I have wondered for a while whether it is really the developers who should always have "creative control" over games. To be a good developer probably requires some form of creativity, but this kind of creativity, I think, is different (or at least only tangentially related) from the kind of creativity that makes for a good game. I have begun to think that good games happen not/just/ because of good, bug-free programming, but also because of "professional creativity" that comes in the form of a producer (the analogy of a movie director or movie producer). The idea is that good games happen when this person (or I suppose, group of people) has some overall vision for the game that is "creatively unique."
I know this comment will not be popular with the hAx0r crowd that/. caters to, but I think this may be true in the same way that you can't depend on camera-men, actors and extras to make a good movie -- you need a director, or at least someone with good vision. That all said, there exist people that exhibit both kinds of creativity, like Clint Eastwood who has demonstrated this ability both as an actor (programmer) and producer (game producer) for "Million Dollar Baby." I don't know id's process, but John Carmack may also be this kind of person -- i.e. one that is a good "low-level contributor" (developer), and one that has good creative "game-level" contributions (game producer).
Anyway, that was a long winded way of saying: maybe 'true' control of what goes into games should be left to people who are creative game 'experts.' In some cases, this/may/ be developers, but I think it's more likely that it's actually the artists or producers, who have experience in "creativity that is evocative for people." (Programmers have experience in "creativity that gets the damn computer to do [x].")
So, I'm RTFA now, and as usual, my little post has little to nothing to do with the RTFA, but what the hell.
I don't mean to be a poo poo here, but this isn't as huge a deal as the author has made it sound (i.e. it certainly is not a "paradigm shift").
Instead, what we have here is an evolutionary suggestion in how we can track users more accurately. Kudos.
As with all solutions in CS, there are problems. As the parent has correctly observed, this doesn't solve the "multiple browsers, same user" problem (which is common -- you probably use a different computer at work than at home). I am not certain, but in fact, it is possible that realistically, this process they use here only solves the "this is the same browser" problem -- many users simply leave their credentials in place (i.e. logged in -- say to/.).
RFID readers and tags are here, and they're here to stay -- mainly because they are -oh- so cheap. People often ask, "how can I build one of these things?" And, while I appreciate the coolness of building something like this, the real cool bit about RFID readers & tags is that we can build things with them very very easily.
Phidgets is a company that sells these RFID readers and tags in an "off the shelf" manner. For a mere $90 CDN (almost nothing in USD), you can get a reader plus a whole set of tags (and of course the software to program against it with).
It's ridiculous that Hasbro is trying to take down this little guy running this little site. After all, have they not heard of "Yahoo" and "Yahoo Games"? Literati is a game that you can play on Yahoo! Games, and everyone knows and thinks of it as Scrabble. What a bunch of hooey.
I second this comment. Another site that is invaluable for me is ACM's digital library (http://acm.org/dl) -- this is essentially citeseer on steroids: links to citations, citation count, reference counts, author relationships, the works. ACM also offers some nice things like full listings of where the publication came from, BibTex entries and the like.
One really cool thing also is that they give you PDF access to these articles.
One really sucky thing is that you have to pay to get access to these articles (most schools have a site license, so the cost to students is usually nothing, but read on...)
What happens if google decides to slurp up these documents as PDF's, DOC's, cache them, and things like that?
In this case, they will have taken away a money stream for people like ACM, who in some way, own some rights to the publication of these documents?
Will ACM get pissed off and do something about this?
As an academic, I wouldn't care too much -- getting your stuff out there is priority 1, but I wonder how ACM would feel..
Phidgets (http://www.phidgets.com/) is something that has recently become extremely cheap and accessible to software guys like me who HATE hardware. Phidgets make it really easy to build physical user interfaces (think nobs, switches, pressure sensors, etc.) without needing to do any hardware stuff yourself.
The title of the post is poorly worded. Crying doesn't BEAT iris scanners -- that seems to imply that by crying, the iris scanner goes "okay, you're good." Instead, the iris scanner FAILS if you cry. That means, if your eyes water, the iris scanner may not recognise you.
