I know seti@home has been rather popular, but I see from some of the posts here, as well as many friends & co-workers, that people are growig bored with the client. there may have been 2.1M volunteers, but I'm sure a fair percentage, if not a majority, have dropped off the seti wagon in favor of other screensavers.
that's not to say SETI@home isn't doing great, I hear they've even been in the situation of not having enough work units to send out, but this whole project could be made into something much bigger, much grander.
I sure S@H could be looking at this data with more precision than they are currently, through numerous refinements to the search criteria and formulae. The limit is only in how many cpu cycles they can reliably expect. I believe the volunteer membership base could be doubled with one very minor refinement to the graphical client: by briefly blink-highlighting canditate signals in the 3axis bar graph gizmo. The article mentions that they've accumulated 1.1 billion candidate signals to date. You can be relatively certain that if you've completed even 1 data unit, you found one of these signals.
It seems to me that the eventual boredom with the SETI@home client is due to the almost complete dearth of feedback or accomplishment. the information displayed on the client is interesting, but it changes very slowly and in a completely predictable way. The simple psychological reward of blinking a triplet or a phased pulse when a canditate signal is hit would go a long way towards providing the rewarding sense of accomplishment people seems to be hoping for out of this project. This simple new feature would not interfere with the science and hardly slow down the typical cliet computer, so I say please!~ add this feature!
omg! why not make a network cable in the form factor of a DIMM? holy fukc!? the thinkg of it is, the network would just be as fast as ram, and as long as you put a decent size cache in there, say 16Mb@clock you could tune the kernel to cooperatively manage memory across the nodes. you could then order up mobo's with multiplexed chipsets and 16 DIMM Slots, no ports, no busses. you could then connect each processor in the cloud by 16 dimensions. at >10k nodes, this system would be sufficient (with an assumption of each processor doing about 2gflops with a combined 256Mb state cache) to process a perfect copy model of the human mind, in realtime.
thankyou.
:)Fudboy
Re:Still waiting for Alan Kay's vision
on
Digital Doodling
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· Score: 2
Re:Easy enuf..and talk about Denial
on
'Thirteen Days'
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· Score: 1
"...as we had missiles in Turkey"
also in west germany, france, norway, UK, AK, NW Territory, Greenland, Iceland, and oh- JAPAN. not to mention dramatically more advanced ship-based missile delivery systems.
I believe the USSR had every reason to pursue the cuban missile base. it only leveled the playing field just a tiny bit, but you require a level playing field in a M.A.D. setting, eh? remember, this is only ~16 years after the end of wwII. the ussr had to spend much of that time ramping back up to speed, and during much of that time they were hobbled by internal purges of the intelligentsia. we were being very aggressive, and the only thing keeping the ussr inthe runnign was the ability to bomb europe. I don't believe their were any ICBM's at this time, that's a later development.
If the Russians could just wait a few more years, I promise them, I will do my best to retrieve the 'Mir' space-station for them, returning it safely so that they may stick it in a museum. Considering certain advances in RLV technology, a heavy lifter shuttle-barge is sure to be developed soon- and I'm going to buy one. I will gladly swing by and pick it up for them. Can someone please suggest they park it in a libration point, someone that knows a powerful Russian politico personally?
if I had some corp attacking me like this, I would go the super-meek route, defend myself in court, and submit briefs with titles and or content along the lines of: "Please don't do this, Your Honor" and "This is Ridiculous!!!".
Then I would send a few emails, ZDNET, Slashdot and MTV.com. y'know, drum up a little support from the press. then I would start an email assault on the corp's CEO, sending him cut&paste news bits and pictures of my sick mother. and I would cc: the stuff to the other officers, the PR dept, the Legal dept and the judge. then I would file for bankruptcy, especially if I don't need to. then I would issue a press release of the top 10 slashdot submissions flaming the evil corporation. this would make good copy, thus my ridiculous assault might get some decent press.
After a week or so of drumming up cheap press stunts and protest legal briefs, I would allow them the opportunity to settle the case by paying me the $$$ to change my domain name.
Now I know this all sounds ridiculous, foolhardy and sure to be met with scorn and simply dismissed as contempt by the likes of a Judge, but I believe obstinancy and stark earnesty would carry me along rather far down this trail. The underlkying theme will be the inequity of the situation, the fundamental unfairness of a corporation bullying citizens about... After all, we came to America to escape the opression of the ruling classes of Europe!
if you go to the matrix website and read some of the conceptual and supporting info, you will see that the humans were originally used for 'extra CPU cycles' in the story (as it probably should be) but my thinking is that this confused test audiences and the studio mandated a dumbdown.
Also, it strikes me that 'mandating a dumbdown' is a useful notion. can anyone think of a good word to indicate this concept? thanks,
vidoegames are much more on the scale of a film than say, an opera performance or one guy in a loft making pictures of 'piss christ'. That's to say, the NEA (was? I seem to remember hearing that it had gone defunct) is more suited to funding the smaller, more traditional or classical arts than anything so large and intesive as an 18 month production cycle for 30-80 people. I don't think it would be practical to subsidize such an endeavor, the typical quality of games is already low enough, the designs and implementations generally weak enough that removing the capitalist incentive would leave us with the weakest productions imaginable.
I have seen some of the offerings of nationalized, subsidized filmaking, and aside from animation from canada and comedy shows from UK, gov't funded media projects always seem to end up stuffy and introverted, ala the french and italian cinema scenes... what's that you say? can't place any particular films from that category? well, maybe that is because the 'artistes' were not held to the capitalist mandate of making 'attractive' movies, and thus failed to 'attract' many veiwers.
