There is only one really visual language I have ever seen, Prograph. You program by connecting boxes with lines representing dataflow. Even so, it was a fully buzzword-compliant object-oriented programming language, very good at some tasks. Although figuring out how to write some simple algorithms (such as repeat-until) required a bit of thought.
The company making it got greedy and started charging 1500 dollars for the language, renamed it CPX, renamed themselves somehting I don't recall, and dropped off the face of the Earth.
New Coke bombed, yes, but it drove up prices of the remaining "old" Coke. When Classic Coke came out, it sold better than it had for decades. Coke went from the "background noise" level to headline news, proving the old adage that no publicity is bad publicity.
It is similar to Intel's managing to score good PR by eventually fixing the Pentium division bug. Although it looked like a disaster at the time, after it was over everyone was thinking of Intel, and I bet most people have forgotten the bug.
How many times will it take before you just know what the icons are? By not showing the icons, it removes needless clutter when you have many windows open at once. Once you learn which button does what, you never need the icons again, so why show them?
I happen to like interfaces such as Bryce 2.0 (and up) which does this to a much bigger degree.
Light of a given wavelength will indeed appear as a color, but that doesn't mean viewing that color means you have a pure wavelength. There are an infinite number of wavelength combinations that will look exactly the same to you.
This is how mixing red and green produces yellow. They do not magically convert into a yellow wavelength, but our eyes see them the same way. IIRC, this is a result of the way our eyes have 3 color sensors, relating approximately to red, green and blue.
Thus, although ~600nm(or whatever) is not a sufficient definition of yellow, you could say something like "a color perceived identically to viewing a pure ~600nm wavelength.
You also cannot use any wavelength to define white.
If you accept this argument (and ignore some of the non-predictable, quantom nature of things) then you also have to accept that you have NO free will.
No I don't, I choose not to:)
Seriously, you should check out the dialogue "Is God A Taoist?" in The Mind's I. Basically, the author (Raymond Smullyan), refutes the idea that determinism is in conflict with free-will. The "laws" of science aren't coercive, they are a explanation of how things do behave. You can think of them as explaining what will be decided. This doesn't mean that no decisions were made.
OT: Smullyan, BTW, is the best logic puzzle creator alive. If you enjoy truth-teller/liar-type puzzles then check him out. You get to learn Godel's Theorem, Cantor's diagonal argument, combinatorics, and much more as a bonus.
If you haven't read it, The Mind's I contains a story titled "Story of a Brain" or something close. It takes your little though experiment to the nth degree.
The theory of uploading brains into data holders was first put forward into popular culture by William Gibson (the guy who coined the term "cyberspace" in the same novel).
Although Gibson popularized the term, check out:
"Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", by John Varley
"True Names" by Vernor Vinge
Maze of Death and "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" by Philip K. Dick.
All predate Neuromancer to my knowledge.
And I would say Greg Egan's Permutation City handles these issues better than anything else that comes to mind. (an A+ work probably never to be made into a movie...)
Duke was a parody of the sexist macho action-hero, I don't think a female character would've worked.
Changing the character would involve new artwork for the sprites and replacing all the player sounds. It would not have been difficult at all, just a little more work.
Yes indeed we jump at every time a company ports to Linux. That's what we should be doing.
You might want to learn a few lessons from Mac game history. There was a time when certain game makers would port any old crap, do a lousy job of it, and when the program tanked, blame the Mac market for not buying games. Sierra, in particular, was infamous for this. The original Civilization broke during a system update and Microprose refused to fix it, saying it was Apple's fault. The problem was eventually fixed for some machines by a freeware patch.
There will be companies doing this trying to get on the Linux bandwagon, probably soon. Don't buy a game just because it is released for your system. If companies can get away with crap, that's what you'll get.
P.S. Both Sierra and Microprose did improve over time and have since put out good Mac products.
