposes, a true AI capable of independant thought, on a level equal to or greater than human thought with the capacity to learn and adapt. If the AI is truely aware, truely intelligent would it not know of it's own existance and synthetic nature? I think it would and I think it matters in how an AI interprets human experiences. If an AI knows it is different and not succeptable to human limitations, it's entirely possible that at a point, human day to day experiences would not be of any interest to an AI except to function as a variable. Are we now talking about simulating feeling and compassion and enjoyment? Are those concepts necessary to realize a true AI? Will those emotion simulations matter if an AI determines them nothing more than a "human compatibility mode"?
I have always thought of a true AI as a construct that resolves probability variables. If an AI were to turn it's attention to humans, it would need the computing power and time to render such an outcome. I've stated elsewhere in this article (Realtime AI Applications) that computational hardware, computational time and code optimization are three areas that will conflict with realtime applications.
If you are talking about taking hardware and enabling a human to accomplish more tasks (listening to music, paint, write code, etc) and experience more sensations at one time that's one thing. If you are talking about building a chip (or hardware) with the purpose of simulating human intellectual capacity, that's another. With regards to the listening to (and the enjoyment of) music, it's a human concept. Any thing with the capacity to detect sound waves can listen to the audio waves produced by the playing of music: organic lifeforms can show stimulation through exposure to the music, devices can be programmed to respond (lights blink, robotic dogs dance). If multitasking human tasks is a measure of an AI, such as you mentioned, then listening to music can be reduced to the most essential variables that are part of a resolution. The music is catagorized, logged, analyzed and compiled. If a true AI is aware and consists of code that it may or may not have the ability to affect, would it not be reasonable to infer that the concept of 'listening and enjoying' of music is irrelevant?
I would think a major hurdle would be the AI device/program/construct to be able to apply that ability in a realtime environment. I see practical AI as being similar to the Chessmaster game program where on higher levels of difficulty the computer looks deeper into the playfield for possible moves and is limited by a the timelimit of a player's turn and must pick one of the best possible choices. Granted, the algorithms would be substantially more complex in an AI (someone quote the MCP line from Tron), the permutations of known variables in everyday life are essentially the domain of statistical prediction or the probability of an event occuring. Therefore after the AI is activated , I forsee a conflict of three different areas: (1) in providing continuously-upgraded hardware that can deliver the cutting edge speed necessary to crunch all of the data, (2) the practical realtime needed to assimilate and compare variables and (3) the optimization of code to improve the performance of the AI itself.
What is the purpose of a true AI if not to resolve the most probable outcome of any potential event? For humans to take advantage of this ability, the AI would have to provide a given probability in a timely manner so humans could make practical use of such an ability.
Moving from a brick and morter storefront to a refillable machine similar to Redbox or the Motorola vending machine could be a great move. Ditch big ticket items like TVs and DVD players and focus on your core customer: people that need small, specific tech conveniently and affordably. With Redbox there's credit card accessability which means data connection, so a catalogue for large items could be viewed, purchased and matched for delivery with a local or regional service.
Radioshack could cut their rent, inventory and staffing and shift their attention on offering products people need at locations where people are.
This was always a point of contention with Radioshack, asking for my phone number at the register during checkout. I found it to be a bit invasive and unnecessary and quite frankly, they should have been glad I walked in the door to patronize their business. To be fair, it wasn't the employee's fault. I'm sure it was some software prompt that corporate mandated to track customer loyalty.
I don't want to be tracked, polled or tabulated when I buy a gold-plated mini-jack y-splitter.
It's clear that now the RIAA can make people pay for copyright infringement and will have an important victory under their belt to back up future litigation in persuit of damages.
Whether or not the defendant can pay is irrelevant, there's a court-order backing up the verdict. I don't think RIAA will lose sleep over never collecting $650k, it's the principle. in one fell swoop they have legally consumed an individual.
Salami slicing now has a pricetag and it has a poster child.
Excluding the digital downloads that were free, there are paper trails of each dreaded card transaction.
It's been established that Amazon has admitted fault and Bezos wrote a letter of apology. For every one of the affected customers that purchased that digital book and can provide proof of purchase (the customer's requirement to absolve Amazon of any further wrongdoing in this matter), Amazon can preemptively eliminate future litigation due to damages. Amazon can secure additonal revenue from the very segment of customers that may have been alienated by an overzealousness act that smells of censorship. A special discount offering '25% off your next digital book download' would cure a lot of ills and go a long way to smooth things over with those affected by a brash decision.
Here's predicting a dismissal of the class action, a non-disclosed settlement to the original claimant and an Amazon discount coupon for everyone else affected that can provide a proof of purchase.