Needless to say, this makes a lot more sense, and is actually more acceptable. After all, (and here's my layman's view coming in) iris scanners are essentially cameras with some pretty cool-dude computer vision algorithms in the back. If your eyes are teary, the CV algorithms get messed up -- it's kind of like having a distortion lens (like an oddly shaped magnifying lens) on the front of the camera.
I still remember having problems playing smooth games on the old-skool Nintendo when there were more than say eight or nine sprites on screen. Remember Super DodgeBall? Geez that was "dodgy" sometimes. Same thing for Super Spike V'ball, if I recall correctly.
Speaking of which, here's a question -- has there been work by the emulator guys to build in sort of "software" overclocking for the emulated systems?
For instance, he has the very first mouse, a word processor with cut, copy, paste, embedded graphics (remember how cool OLE seemed to be?), hyper-linking (remember how cool hypercard seemed to be?), embedded levels of text (kind of like looking at a hyper-linked table of contents in a book), multi-handed interface, a piece of groupware that allows him and a distant co-worker to work together in the same application (think collaborative real-time modification of the same document -- something we still don't really have), telepointers (graphical representation of other people's mouse pointers), embedded video (think webcam), and the list goes on and on and on.
When you think about the fact that this was done in the 1960's, you really begin to wonder, "what the hell have we been doing since then!?"
The problem with a lot of video conferencing software out there is that it's heavy-weight. It's hard to get it running, and by the time you do get it running (esp. in a small company), and sort of chatting over the system ("hey! can you hear me?" "what?"), you wonder to yourself whether you should have just walked over to the person's desk instead.
I suggest using the Notification Collage, which supports casual communication between close groups of collaborators (smaller teams within your company). It's an extremely lightweight application that has a clean install/uninstall process, and is easy to run (and leave running) all day.
Close collaborators can maintain awareness of each other using video snapshots, as well as desktop snapshots (both automagically taken at set intervals), and can communicate with sticky notes and chat items. They can share photos and stuff with each other too.
I should point out that I belong to the lab that created this little app. To be fair, it is a research prototype, but it is quite neat. We all run it in our lab to stay in touch because a few of us telecommute.
Transparent Windows
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I never really understood why people thought transparent windows were so cool.
Now I understand why it should be a priority 1 feature in all applications.
Congratulations on getting Linux working on TabletPC hardware. It's always neat to see linux on newer and different hardware.
There are some obvious next steps here. What makes TabletPC is not merely its form-factor or the hardware bits -- it is also, in large part, the software that is running on the TabletPC. TabletPC has all sorts of software hooks to make applications function reasonably well with just ink input. Can someone out there create a linux-equivalent to the ink applications for TabletPC?
For instance, the Journal is super cool. It lets you make notes in ink (or by text), it can translate, etc. Most importantly, you can/search/ using ink.
Most linux and applications in X assume keyboard + mouse input. This is not an unreasonable assumption; however, it does mean that just being able to/run/ the application on this linux/tabletpc is not enough. Many will not be nearly as useful as if they were built assuming some sort of ink interface.
Note: the Ink interface is/not/ the same as a mouse interface. It has different dynamics and unique properties. Applications, for instance, that make use of the wacom tablets will be best suited for the linux/tabletpc combo.
I didn't read the review too carefully, but I don't think a fundamental question was addressed. In my opinion, the thing that will make or break this product for me is the answer to the following question:
How fast can you type with this thing?!
The reviewer should consider using the thing for a month (exclusively), and tell us whether he learned how to do use it in the end. Furthermore, he should tell us what his WPM is with a regular keyboard, and what his WPM is with this thing is (in a month's time).
The assumption with giving him a month's time is that the novelty (for me) would last about a month. If most people wouldn't be up to keyboard speed in a month, I can't imagine many people sticking to it.
So they'll do more thorough inspections before reentry - but they still haven't addressed the issue of what to do if they actually find something wrong.
Agreed. Furthermore, it's not clear whether just taking pictures is sufficient to check the integrity of the ship. Who is going to look at the pictures? What are they going to see? What level of detail do they have to look at to find hairline fractures which may be sufficient to take the whole thing apart? What about ship integrity stuff that's right underneath the tiles? If that stuff's broken, taking pictures from the outside won't do.
