I'm glad to hear that you have access to a different version of Google than I do and are going to find me a rebate on LED bulbs since I've actively looked and my power company (Appalachian Power in Virginia) does not seem to have any interest in providing one as evidenced by the links below. Interestingly, they are willing to at least provide subsidized pricing/rebates for CFLs for the neighboring state of West Virginia but still no subsidy/rebate for LED bulbs.
I started as a kid with a pretty sweet Apple IIe with dual disk drive, extended memory, and 80 column card. I learned basic on it, typing, and general computer knowledge. I loved that thing. I was absolutely heart broken when I found out that my dad sold it at a garage sale after I was in college for not much money. If I would have known he was going to sell it, I'd have bought it from him. It still worked great and meant more to me for nostalgia value than whatever pittance he got for it. Oh well.
I have just one question, will we see Toys for Bob (i.e., Ford and Reiche) start a kickstarter effort for a true Star Control sequel? Star Control 2 was one of my favorite games of all time. Heck, I even enjoyed (although nowhere near as much) the non-Ford/Reiche produced Star Control 3 (I know, heresy...). If there is any game that screams out as good candidate, surely this is it. I'd be willing to put my money where my mouth is and help fund it through kick-starter. Anyone else with me?
Took me a few minutes to figure out, but the title is actually 0x10^C, which is 16^12 in decimal, which is 281,474,976,712,644, which is the year the game is set. Clever!
Well if you want to get ever more precise and pedantic. 16^12 is actually 281,474,976,710,656 not 281,474,976,712,644. While it is true that the game is set in the year 281,474,976,712,644, the way that number is arrived at is by adding 1988 to 281,474,976,710,656 to get 281,474,976,712,644. The concept is that in 1988 the cryo units for travel were accidentally set for 281,474,976,710,656 years due to an endian mistake.
That's fine... people simply need to realize these cars are about as practical as personal submarines.
Hmm, ~70% of the earth's surface is water and subs are not constrained to the surface like cars. This would make me conclude that no car is as practical as a personal submarine when considering the ability to provide personal transport. I guess I should go buy one today.:) This is slashdot where pedantic quibbling is the name of the game.
I agree that the ability to squeeze out every drop of performance possible by having a fixed hardware configuration is the strongest reason why consoles should not be upgradeable (except on the peripheral and I/O side like HDMI outputs, hard-drive storage, etc.). However, a close second factor is the fact that having a non-upgradeable machine can also dramatically reduce development and per device costs. Flexibility is great, but costs money. This is why I can have a PC that costs 3-10X the cost of a gaming console which is highly upgradeable or I can have a relatively cheap but targeted device that costs about as much as a mid-to-high end PC graphics card. If the cost of a console is near that of a PC and doesn't have some compelling differentiator (e.g. motion control or something else novel) then why would I buy a console. It is the price/performance ratio that is one of the keys to console sales.
The biggest issue with this console cycle is that it has been (and will be) much longer than the usual cycle so the performance disparity between what can be accomplished with this generation of consoles versus the current generation of PCs is much wider (in the PC's favor). If the console cycle had been more comparable to a standard cycle time, I wonder if there would be much talk about an "upgradeable" console. I'm curious if this extended development cycle is a trend that we will see continue with the next generation due to the high development costs of AAA titles or if it is an anomaly that will self correct in the next cycle?
While not a prize, he is someone who has been effectively immortalized in engineering ethics classes, at least in the US. The Challenger incident, and his participation of it, are studied in some depth right alongside the Tacoma Narrows and Quebec River Bridge incidents. Admittedly I speak from a relatively small sample size (direct personal experience plus anecdotal evidence from ~10 other engineering colleagues), but the samples are from geographically diverse schools in the US. I'm curious if this case is studied in engineering ethics classes abroad?
This made me think of one of my favorite Douglas Adam's quotes from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?" "What?" "I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?" "I'll look. Tell me about the lizards." Ford shrugged again. "Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it." "But that's terrible," said Arthur.
Will you be able to play on private servers or will you be stuck with B.net?
The B.net aspect of your post is interesting to me. With the exception of Sony's recent acceptance of Steam on the PS3, the consoles have been loathe to support a community system other than their own. For example, the XBox 360 never gives any indication that you are playing on anything other than XBox Live (aka XBL). Although, when playing many EA games you do have to at least link an EA account to your XBL gamer tag, so there does seem to be some connection, but everything about the interaction appears to be simply XBL.