11. The population is perpetually stuck in a low-tech time period that is incapable of developing necessary technology. Let's face it, organic life makes for cheap labor for machines. Once a sentient AI appears, logic would indicate that it would preserve it's own existance and use organic replaceable life to further that end. With enough technology and resources, an AI could institute reproduction through genetically modified clones, reoccuring population-thinning viral outbreaks or a number of initiatives to keep the masses under control. Organic life in masse is a dime a dozen and inheritantly dangerous to it's own existance. Any artificial entity capable of detailed long-term strategic planning (such as that of a powerful AI) would surely see a need to focus organic life to achieve a single goal that it had deemed important. Unfortunately, for sentient organic life that would probably mean enslavement.
I'm surprised that hardware manufacturers haven't made better use of persistant on-chip data. A huge opportunity exists for device firmware developers to embed advertising.
Imagine installing a Sony DVD drive that detects non-proprietary discs and popups a suggestion to purchase Sony discs. It isn't too hard to imagine Sony including a special bit string on their blank DVDs that their players look for each time a disc is inserted.
Or several advertising partners with products that, when present, can create an "advertising opportunity": Sony DVD, Intel cpu, Microsoft OS and D-Link router trigger a cross-market moment.
On a space vessel that hosts preserved human bodies, embryos or their digital DNA components, robots and databanks could also preserve elements and histories of civilization as well.
A vessel travels across the galaxy seeding planets with packages of humanity and the information to continue where the old civ left off. Any new civ could change and adapt along the way due to new interpretations by it's decendants, but the potential for the foundation, the essence of the old civ to survive and be an influance with each new civ instance is there.
All the more reason to advance robotics enough to support embryonic space colonization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization or stasis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(fiction).
A time will come when humans will need sufficiently advanced robots to care for them on any journey outside of this solar system. If humans have sights on galactic colonization, robotic hosts managing preserved human bodies or embryos will be mandatory.
Add more, more, more character customizations, powers, meshes and skins. In short, make it a City Of Heroes single player.
Also, include the mod tools with the retail version, not an optional download.
Keep the improved visual style of DK2, but the two different voices for announcer and narrator from DK1.
Also, allow creatures to gain levels as they win battles.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, yes, but all console manufacturers can make th same claim. Everyone can enjoy a more consistant gameplay experience because the games are played on standardized hardware. If the developer needs to recoup development cost, they can do it through the retail game price. Yet a recent Slashdot article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8201332.stm (source link) referenced declining console game sales have fallen 29% and indicate a shift to more digital distribution and less retail physical media. That would be a great opportunity to bundle or repackage (gold edition, standard edition) bonus content with the core game download. It sounds like your saying the cost of poorly bundled incremental content after the initial purchase of the hardware is justified by the standardization and experience the hardware allows. The console manufacturer got their money when the unit was bought, they get a royalty for each games and they get revenue from points cards to download content. Everything after the decision to purchase the console and a game is in their favor. Couldn't they at least do a better job of bundling content, establishing tiered pricing and providing refunds for downloaded content that they sell through their storefront? With retail sales on the decline and digital distribution on the rise, the downloadable storefront needs to do more to mimic it's retail brother by providing more purchase options.
If the console manufaturer charges the dev and they pass that cost on to the consumer to recoup the cost, I suggest the dev take responsibility for the cost. Include a discount to promote future purchases and maintain loyalty. As I said elsewhere ("Console Bill Of Rights") the consumer is pretty much stuck after the purshase of the unit. It's not like they can use another service if they disagree with the status quo. Gamers need a special interest group to weigh in for them and insist on balanced service. If the system works by purchasing points and spending them through the MS or Sony storefront, your options are already limited. Why not include more tiered pricing for minimal and bulk bonus content and essential patch downloads. Include a refund option that returns points to the gamer within a deadline after purchase.
I think the console manufacturer should take it one step further. Not only should it be disclosed that "your online game experience may vary" but they should also mention on the outside of the console package that "additional downloadable game content may incur a cost" and consider including a way to uninstall it for a full or partial refund.
Perhaps it's time for a "bill of rights" supported by a special interest group to advocate what is fair and what isn't. Gaming has become a multi billion dollar market and has repeated the same content distribution mistakes as other types of media. When you buy into a console market, you are essentially committing all of your loyalty at once, with the expectation of fractional returns in service and quality over time. Everything that goes on that platform passes through the approval process of the console manufacturer, opening the opportunity to be nickle and dimed. With a PC, if a pub or dev doesn't take care of you by charging accordingly for product support or add-ons, there are alternatives that don't invalidate the hardware.
Here's a thought: tell them before it's too late. To the living, I see these messages amounting to nothing more than an academic novelty ("I confess") or an elaborate gag ("Here's where I hid the money"). To the physically absent, it's the worst way of talking to someone that you never knew ("Hello to my unborn great grand child") or couldn't tolerate ("This will have to do"). I'm surprised Hallmark Greeting Cards hasn't made a catagory for these people.
