I think the problem is the primary contstraint in modern games is rarely hardware anymore, it's developer time and skill.
In the past, hardware cost was a major contraint. 8K of RAM used to cost a good chunk of change. The programming skill and knowledge was there, but the hardware was holding them back. I believe we have become sufficiently unconstrained in hardware these days that it is no longer the major limiting factor of games that it used to be.
Now the challenge is making an entertaining game, that is novel, but understandable, easy to learn quickly, but difficult to master. When you look at major successes in games, most have these qualities (pac-man, space invaders, DDR).
So really, is having a GPU that can pump 4X the polygons of a high end home system really going to compell people to arcades? I doubt it, and it'll still be obselete in a year or so.
Re:Public Domain vs OpenSource
on
Open Source Law
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· Score: 1
How about Open Source vs Free Software.
"Open source" really says nothing about the copyright or license restrictions, only that the source is available in some way to the general public.
"Free Software" means software protected by copyright, but distributed under a license the protects the rights of the public to modify and redistribute the software.
I agree with your basic sentiment though, calling legislation "open source" is kinda dumb. It should rightfully be called "public domain".
EM power decreases with the inverse square of the distance.
Say you have 1 unit of power at 1 foot, at 2 feet you would have 1/(2^2), or 1/4th of the power. At 4 feet you would have 1/(4^2) or 1/16th of the power.
Actually, it should be OK so long as you make sure the tinfoil hat has no pointy edges, raise it off the floor (on a plate or something), and you put a glass of water in the microwave to keep the load down on the magnetotron.
Metal in a microwave should be pefectly safe so long as you avoid the pointy edges. The recommended way to cook meat in a microwave actually involves covering the hotspots with foil so it gets evenly cooked.
Of course, maybe I'm just part of the conspiracy, and I want you to burn out your microwave so you can't deactivate RFID tags.:)
we understand the cause of something does not alleviate someone from responsibility for themselves.
Doesn't it?
If I run a stop sign and pull out in front of you in my car, and you run your car into me, it's my fault, right? I'll get the ticket, not you.
A clear case of a wholly external factor beyond your control causing you to be involved in a crime. You would be called the "victim" in this case.
Now, you probably see where I am going with this. If behavior, especially deviant bahavior, can be explained (even in part) in terms of causal factors beyond the criminal's control, isn't he really the victim too? This strikes at the root of the concept of personal responsibility.
I know about your personal story, I've read other posts you have made on the subject. I just hope you can see where I'm coming from.
I'm not sure that's true, but in any case you have to factor in that it's human nature to ask the question "why."
It is exactly the question "Why?" that has me concerned about this. I'm concerned about "why" this research is often done.
What I see often is not a desire to understand behavior, as a desire to control behavior. As a Libertarian, that grates me the most. Think of this as weapons research in the field of the human mind.
I agree that this is just mostly mental masturbation at this point, but I do think that the bad effects of this can happen in lesser degrees, it's not necessary to take it all the way to the absurd borg world state before we have major trouble.
Just look at Soviet Russia, or many other great plans for society that have failed.
If we could explain every behavior with a biochemical or external environmental cause, then we wouldn't need to punish anyone for a crime. Punishment is very poor solution to the problem of crime. It just sometimes turns out to be the best solution we have, which is why we use it.
But can we tolerate the alternative? Mandatory state funded re-education camps?
Crime is not an invariant thing. The patriots who founded the USA could have been considered criminals in many people's eyes. Many inventors, great innovators, and scientists were charged and punished (and sometimes killed) as criminals.
So I guess the question morphs to this, once we know the cause of every behaviour, what's to stop society from becoming 100% conformist with completely suppressed individuality?
It amazes me that companies are allowed this unfettered access to our children in school to peddle such messages they desire
You can thank Channel 1 for that crap. "Let us buy you TVs for your classroom, just one string attached, you must show the kids this propaganda every morning".
A great boon for the drug war, and all the other causes that no one would support if they really considered the issues.