"A stasis field isn't actually a part of a GP hull. I haven't kept up with the recent Niven books, so I might have missed some reference to it. But in the original stories introducing the GP hulls, there was no mention of it. "
I beg to differ, as in the book 'Ringworld Engineers' there were thousands of ships and buildings, trapped in stasism and melted into the crustal walls of planet Canyon (where Loius Wu was living as a wirehead, 'member?). Besides, no puppeteer would be insane enough to travel without it!
Also in the Ringworld books proper, they have some very strong gravity generators to buffer the tidal forces problem, and if it (or the heatsink) were about to fail, the stasis field would kick on again.
Btw, for anyone living in the LA area, mr. Niven and mr. Pournelle regularly attend the LASFS on thursdays in Burbank. I can actually go ask him! but it seems clear that we have crossed the line into way too frickin geekey. like those fellahs from southpark last week, arguing over how many origianl trek episodes there were.
The General Products Corporation (and their mainstay product line of spaceship hulls) was the mouthpiece of the cowardly race called the "Puppeteers" in the book Ringworld(so named because of their "heads", two mouth/eye stalks resembling human arm-puppets as well as their devious and manipulative ways. They are also tripedal which isn't nearly as silly as it sounds here).
The GP Hulls are constructed of one solid piece of some fantastic transparent and indestructable material. The inside surface is coated with a 'stasis field' conducting film making the ship indestructable and extremely safe. If a threat were detected, such as immenent collision or attack, the satsis field would flip on and further interaction with the space-time continuum would be cut off for anything within the field. The computer would set to deactivate the field in random intervals and poll for conditions. if it was safe (say the sun you crashed into finally blew up and cast you free), then you were back in real time and could continue your voyage.
As a side note, even with all these amazing strentghs, the puppeteers, as a race, were far to paranoid to actually use a spaceship. that would be madness!
There are only so many plots and story elements to work with, if you intend to make a satisfying piece of work. So why not focus on those elements that hit closest to home? like getting the girl, defeating the villian, etc. these elements are metaphors for challenges you'll be facing all the rest of your days.
To prove my point, I guaruntee that a wizened old man will send the main character off on his journey in the D&D movie. Because HE, the old man, is an element common to almost every epic, myth or parable that can be considered an 'adventure', throughout all of human history, from every culture and continent.
ok, so I'm out ill today. I have a really good point about this, and if it coming off incoherently, I apologize. Maybe someone else could back me up in a more eloquent fashion? I'll shut up now...
I am writing this from the QNX demo right now. it took about 15 minutes to get it going from scratch, including downloading it.
From the Package Mgr, I am currently downloading perl, pine, the quake3 engine and dozens of other *nixy GNU stuff that abounds.
My screen resolution is at 1280x1024 32bit, and the text and gui elements are amazingly crisp and tight. I didn't have to do any configuring other than choosing a resolution and color depth.
I was able to browse directly to a fat32 partition and play an mp3 within 30 seconds of gui bootup. It didn't detect my usb mouse though it is running a usb enumerator. I do have crappy usb on this mobo thouhg, so mileage may vary. this is the sweetest thing I'VE EVER SEEN.
Yup. I think we have an interesting convergence on the way here. i notice that automation like this is steadly becoming more practical and reliable, while at the same time Network Television (the world over) is now or is soon going to be desperate for 'blockbuster' productions (survivor, various millionaire shows, etc).
The Network TV shows of the future will need to be more outrageous than anything we've seen today, this has been the trend since the introduction of television. The networks will embrace automated sports sooner or later, and then all the networks will begin the cycle of one-upping one another.
Networks will arrange increasingly more lavish sponsorships for the teams. Increasingly more sophisticated robotics will be employed. This will spur development of more sophisticated robotics, providing a financial incentive, even. Amazingly, marketing dollars will be converted to applied engineering for once!
Surely, some day soon we'll see a humanoid deathmatch robot game with weapons like pick-axes and swords and maces. It just seems obvious that as soon as honda or sony releases a reliable, well designed humoid robot, someone somewhere will arrange a fight to the death between two of em.
This would eventually develop into a network style 'Robot Joust' series. perhaps the robotics will even take the form of knights in full plate? I can see it now, "The Black Knight vs. The Golem!", brought to you by Napster(tm)(maybe we could even see a writhing clockwork dragon? as long as it doesn't violate the weight limit...). The remote control controls would be similar to a marionette, running on 900mhz cordless phones. This is a sport that hobbyists will be able to afford (and much more satisfying than the SCA people!), weekend legues will spring up, joy will be had.
As the other networks champ at the bit, we'll see a bidding war errupt over Quake and UT licenses, for the purpose of adapting them to live TV. the combatants would all be mechanical, and maybe ther'll be a a limit on the number of bots you're able to enter, say 10. the course will be in a bunker, at the bottom of an old strip mine, covered in sand and gravel. Ther'll be cameras everywhere, literally covering every singele vantage, and at frame rates in the 1000's, like in that/. article a few days ago. The robotics will have developed enough that the combatants will be nimble and responsive.
If no adequate AI were developed (imagine a $150,000 robot bouncing endlessly into a wall) or if completely automated combatants are unpopular, a human 'driver' would be used. this seems the most satisfying and attaractive for viewers IMHO. This driver would use a regulation 'terminal', a specialised FPS environment. very deep immersion, but nothing like direct machine-brain interfacing or anything. And thus would lead to the debut of the world's first true Robotic [greasy haired, pimply faced, overweight] Sports Hero.