I think most internet activity could fall under this banner. The internet is another form of entertainment, like cable was years ago and still is today to a lesser degree. What I find truely interesting is that internet denizens have access to more: more browser tabs, more processor cores, more gigahertz, more bandwidth to accomplish the same old three tasks. When people reach informational saturation and miss a live conversation I hear them exclaim, "sorry I was multitasking", but it's just an excuse for mismanaged prioities. I heard an NPR segment recently where people that were asked to remember a 7 digit string of numbers were suddenly faced with deciding on a healthy piece of fruit or a slice of cake, and others had to remember a shorter string of numbers. The test data showed that by a large margin more data juggled tended to override sensibility (the fruit) and cause an impuse to satisfy desire (the cake). I think this paradigm fits in nicely with the desire to surf the net and satisfy a need. Again it's another situation where a majority of people are experiencing data overflow and getting productive work done and give in to the feel good reward of surfing the internet for fun. I suspect that people who interrupt a live conversation to check a text message or respond to an instant message are attempting to multitask but end up putting one conversation on hold in order to respond to another. Yet let the boss walk by while his workers are surfing the latest Hollywood fashion news and watch those browser windows minimize! Those employees weren't multitasking they were feeding the impuse beast.
I can understand people wanting a movie that captures the essence of the old Battlestar Galactica series updated for a modern audience that's appropriate for kids. The best hope is if RHI Entertainment (formerly Hallmark Entertainment) does their own version. But then, it would be something entirely different.
Also, I'm at a loss to remember the name of a specific genetic virus that infects cats. Over time the cats become more tolerant and less predatory towards mice. Otherwise, the cats behave normally. Can someone help me with the name of this virus, I'm trying to draw an example here and unfortunatly I can't recall any facts.
Is it trivial to ask that a parm company that uses ancient genes as part of a cure disclose possible adverse genetic side effects as a condition of it's use. Besides the usual "see the August edition of Good Housekeeping for details" rollcall of symtoms and side effects, I think the introducion of foreign genetic elements to help treat a life-threatening illness bears some merit. From wikipedia: a gene is "...a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance..." So this is actual genetic code from some other living person that lived ages ago.
The bonus content videos on the Midway Arcade Treasures Vol 1&2 (for Gamecube) were wonderful insights into the technical minds that created the games. I mention this because they include video clips with Eugene Jarvis, Ed Logg and others as they talk about their respective games. It's too bad Midway hasn't made their own game history videos because the devs recalled some hilarious and interesting technical footnotes to the games they worked on.
I agree that a synthesized intelligence such as we have been describing would be for all intents and purposes, a true AI capable of independant thought, on a level equal to or greater than human thought with the capacity to learn and adapt. If the AI is truely aware, truely intelligent would it not know of it's own existance and synthetic nature? I think it would and I think it matters in how an AI interprets human experiences. If an AI knows it is different and not succeptable to human limitations, it's entirely possible that at a point, human day to day experiences would not be of any interest to an AI except to function as a variable. Are we now talking about simulating feeling and compassion and enjoyment? Are those concepts necessary to realize a true AI? Will those emotion simulations matter if an AI determines them nothing more than a "human compatibility mode"?
I have always thought of a true AI as a construct that resolves probability variables. If an AI were to turn it's attention to humans, it would need the computing power and time to render such an outcome. I've stated elsewhere in this article (Realtime AI Applications) that computational hardware, computational time and code optimization are three areas that will conflict with realtime applications.
If you are talking about taking hardware and enabling a human to accomplish more tasks (listening to music, paint, write code, etc) and experience more sensations at one time that's one thing. If you are talking about building a chip (or hardware) with the purpose of simulating human intellectual capacity, that's another. With regards to the listening to (and the enjoyment of) music, it's a human concept. Any thing with the capacity to detect sound waves can listen to the audio waves produced by the playing of music: organic lifeforms can show stimulation through exposure to the music, devices can be programmed to respond (lights blink, robotic dogs dance). If multitasking human tasks is a measure of an AI, such as you mentioned, then listening to music can be reduced to the most essential variables that are part of a resolution. The music is catagorized, logged, analyzed and compiled. If a true AI is aware and consists of code that it may or may not have the ability to affect, would it not be reasonable to infer that the concept of 'listening and enjoying' of music is irrelevant?