But lets take it to an extreme. Suppose we explained every behavior with a biochemical or external environmental cause. How could we, under any system of morality, ever punish anyone for a crime?
This sort of medicalization of personality traits strikes directly at the foundation of personal responsibility that our society was built on.
It's happening in small ways already. A kid who has been told he has a "medical problem" that makes him get bad grades may never realize his full potential, and overcome his lack of willpower to develop a long attention span, and put forth the effort required for learning.
Actually the settlement still lets them use ads that look like windows messages, they just can't put WM decorations on it, and it has to say "advertisement" somewhere (in a tiny font). I think there was also something about them changing the text on the "button" to "More Info" instead of "OK".
Another disadvantage to XML is that it creates a barrier to creation of the documents. It's not easy to write XML style documents, from a lay point of view.
I've created a HOWTO with an eye on submitting it to the LDP eventually, and it wasn't something I'd expect just anyone to be able to do. Writing SGML/XML documents is difficult, especially at first, when you don't know the names of many of the tags yet.
With a proper setup you could read MS Word 2000 docs 100 years from now too. The whole point is to not make it reliant on any particular software, or any particular fad.
XML hasn't been around long enough to say whether it is a fad or not. ASCII has been around longer than most of us have existed.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the problem is the primary contstraint in modern games is rarely hardware anymore, it's developer time and skill.
In the past, hardware cost was a major contraint. 8K of RAM used to cost a good chunk of change. The programming skill and knowledge was there, but the hardware was holding them back. I believe we have become sufficiently unconstrained in hardware these days that it is no longer the major limiting factor of games that it used to be.
Now the challenge is making an entertaining game, that is novel, but understandable, easy to learn quickly, but difficult to master. When you look at major successes in games, most have these qualities (pac-man, space invaders, DDR).
So really, is having a GPU that can pump 4X the polygons of a high end home system really going to compell people to arcades? I doubt it, and it'll still be obselete in a year or so.
How about Open Source vs Free Software.
"Open source" really says nothing about the copyright or license restrictions, only that the source is available in some way to the general public.
"Free Software" means software protected by copyright, but distributed under a license the protects the rights of the public to modify and redistribute the software.
I agree with your basic sentiment though, calling legislation "open source" is kinda dumb. It should rightfully be called "public domain".
I think it's Pi(x tan a)^2 where a is the angle of the radiation (one side of it) and x is the distance.
since the physical transmission of the data is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand
:)
Indeed.
haha, "informative" :)
The law of inverse squares gets you in that case.
EM power decreases with the inverse square of the distance.
Say you have 1 unit of power at 1 foot, at 2 feet you would have 1/(2^2), or 1/4th of the power. At 4 feet you would have 1/(4^2) or 1/16th of the power.
Actually, it should be OK so long as you make sure the tinfoil hat has no pointy edges, raise it off the floor (on a plate or something), and you put a glass of water in the microwave to keep the load down on the magnetotron.
:)
Metal in a microwave should be pefectly safe so long as you avoid the pointy edges. The recommended way to cook meat in a microwave actually involves covering the hotspots with foil so it gets evenly cooked.
Of course, maybe I'm just part of the conspiracy, and I want you to burn out your microwave so you can't deactivate RFID tags.
we understand the cause of something does not alleviate someone from responsibility for themselves.
Doesn't it?
If I run a stop sign and pull out in front of you in my car, and you run your car into me, it's my fault, right? I'll get the ticket, not you.
A clear case of a wholly external factor beyond your control causing you to be involved in a crime. You would be called the "victim" in this case.
Now, you probably see where I am going with this. If behavior, especially deviant bahavior, can be explained (even in part) in terms of causal factors beyond the criminal's control, isn't he really the victim too? This strikes at the root of the concept of personal responsibility.
I know about your personal story, I've read other posts you have made on the subject. I just hope you can see where I'm coming from.
I'm not sure that's true, but in any case you have to factor in that it's human nature to ask the question "why."