But there's a problem. It isn't much fun watching UT on TV, because by this late date, watching live footage of actual robots is precisely indestinguishable from playing it yourself. Remember, we're talking a couple console generations down the line, playstation 5 stuff. The ratings will flail, and the networks will fall back to torturing Average Joe, or maybe brewing up a war to cover.
's me fa-a-a-vorite devo song by a long shot. listen to the intro sometime w/ headphones.
Devo was certainly years/decades (centuries?) ahead of their time. I think the public may finally be 'ready' for that level of aural majesty in about 10-15 years. Just as I'm becoming a grandfather?!
a lot of folks are going to wax nostalgic over this here machine, but I'm gonna have to disagree. This was my first computer. I recieved it IIRC around Oct 1982, and I was stunned at how crappy a machine this was. I was 9-10 years old, personal computers were an utterly and completely brand new phenomenon, but I could immediately sense the uselessness and cheapness of this machine.
My dad, who bought it for me, had previously engineered some of the first networked cash register systems in the mid 70's (for the Burger Chef chain of fast food resturants), he was/is a primordial hax0r, but even he couldn't get into this dog. But he could understand my dismay, so he got me a TI994a.
I would love to get a bevvy of brand new TI99 parts, maybe even c64 or some '086's, but I can't quite bring myself to embrace this amazing find.
It sounds like you could just bolt this new device to the floor of a shuttle's cargo bay and have yourself an interplanetary cruiser. That would make shuttle trips to places like L1 or a lunar base not only viable, but downright dirt cheap, and missions to Venus, mars and the asteroids well within reach. I am not too sure on how it works, but there is a technique that sailing ships used to travel into the wind (tacking?) for the return journeys. The biggest concern would become cargo space for life support: air, food and water, rather than fuel. The future is finally with us!
One really exciting use for this would be to attach drives like this to asteroids. This would first and foremost serve to save the Earth from any imminent collisions but would also allow you to re-position juicy asteroids closer to home, etc. All you need to do is bolt the coil and a power generator to the surface, and voila'! the rock will be moving 180,000 km/sec within umpteen units of time.
Let's just assume the m2p2 drive will make it. The next holdup will be attaining orbit. I predict that either one- something similar to m2p2 is developed to launch cheaply using the Earth's own magnetic currents. Launches would take place at one of the magnetic poles (finally, a use for Antarctica!) and will be simple and sturdy like the m2p2. OR two- the application of the cavitation bubble can be used for building up hypersonic speeds (escape velocity) without much friction and without fighting gravity. A damned Mack truck could attain orbit with a system like that.
One further thing strikes me as curious about this. I know it's pretty far-fetched, but the [douglas adams/joseph campbell/tim powers] tainted conspiracy theorist within urges me to mention it; The name m2p2 bears a close resemblance to the city 'machu pichu' one of the absolute most vexing mysteries in human history. The architects of that ancient city were able to bring large rocks (massing dozens of tons each) to a remote South American mountain peak many miles from the quarry of origin. When you ask yourself "did they use m2p2 to build machu pichu?" and take into account the permutations and perversions of language drift, a suspicious coincidence in phonemes comes to light... I wonder if a band of space adventurers stumbled back in time and tried to leave us a message or hint?
Perhaps when they no longer make revenues of more than $30 Billion a year...
We often tend to doubt these 'captains of industry' from the safety of our armchairs, here on slashdot, but few of us can ever hope to approach this kind of success. How can we possibly know what is savvy or correct at that scale? I think I'll side with the expert considerations of the people that run such a monstrous company than the consummer-centric bashing this mob has to offer. Intel is perfectly aware of their competition.
yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about... I haven't been playing CS much (still playing UT ctf constantly- I still have weeks of that left with all the mods that are available) but it is extremely popular around the office.
Might I recommend boxes? I know that sounds sarcastic, but seriously, put a big sturdy garbage bag in the box and wrap the openeing around the edges. You can then stack the books comfortably, at your leisure, you'll also get the satisfying sensation of brushing up against all that black glossy plastic with your forarms.
To seal it up, you could just stuff the bag in and close the box or you could use a twisty-tie, bailing wire and needle nosed plier, melt it shut with a bic lighter, use a glue gun or even a few swathes of trusty old duct tape.
To be extra safe, include some baking powder or silica gel and moth balls. If you're in need of further safeguards, you could also booby-trap the boxes with something akin to a letter bomb, if for instance you suspect treacherous sentiment of the storage center custodial staff. If you do choose this precation, I strongly recommend a steel plate between the bomb and your books. After all, the boxes will already weigh close to a metric tonne, what's a little armor plating gonna hurt?
I am an artist working for a major video game publisher. I've been in the industry since, oh, about the time the CD-ROM appeared on the scene. When that happened, intro movies and "in game cut-scenes" became the standard, and almost all high profile games are compelled to include them to this very day.
I've noticed something about all the cutscenes and intro movies. They all have two things in common- they are all very expensive to make, and they are all crap. With a few exceptions (fer instance the stuff from Starcraft), I've never been moved to admire any of that effort. The stuff is always too stiff, phony looking, poorly written and cornily voice-acted.
IMHO, this has proved to be a big problem in the industry, I'd even venture say that 'cinematics' are ultimatly the number one reason so many game companies fold. See, these cut scenes end up accounting for a huge chunk of a games budget. It generally takes 8-10 people a whole project cycle to wrangle these movies together, sometimes as many as 15 or 20! That's translates into 18 months of paying those big salaries, buying all that 'bitchin' equipment, office space and outrageously expensive software packages.