Several years ago I went to see Neil speak at a comic convention in Chicago. Someone asked if/when Sandman was going to be filmed.
Neil then gave a really entertaining discussion of exactly why everyone in Hollywood was a "madman". He and Terry spent a long time working on a script for Good Omens, condensing it to movie length, and sent it to them. After a few weeks with no response, he called up and asked what was going on. They said "Well, it's a lot like the book."
Of course it was, Neil didn't understand how that could be a problem. The authors then thought of other variations on the basic theme and came up with a derivative work, built around the same characters and situations, but giving a new slant on things. They were quite proud of the second script and sent it in. After another quiet period, they pushed for a response. And it was: "Well, it doesn't have much to do with the book."
At this point, Neil gave up on Hollywood.
Of course, he also said the next Miracleman was going to be soon as well...
The first use of the concept I'm aware of is Philip K. Dick's Counter-Clock World. I also remember a short story (Philip Jose Farmer, maybe) where a man watches the unmaking of the pyramids. Piers Anthony used a reverse-time region in the second Incarnations book, Bearing an Hourglass. So its hardly new to Red Dwarf, which shows LOTS of PKD influence IMHO.
The number of CDs in the world is probably not more than 1 billion. This is a 32 bit key. The measure of a good key is how many bits of information is contained. If the key is in any way derivable from a smaller set (such as CDs or English words) then it is equivalent to using a smaller set.
The Netscape problem back in the day was caused because the keys were generated based on 40 bits of information, it didn't matter that there were more bits in the key, they just needed to check those 2^40.
Generally anything that makes a key easy to manage also makes it useless. sigh.
Admittedly, getting the list of codes from all CDs would be tricky....
>And who did Prowse get replaced by? He's in the credits in all three movies as Darth's body. The ghost Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi was played by someone else (don't know who).
Linux is the system for the development system, not the PSX2. Sony doesn't have to release any specs what-so-ever, and judging by their actions so far, won't.
Actually, most Playstation development environments are based around gcc and make. This has changed with the creation of Codewarrior for PSX, but not much.
Shenmue is like a graphically brillant incarnation of Dragon's Lair. You know, watch the pretty movie and when the light flashes, hit the button. If you don't, you die otherwise you go to the next movie. Yippee. I saw this at E3 and was NOT impressed.
Your conclusion would be true only if there was some definition of value which held equal for everyone. The basis of economics is two people exchanging things for things they want more. For instance, to me a CD is worth more than the 15 dollars it takes to get it. To the store, the money is worth more. No one gets shafted.
In exchange for my time and labor, I get benefits, pay, and some intangible benefits such as meeting people, learning things, and job satifaction. I don't feel in any way shafted (at my current job anyway).
Further, the amount of work you produce isn't linear. Two people working together can create something that neither one seperately could ever do. The combined result could be worth more than individual work. The company can then give the workers what they would've earned seperately and still make profit. So who loses?
It is true that evil companies exist, but I don't agree that it is necessary.
P.S. I realize my buying a CD example ignores MP3, artist rights, monopoly, and other issues where people in fact are shafted, but that is tangent to my main point.
A PC development machine can indeed be had for about 2k. However, games these days require art, and quality tools are really expensive. Numbers like 5k for 3D Studio Max, 10k for MultiGen, and such really add up fast. I still think PC development is cheaper (Sony charges a bundle for special emulators and CD burners), but starting up either platform requires a lot of money.
According to an interesting article by Steve Albini (of Touch & Go records and lots of bands), CDs were initially a failure. The record companies then told the stores they wouldn't accept returns on vinyl, only CDs. The stores would then be stuck with all used vinyl. This effectively caused the stores to dump vinyl, not customer acceptance.
In response to earlier comments on what the artist gets, yes they do get a percentage, but: 1) They have to pay for recording the album 2) They have to pay for the promotion 3) The record company does not have to promote them in any way.