The advantage of Sony's way of doing things is that it is up to the individual gaming companies to provide such service
This in my mind, is a plus and a minus though. Trade off works like this: *big game company* (replace with MS or Sony or whatever) retains less control over users; however, users have more and different interfaces to deal with depending on the game that they're using. Sony has gone for one choice; MS has gone for the other.
Because the game companies run the centralized "master" server for their game. [...] If game developers want to make additional content available, [however, they will need to] provide the server to download it from.
This is a minus for companies: it means that having a multiplayer game or providing extra content also means the need for running (setting up, maintaining, etc.) an online service. Kind of a bummer. Read: "Outsourcing is the solution to all our problems." (I don't work for a consulting firm, really! LOL:)
Companies that decide to use X-Box Live for their games are REQUIRED to host their servers in one of Microsoft's datacenters. Unlike Sony, which allows developers to put their servers wherever they want.
True.
You've seen the SOCOM: Navy Seals commercials, right?
LMAO! That commercial is frickin' hilarious!:D I think that XBox gives you a headset for the Live! service though; it looks like the headset is an add-on for the PS2.
It's clear that both methods have their advantages. It will be interesting to see what N64's model will be in this arena, too. How large companies decide to provide online gaming to the masses via the console will prove to be very interesting.
Like a lot of us, my family and friends have come to rely on me as the "IT-Guy". I hate this designation because I hate IT stuff. I think this statement from the article sums it up:
Systems Administration is the kind of job that nobody notices if you're doing it well. People only take notice of their systems when they're not working, And they tend to forget that a lot of work and expertise goes into making sure that they continue working.
You only ever talk about IT when things go wrong. In my mind, that's a thankless job. I am SO thankful that there are people that don't mind that... And this guy is a professional through and through:
But that's as it should be - computer networks are infrastructure that you should be able to rely on, to take for granted, just like telephones and electricity. If you can't do that, then there's something wrong, something that can and should be fixed.
I like how he takes responsibility. This is unbelievable. I want him as my IT guy now.
> sony is way AHEAD of ms this way.. just like my Pc games.. I dont have to pay anything to play them.
Many XBox games support multiplayer online gaming (albeit with additional software) in a similar way that PS2 does. For instance, games like Halo, Ghost Recon, etc. play very well WITHOUT Live! (see XB Connect, or Gamespy's XBox Tunnel). Granted, these tools are not supported by MS, nor are they accessible to the beginner user; however, the numbers on the servers demonstrate that there are a large number of people that have figured out how to use them. In this sense, I think it's fair to say that Sony & MS are almost on par (they're not, but they're similar).
I think the key take-away, however, is that Live! is that it is NOT JUST a way to play multiplayer games online. It is also a way for MS to provide support for things like content upgrades (a la Everquest), and easy access to playing with your other friends online (something that PS2 doesn't can't support without a centralized server). The latter point is important because it means that even the non-Internet savvy can use Live!'s online service; PS2 users may not be so fortunate.
Live! also provides a headset that works right off the bat with any Live!-enabled game. That's cool! Think about it -- talking is much cooler than breaking out of the action to type. That's why it's more fun to play at a LAN party than having everyone play at home and communicating by pressing the `T' button.;)
The content upgrade thing sounds cool, too. We have yet to see it happen in a big way for games yet, but the possibilities here are extremely cool. After finishing the nine missions of Splinter Cell, I can tell you that I am DYING for the downloadable missions. *cross fingers* Let's hope it actually comes to pass.:)
In sum, MS and PS2's strategies clearly seem different here; it seems that the infrastructure laid down by Live! will allow for much much more -- it's a matter of seeing whether they decide to take advatange of it all.
> [RFIDs are] useful for identity, but nonsense for encryption
I don't know much about RFID's, but I think you're probably right. Here's a question: wouldn't it be possible to capture someone else's EZ-Pass ID then and then replay it? If it is possible, how come no one has (apparently) done it?
I think the key take-away from this article is not so much its implementation as the idea: 1. the mobile device somehow identifies its owner, 2. when the owner is not around, then the mobile device becomes useless.
