"What I'd really like to see is a goal-free 3D world like the Snowcrash Metaverse, but it will take games to get there."
This seems to be a fairly prevalent mentality amongst 3d gamers and other techies, but it's not a very insightful comment to make. You would most definitely not like to see a Metaverse anytime soon, because there isn't anything you could do with one. All games are goal-driven, at least in some sense. Separating the time-tested design strategy of "Now You Do This" from the still relatively nascent "Look, Pretty Scenery!" takes away all the entertainment value from 3d environments.
People don't remember that Stephenson's Metaverse was supposed to be lightyears ahead of current technology, not just in terms of the graphical representations of objects and people, but in the input methods. Stephenson never actually explained how Hiro and his cohorts interfaced with the Metaverse and controlled their avatars, other than commenting that it was a relatively difficult thing to do. Until navigation and communication in 3d can be brought to a level that's nearly as natural to us as moving around and talking to people in the real world, 3d isn't going to be good for anything except for goal-based games.
"You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by...Jon Katz"
Now that's a scary thought. Bad drugs that make you read Jon Katz reviews instead of just the normal spiders crawling in your mouth and melting walls. *Shudder*
I'm not trying to be a troll, but why on earth did this deserve to be posted? Just because Jon Katz wrote it doesn't mean it's appropriate. If a reader had submitted this, it would have gotten rejected.
But I'm sick and tired of hearing about how wonderful Dell's technical support system is. I bought a computer from them two years ago, and had several problems with the computer, all of which have resulted in me getting way-less-than-decent help from their techs. The last time I called, I was having trouble networking my two computers because of (what turned out to be) a faulty netword card.
When I called Dell's "hardware" division for help, I spoke to someone who was (obviously) reading directly from their webpage. He blatantly refused to listen to anything I had to say (I'd already ruled several potential causes of the problem out) and wasn't able to answer several of my moderately-technical questions. He eventually told me I was in the wrong place (because "networking involved Windows"), and transfered me to "software". When I mentioned (as nicely as I could) to the tech that I was connected with there that the person I had just been speaking with didn't seem to be very competent in his field, he got insulted and became very tight-lipped about trying to solve my problem. When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he hung up on me.
The whole experience reminded me of when I called to apply for my first credit card. I asked for a more detailed explanation of the APR from the service rep. and she said "We don't have that information. We can only read the sheet that we're given.". While this was mildly amusing to hear from Visa (I, of course, took my business elsewhere), I think Dell and IT companies in general need to excercise a little more selectivity in hiring their support people. If they have to train a candidate for the job, then they'd be better off finding someone else to fill the spot.
As soon as I saw this article, I clicked on it and hit CTRL-F. Lo and behold, "TJHSST" popped right up!!
Since I was TJHSST class of '00, I'd like to add my two cents.
Off of Stuy's website:
"Our school almost invariably leads the nation in National Merit Scholars, Intel Finalists, in Mathematics competitions (city, state, and nationwide)"
That's just a blatant lie. We beat them regularly in National Merit, and they have what, double our class size?
TJ wasn't a nerd school. That myth needs to be dispelled. I hated it with a passion (although it was better than a normal high school, that's for sure), but not because it was a school for nerds. By far the best classes I took at TJ were in the humanities. The math and science portion of my educational experience there paled in comparison. Sure, Jefferson had its share of nerds, and maybe they were a bit nerdier (and smarter) than your run-of-the-mill nerds, but there are nerds everywhere, and they made up a very normal-sized slice of the population at TJ.
The one thing that I can say about the sci/tech part of TJHSST is that it most emphatically does NOT try to teach you how to "write papers and do research". The great beauty of Jefferson is that it is filled with brilliant students that you can learn from, and teachers who want to help you do whatever it is you want to do. It's a free environment. There aren't any bells, and no one gives you a hard time if you're wandering the halls during class periods. Admissions at TJ aren't just based on test scores. They want bright, creative people who are good at lots of things. We had brilliant artists, great writers, amazing thesbians, and talented musicians. If that meant that we didn't get the "GREAT HIGH SCHOOL PLUG" on/. or that people don't think that we're as competitive in the sci/tech areas, so be it. I didn't have any trouble getting in to a college.;-)
C'mon, people. Give us some credit! Highschoolers, even middle-schoolers are intelligent. They are responsible.