Since Blizzard was adamant about the tight incorporation of the new Battlenet when releasing the latest StarCraft, I'd be surprised that they would court consoles unless the console companies were willing to loosen their grip on the online experience. Perhaps that is an indication that Blizzard is actually targeting the PS3 rather than the XBox 360, even though the port work would likely be easier for PC->360 than PC->PS3.
In many cases if you want to buy a quality home theater TV for 2D viewing you may have to buy a 3D TV. In this case I'm defining quality by the general performance aspects of image quality, color accuracy, black levels, etc. The bottom line is that in many cases manufacturers are simply holding back the better quality TVs for those that come with an (often unused) 3D feature. You can see this repeatedly in home theater review websites and forums like avsforum.com. This is not to say that all 3D TVs are inherently better than all 2D TVs, there are still the spec whore TVs that through in that feature on a substandard TV. There are also still high quality 2D only TVs that will blow away 3D TVs, but increasingly manufacturers (e.g., Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc.) are using the 3D TV feature as a dividing line for their higher quality TVs. I speak from recent experience, my old rear projection 720p Sony died over Thanksgiving and I researched and bought a new Panasonic plasma to take its place. This is my primary home theater TV so picture quality does matter to me and as part of my research, I consistently came across recommendations and test results that indicated that one should get into the 3D portion of the product line up even if you have little to no intention of using 3D. I absolutely love my TV, but have not even tried 3D yet. In fact I haven't even bought any of the active shutter glasses yet. In reality, I probably will dabble with 3D. I'm far more curious to try out 3D gaming on my PC and Xbox 360, but am in no hurry.
First off, a lot of "real" sci-fi has substantial cerebral elements that would be very difficult to adequately translate to the video game medium in a fun and engaging way. Note that I didn't say impossible, just very difficult.
Second, there are multiple examples of excellent, "real" sci-fi that do contain a single person or group of people that save the universe. For example, the Dune series, the Ender's Game series, the Foundation series (since you mentioned Asimov), Starship Troopers (since you mentioned Heinlein), etc. They had interesting plot, but an epic war was a contributing factor or back-drop to that interesting plot.
Have you played the Mass Effect games? I think there is a general feeling that the first two games do have a very engaging plot and are not yet another war game like CoD, Battefield, Gears, etc. They even have innovated to the point where you make lasting decisions that not only impact the plot of the first game, but translate to the second, and purportedly the third. I do not remember a game where meaningful decisions were reflected across not one but two games.
One of the things that I find disappointing is that probably the single largest factor in terms of whether a comment is promoted or demoted is the time after the post hits the main page. It is extremely common to see average posts (i.e. limited informational or insightful quantity/quality) rated very highly (probably too highly) simply because they are submitted shortly (within 1-2 hours, often much less) after the parent post hits the main page. Conversely, insanely high quality posts (i.e. those with tons of useful information or insight) that are submitted after the magic window either do not get voted up or are only voted up to a minor degree.
I understand why this occurs. A large influx of people are reading the comments shortly after the post and then there is an exponential decay afterwards. The result is that high quality and deserving posts do not get voted up since fewer and fewer people with mod points see them. It is completely understandable, however I think addressing this would have a significant positive impact. I know there have often been times that I would not post simply because I figured it was too late and practically no-one would read the comment so why bother. Unfortunately, I do not know how to solve this problem, just that it is real.
I do realize that the meta-moderation system does have some limited impact here, but I think it is too limited to be effective.
Now that the Space Shuttle has been retired, is this just a political maneuver to get more funding by making a "modest proposal" of what will happen if they don't? Considering the extended time and money it took to assemble, it seems like a huge waste to deorbit it in just 9 years.
I hope this is not the case, but it sounds like they are killing off their central idea birthing grounds? When Google first started developing an OS for cell phones it would have seemed like a crazy stretch for a search engine company, but Android is successful today. How many new "crazy" ideas will never see the light of day that could create future critical technologies for the company by this decision to "prioritize their product effort"? It is important for a tech company to have focus, but it needs at least a small group of innovative people to have the opportunity to let their ideas run wild in order to create the next big thing or they will eventually just stall and hand over technological innovation to a smaller, hungrier company.
To me this seems almost as stupid as when Xerox decided that the core ideas at Xerox PARC in the 70's weren't worth productizing and basically gave them away to Apple.
My take is that exec A (the CoD is approx. Guitar Hero exec) has valid concerns. My reasoning is that Activision is doing the similar things with it that they did with GH:
1) They are milking the franchise for all its worth by doing annualized releases, whether or not they are really ready or called for. Admittedly towards the end the milking of GH was even worse with an annual major release and then multiple mini releases (GH: Metallica, GH: Barbershop, GH: My kid's 5th grade chorus). Although, I think some of that may already be beginning for CoD. Even if they stick to annual releases, I'm not convinced that people will continue to want CoD that frequently.
