I thought this was a belated April Fools post for a moment. I remember following some link from Slashdot on the 1st that had articles talking about how to modify your car to use water instead of gasoline.
Articles like this are always fun because there's never any follow up that shows some progress on the subject. Like "Time Travel: Still yet to be achieved" and "Is it yesterday yet?" I also like the cute little pictures of spacemen going through some hole in time that often accompany the articles (http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/wormholes/defa ult.htm#).
Here's an amusing (though thoroughly hostile) article that argues against the possibility of time travel:
http://home1.gte.net/res02khr/crackpots/notoriou s. htm
The dreamy Star-trekkie side of me would love to believe time travel is possible, but the down to Earth part of me believes that it's our perception of time that can change.
The commonly accepted "legal" form of time travel that people talk about is that of going into the future. I can accept that someone traveling at relativistic speeds will experience time slower than someone on the Earth, but that doesn't mean that he's travelling faster through time. It just means that all the factors that we use to measure change in time (including consciousness, his heartrate, the ticking of a clock, or the wavelength of a photon) are being distorted by speed he's travelling. There is still a unique *moment* in time for everything in the universe regardless of how fast you are travelling.
It's sweet that Mallett wants to travel back in time to save his father, but it smacks more of a Hollywood cliché than anything (Contact, anyone?). If he can show an experiment that is more than a trick of physics then maybe I'll start to take him seriously.
I thought this was a belated April Fools post for a moment. I remember following some link from Slashdot on the 1st that had articles talking about how to modify your car to use water instead of gasoline.
Articles like this are always fun because there's never any follow up that shows some progress on the subject. Like "Time Travel: Still yet to be achieved" and "Is it yesterday yet?" I also like the cute little pictures of spacemen going through some hole in time that often accompany the articles ().
Here's an amusing (though thoroughly hostile) article that argues against the possibility of time travel:
The dreamy Star-trekkie side of me would love to believe time travel is possible, but the down to Earth part of me believes that it's our perception of time that can change.
The commonly accepted "legal" form of time travel that people talk about is that of going into the future. I can accept that someone traveling at relativistic speeds will experience time slower than someone on the Earth, but that doesn't mean that he's travelling faster through time. It just means that all the factors that we use to measure change in time (including consciousness, his heartrate, the ticking of a clock, or the wavelength of a photon) are being distorted by speed he's travelling. There is still a unique *moment* in time for everything in the universe regardless of how fast you are travelling.
It's sweet that Mallett wants to travel back in time to save his father, but it smacks more of a Hollywood cliché than anything (Contact, anyone?). If he can show an experiment that is more than a trick of physics then maybe I'll start to take him seriously.
I'm not going to comment on how right or wrong I think Blizzard's or the Bnetd people's actions are, but for those who are bothered by the situation, there's one solution to all the fuss that's legal and benefits everyone, and that is to develop an open source Diablo or (insert your favorite style of game here) game that makes use of BNetd's efforts.
Just among Slashdot readers, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers ready and willing to put together a good game engine. For game art, you can find plenty of models and textures available on mod sites for Quake 3, Unreal, and Halflife, as well as people willing to create new art and levels (even if it's 3D, it can still be used for a 2D game).
After all, Diablo is really just a descendent of Hack or Rogue--classic examples of Open Source gaming.
Heh, if that's true, then a great tactic against Windows would be to add Linux support to Windows. Make it more stable and easier to program for than Windows, and you've got a counter revolution on your hands.;)
When I originally discussed what features we wanted in the animation system with the animator, I suggested adding controls for parametric facial animation, and he was basically horrified. His response was that he could do a much better job by hand. "This (animation) is what I do.", he said. After seeing the results of what he can accomplish by hand, I tend to agree.
I've looked into the research that's been done on parametric facial animation, and while it's impressive, I haven't seen anything that approaches the quality that an animator can do by hand. Even when the set of expressions it uses are manually created, the expressiveness doesn't compare to the subtlety an animator can put into it.