If RFID's aren't the way to accomplish (1), then people in the future just need to think about the way to accomplish it in a different way.
Slashdot Mirror
They have collections of both human read mp3 audio books and computer read mp3 audio books (kind of weird).
I have wondered for a while whether it is really the developers who should always have "creative control" over games. To be a good developer probably requires some form of creativity, but this kind of creativity, I think, is different (or at least only tangentially related) from the kind of creativity that makes for a good game. I have begun to think that good games happen not /just/ because of good, bug-free programming, but also because of "professional creativity" that comes in the form of a producer (the analogy of a movie director or movie producer). The idea is that good games happen when this person (or I suppose, group of people) has some overall vision for the game that is "creatively unique."
/. caters to, but I think this may be true in the same way that you can't depend on camera-men, actors and extras to make a good movie -- you need a director, or at least someone with good vision. That all said, there exist people that exhibit both kinds of creativity, like Clint Eastwood who has demonstrated this ability both as an actor (programmer) and producer (game producer) for "Million Dollar Baby." I don't know id's process, but John Carmack may also be this kind of person -- i.e. one that is a good "low-level contributor" (developer), and one that has good creative "game-level" contributions (game producer).
/may/ be developers, but I think it's more likely that it's actually the artists or producers, who have experience in "creativity that is evocative for people." (Programmers have experience in "creativity that gets the damn computer to do [x].")
I know this comment will not be popular with the hAx0r crowd that
Anyway, that was a long winded way of saying: maybe 'true' control of what goes into games should be left to people who are creative game 'experts.' In some cases, this
So, I'm RTFA now, and as usual, my little post has little to nothing to do with the RTFA, but what the hell.
*hits Post on his browser*
Mod this parent up.
/.).
I don't mean to be a poo poo here, but this isn't as huge a deal as the author has made it sound (i.e. it certainly is not a "paradigm shift").
Instead, what we have here is an evolutionary suggestion in how we can track users more accurately. Kudos.
As with all solutions in CS, there are problems. As the parent has correctly observed, this doesn't solve the "multiple browsers, same user" problem (which is common -- you probably use a different computer at work than at home). I am not certain, but in fact, it is possible that realistically, this process they use here only solves the "this is the same browser" problem -- many users simply leave their credentials in place (i.e. logged in -- say to
Phidgets is a company that sells these RFID readers and tags in an "off the shelf" manner. For a mere $90 CDN (almost nothing in USD), you can get a reader plus a whole set of tags (and of course the software to program against it with).
It's ridiculous that Hasbro is trying to take down this little guy running this little site. After all, have they not heard of "Yahoo" and "Yahoo Games"? Literati is a game that you can play on Yahoo! Games, and everyone knows and thinks of it as Scrabble. What a bunch of hooey.
I like this post. For some reason, I couldn't help but think that someone might post:
Easy fix. Press Alt-F4 for ops. If it crashes, then restart and press Alt-F4 again.
I second this comment. Another site that is invaluable for me is ACM's digital library (http://acm.org/dl) -- this is essentially citeseer on steroids: links to citations, citation count, reference counts, author relationships, the works. ACM also offers some nice things like full listings of where the publication came from, BibTex entries and the like.
One really cool thing also is that they give you PDF access to these articles.
One really sucky thing is that you have to pay to get access to these articles (most schools have a site license, so the cost to students is usually nothing, but read on...)
What happens if google decides to slurp up these documents as PDF's, DOC's, cache them, and things like that?
In this case, they will have taken away a money stream for people like ACM, who in some way, own some rights to the publication of these documents?
Will ACM get pissed off and do something about this?
As an academic, I wouldn't care too much -- getting your stuff out there is priority 1, but I wonder how ACM would feel..
Phidgets (http://www.phidgets.com/) is something that has recently become extremely cheap and accessible to software guys like me who HATE hardware. Phidgets make it really easy to build physical user interfaces (think nobs, switches, pressure sensors, etc.) without needing to do any hardware stuff yourself.
y /index.html).
They are extremely easy to use, as you can see by these undergrad projects (http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/phidgets/galler
Full disclosure: I am a member of the lab from which this stuff was developed.