So, you get a contract which means you are allowed to go heavily in debt in hopes that they'll like the album you end up with.
P.S. I can't find the Albini article, can someone help?
Slashdot Mirror
The company making it got greedy and started charging 1500 dollars for the language, renamed it CPX, renamed themselves somehting I don't recall, and dropped off the face of the Earth.
It is similar to Intel's managing to score good PR by eventually fixing the Pentium division bug. Although it looked like a disaster at the time, after it was over everyone was thinking of Intel, and I bet most people have forgotten the bug.
I happen to like interfaces such as Bryce 2.0 (and up) which does this to a much bigger degree.
This is how mixing red and green produces yellow. They do not magically convert into a yellow wavelength, but our eyes see them the same way. IIRC, this is a result of the way our eyes have 3 color sensors, relating approximately to red, green and blue.
Thus, although ~600nm(or whatever) is not a sufficient definition of yellow, you could say something like "a color perceived identically to viewing a pure ~600nm wavelength.
You also cannot use any wavelength to define white.
No I don't, I choose not to
Seriously, you should check out the dialogue "Is God A Taoist?" in The Mind's I. Basically, the author (Raymond Smullyan), refutes the idea that determinism is in conflict with free-will. The "laws" of science aren't coercive, they are a explanation of how things do behave. You can think of them as explaining what will be decided. This doesn't mean that no decisions were made.
OT: Smullyan, BTW, is the best logic puzzle creator alive. If you enjoy truth-teller/liar-type puzzles then check him out. You get to learn Godel's Theorem, Cantor's diagonal argument, combinatorics, and much more as a bonus.
If you haven't read it, The Mind's I contains a story titled "Story of a Brain" or something close. It takes your little though experiment to the nth degree.
Although Gibson popularized the term, check out:
"Overdrawn at the Memory Bank", by John Varley
"True Names" by Vernor Vinge
Maze of Death and "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" by Philip K. Dick.
All predate Neuromancer to my knowledge.
And I would say Greg Egan's Permutation City handles these issues better than anything else that comes to mind. (an A+ work probably never to be made into a movie...)
Something Awful
Question, is this page a funny parody of the sort of things this article is against, or an example?
P.S. My apologies if this was duplicated.
Changing the character would involve new artwork for the sprites and replacing all the player sounds. It would not have been difficult at all, just a little more work.
The game sucked, but the ads certainly got attention.
You might want to learn a few lessons from Mac game history. There was a time when certain game makers would port any old crap, do a lousy job of it, and when the program tanked, blame the Mac market for not buying games. Sierra, in particular, was infamous for this. The original Civilization broke during a system update and Microprose refused to fix it, saying it was Apple's fault. The problem was eventually fixed for some machines by a freeware patch.
There will be companies doing this trying to get on the Linux bandwagon, probably soon. Don't buy a game just because it is released for your system. If companies can get away with crap, that's what you'll get.
P.S. Both Sierra and Microprose did improve over time and have since put out good Mac products.
But the PC port didn't include Mac-PC networking, which effectively killed it.
Incidentally, are Forge and Anvil (Bungie's editors) going to be open-sourced?
Several years ago I went to see Neil speak at a comic convention in Chicago. Someone asked if/when Sandman was going to be filmed.
Neil then gave a really entertaining discussion of exactly why everyone in Hollywood was a "madman". He and Terry spent a long time working on a script for Good Omens, condensing it to movie length, and sent it to them. After a few weeks with no response, he called up and asked what was going on. They said "Well, it's a lot like the book."
Of course it was, Neil didn't understand how that could be a problem. The authors then thought of other variations on the basic theme and came up with a derivative work, built around the same characters and situations, but giving a new slant on things. They were quite proud of the second script and sent it in. After another quiet period, they pushed for a response. And it was:
"Well, it doesn't have much to do with the book."
At this point, Neil gave up on Hollywood.
Of course, he also said the next Miracleman was going to be soon as well...