But that's just where the trouble begins. Due to the commitee-like arrangement of a software project, work is slow and prone to revisions. Several months of work can be undone in one email from marketting. Imagine how it is to be the executive that makes the decision whether to delay a game because the cinematics have fallen a bit short of spectacular, to pay that much more while going that much longer without revenue, because some primmadonna (that btw isn't 'hot' enough for pixar, disney or real films) insists that just a few more weeks of rendering volume search lights on the Nebulon Battle Cruiser will make or break the game? Of course your going to let crap out the door at that point.
Stress really begins to mount towards the end of a project. ship date begins to really loom on the horizon. maybe a competitor beats yoou to the market with a similar game, but then it flops! People are always saying very mean things about you at places like Old Man Murray and Fatbabies and there's the almost ever-present threat of the numbers just not adding up this month. And cinematics are taking half the entire budget!?!!
I hate to admit it, especially since I have a professional interest, but I almost always click through cinematics after I've seen the first couple. I am always eager to get back to the action, in my mind, like a real gamer. I am rarely hooked into the story, almost never interested in the setting enough to sit idle for 2-3 minutes to see obscure details. I'm satisfied with the gameplay I guess, and maybe I'm soured to them by the process- but I can't think of many games that would have been lesser for their lack of cinematics...
Great change is always rocking the industry. But there has collected a sediment, an entrenched school of thinking that is slowly entrenching itself out of business. This school of thought that says that 'cinematics are in' also says that 'consumers like crates and jumping puzzles' and 'let them eat bugs'. The industry is crowded and stuck, everyone is chasing the sequel, (franchise), investor dollars and the reviewers. (The PS2 is promising a sort salvation for all (in that the sales will be high enough to support even the gluttonous lifestyle of a contemporary software studio) though it is a shaky bet at best considereing the N and X box/cube FUD and all the negative PS2 info floating around...)
Which all sorta leads me to my point: A fantastic thing is happening to videogames lately, and it has almost nothing to do with the industry. Level Designers, Artists and Programmers are all creaping out of the woodwork, out of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. The game industry is headed back into the garage, at last, though we may as well start calling it the 'bedroom' as that's where most people keep their computers AFAIK. They are putting together some great stuff- just think of all the mods and skins for UT and Q3a. With the adoption of the term 'machinema', another crucial element of gamemaking has reverted to the hands of the ameteur. With half a gig of warez audio and graphics apps, an open-source engine and a little bit of scripting magic, a near-professional quality game can once again get hacked together by a couple of geek comrades-in-arms on their summer break from High School. It is only a matter of time before machinema and all the other elements come together and spontaneously create the next Doom2 or even a Final Fantasy and capture the attention of the gaming public in a #1 hit kinda way.
And I want to participate! I will begin browsing heavilly after I post this. Hmmm, I wonder if I can participate in something like this. I signed my name to an awful lot of intimidating legalese during the course of my rather short career, I imagine I could get fired or sued for something like this. All the [free software] triumph in the world isn't going to pay for my Dual P4 or 60" HDTV.
I know it's bad form to mention them, but maybe all the slashdot trolls could get together and make a machinama flick about their favorite troll topics? Maybe those elements could be woven into a compelling love story, or an action adventure...
That would be sweet, it would be both funny to watch and it would get them off our backs for a while so that (threshold: 0) could once again be useful and pleasant to read.
Say, it's kinda cool to be able to discuss/.trolls and for once be both on topic and insightful.
:)Fudboy
Carbon Fiber LEGOs please,
on
The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 3
Yes, if there are any LEGO Group employees listening, I would like to see your blocks made out of carbon fiber or space-age ceramics or something. Then we could build actual tools and machines from them, as they'd be quite strong.
There are added benefits:
whatever material you choose will revolutionize that material's place in the world. The volume of LEGO production is so immense (are you up to billions per year yet? per week, maybe?) that the infrastructure needed to supply this material will get a big boost and drive prices down in all industries using this material (palm and laptop cases, auto components, etc) This will be good for everyone.
With cheap and simple gluing techniques and immensly sturdy brick materials, people could build actual structures and drive the building supplies home in a compact car. This is good for Europe in particular, but maybe also in places like Siberia, Africa and Bangaladesh for all sorts of natural disaster/infrastructure reasons.
Let me add that I am assuming another LEGO form factor would be developed, with full sized structures in mind. I'm thinking in the 40-60cm range.
"...Maybe we should optimize what we've got more...."
You know, this principle holds for software development too... The potential for a LOT of what we do with computers today was present in the humble old 486. Maybe this mad dash for better faster hardware spells our own doom. already people are buckling under the complexities of things like the psx2, x86 extensions, massive ram on video cards, etc. the stuff is going to waste just as fast as it can be invented.
it's simply too much to work with or take advantage of with the tools we have nowadays (in the time alotted us). I wish software could advance at the same rate as hardware, but it takes years of tinkering and developing new techniques to get anywhere near taking advantage of ALL of a given piece of hardware's potential.
Just look at an example like 3DStudio: version 3.0 is dramatically more sophisticated and powerful than version 1.0, and v3 runs better (is capable of more, easier to use, faster for certain tasks like modelling low poly stuff?)on p200 than 1.0 would on a pIII. all the hardware upgrades in the world don't help a bad app very much.
As hardware continues to advance by leaps and bounds, will the gap between it and software be growing much? what are the repercussions of this? lazy and imcomplete coding do seem to be becoming the standard rather than the exception...
maybe there'll be an 'Einstein' that springs up to turn the software engineering world on its ear. until then, the over-all essence of computer use will grow at a fraction of what the state of the art hardware is capable of.
Slashdot Mirror
I know seti@home has been rather popular, but I see from some of the posts here, as well as many friends & co-workers, that people are growig bored with the client. there may have been 2.1M volunteers, but I'm sure a fair percentage, if not a majority, have dropped off the seti wagon in favor of other screensavers.
that's not to say SETI@home isn't doing great, I hear they've even been in the situation of not having enough work units to send out, but this whole project could be made into something much bigger, much grander.
