for something they have spent zero dollars on tv advertising for? (going on the fact that I have never seen an everquest commercial) That's not too shabby. In the games market, it damn near amazing.
Whenever I see a point of view this blatantly ignorant and shallow I weep for the american people, including myself.
So basically what you're saying is, because a few people might die, that the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who died to free this country and give us civil liberties in the first place, every person who ever fought for equal rights in the face of a heavy handed government, everyone who believes that freedom is WORTH dying for, has lived their lives in vain.
News flash, we've killing more civilians at this point in afghanistan "defending" our freedoms then the terrorists killed in the World Trade centers. And at the same time, you advocate giving away the very thing we should be protecting?
Value security over freedom and you buy it at that price my man. Thanks, but I'm not buying.
whups, I should have specified for the additional cost of those components, assuming you have radiant tubing installed in your new home for heat as well.. if you guys even install heat in texas;)
if not, then tubing will run you.50$US per square foot or so and is very easy to install. Still probably cheaper, definitely far more efficient than central AC.
You are obviously not a cooling technician, or if you are, you make your money selling central AC units.
Radiant cooling could easily maintain a comfortable temperature in such an arid climate for the cost of a couple of circulating pumps (low head, DC if you like) and a low voltage thermostat. Condensation is not a problem in Texas last I knew, so a slight oversimplification would be hey, circulating 50, maybe 60 degree water through a concrete base slab works.
That's a damn big improvement, power wise, over central AC, the single biggest energy guzzler you can put in your home.
It really isn't that much of an issue. Now in this area we only get 2-3 hailstorms a year, granted, but the company I worked for previously installed panels for ten years and I never heard of having to replace them because of hail.
Even if it did happen, I bet a good homeowner's insurance could cover it. That's just speculation though.
I would certainly never recommend anyone try doing ANYTHING to the grid without discussing it with their local power company and meeting appropriate safety guidelines.
I'm a big proponent of Solar energy, but come on. Payed off in two years and NETTING $300/month in payback? MAYBE if you include the energy they use in that figure, and if that is quite a stretch.
However yes, many locales do have this sort of net metering set up. You have to demonstrate that you can do it safely but it's just common enough that even utilities up here in Maine have policies on it.
Hardly. Buying your energy from a nuclear power plant will never net YOU, a homeowner, a net profit. Maybe if you live in the town that houses one you'll see something from their tax money.
If you aren't actually OFF the grid, most areas have a net metering program where you can sell excess power to the grid during the day and buy back power at night. This eliminates all the battery banks, a substantial chunk of the cost. If you furthermore design a home to be energy efficient to begin with, you can have an "affordable' solar system. I use quotes as it is undeniably a greater up front cost, but there is a return, though admittedly not much and it takes awhile to accrue.
If you ARE off the grid, then many people go with solar simply based on the economics of having a power line run to your home, if one doesn't already exist, can very quickly outstrip the cost of an entire solar electric system.
And for $1000 US or less, you can get solar hot water collection to at least augment your domestic hot water needs as well, with a definite payback period of less than ten years.
Not that payback is currently the best reason to go with solar. If someone hits a baseball into your panels, there goes your chance of payback for awhile;) But it does frequently exist, and a net zero or close to it for energy manufactured from a clean and renewable resource, for many, is maybe worth forgoing marble countertops.
Interesting that I routinely deal with homes that will think nothing of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to use Antique Jerusalem Stone on the floors, but mention Solar and the first question is, "what's the payback".
Actually, this is starting to sound a lot like an experimental analog robot project a scientist at los alamos was working on that I read about a year ago.
Unfortunately, I have no links and can't remember the magazine, but the gist of it was this scientist was making problem-solving robotic insects out of about $100 in radio shack off the shelf electronic components and no digital programming whatsoever. The robots used the fluctuations in the electric current in their bodies, somehow, to determine when they were hungry, when they were getting energy, etc.
And when faced with obstacles, these robots would actually problem solve, with no processing capacity at all. No one was sure why it worked either according to that article.