I can't believe I just read that. You're making the terrible mistake of assuming that other people are like you, and you're assuming a correlation between "intelligence" and responsibility that doesn't exist.
I graduated from the nerdiest high school in the entire nation last year: Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Virginia. We routinely have the most National Merit Semifinalists of any school in the country; the only school to come close to us in recent years has over twice our class size. Because so many of TJ's students are so intelligent and go to great colleges and do great things, it is assumed that they're responsible people and that they can be trusted. Having spent four years of my life in this environment I can safely say that that assumption is FLAWED.
Kids at my high school acted like absolute idiots just as much as kids at other high schools. The only difference that their superior intellect made was that they were able to find extrodinarily brilliant ways to abuse the system and do terrible, awful things. Rather than writing mean notes about teachers and muttering vile invectives about each other under their breath, students organized an online messageboard system (almost as useful and as portable as slashcode) and then blasted teachers and other students under the protection of the first amendment. So many kids cut 8th period (a period added to the school day to allow our geographically diverse student body to participate together in extracirricular activities) that the administration was seriously considering canceling most of the school student organizations. Drugs, alcohol, and violence were all common, as were attempts by students to manipulate the administration for their own, often nefarious, purposes.
As much as I hated high school, I was incredibly thankful that I was able to get into TJ. I know that my experiences would have been much worse at a "normal" school. Highschoolers (or at least some of them) may be intelligent, but that doesn't mean that they can be trusted not to abuse legitimate authority, nor that they are free from malevolent intentions.
That "paper" didn't actually prove a damned thing. It provided a fairly good description of the innerworkings of the eye, but I sure failed to see any logical correlation between "the eye works like this" and "you only need 72 (exactly) fps".
It seems to me that the line between "acceptable" and "realistic" is pretty thin. Technology will continue to advance, frame rates will get faster, more triangles will be produced, and things will become more and more "realistic". For games, at least, I think that the willing suspension of disbelief is far more important to how much fun one has than the number of triangles or the frames per second that get pumped up on the screen.
Furthermore, all of this talk about getting average fps up in the 300 range seems a little moronic to me, unless I'm missing some new monitor technology. I'm running at 1600X1200 at 85Hz right now, and as long as the monitor is only refreshing the screen 85 times per second, 85 effective "frames" per second is my absolute best case.
For other nerd related topics, I HIGHLY recommend running down Mike Abrash. He just spoke to us at UIUC and although there was a tinge of Microsoft proselytizing (naturally) to the talk he gave to us, he was one of the best college speakers I've heard yet. His anecdotes about Life algorithms and the development of Xbox were really interesting, and seemed to scale nicely depending on the listener's level of nerdiness (the more of a nerd you were, the harder you laughed).
Plus, I mean, he helped make Quake. How much cooler can you get?;-)
I'm not sure what/if we paid him, but I imagine that if anything it was very little.
I personally use both ICQ and AIM regularly, and I think it's pretty clear that a standard needs to emerge. For a long time ICQ was the clearly superior utility, but with each subsequent version a new plethora of unnecessary bells and whistles have emerged and the number of my friends and associates that use it as their primary messaging software has dwindled. Even though AIM has a vastly inferior UI, no easily navigable message history, and an inelegant identification scheme (Joe405867392, etc.) it's become the messaging method of choice for most people I communicate with.
It's pretty clear, to me at least, that this is exactly the kind of project open source is meant for. Obviously different people want different things from their instant messaging software, and the flexibility that a great number of open source messaging clients communicating using a shared standard would offer is pretty staggering.
AOL needs to make an intelligent decision (for once) and realize that the popularity (err...or at least LACK of negativity) they would receive by creating and releasing an all-purpose communication standard that incorporates the best of both technologies would far outweigh the few million bucks they could make off of sending banner adds to their proprietary client programs. I mean, who ever actually clicks on the stupid little things, anyways?