2) The highly touted "innovation" is coming at decreasing pace. I'm not going to knock that CoD:BO had some innovation nor deny that they have been more responsive about "fixing" multiplayer. Just that if you think about the biggest recent innovation, that came out with CoD4:MW and most things have been incremental improvements at best since then. That isn't to say that incremental improvements won't sell (see Madden), just that eventually people will have to take a long hard look as to whether the next shiny is really that much different than the current shiny. At some point, people will start deciding it isn't and then things will go to hell for their sales.
Right now I think CoD is coasting on its own inertia. Everyone "has" to buy the next CoD because that is the game that "everyone" will be playing. Once, people decide that Game Z (Battlefield 3?) is much more shiny and interesting, I think there will be a rapid exodus that will take Activision by surprise.
I found it amusing that the key example the author of article chose as a game that cannot change is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. This is one of the recent success stories of mainstream genre blurring! The Call of Duty series was growing stale, then the Modern Warfare branch was created which introduced persistent RPG elements (leveling, etc.) into the FPS genre (peanut butter meet chocolate). Far from an uproar, there was wide acclaim and commercial success. This is why Modern Warfare and its successors have been so successful: they completely revitalized the genre by performing so called genre blurring.
In terms of other triple A games, Mass Effect started off as an RPG with FPS elements and Mass Effect 2 was more of an FPS with RPG elements, both were great and widely acclaimed.
I'm not saying that genre blending isn't risky and that once a formula is established there aren't plenty of imitators (especially amongst triple A titles), but acting like mainstream titles have not been successful at genre blending and that it doesn't happen is ludicrous.
There is speculation that Amazon Prime members may get free Kindles (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20040764-1.html). I would definitely take them up on that and would likely buy books on it. Even if this isn't true, it was a shrewd move by Amazon since I was considering getting a Color Nook and rooting it to put stock Android on it. I'm now holding out until after the holidays to see if this rumor comes to fruition. I wonder how many others that were on the fence about buying a competitors device are now waiting to see if they will get a free Kindle instead.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad to hear that you have access to a different version of Google than I do and are going to find me a rebate on LED bulbs since I've actively looked and my power company (Appalachian Power in Virginia) does not seem to have any interest in providing one as evidenced by the links below. Interestingly, they are willing to at least provide subsidized pricing/rebates for CFLs for the neighboring state of West Virginia but still no subsidy/rebate for LED bulbs.
https://www.appalachianpower.com/save/programs/Virginia.aspx
https://www.appalachianpower.com/global/utilities/lib/docs/save/programs/RetrofitFAQ.pdf
Apple distributes Android? :)
I started as a kid with a pretty sweet Apple IIe with dual disk drive, extended memory, and 80 column card. I learned basic on it, typing, and general computer knowledge. I loved that thing. I was absolutely heart broken when I found out that my dad sold it at a garage sale after I was in college for not much money. If I would have known he was going to sell it, I'd have bought it from him. It still worked great and meant more to me for nostalgia value than whatever pittance he got for it. Oh well.
I have just one question, will we see Toys for Bob (i.e., Ford and Reiche) start a kickstarter effort for a true Star Control sequel? Star Control 2 was one of my favorite games of all time. Heck, I even enjoyed (although nowhere near as much) the non-Ford/Reiche produced Star Control 3 (I know, heresy...). If there is any game that screams out as good candidate, surely this is it. I'd be willing to put my money where my mouth is and help fund it through kick-starter. Anyone else with me?
Took me a few minutes to figure out, but the title is actually 0x10^C, which is 16^12 in decimal, which is 281,474,976,712,644, which is the year the game is set. Clever!
Well if you want to get ever more precise and pedantic. 16^12 is actually 281,474,976,710,656 not 281,474,976,712,644. While it is true that the game is set in the year 281,474,976,712,644, the way that number is arrived at is by adding 1988 to 281,474,976,710,656 to get 281,474,976,712,644. The concept is that in 1988 the cryo units for travel were accidentally set for 281,474,976,710,656 years due to an endian mistake.
That would bring a new meaning to the "red zone."
That's fine... people simply need to realize these cars are about as practical as personal submarines.
Hmm, ~70% of the earth's surface is water and subs are not constrained to the surface like cars. This would make me conclude that no car is as practical as a personal submarine when considering the ability to provide personal transport. I guess I should go buy one today. :) This is slashdot where pedantic quibbling is the name of the game.