A brief experiement showed they did have a very short term "memory" of sorts, in that if they overcame an obstacle and were immediately replaced at the same obstacle, they would solve the problem much faster. However this did not seem to hold true for long.
Perhaps these robots are a hybrid digital/analog processor of sorts or fully analog? I'm glad to see research continuing in this direction as the mysterious article I read seemed to indicate strongly that analog processing of this kind would be critical to our understanding of our minds, which are at most only partially digital in nature.
Here is one story on him: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9804/30/t_t/robots/
a google search on "los alamos analog robot" turns up several others.
When are Barbies going to be regulated for causing unrealistic standards to be set in young children's minds? Or obsession with materialism and shallow values?
Personally I'd say that of all things, the blatantly over the top games like GTA3, Doom and the like are FAR LESS detrimental than those toys are are accepted as ok.. simply BECAUSE they are so extreme. Any sane person knows they are not acceptable behaviour in real life.
The line isn't so clear with some other outlets for young people eh? Not that I'm really advocating regulating Barbie, just pointing out that practically any outlet can result in misuse or negative impact on a child. Ultimately the only responsibility that can be expected lies with the parents to make sure their children have a clear line in their minds between fantasy worlds and reality.
well just in case you check your profile sometime;
that is one of the sides of quake that UT2k3 is borrowing from; the new builds on the weapons are much less spammy.
That's one of the major reasons why I think UT2003 will beat out quake, at least until the next installment; between the movement and weapon options, the reduced spam, faster weapon switching, and better implementation of team games, i really believe it will become the "pro" game of choice.
With the major exceptions of Unreal actually understanding how team games should work and what makes them fun.
Personally I'm very excited that UT2003 seems to be using some of the good ideas that Quake did have, and combining it with both their own new ideas and the best from UT itself. The spam has been cut down, the teamplay enhanced..
Overall, I think this game promises to offer much better gameplay from newbie to elite levels than anything else out there or anything else coming out any time soon. If you're a hardcore gamer, I don't think quake will even come close whether you're into 1v1 or full scale team CTF.
Nope, you didn't miss it, Assault has officially been canned from the UT2003 release. Interestingly enough, the other gametypes available are all "double objective" gametypes;
-Capture the Flag, -Domination 2 (control point on each end, hold both simultaneously for 5 seconds to score a point for your team), -Bombing Run ("bomb" or "ball" in the middle, carry it to the opponent's base to score, kind of like football, and you can throw it to a teammate as well).
My guess is the multiple objective game of Assault had far too few players to justify the surely formidable task of creating new maps for it. Domination was pretty small too, but I'm sure it's not too hard to make a good DOM map now with the tweaks from the old style.
It's too bad though, with some work Assault could have been a much better gametype the second time around.
between globalism as it relates to corporation and as it relates to PEOPLE.
There are definitely two movements in the world focusing on globalism; that which is corporate, and focused on maintaining control of the global market, is one. The track record on that movement shows that it is really a movement by and for coporations to gain power in relation to the governments of the world, in order for them to pursue their business for maximum gain.. often at the expense of the people under them.
The second movement is a social globalism; environmentalists and labor union activists are the first to join forces under this banner. The idea is simple, very simple indeed: inequity creates violence, or even inequity IS violence to some members of these groups. Certainly even if you don't believe inequity is violence, inherently, you can see how exploitation and economic hardship is not good for the world as a whole; it's the stuff of revolutions and violent upheavals.
Hopefully, as the corporate movement gains in power, the social movement can provide a counter balance, though personally I worry about that. Whether you believe in an unfettered free market or not, you cannot argue the right of people to take power by working together; and by organizing they can achieve just this for their uphill battle. Corporations have the advantage; by their very nature, they are already organized, and they have capital to make their messages heard by people in power all over the world. The social organizations will likewise need to organize and unify to a degree never before seen in the world, across national boundaries. The nature of a corporation is to do as little as possible in order to secure its goals... it's up to the people to make sure that "as little as possible" is still in their own best interests.