I sure S@H could be looking at this data with more precision than they are currently, through numerous refinements to the search criteria and formulae. The limit is only in how many cpu cycles they can reliably expect. I believe the volunteer membership base could be doubled with one very minor refinement to the graphical client: by briefly blink-highlighting canditate signals in the 3axis bar graph gizmo. The article mentions that they've accumulated 1.1 billion candidate signals to date. You can be relatively certain that if you've completed even 1 data unit, you found one of these signals.
It seems to me that the eventual boredom with the SETI@home client is due to the almost complete dearth of feedback or accomplishment. the information displayed on the client is interesting, but it changes very slowly and in a completely predictable way. The simple psychological reward of blinking a triplet or a phased pulse when a canditate signal is hit would go a long way towards providing the rewarding sense of accomplishment people seems to be hoping for out of this project. This simple new feature would not interfere with the science and hardly slow down the typical cliet computer, so I say please!~ add this feature!
:)Fudboy
omg! why not make a network cable in the form factor of a DIMM? holy fukc!? the thinkg of it is, the network would just be as fast as ram, and as long as you put a decent size cache in there, say 16Mb@clock you could tune the kernel to cooperatively manage memory across the nodes. you could then order up mobo's with multiplexed chipsets and 16 DIMM Slots, no ports, no busses. you could then connect each processor in the cloud by 16 dimensions. at >10k nodes, this system would be sufficient (with an assumption of each processor doing about 2gflops with a combined 256Mb state cache) to process a perfect copy model of the human mind, in realtime.
thankyou.
:)Fudboy
maybe you should meet the Clio®
:)Fudboy
" ...as we had missiles in Turkey"
also in west germany, france, norway, UK, AK, NW Territory, Greenland, Iceland, and oh- JAPAN. not to mention dramatically more advanced ship-based missile delivery systems.
I believe the USSR had every reason to pursue the cuban missile base. it only leveled the playing field just a tiny bit, but you require a level playing field in a M.A.D. setting, eh? remember, this is only ~16 years after the end of wwII. the ussr had to spend much of that time ramping back up to speed, and during much of that time they were hobbled by internal purges of the intelligentsia. we were being very aggressive, and the only thing keeping the ussr inthe runnign was the ability to bomb europe. I don't believe their were any ICBM's at this time, that's a later development.
:)Fudboy
If the Russians could just wait a few more years, I promise them, I will do my best to retrieve the 'Mir' space-station for them, returning it safely so that they may stick it in a museum. Considering certain advances in RLV technology, a heavy lifter shuttle-barge is sure to be developed soon- and I'm going to buy one. I will gladly swing by and pick it up for them. Can someone please suggest they park it in a libration point, someone that knows a powerful Russian politico personally?
:)Fudboy
if I had some corp attacking me like this, I would go the super-meek route, defend myself in court, and submit briefs with titles and or content along the lines of: "Please don't do this, Your Honor" and "This is Ridiculous!!!".
Then I would send a few emails, ZDNET, Slashdot and MTV.com. y'know, drum up a little support from the press. then I would start an email assault on the corp's CEO, sending him cut&paste news bits and pictures of my sick mother. and I would cc: the stuff to the other officers, the PR dept, the Legal dept and the judge. then I would file for bankruptcy, especially if I don't need to. then I would issue a press release of the top 10 slashdot submissions flaming the evil corporation. this would make good copy, thus my ridiculous assault might get some decent press.
After a week or so of drumming up cheap press stunts and protest legal briefs, I would allow them the opportunity to settle the case by paying me the $$$ to change my domain name.
Now I know this all sounds ridiculous, foolhardy and sure to be met with scorn and simply dismissed as contempt by the likes of a Judge, but I believe obstinancy and stark earnesty would carry me along rather far down this trail. The underlkying theme will be the inequity of the situation, the fundamental unfairness of a corporation bullying citizens about... After all, we came to America to escape the opression of the ruling classes of Europe!
:)Fudboy
if you go to the matrix website and read some of the conceptual and supporting info, you will see that the humans were originally used for 'extra CPU cycles' in the story (as it probably should be) but my thinking is that this confused test audiences and the studio mandated a dumbdown.
Also, it strikes me that 'mandating a dumbdown' is a useful notion. can anyone think of a good word to indicate this concept? thanks,
:)Fudboy
hrmmm...
vidoegames are much more on the scale of a film than say, an opera performance or one guy in a loft making pictures of 'piss christ'. That's to say, the NEA (was? I seem to remember hearing that it had gone defunct) is more suited to funding the smaller, more traditional or classical arts than anything so large and intesive as an 18 month production cycle for 30-80 people. I don't think it would be practical to subsidize such an endeavor, the typical quality of games is already low enough, the designs and implementations generally weak enough that removing the capitalist incentive would leave us with the weakest productions imaginable.
I have seen some of the offerings of nationalized, subsidized filmaking, and aside from animation from canada and comedy shows from UK, gov't funded media projects always seem to end up stuffy and introverted, ala the french and italian cinema scenes... what's that you say? can't place any particular films from that category? well, maybe that is because the 'artistes' were not held to the capitalist mandate of making 'attractive' movies, and thus failed to 'attract' many veiwers.