I agree that the ability to squeeze out every drop of performance possible by having a fixed hardware configuration is the strongest reason why consoles should not be upgradeable (except on the peripheral and I/O side like HDMI outputs, hard-drive storage, etc.). However, a close second factor is the fact that having a non-upgradeable machine can also dramatically reduce development and per device costs. Flexibility is great, but costs money. This is why I can have a PC that costs 3-10X the cost of a gaming console which is highly upgradeable or I can have a relatively cheap but targeted device that costs about as much as a mid-to-high end PC graphics card. If the cost of a console is near that of a PC and doesn't have some compelling differentiator (e.g. motion control or something else novel) then why would I buy a console. It is the price/performance ratio that is one of the keys to console sales.
The biggest issue with this console cycle is that it has been (and will be) much longer than the usual cycle so the performance disparity between what can be accomplished with this generation of consoles versus the current generation of PCs is much wider (in the PC's favor). If the console cycle had been more comparable to a standard cycle time, I wonder if there would be much talk about an "upgradeable" console. I'm curious if this extended development cycle is a trend that we will see continue with the next generation due to the high development costs of AAA titles or if it is an anomaly that will self correct in the next cycle?
While not a prize, he is someone who has been effectively immortalized in engineering ethics classes, at least in the US. The Challenger incident, and his participation of it, are studied in some depth right alongside the Tacoma Narrows and Quebec River Bridge incidents. Admittedly I speak from a relatively small sample size (direct personal experience plus anecdotal evidence from ~10 other engineering colleagues), but the samples are from geographically diverse schools in the US. I'm curious if this case is studied in engineering ethics classes abroad?
This made me think of one of my favorite Douglas Adam's quotes from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish:
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
Will you be able to play on private servers or will you be stuck with B.net?
The B.net aspect of your post is interesting to me. With the exception of Sony's recent acceptance of Steam on the PS3, the consoles have been loathe to support a community system other than their own. For example, the XBox 360 never gives any indication that you are playing on anything other than XBox Live (aka XBL). Although, when playing many EA games you do have to at least link an EA account to your XBL gamer tag, so there does seem to be some connection, but everything about the interaction appears to be simply XBL.
Since Blizzard was adamant about the tight incorporation of the new Battlenet when releasing the latest StarCraft, I'd be surprised that they would court consoles unless the console companies were willing to loosen their grip on the online experience. Perhaps that is an indication that Blizzard is actually targeting the PS3 rather than the XBox 360, even though the port work would likely be easier for PC->360 than PC->PS3.
In many cases if you want to buy a quality home theater TV for 2D viewing you may have to buy a 3D TV. In this case I'm defining quality by the general performance aspects of image quality, color accuracy, black levels, etc. The bottom line is that in many cases manufacturers are simply holding back the better quality TVs for those that come with an (often unused) 3D feature. You can see this repeatedly in home theater review websites and forums like avsforum.com. This is not to say that all 3D TVs are inherently better than all 2D TVs, there are still the spec whore TVs that through in that feature on a substandard TV. There are also still high quality 2D only TVs that will blow away 3D TVs, but increasingly manufacturers (e.g., Sony, Panasonic, LG, etc.) are using the 3D TV feature as a dividing line for their higher quality TVs.
I speak from recent experience, my old rear projection 720p Sony died over Thanksgiving and I researched and bought a new Panasonic plasma to take its place. This is my primary home theater TV so picture quality does matter to me and as part of my research, I consistently came across recommendations and test results that indicated that one should get into the 3D portion of the product line up even if you have little to no intention of using 3D. I absolutely love my TV, but have not even tried 3D yet. In fact I haven't even bought any of the active shutter glasses yet. In reality, I probably will dabble with 3D. I'm far more curious to try out 3D gaming on my PC and Xbox 360, but am in no hurry.
First off, a lot of "real" sci-fi has substantial cerebral elements that would be very difficult to adequately translate to the video game medium in a fun and engaging way. Note that I didn't say impossible, just very difficult.
Second, there are multiple examples of excellent, "real" sci-fi that do contain a single person or group of people that save the universe. For example, the Dune series, the Ender's Game series, the Foundation series (since you mentioned Asimov), Starship Troopers (since you mentioned Heinlein), etc. They had interesting plot, but an epic war was a contributing factor or back-drop to that interesting plot.
Have you played the Mass Effect games? I think there is a general feeling that the first two games do have a very engaging plot and are not yet another war game like CoD, Battefield, Gears, etc. They even have innovated to the point where you make lasting decisions that not only impact the plot of the first game, but translate to the second, and purportedly the third. I do not remember a game where meaningful decisions were reflected across not one but two games.