I think this whole discussion is pretty flimsy in its relation to open source software, but the mindsets are similiar. Why work only for yourself, when you can work for everyone? As some modern interpetations of Darwin would say, the evolutionary winner is not the species which individually is most adapted to its surroundings, but rather, that which is most predisposed to co-operate. For now, the biggest tool to achieving co-operation is money; giving the edge to corporate power. the social movements, as of now, are mostly fringe activists who are motivated by means beyond money.
here's hoping they can achieve enough successes to draw people to the cause as they work to support the dignity of the human race. Even if you aren't an environmentalist; I suggest checking out the Green party/Green party USA website, there is plenty of great discussion of these topics there.
You know, to a large part I agree with this statement, however I do believe it's easy to say that creativity is being "stifled" by technology at this point... if you don't look a little deeper.
First of all, games like pac man and donkey kong are still being made but now they are seen as passe and you'll only find them in little flash or java games. Why? because the creativity of 20 solid years of consumer electronic-based video games has zeroed in on things that people want to play!
There are still fanciful arcade-esque games, like sonic/mario/crash bandicoot types, that have no bearing on reality whatsoever. They are still fairly popular too. But a substantial number of gamers are of the "sim" type; they want to do things larger than life, not necessarily just some abstract contest. Cards and board games are fine for that end of things. For the "sim" focused gamer, heightening the suspension of disbelief, "being there" is what gives the rush, whether it's combat, FPS, or adventure game.
Let's not ignore the large Real time strategy games either; they still use complex interactions coupled with great graphics to acheive a wonderful gaming experience, yet with an unavoidable level of abstraction.
You can boil down the games being released today into a very few basic categorys: RPG, RTS, FPS, combat, racing, sport, maybe one or two others I am not thinking of right now. Now it's easy to say that indicates a lack of creativity, but look at the options we had twenty years ago: a side-scroll "jump and bop", maze game, top view shooter? There weren't that many different ideas really, it's just everything was so abstract (and so new!) it was harder to see the rip offs.
In short, the only thing different now is the originals of the genres have been created. I can't forsee too many new separate genres coming up, I mean, how long can it really continue? Movies are not inventing new genres very often because most of them HAVE BEEN DONE already. different scales (massively multipler for example) may continue to alter things but overall I would say the creativity is still there; we're just in a mature stage in video game developement. The basic structures are settling, the creativity is in the details now.
Not to say people don't just release eye candy hoping it'll sell with no concept of what makes a good game; but good games and creativity is still there in spades IMO, it's just gotten more subtle because of necessity.
the countries that are "doing it right" are the third world nations that are slowly moving ahead with energy plans, i'm sorry, I can't recall specific countries.
the premise was, however, that building a conventional energy infrastructure in these countries would be prohibitively expensive, whereas a decentralized energy plan utilizing non-point source energy like solar and wind power generation actually made more economic sense, given their lack of a standing infrastructure to utilize. Later, if they grow, these decentralized networks can be tied together if necessary.
the end result is that they would have a large, decentralized, and self-sufficient energy network; stable energy costs, and minimal reoccuring expenses related to energy.
as for not being able to store solar or wind power, that's patentedly untrue. Ignoring batteries, a simple pump and tank of water can store energy quite simply; power the pump to push water up hill, release it and run it back down to turn a generator when you need the power. simple. if you have a water supply (and if you don't, you're not living there..) and any kind of incline handy, you're all set.
is that in most cases, there are benefits beyond "saving the planet" to living a more Green lifestyle. Most Green design not only provides environmental benefit but also benefits such as self-sufficiency, health benefits, or even just creature comfort (a good natural-lighting design in a building can immesurable enhance the space, for example).
Even beyond Global warming, there are a slew of inarguable truths that indicate a stance that is green-er (not Green, but greener) is necessary. Ever taken a trip to a solid waste facility? All those guys can talk about is how they are running out of space because of all the unnecessary trash we generate. In areas such as that, greener developements (less packaging, for example) saves everyone money! yes, money! believe it or not, green lifestyle can actually be economically feasible.
The only question on my mind is, when the oil starts getting low OR we no longer have a decent source (presumably because the oil producing nations have a "shortage"), is America going to retain its status against now-developing countries that are doing it right from the beginning? Are we larger enough to convert when necessary?