The title of the post is poorly worded. Crying doesn't BEAT iris scanners -- that seems to imply that by crying, the iris scanner goes "okay, you're good." Instead, the iris scanner FAILS if you cry. That means, if your eyes water, the iris scanner may not recognise you.
Needless to say, this makes a lot more sense, and is actually more acceptable. After all, (and here's my layman's view coming in) iris scanners are essentially cameras with some pretty cool-dude computer vision algorithms in the back. If your eyes are teary, the CV algorithms get messed up -- it's kind of like having a distortion lens (like an oddly shaped magnifying lens) on the front of the camera.
I still remember having problems playing smooth games on the old-skool Nintendo when there were more than say eight or nine sprites on screen. Remember Super DodgeBall? Geez that was "dodgy" sometimes. Same thing for Super Spike V'ball, if I recall correctly.
Speaking of which, here's a question -- has there been work by the emulator guys to build in sort of "software" overclocking for the emulated systems?
Hey! Those are fake! (diamonds)
For instance, he has the very first mouse, a word processor with cut, copy, paste, embedded graphics (remember how cool OLE seemed to be?), hyper-linking (remember how cool hypercard seemed to be?), embedded levels of text (kind of like looking at a hyper-linked table of contents in a book), multi-handed interface, a piece of groupware that allows him and a distant co-worker to work together in the same application (think collaborative real-time modification of the same document -- something we still don't really have), telepointers (graphical representation of other people's mouse pointers), embedded video (think webcam), and the list goes on and on and on.
When you think about the fact that this was done in the 1960's, you really begin to wonder, "what the hell have we been doing since then!?"
You RTFA? You must be new here... ;)
I guess you were really hungry, huh?
I suggest using the Notification Collage, which supports casual communication between close groups of collaborators (smaller teams within your company). It's an extremely lightweight application that has a clean install/uninstall process, and is easy to run (and leave running) all day.
Close collaborators can maintain awareness of each other using video snapshots, as well as desktop snapshots (both automagically taken at set intervals), and can communicate with sticky notes and chat items. They can share photos and stuff with each other too.
I should point out that I belong to the lab that created this little app. To be fair, it is a research prototype, but it is quite neat. We all run it in our lab to stay in touch because a few of us telecommute.
I never really understood why people thought transparent windows were so cool.
Now I understand why it should be a priority 1 feature in all applications.
Congratulations on getting Linux working on TabletPC hardware. It's always neat to see linux on newer and different hardware.
/search/ using ink.
/run/ the application on this linux/tabletpc is not enough. Many will not be nearly as useful as if they were built assuming some sort of ink interface.
/not/ the same as a mouse interface. It has different dynamics and unique properties. Applications, for instance, that make use of the wacom tablets will be best suited for the linux/tabletpc combo.
There are some obvious next steps here. What makes TabletPC is not merely its form-factor or the hardware bits -- it is also, in large part, the software that is running on the TabletPC. TabletPC has all sorts of software hooks to make applications function reasonably well with just ink input. Can someone out there create a linux-equivalent to the ink applications for TabletPC?
For instance, the Journal is super cool. It lets you make notes in ink (or by text), it can translate, etc. Most importantly, you can
Most linux and applications in X assume keyboard + mouse input. This is not an unreasonable assumption; however, it does mean that just being able to
Note: the Ink interface is
How fast can you type with this thing?!
The reviewer should consider using the thing for a month (exclusively), and tell us whether he learned how to do use it in the end. Furthermore, he should tell us what his WPM is with a regular keyboard, and what his WPM is with this thing is (in a month's time).
The assumption with giving him a month's time is that the novelty (for me) would last about a month. If most people wouldn't be up to keyboard speed in a month, I can't imagine many people sticking to it.
Agreed. Furthermore, it's not clear whether just taking pictures is sufficient to check the integrity of the ship. Who is going to look at the pictures? What are they going to see? What level of detail do they have to look at to find hairline fractures which may be sufficient to take the whole thing apart? What about ship integrity stuff that's right underneath the tiles? If that stuff's broken, taking pictures from the outside won't do.