:)Fudboy
heh. I'd mod this parent up... (+1, funny)
:)Fudboy
"A stasis field isn't actually a part of a GP hull. I haven't kept up with the recent Niven books, so I might have missed some reference to it. But in the original stories introducing the GP hulls, there was no mention of it. "
I beg to differ, as in the book 'Ringworld Engineers' there were thousands of ships and buildings, trapped in stasism and melted into the crustal walls of planet Canyon (where Loius Wu was living as a wirehead, 'member?). Besides, no puppeteer would be insane enough to travel without it!
Also in the Ringworld books proper, they have some very strong gravity generators to buffer the tidal forces problem, and if it (or the heatsink) were about to fail, the stasis field would kick on again.
Btw, for anyone living in the LA area, mr. Niven and mr. Pournelle regularly attend the LASFS on thursdays in Burbank. I can actually go ask him! but it seems clear that we have crossed the line into way too frickin geekey. like those fellahs from southpark last week, arguing over how many origianl trek episodes there were.
:)Fudboy
The General Products Corporation (and their mainstay product line of spaceship hulls) was the mouthpiece of the cowardly race called the "Puppeteers" in the book Ringworld (so named because of their "heads", two mouth/eye stalks resembling human arm-puppets as well as their devious and manipulative ways. They are also tripedal which isn't nearly as silly as it sounds here).
The GP Hulls are constructed of one solid piece of some fantastic transparent and indestructable material. The inside surface is coated with a 'stasis field' conducting film making the ship indestructable and extremely safe. If a threat were detected, such as immenent collision or attack, the satsis field would flip on and further interaction with the space-time continuum would be cut off for anything within the field. The computer would set to deactivate the field in random intervals and poll for conditions. if it was safe (say the sun you crashed into finally blew up and cast you free), then you were back in real time and could continue your voyage.
As a side note, even with all these amazing strentghs, the puppeteers, as a race, were far to paranoid to actually use a spaceship. that would be madness!
:)Fudboy
hey, lay the hell off.
haven't you read your Joseph Campbell?
There are only so many plots and story elements to work with, if you intend to make a satisfying piece of work. So why not focus on those elements that hit closest to home? like getting the girl, defeating the villian, etc. these elements are metaphors for challenges you'll be facing all the rest of your days.
To prove my point, I guaruntee that a wizened old man will send the main character off on his journey in the D&D movie. Because HE, the old man, is an element common to almost every epic, myth or parable that can be considered an 'adventure', throughout all of human history, from every culture and continent.
ok, so I'm out ill today. I have a really good point about this, and if it coming off incoherently, I apologize. Maybe someone else could back me up in a more eloquent fashion? I'll shut up now...
:)Fudboy
I am writing this from the QNX demo right now. it took about 15 minutes to get it going from scratch, including downloading it.
From the Package Mgr, I am currently downloading perl, pine, the quake3 engine and dozens of other *nixy GNU stuff that abounds.
My screen resolution is at 1280x1024 32bit, and the text and gui elements are amazingly crisp and tight. I didn't have to do any configuring other than choosing a resolution and color depth.
I was able to browse directly to a fat32 partition and play an mp3 within 30 seconds of gui bootup. It didn't detect my usb mouse though it is running a usb enumerator. I do have crappy usb on this mobo thouhg, so mileage may vary. this is the sweetest thing I'VE EVER SEEN.
:)Fudboy
Yup. I think we have an interesting convergence on the way here. i notice that automation like this is steadly becoming more practical and reliable, while at the same time Network Television (the world over) is now or is soon going to be desperate for 'blockbuster' productions (survivor, various millionaire shows, etc).
The Network TV shows of the future will need to be more outrageous than anything we've seen today, this has been the trend since the introduction of television. The networks will embrace automated sports sooner or later, and then all the networks will begin the cycle of one-upping one another.
Networks will arrange increasingly more lavish sponsorships for the teams. Increasingly more sophisticated robotics will be employed. This will spur development of more sophisticated robotics, providing a financial incentive, even. Amazingly, marketing dollars will be converted to applied engineering for once!
Surely, some day soon we'll see a humanoid deathmatch robot game with weapons like pick-axes and swords and maces. It just seems obvious that as soon as honda or sony releases a reliable, well designed humoid robot, someone somewhere will arrange a fight to the death between two of em.
This would eventually develop into a network style 'Robot Joust' series. perhaps the robotics will even take the form of knights in full plate? I can see it now, "The Black Knight vs. The Golem!", brought to you by Napster(tm)(maybe we could even see a writhing clockwork dragon? as long as it doesn't violate the weight limit...). The remote control controls would be similar to a marionette, running on 900mhz cordless phones. This is a sport that hobbyists will be able to afford (and much more satisfying than the SCA people!), weekend legues will spring up, joy will be had.
As the other networks champ at the bit, we'll see a bidding war errupt over Quake and UT licenses, for the purpose of adapting them to live TV. the combatants would all be mechanical, and maybe ther'll be a a limit on the number of bots you're able to enter, say 10. the course will be in a bunker, at the bottom of an old strip mine, covered in sand and gravel. Ther'll be cameras everywhere, literally covering every singele vantage, and at frame rates in the 1000's, like in that
If no adequate AI were developed (imagine a $150,000 robot bouncing endlessly into a wall) or if completely automated combatants are unpopular, a human 'driver' would be used. this seems the most satisfying and attaractive for viewers IMHO. This driver would use a regulation 'terminal', a specialised FPS environment. very deep immersion, but nothing like direct machine-brain interfacing or anything. And thus would lead to the debut of the world's first true Robotic [greasy haired, pimply faced, overweight] Sports Hero.
But there's a problem. It isn't much fun watching UT on TV, because by this late date, watching live footage of actual robots is precisely indestinguishable from playing it yourself. Remember, we're talking a couple console generations down the line, playstation 5 stuff. The ratings will flail, and the networks will fall back to torturing Average Joe, or maybe brewing up a war to cover.