I have to admit, Nvidia deserves a lot of credit for making such great chips and pushing the graphical envelope as much as they do, but I'm really not pleased at all with the whole Ultra release. As someone who just bought a new computer complete with a Geforce II GTS, I feel cheated. If there had been some warning (ANY warning) that the chip was going to come in an Ultra flavor, I'd have waited the extra month and made due with my TNT2 a little longer. Instead, I shelled out $400+ dollars for a card that wasn't top-of-the-line for even four whole weeks. The price difference between the Ultra and regular cards notwithstanding, I think Nvidia has made a mistake in releasing the Ultra a.) so soon in its product cycle and b.) without any warning at all. Personally, I'm going to give 3dfx a great deal of consideration when the time comes to upgrade to the NV20 or equivalent.
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This seems to be a fairly prevalent mentality amongst 3d gamers and other techies, but it's not a very insightful comment to make. You would most definitely not like to see a Metaverse anytime soon, because there isn't anything you could do with one. All games are goal-driven, at least in some sense. Separating the time-tested design strategy of "Now You Do This" from the still relatively nascent "Look, Pretty Scenery!" takes away all the entertainment value from 3d environments.
People don't remember that Stephenson's Metaverse was supposed to be lightyears ahead of current technology, not just in terms of the graphical representations of objects and people, but in the input methods. Stephenson never actually explained how Hiro and his cohorts interfaced with the Metaverse and controlled their avatars, other than commenting that it was a relatively difficult thing to do. Until navigation and communication in 3d can be brought to a level that's nearly as natural to us as moving around and talking to people in the real world, 3d isn't going to be good for anything except for goal-based games.
"You might want to flashback to earlier reviews of these by...Jon Katz" Now that's a scary thought. Bad drugs that make you read Jon Katz reviews instead of just the normal spiders crawling in your mouth and melting walls. *Shudder*
I'm not trying to be a troll, but why on earth did this deserve to be posted? Just because Jon Katz wrote it doesn't mean it's appropriate. If a reader had submitted this, it would have gotten rejected.
When I called Dell's "hardware" division for help, I spoke to someone who was (obviously) reading directly from their webpage. He blatantly refused to listen to anything I had to say (I'd already ruled several potential causes of the problem out) and wasn't able to answer several of my moderately-technical questions. He eventually told me I was in the wrong place (because "networking involved Windows"), and transfered me to "software". When I mentioned (as nicely as I could) to the tech that I was connected with there that the person I had just been speaking with didn't seem to be very competent in his field, he got insulted and became very tight-lipped about trying to solve my problem. When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he hung up on me.
The whole experience reminded me of when I called to apply for my first credit card. I asked for a more detailed explanation of the APR from the service rep. and she said "We don't have that information. We can only read the sheet that we're given.". While this was mildly amusing to hear from Visa (I, of course, took my business elsewhere), I think Dell and IT companies in general need to excercise a little more selectivity in hiring their support people. If they have to train a candidate for the job, then they'd be better off finding someone else to fill the spot.
Since I was TJHSST class of '00, I'd like to add my two cents.
Off of Stuy's website:
That's just a blatant lie. We beat them regularly in National Merit, and they have what, double our class size?
TJ wasn't a nerd school. That myth needs to be dispelled. I hated it with a passion (although it was better than a normal high school, that's for sure), but not because it was a school for nerds. By far the best classes I took at TJ were in the humanities. The math and science portion of my educational experience there paled in comparison. Sure, Jefferson had its share of nerds, and maybe they were a bit nerdier (and smarter) than your run-of-the-mill nerds, but there are nerds everywhere, and they made up a very normal-sized slice of the population at TJ.
The one thing that I can say about the sci/tech part of TJHSST is that it most emphatically does NOT try to teach you how to "write papers and do research". The great beauty of Jefferson is that it is filled with brilliant students that you can learn from, and teachers who want to help you do whatever it is you want to do. It's a free environment. There aren't any bells, and no one gives you a hard time if you're wandering the halls during class periods. Admissions at TJ aren't just based on test scores. They want bright, creative people who are good at lots of things. We had brilliant artists, great writers, amazing thesbians, and talented musicians. If that meant that we didn't get the "GREAT HIGH SCHOOL PLUG" on /. or that people don't think that we're as competitive in the sci/tech areas, so be it. I didn't have any trouble getting in to a college. ;-)
I can't believe I just read that. You're making the terrible mistake of assuming that other people are like you, and you're assuming a correlation between "intelligence" and responsibility that doesn't exist.