I thought the big three laws were:
1) You can't win
2) You can't even break even
3) You can't leave the game
The first use of the concept I'm aware of is Philip K. Dick's Counter-Clock World. I also remember a short story (Philip Jose Farmer, maybe) where a man watches the unmaking of the pyramids. Piers Anthony used a reverse-time region in the second Incarnations book, Bearing an Hourglass. So its hardly new to Red Dwarf, which shows LOTS of PKD influence IMHO.
The number of CDs in the world is probably not more than 1 billion. This is a 32 bit key. The measure of a good key is how many bits of information is contained. If the key is in any way derivable from a smaller set (such as CDs or English words) then it is equivalent to using a smaller set.
The Netscape problem back in the day was caused because the keys were generated based on 40 bits of information, it didn't matter that there were more bits in the key, they just needed to check those 2^40.
Generally anything that makes a key easy to manage also makes it useless. sigh.
Admittedly, getting the list of codes from all CDs would be tricky....
>And who did Prowse get replaced by? He's in the credits in all three movies as Darth's body. The ghost Anakin at the end of Return of the Jedi was played by someone else (don't know who).
Linux is the system for the development system, not the PSX2. Sony doesn't have to release any specs what-so-ever, and judging by their actions so far, won't.
Actually, most Playstation development environments are based around gcc and make. This has changed with the creation of Codewarrior for PSX, but not much.
The last I heard, Sega was saying that any Internet connection would work for Dreamcast. Sony hasn't said anything, yet.
Shenmue is like a graphically brillant incarnation of Dragon's Lair. You know, watch the pretty movie and when the light flashes, hit the button. If you don't, you die otherwise you go to the next movie. Yippee. I saw this at E3 and was NOT impressed.
You need to learn some economics.
Your conclusion would be true only if there was some definition of value which held equal for everyone. The basis of economics is two people exchanging things for things they want more. For instance, to me a CD is worth more than the 15 dollars it takes to get it. To the store, the money is worth more. No one gets shafted.
In exchange for my time and labor, I get benefits, pay, and some intangible benefits such as meeting people, learning things, and job satifaction. I don't feel in any way shafted (at my current job anyway).
Further, the amount of work you produce isn't linear. Two people working together can create something that neither one seperately could ever do. The combined result could be worth more than individual work. The company can then give the workers what they would've earned seperately and still make profit. So who loses?
It is true that evil companies exist, but I don't agree that it is necessary.
P.S. I realize my buying a CD example ignores MP3, artist rights, monopoly, and other issues where people in fact are shafted, but that is tangent to my main point.
"If Carmack has any sense (and I am sure he does) he wont bother with making console version of ID products"
Doom for SNES
Doom64 for Nintendo 64
Quake64 for Nintendo 64
Doom for Playstation (included Doom2 critters)
Quake2 for Playstation (saw it at E3)
Carmack doesn't need to bother with making console versions, they get made by other people. There most likely will be a Q3A port.
A PC development machine can indeed be had for about 2k. However, games these days require art, and quality tools are really expensive. Numbers like 5k for 3D Studio Max, 10k for MultiGen, and such really add up fast. I still think PC development is cheaper (Sony charges a bundle for special emulators and CD burners), but starting up either platform requires a lot of money.
According to an interesting article by Steve Albini (of Touch & Go records and lots of bands), CDs were initially a failure. The record companies then told the stores they wouldn't accept returns on vinyl, only CDs. The stores would then be stuck with all used vinyl. This effectively caused the stores to dump vinyl, not customer acceptance.
In response to earlier comments on what the artist gets, yes they do get a percentage, but:
1) They have to pay for recording the album
2) They have to pay for the promotion
3) The record company does not have to promote them in any way.
So, you get a contract which means you are allowed to go heavily in debt in hopes that they'll like the album you end up with.
P.S. I can't find the Albini article, can someone help?