:)Fudboy
's me fa-a-a-vorite devo song by a long shot. listen to the intro sometime w/ headphones.
Devo was certainly years/decades (centuries?) ahead of their time. I think the public may finally be 'ready' for that level of aural majesty in about 10-15 years. Just as I'm becoming a grandfather?!
:)Fudboy
a lot of folks are going to wax nostalgic over this here machine, but I'm gonna have to disagree. This was my first computer. I recieved it IIRC around Oct 1982, and I was stunned at how crappy a machine this was. I was 9-10 years old, personal computers were an utterly and completely brand new phenomenon, but I could immediately sense the uselessness and cheapness of this machine.
My dad, who bought it for me, had previously engineered some of the first networked cash register systems in the mid 70's (for the Burger Chef chain of fast food resturants), he was/is a primordial hax0r, but even he couldn't get into this dog. But he could understand my dismay, so he got me a TI994a.
I would love to get a bevvy of brand new TI99 parts, maybe even c64 or some '086's, but I can't quite bring myself to embrace this amazing find.
just my $.0200251
:)Fudboy
It sounds like you could just bolt this new device to the floor of a shuttle's cargo bay and have yourself an interplanetary cruiser. That would make shuttle trips to places like L1 or a lunar base not only viable, but downright dirt cheap, and missions to Venus, mars and the asteroids well within reach. I am not too sure on how it works, but there is a technique that sailing ships used to travel into the wind (tacking?) for the return journeys. The biggest concern would become cargo space for life support: air, food and water, rather than fuel. The future is finally with us!
One really exciting use for this would be to attach drives like this to asteroids. This would first and foremost serve to save the Earth from any imminent collisions but would also allow you to re-position juicy asteroids closer to home, etc. All you need to do is bolt the coil and a power generator to the surface, and voila'! the rock will be moving 180,000 km/sec within umpteen units of time.
Let's just assume the m2p2 drive will make it. The next holdup will be attaining orbit. I predict that either one- something similar to m2p2 is developed to launch cheaply using the Earth's own magnetic currents. Launches would take place at one of the magnetic poles (finally, a use for Antarctica!) and will be simple and sturdy like the m2p2. OR two- the application of the cavitation bubble can be used for building up hypersonic speeds (escape velocity) without much friction and without fighting gravity. A damned Mack truck could attain orbit with a system like that.
One further thing strikes me as curious about this. I know it's pretty far-fetched, but the [douglas adams/joseph campbell/tim powers] tainted conspiracy theorist within urges me to mention it; The name m2p2 bears a close resemblance to the city 'machu pichu' one of the absolute most vexing mysteries in human history. The architects of that ancient city were able to bring large rocks (massing dozens of tons each) to a remote South American mountain peak many miles from the quarry of origin. When you ask yourself "did they use m2p2 to build machu pichu?" and take into account the permutations and perversions of language drift, a suspicious coincidence in phonemes comes to light... I wonder if a band of space adventurers stumbled back in time and tried to leave us a message or hint?
:)Fudboy
heard in the Transmeta boardroom:
"today is a good day to die!"
:)Fudboy
" ...when will they find a clue?"
Perhaps when they no longer make revenues of more than $30 Billion a year...
We often tend to doubt these 'captains of industry' from the safety of our armchairs, here on slashdot, but few of us can ever hope to approach this kind of success. How can we possibly know what is savvy or correct at that scale? I think I'll side with the expert considerations of the people that run such a monstrous company than the consummer-centric bashing this mob has to offer. Intel is perfectly aware of their competition.
:)Fudboy
yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about... I haven't been playing CS much (still playing UT ctf constantly- I still have weeks of that left with all the mods that are available) but it is extremely popular around the office.
:)Fudboy
Might I recommend boxes? I know that sounds sarcastic, but seriously, put a big sturdy garbage bag in the box and wrap the openeing around the edges. You can then stack the books comfortably, at your leisure, you'll also get the satisfying sensation of brushing up against all that black glossy plastic with your forarms.
To seal it up, you could just stuff the bag in and close the box or you could use a twisty-tie, bailing wire and needle nosed plier, melt it shut with a bic lighter, use a glue gun or even a few swathes of trusty old duct tape.
To be extra safe, include some baking powder or silica gel and moth balls. If you're in need of further safeguards, you could also booby-trap the boxes with something akin to a letter bomb, if for instance you suspect treacherous sentiment of the storage center custodial staff. If you do choose this precation, I strongly recommend a steel plate between the bomb and your books. After all, the boxes will already weigh close to a metric tonne, what's a little armor plating gonna hurt?
:)Fudboy
I am an artist working for a major video game publisher. I've been in the industry since, oh, about the time the CD-ROM appeared on the scene. When that happened, intro movies and "in game cut-scenes" became the standard, and almost all high profile games are compelled to include them to this very day.
I've noticed something about all the cutscenes and intro movies. They all have two things in common- they are all very expensive to make, and they are all crap. With a few exceptions (fer instance the stuff from Starcraft), I've never been moved to admire any of that effort. The stuff is always too stiff, phony looking, poorly written and cornily voice-acted.
IMHO, this has proved to be a big problem in the industry, I'd even venture say that 'cinematics' are ultimatly the number one reason so many game companies fold. See, these cut scenes end up accounting for a huge chunk of a games budget. It generally takes 8-10 people a whole project cycle to wrangle these movies together, sometimes as many as 15 or 20! That's translates into 18 months of paying those big salaries, buying all that 'bitchin' equipment, office space and outrageously expensive software packages.