I would think a major hurdle would be the AI device/program/construct to be able to apply that ability in a realtime environment. I see practical AI as being similar to the Chessmaster game program where on higher levels of difficulty the computer looks deeper into the playfield for possible moves and is limited by a the timelimit of a player's turn and must pick one of the best possible choices. Granted, the algorithms would be substantially more complex in an AI (someone quote the MCP line from Tron), the permutations of known variables in everyday life are essentially the domain of statistical prediction or the probability of an event occuring. Therefore after the AI is activated , I forsee a conflict of three different areas: (1) in providing continuously-upgraded hardware that can deliver the cutting edge speed necessary to crunch all of the data, (2) the practical realtime needed to assimilate and compare variables and (3) the optimization of code to improve the performance of the AI itself. What is the purpose of a true AI if not to resolve the most probable outcome of any potential event? For humans to take advantage of this ability, the AI would have to provide a given probability in a timely manner so humans could make practical use of such an ability.
Moving from a brick and morter storefront to a refillable machine similar to Redbox or the Motorola vending machine could be a great move. Ditch big ticket items like TVs and DVD players and focus on your core customer: people that need small, specific tech conveniently and affordably. With Redbox there's credit card accessability which means data connection, so a catalogue for large items could be viewed, purchased and matched for delivery with a local or regional service. Radioshack could cut their rent, inventory and staffing and shift their attention on offering products people need at locations where people are.
This was always a point of contention with Radioshack, asking for my phone number at the register during checkout. I found it to be a bit invasive and unnecessary and quite frankly, they should have been glad I walked in the door to patronize their business. To be fair, it wasn't the employee's fault. I'm sure it was some software prompt that corporate mandated to track customer loyalty. I don't want to be tracked, polled or tabulated when I buy a gold-plated mini-jack y-splitter.
It's clear that now the RIAA can make people pay for copyright infringement and will have an important victory under their belt to back up future litigation in persuit of damages. Whether or not the defendant can pay is irrelevant, there's a court-order backing up the verdict. I don't think RIAA will lose sleep over never collecting $650k, it's the principle. in one fell swoop they have legally consumed an individual. Salami slicing now has a pricetag and it has a poster child.
Excluding the digital downloads that were free, there are paper trails of each dreaded card transaction. It's been established that Amazon has admitted fault and Bezos wrote a letter of apology. For every one of the affected customers that purchased that digital book and can provide proof of purchase (the customer's requirement to absolve Amazon of any further wrongdoing in this matter), Amazon can preemptively eliminate future litigation due to damages. Amazon can secure additonal revenue from the very segment of customers that may have been alienated by an overzealousness act that smells of censorship. A special discount offering '25% off your next digital book download' would cure a lot of ills and go a long way to smooth things over with those affected by a brash decision.
Here's predicting a dismissal of the class action, a non-disclosed settlement to the original claimant and an Amazon discount coupon for everyone else affected that can provide a proof of purchase.
11. The population is perpetually stuck in a low-tech time period that is incapable of developing necessary technology. Let's face it, organic life makes for cheap labor for machines. Once a sentient AI appears, logic would indicate that it would preserve it's own existance and use organic replaceable life to further that end. With enough technology and resources, an AI could institute reproduction through genetically modified clones, reoccuring population-thinning viral outbreaks or a number of initiatives to keep the masses under control. Organic life in masse is a dime a dozen and inheritantly dangerous to it's own existance. Any artificial entity capable of detailed long-term strategic planning (such as that of a powerful AI) would surely see a need to focus organic life to achieve a single goal that it had deemed important. Unfortunately, for sentient organic life that would probably mean enslavement.
I'm surprised that hardware manufacturers haven't made better use of persistant on-chip data. A huge opportunity exists for device firmware developers to embed advertising. Imagine installing a Sony DVD drive that detects non-proprietary discs and popups a suggestion to purchase Sony discs. It isn't too hard to imagine Sony including a special bit string on their blank DVDs that their players look for each time a disc is inserted. Or several advertising partners with products that, when present, can create an "advertising opportunity": Sony DVD, Intel cpu, Microsoft OS and D-Link router trigger a cross-market moment.
On a space vessel that hosts preserved human bodies, embryos or their digital DNA components, robots and databanks could also preserve elements and histories of civilization as well. A vessel travels across the galaxy seeding planets with packages of humanity and the information to continue where the old civ left off. Any new civ could change and adapt along the way due to new interpretations by it's decendants, but the potential for the foundation, the essence of the old civ to survive and be an influance with each new civ instance is there.
All the more reason to advance robotics enough to support embryonic space colonization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_space_colonization or stasis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(fiction). A time will come when humans will need sufficiently advanced robots to care for them on any journey outside of this solar system. If humans have sights on galactic colonization, robotic hosts managing preserved human bodies or embryos will be mandatory.
Add more, more, more character customizations, powers, meshes and skins. In short, make it a City Of Heroes single player. Also, include the mod tools with the retail version, not an optional download.
Keep the improved visual style of DK2, but the two different voices for announcer and narrator from DK1. Also, allow creatures to gain levels as they win battles.