True, but the novelty here is that he was able to (1) build one himself, and (2) have it in his own home.
;)
I think that authorities might not like it too much if you took one of those LED displays from the tube and brought it home.
hehehehe...
Uh ... hello! It was posted on /.! It MUST be true. ;)
This in my mind, is a plus and a minus though. Trade off works like this: *big game company* (replace with MS or Sony or whatever) retains less control over users; however, users have more and different interfaces to deal with depending on the game that they're using. Sony has gone for one choice; MS has gone for the other.
Because the game companies run the centralized "master" server for their game. [...] If game developers want to make additional content available, [however, they will need to] provide the server to download it from.
This is a minus for companies: it means that having a multiplayer game or providing extra content also means the need for running (setting up, maintaining, etc.) an online service. Kind of a bummer. Read: "Outsourcing is the solution to all our problems." (I don't work for a consulting firm, really! LOL :)
Companies that decide to use X-Box Live for their games are REQUIRED to host their servers in one of Microsoft's datacenters. Unlike Sony, which allows developers to put their servers wherever they want.
True.
You've seen the SOCOM: Navy Seals commercials, right?
LMAO! That commercial is frickin' hilarious! :D I think that XBox gives you a headset for the Live! service though; it looks like the headset is an add-on for the PS2.
It's clear that both methods have their advantages. It will be interesting to see what N64's model will be in this arena, too. How large companies decide to provide online gaming to the masses via the console will prove to be very interesting.
Systems Administration is the kind of job that nobody notices if you're doing it well. People only take notice of their systems when they're not working, And they tend to forget that a lot of work and expertise goes into making sure that they continue working.
You only ever talk about IT when things go wrong. In my mind, that's a thankless job. I am SO thankful that there are people that don't mind that... And this guy is a professional through and through:
But that's as it should be - computer networks are infrastructure that you should be able to rely on, to take for granted, just like telephones and electricity. If you can't do that, then there's something wrong, something that can and should be fixed.
I like how he takes responsibility. This is unbelievable. I want him as my IT guy now.
Many XBox games support multiplayer online gaming (albeit with additional software) in a similar way that PS2 does. For instance, games like Halo, Ghost Recon, etc. play very well WITHOUT Live! (see XB Connect, or Gamespy's XBox Tunnel). Granted, these tools are not supported by MS, nor are they accessible to the beginner user; however, the numbers on the servers demonstrate that there are a large number of people that have figured out how to use them. In this sense, I think it's fair to say that Sony & MS are almost on par (they're not, but they're similar).
I think the key take-away, however, is that Live! is that it is NOT JUST a way to play multiplayer games online. It is also a way for MS to provide support for things like content upgrades (a la Everquest), and easy access to playing with your other friends online (something that PS2 doesn't can't support without a centralized server). The latter point is important because it means that even the non-Internet savvy can use Live!'s online service; PS2 users may not be so fortunate.
Live! also provides a headset that works right off the bat with any Live!-enabled game. That's cool! Think about it -- talking is much cooler than breaking out of the action to type. That's why it's more fun to play at a LAN party than having everyone play at home and communicating by pressing the `T' button. ;)
The content upgrade thing sounds cool, too. We have yet to see it happen in a big way for games yet, but the possibilities here are extremely cool. After finishing the nine missions of Splinter Cell, I can tell you that I am DYING for the downloadable missions. *cross fingers* Let's hope it actually comes to pass. :)
In sum, MS and PS2's strategies clearly seem different here; it seems that the infrastructure laid down by Live! will allow for much much more -- it's a matter of seeing whether they decide to take advatange of it all.
> [RFIDs are] useful for identity, but nonsense for encryption
I don't know much about RFID's, but I think you're probably right. Here's a question: wouldn't it be possible to capture someone else's EZ-Pass ID then and then replay it? If it is possible, how come no one has (apparently) done it?
I think the key take-away from this article is not so much its implementation as the idea: 1. the mobile device somehow identifies its owner, 2. when the owner is not around, then the mobile device becomes useless.
If RFID's aren't the way to accomplish (1), then people in the future just need to think about the way to accomplish it in a different way.