But that's just where the trouble begins. Due to the commitee-like arrangement of a software project, work is slow and prone to revisions. Several months of work can be undone in one email from marketting. Imagine how it is to be the executive that makes the decision whether to delay a game because the cinematics have fallen a bit short of spectacular, to pay that much more while going that much longer without revenue, because some primmadonna (that btw isn't 'hot' enough for pixar, disney or real films) insists that just a few more weeks of rendering volume search lights on the Nebulon Battle Cruiser will make or break the game? Of course your going to let crap out the door at that point.
Stress really begins to mount towards the end of a project. ship date begins to really loom on the horizon. maybe a competitor beats yoou to the market with a similar game, but then it flops! People are always saying very mean things about you at places like Old Man Murray and Fatbabies and there's the almost ever-present threat of the numbers just not adding up this month. And cinematics are taking half the entire budget!?!!
I hate to admit it, especially since I have a professional interest, but I almost always click through cinematics after I've seen the first couple. I am always eager to get back to the action, in my mind, like a real gamer. I am rarely hooked into the story, almost never interested in the setting enough to sit idle for 2-3 minutes to see obscure details. I'm satisfied with the gameplay I guess, and maybe I'm soured to them by the process- but I can't think of many games that would have been lesser for their lack of cinematics...
Great change is always rocking the industry. But there has collected a sediment, an entrenched school of thinking that is slowly entrenching itself out of business. This school of thought that says that 'cinematics are in' also says that 'consumers like crates and jumping puzzles' and 'let them eat bugs'. The industry is crowded and stuck, everyone is chasing the sequel, (franchise), investor dollars and the reviewers. (The PS2 is promising a sort salvation for all (in that the sales will be high enough to support even the gluttonous lifestyle of a contemporary software studio) though it is a shaky bet at best considereing the N and X box/cube FUD and all the negative PS2 info floating around...)
Which all sorta leads me to my point: A fantastic thing is happening to videogames lately, and it has almost nothing to do with the industry. Level Designers, Artists and Programmers are all creaping out of the woodwork, out of the nooks and crannies of the Internet. The game industry is headed back into the garage, at last, though we may as well start calling it the 'bedroom' as that's where most people keep their computers AFAIK. They are putting together some great stuff- just think of all the mods and skins for UT and Q3a. With the adoption of the term 'machinema', another crucial element of gamemaking has reverted to the hands of the ameteur. With half a gig of warez audio and graphics apps, an open-source engine and a little bit of scripting magic, a near-professional quality game can once again get hacked together by a couple of geek comrades-in-arms on their summer break from High School. It is only a matter of time before machinema and all the other elements come together and spontaneously create the next Doom2 or even a Final Fantasy and capture the attention of the gaming public in a #1 hit kinda way.
And I want to participate! I will begin browsing heavilly after I post this. Hmmm, I wonder if I can participate in something like this. I signed my name to an awful lot of intimidating legalese during the course of my rather short career, I imagine I could get fired or sued for something like this. All the [free software] triumph in the world isn't going to pay for my Dual P4 or 60" HDTV.
:)Fudboy
I know it's bad form to mention them, but maybe all the slashdot trolls could get together and make a machinama flick about their favorite troll topics? Maybe those elements could be woven into a compelling love story, or an action adventure...
That would be sweet, it would be both funny to watch and it would get them off our backs for a while so that (threshold: 0) could once again be useful and pleasant to read.
Say, it's kinda cool to be able to discuss
:)Fudboy
Yes, if there are any LEGO Group employees listening, I would like to see your blocks made out of carbon fiber or space-age ceramics or something. Then we could build actual tools and machines from them, as they'd be quite strong.
There are added benefits:
whatever material you choose will revolutionize that material's place in the world. The volume of LEGO production is so immense (are you up to billions per year yet? per week, maybe?) that the infrastructure needed to supply this material will get a big boost and drive prices down in all industries using this material (palm and laptop cases, auto components, etc) This will be good for everyone.
With cheap and simple gluing techniques and immensly sturdy brick materials, people could build actual structures and drive the building supplies home in a compact car. This is good for Europe in particular, but maybe also in places like Siberia, Africa and Bangaladesh for all sorts of natural disaster/infrastructure reasons.
Let me add that I am assuming another LEGO form factor would be developed, with full sized structures in mind. I'm thinking in the 40-60cm range.
:)Fudboy
" ...Maybe we should optimize what we've got more...."
You know, this principle holds for software development too... The potential for a LOT of what we do with computers today was present in the humble old 486. Maybe this mad dash for better faster hardware spells our own doom. already people are buckling under the complexities of things like the psx2, x86 extensions, massive ram on video cards, etc. the stuff is going to waste just as fast as it can be invented.
it's simply too much to work with or take advantage of with the tools we have nowadays (in the time alotted us). I wish software could advance at the same rate as hardware, but it takes years of tinkering and developing new techniques to get anywhere near taking advantage of ALL of a given piece of hardware's potential.
Just look at an example like 3DStudio: version 3.0 is dramatically more sophisticated and powerful than version 1.0, and v3 runs better (is capable of more, easier to use, faster for certain tasks like modelling low poly stuff?)on p200 than 1.0 would on a pIII. all the hardware upgrades in the world don't help a bad app very much.
As hardware continues to advance by leaps and bounds, will the gap between it and software be growing much? what are the repercussions of this? lazy and imcomplete coding do seem to be becoming the standard rather than the exception...
maybe there'll be an 'Einstein' that springs up to turn the software engineering world on its ear. until then, the over-all essence of computer use will grow at a fraction of what the state of the art hardware is capable of.
:)Fudboy