It is exactly the question "Why?" that has me concerned about this. I'm concerned about "why" this research is often done.
What I see often is not a desire to understand behavior, as a desire to control behavior. As a Libertarian, that grates me the most. Think of this as weapons research in the field of the human mind.
I agree that this is just mostly mental masturbation at this point, but I do think that the bad effects of this can happen in lesser degrees, it's not necessary to take it all the way to the absurd borg world state before we have major trouble.
Just look at Soviet Russia, or many other great plans for society that have failed.
If we could explain every behavior with a biochemical or external environmental cause, then we wouldn't need to punish anyone for a crime. Punishment is very poor solution to the problem of crime. It just sometimes turns out to be the best solution we have, which is why we use it.
But can we tolerate the alternative? Mandatory state funded re-education camps?
Crime is not an invariant thing. The patriots who founded the USA could have been considered criminals in many people's eyes. Many inventors, great innovators, and scientists were charged and punished (and sometimes killed) as criminals.
So I guess the question morphs to this, once we know the cause of every behaviour, what's to stop society from becoming 100% conformist with completely suppressed individuality?
I would love to see how you would have performed under Milgram's experiment.
Me too, but unfortunatly, I would recognize it and be biased due to that fact.
That can mean 19-35 year olds have a 3% chance of death, but elderly could have something like 85-90% since their immune systems can't cope.
And this is a bad thing? Sounds like a good way to ensure the future of social security.
It amazes me that companies are allowed this unfettered access to our children in school to peddle such messages they desire
You can thank Channel 1 for that crap. "Let us buy you TVs for your classroom, just one string attached, you must show the kids this propaganda every morning".
A great boon for the drug war, and all the other causes that no one would support if they really considered the issues.
Haha, good comeback :)
But lets take it to an extreme. Suppose we explained every behavior with a biochemical or external environmental cause. How could we, under any system of morality, ever punish anyone for a crime?
This sort of medicalization of personality traits strikes directly at the foundation of personal responsibility that our society was built on.
It's happening in small ways already. A kid who has been told he has a "medical problem" that makes him get bad grades may never realize his full potential, and overcome his lack of willpower to develop a long attention span, and put forth the effort required for learning.
A large percentage of the hacker/geek culture would probably meet the DSM-IV criteria for ADD and/or ADHD.
More like a large percentage of the entire population of the world.
The criteria are so vague, it gives the parents what they want; an excuse to drug their kids.
Do they not deserve to pick up the couple pennies for that?
So it should be illegal to skip commercials when you watch TV too?
Hint: They don't look right on Mac OS X, either.
Hint: Linux is about as popular as Windows, and both are far more popular than OS X.
The numbers speak for themselves:
Searched the web for Linux.
Results 1 - 10 of about 55,900,000
Searched the web for Windows.
Results 1 - 10 of about 62,400,000.
Searched the web for Mac OS X.
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,640,000
Actually the settlement still lets them use ads that look like windows messages, they just can't put WM decorations on it, and it has to say "advertisement" somewhere (in a tiny font). I think there was also something about them changing the text on the "button" to "More Info" instead of "OK".
Well ultimately any stock has no real value other than dividends and future dividends.
Think about it.
You apparently didn't have Gnome already installed.
You get the idea, eh?
Yes, and the ad hominem attacks were unnecessary.
Another disadvantage to XML is that it creates a barrier to creation of the documents. It's not easy to write XML style documents, from a lay point of view.
I've created a HOWTO with an eye on submitting it to the LDP eventually, and it wasn't something I'd expect just anyone to be able to do. Writing SGML/XML documents is difficult, especially at first, when you don't know the names of many of the tags yet.
I think that used to be true more than it is now.
After all, XP home versions had copy protection, but the corporate versions did not.
With a proper setup you could read MS Word 2000 docs 100 years from now too. The whole point is to not make it reliant on any particular software, or any particular fad.
XML hasn't been around long enough to say whether it is a fad or not. ASCII has been around longer than most of us have existed.