While the generality of a parametric system would be great for generating massive amounts of facial animation, as well as animation for dynamic content (such as net-based voice communication), if the animator is willing and able to handle to workload, I am more than happy to stick with hand animation. The technical challenge would be quite enjoyable, but in the end, I'll take a limited amount of high quality hand animation over an unlimited quantity of mediocre computer generated animation.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought this was a belated April Fools post for a moment. I remember following some link from Slashdot on the 1st that had articles talking about how to modify your car to use water instead of gasoline.
a ult.htm#).
u s. htm
Articles like this are always fun because there's never any follow up that shows some progress on the subject. Like "Time Travel: Still yet to be achieved" and "Is it yesterday yet?" I also like the cute little pictures of spacemen going through some hole in time that often accompany the articles (http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/wormholes/def
Here's an amusing (though thoroughly hostile) article that argues against the possibility of time travel:
http://home1.gte.net/res02khr/crackpots/notorio
The dreamy Star-trekkie side of me would love to believe time travel is possible, but the down to Earth part of me believes that it's our perception of time that can change.
The commonly accepted "legal" form of time travel that people talk about is that of going into the future. I can accept that someone traveling at relativistic speeds will experience time slower than someone on the Earth, but that doesn't mean that he's travelling faster through time. It just means that all the factors that we use to measure change in time (including consciousness, his heartrate, the ticking of a clock, or the wavelength of a photon) are being distorted by speed he's travelling. There is still a unique *moment* in time for everything in the universe regardless of how fast you are travelling.
It's sweet that Mallett wants to travel back in time to save his father, but it smacks more of a Hollywood cliché than anything (Contact, anyone?). If he can show an experiment that is more than a trick of physics then maybe I'll start to take him seriously.
Oops. I actually did try to format that correctly. I foolishly tried to submit it as html thinking the links would show better. :/
I thought this was a belated April Fools post for a moment. I remember following some link from Slashdot on the 1st that had articles talking about how to modify your car to use water instead of gasoline. Articles like this are always fun because there's never any follow up that shows some progress on the subject. Like "Time Travel: Still yet to be achieved" and "Is it yesterday yet?" I also like the cute little pictures of spacemen going through some hole in time that often accompany the articles (). Here's an amusing (though thoroughly hostile) article that argues against the possibility of time travel: The dreamy Star-trekkie side of me would love to believe time travel is possible, but the down to Earth part of me believes that it's our perception of time that can change. The commonly accepted "legal" form of time travel that people talk about is that of going into the future. I can accept that someone traveling at relativistic speeds will experience time slower than someone on the Earth, but that doesn't mean that he's travelling faster through time. It just means that all the factors that we use to measure change in time (including consciousness, his heartrate, the ticking of a clock, or the wavelength of a photon) are being distorted by speed he's travelling. There is still a unique *moment* in time for everything in the universe regardless of how fast you are travelling. It's sweet that Mallett wants to travel back in time to save his father, but it smacks more of a Hollywood cliché than anything (Contact, anyone?). If he can show an experiment that is more than a trick of physics then maybe I'll start to take him seriously.
I'm not going to comment on how right or wrong I think Blizzard's or the Bnetd people's actions are, but for those who are bothered by the situation, there's one solution to all the fuss that's legal and benefits everyone, and that is to develop an open source Diablo or (insert your favorite style of game here) game that makes use of BNetd's efforts.
Just among Slashdot readers, I'm sure there are plenty of programmers ready and willing to put together a good game engine. For game art, you can find plenty of models and textures available on mod sites for Quake 3, Unreal, and Halflife, as well as people willing to create new art and levels (even if it's 3D, it can still be used for a 2D game).
After all, Diablo is really just a descendent of Hack or Rogue--classic examples of Open Source gaming.
Jim Dosé
Heh, if that's true, then a great tactic against Windows would be to add Linux support to Windows. Make it more stable and easier to program for than Windows, and you've got a counter revolution on your hands. ;)
When I originally discussed what features we wanted in the animation system with the animator, I suggested adding controls for parametric facial animation, and he was basically horrified. His response was that he could do a much better job by hand. "This (animation) is what I do.", he said. After seeing the results of what he can accomplish by hand, I tend to agree.
I've looked into the research that's been done on parametric facial animation, and while it's impressive, I haven't seen anything that approaches the quality that an animator can do by hand. Even when the set of expressions it uses are manually created, the expressiveness doesn't compare to the subtlety an animator can put into it.
While the generality of a parametric system would be great for generating massive amounts of facial animation, as well as animation for dynamic content (such as net-based voice communication), if the animator is willing and able to handle to workload, I am more than happy to stick with hand animation. The technical challenge would be quite enjoyable, but in the end, I'll take a limited amount of high quality hand animation over an unlimited quantity of mediocre computer generated animation.
Jim Dosé
id Software