One of the things that I find disappointing is that probably the single largest factor in terms of whether a comment is promoted or demoted is the time after the post hits the main page. It is extremely common to see average posts (i.e. limited informational or insightful quantity/quality) rated very highly (probably too highly) simply because they are submitted shortly (within 1-2 hours, often much less) after the parent post hits the main page. Conversely, insanely high quality posts (i.e. those with tons of useful information or insight) that are submitted after the magic window either do not get voted up or are only voted up to a minor degree.
I understand why this occurs. A large influx of people are reading the comments shortly after the post and then there is an exponential decay afterwards. The result is that high quality and deserving posts do not get voted up since fewer and fewer people with mod points see them. It is completely understandable, however I think addressing this would have a significant positive impact. I know there have often been times that I would not post simply because I figured it was too late and practically no-one would read the comment so why bother. Unfortunately, I do not know how to solve this problem, just that it is real.
I do realize that the meta-moderation system does have some limited impact here, but I think it is too limited to be effective.
Now that the Space Shuttle has been retired, is this just a political maneuver to get more funding by making a "modest proposal" of what will happen if they don't? Considering the extended time and money it took to assemble, it seems like a huge waste to deorbit it in just 9 years.
I hope this is not the case, but it sounds like they are killing off their central idea birthing grounds? When Google first started developing an OS for cell phones it would have seemed like a crazy stretch for a search engine company, but Android is successful today. How many new "crazy" ideas will never see the light of day that could create future critical technologies for the company by this decision to "prioritize their product effort"? It is important for a tech company to have focus, but it needs at least a small group of innovative people to have the opportunity to let their ideas run wild in order to create the next big thing or they will eventually just stall and hand over technological innovation to a smaller, hungrier company. To me this seems almost as stupid as when Xerox decided that the core ideas at Xerox PARC in the 70's weren't worth productizing and basically gave them away to Apple.
My take is that exec A (the CoD is approx. Guitar Hero exec) has valid concerns. My reasoning is that Activision is doing the similar things with it that they did with GH: 1) They are milking the franchise for all its worth by doing annualized releases, whether or not they are really ready or called for. Admittedly towards the end the milking of GH was even worse with an annual major release and then multiple mini releases (GH: Metallica, GH: Barbershop, GH: My kid's 5th grade chorus). Although, I think some of that may already be beginning for CoD. Even if they stick to annual releases, I'm not convinced that people will continue to want CoD that frequently. 2) The highly touted "innovation" is coming at decreasing pace. I'm not going to knock that CoD:BO had some innovation nor deny that they have been more responsive about "fixing" multiplayer. Just that if you think about the biggest recent innovation, that came out with CoD4:MW and most things have been incremental improvements at best since then. That isn't to say that incremental improvements won't sell (see Madden), just that eventually people will have to take a long hard look as to whether the next shiny is really that much different than the current shiny. At some point, people will start deciding it isn't and then things will go to hell for their sales. Right now I think CoD is coasting on its own inertia. Everyone "has" to buy the next CoD because that is the game that "everyone" will be playing. Once, people decide that Game Z (Battlefield 3?) is much more shiny and interesting, I think there will be a rapid exodus that will take Activision by surprise.
I found it amusing that the key example the author of article chose as a game that cannot change is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. This is one of the recent success stories of mainstream genre blurring! The Call of Duty series was growing stale, then the Modern Warfare branch was created which introduced persistent RPG elements (leveling, etc.) into the FPS genre (peanut butter meet chocolate). Far from an uproar, there was wide acclaim and commercial success. This is why Modern Warfare and its successors have been so successful: they completely revitalized the genre by performing so called genre blurring. In terms of other triple A games, Mass Effect started off as an RPG with FPS elements and Mass Effect 2 was more of an FPS with RPG elements, both were great and widely acclaimed. I'm not saying that genre blending isn't risky and that once a formula is established there aren't plenty of imitators (especially amongst triple A titles), but acting like mainstream titles have not been successful at genre blending and that it doesn't happen is ludicrous.
There is speculation that Amazon Prime members may get free Kindles (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20040764-1.html). I would definitely take them up on that and would likely buy books on it. Even if this isn't true, it was a shrewd move by Amazon since I was considering getting a Color Nook and rooting it to put stock Android on it. I'm now holding out until after the holidays to see if this rumor comes to fruition. I wonder how many others that were on the fence about buying a competitors device are now waiting to see if they will get a free Kindle instead.