I graduated from the nerdiest high school in the entire nation last year: Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Virginia. We routinely have the most National Merit Semifinalists of any school in the country; the only school to come close to us in recent years has over twice our class size. Because so many of TJ's students are so intelligent and go to great colleges and do great things, it is assumed that they're responsible people and that they can be trusted. Having spent four years of my life in this environment I can safely say that that assumption is FLAWED.
Kids at my high school acted like absolute idiots just as much as kids at other high schools. The only difference that their superior intellect made was that they were able to find extrodinarily brilliant ways to abuse the system and do terrible, awful things. Rather than writing mean notes about teachers and muttering vile invectives about each other under their breath, students organized an online messageboard system (almost as useful and as portable as slashcode) and then blasted teachers and other students under the protection of the first amendment. So many kids cut 8th period (a period added to the school day to allow our geographically diverse student body to participate together in extracirricular activities) that the administration was seriously considering canceling most of the school student organizations. Drugs, alcohol, and violence were all common, as were attempts by students to manipulate the administration for their own, often nefarious, purposes.
As much as I hated high school, I was incredibly thankful that I was able to get into TJ. I know that my experiences would have been much worse at a "normal" school. Highschoolers (or at least some of them) may be intelligent, but that doesn't mean that they can be trusted not to abuse legitimate authority, nor that they are free from malevolent intentions.
It seems to me that the line between "acceptable" and "realistic" is pretty thin. Technology will continue to advance, frame rates will get faster, more triangles will be produced, and things will become more and more "realistic". For games, at least, I think that the willing suspension of disbelief is far more important to how much fun one has than the number of triangles or the frames per second that get pumped up on the screen.
Furthermore, all of this talk about getting average fps up in the 300 range seems a little moronic to me, unless I'm missing some new monitor technology. I'm running at 1600X1200 at 85Hz right now, and as long as the monitor is only refreshing the screen 85 times per second, 85 effective "frames" per second is my absolute best case.
For other nerd related topics, I HIGHLY recommend running down Mike Abrash. He just spoke to us at UIUC and although there was a tinge of Microsoft proselytizing (naturally) to the talk he gave to us, he was one of the best college speakers I've heard yet. His anecdotes about Life algorithms and the development of Xbox were really interesting, and seemed to scale nicely depending on the listener's level of nerdiness (the more of a nerd you were, the harder you laughed). Plus, I mean, he helped make Quake. How much cooler can you get? ;-)
I'm not sure what/if we paid him, but I imagine that if anything it was very little.
It's pretty clear, to me at least, that this is exactly the kind of project open source is meant for. Obviously different people want different things from their instant messaging software, and the flexibility that a great number of open source messaging clients communicating using a shared standard would offer is pretty staggering.
AOL needs to make an intelligent decision (for once) and realize that the popularity (err...or at least LACK of negativity) they would receive by creating and releasing an all-purpose communication standard that incorporates the best of both technologies would far outweigh the few million bucks they could make off of sending banner adds to their proprietary client programs. I mean, who ever actually clicks on the stupid little things, anyways?
I have to admit, Nvidia deserves a lot of credit for making such great chips and pushing the graphical envelope as much as they do, but I'm really not pleased at all with the whole Ultra release. As someone who just bought a new computer complete with a Geforce II GTS, I feel cheated. If there had been some warning (ANY warning) that the chip was going to come in an Ultra flavor, I'd have waited the extra month and made due with my TNT2 a little longer. Instead, I shelled out $400+ dollars for a card that wasn't top-of-the-line for even four whole weeks. The price difference between the Ultra and regular cards notwithstanding, I think Nvidia has made a mistake in releasing the Ultra a.) so soon in its product cycle and b.) without any warning at all. Personally, I'm going to give 3dfx a great deal of consideration when the time comes to upgrade to the NV20 or equivalent.