If not, we need to start planning, because we have an achilles heel, and its name is oil, no matter how you slice it.
when they weren't busy beating them for being too slow with the beer.
who cares?
"sports" are not for atheletes at all. Chess is a multi million dollar worldwide competition. Whether you want to call it "sport" or "competition" or whatever is completely immaterial; the difference is, there is visible action in gaming, and it's getting more realistic every year.
You seriously think when you can't tell whether a player model is a human being or pixels on a screen, that the origin is somehow going to affect the spectator?
No way. Even *if* it only caught the "star trek" crowd, that's more than enough to make it a success. The jocks can go suck down protein shakes and grow beerguts at 25 just like those oh so sedentary video gamers. So what.
All the "lame ass geeks" do is make fun of grown men putting on stretch pants and jumping into big piles of other grown men. Does that change anything? no. Do the frat boy jocks have a damn thing to do with this topic? no. Do more than one out of 100,000 make any money in their sports? Probably not.
Plus, I'm a "lame ass geek" who's girlfriend used to be the captain of the cheerleading squad, so:P hehe.
HA! you show me one quake player who eats better than any high school athelete
-go read about the #1 Quake 1v1 deathmatcher. He follows a regimen just like any other athlete, minus the steroids and potential physical injury in game. You ever have a day where you feel "not quite on?"... that's what he trains to avoid; to be lightning sharp. Not to throw balls further, or run faster, but to process and respond with blazing intensity. The *video game* doesn't excercise his mind; he excercises it to excel in his competition. Again, like chess, which is a world competition, but much more intense.
and playing video games to exrcise your mind??? TRY CONVERSATION!!! or a book, most anything is better than the repetitiveness of a video game!
-Repetitiveness? Was pac-man the last game you played? Have you EVER played a team game online? I doubt it. Check out Capture the Flag for Unreal Tournament; you have a "field", the rules of the game are programmed, and you and your teammates try to "run" the flag from one side to the other; sounds kinda like football doesn't it? Oh wait, football fields come in one variety, not dozens, they don't have "guns", all they can do is line up, throw balls and run. Boy that must be repetitive, huh? But it's not; they have plays and strategies and no two games are alike; Just like online team gaming.
maybe you don't play the sports you watch, and i'd agree that millions of Americans don't necessarily play them either. but i do, and so do all my friends. Maybe more people should? This would definately reduce your risk of heart disease, among many other ailments...
-Yeah, sports are popular and televised because they reduce your risk of heart disease, how foolish of me not to make that connection before. Just cause someone plays games doesn't mean they don't go outside man, not that this comment had a damn thing to do with the topic at hand. Anyway, I don't *watch* sports, I *play* them.. online.
Slashdot Mirror
for something they have spent zero dollars on tv advertising for? (going on the fact that I have never seen an everquest commercial) That's not too shabby. In the games market, it damn near amazing.
Imagine what it could do with good media support.
Whenever I see a point of view this blatantly ignorant and shallow I weep for the american people, including myself.
So basically what you're saying is, because a few people might die, that the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who died to free this country and give us civil liberties in the first place, every person who ever fought for equal rights in the face of a heavy handed government, everyone who believes that freedom is WORTH dying for, has lived their lives in vain.
News flash, we've killing more civilians at this point in afghanistan "defending" our freedoms then the terrorists killed in the World Trade centers. And at the same time, you advocate giving away the very thing we should be protecting?
Value security over freedom and you buy it at that price my man. Thanks, but I'm not buying.
apparently I missed that, my mistake.. I think texas I think desert, what can ya expect from a damn yankee, right?
urp..
whups, I should have specified for the additional cost of those components, assuming you have radiant tubing installed in your new home for heat as well.. if you guys even install heat in texas ;)
.50$US per square foot or so and is very easy to install. Still probably cheaper, definitely far more efficient than central AC.
if not, then tubing will run you
You are obviously not a cooling technician, or if you are, you make your money selling central AC units.
Radiant cooling could easily maintain a comfortable temperature in such an arid climate for the cost of a couple of circulating pumps (low head, DC if you like) and a low voltage thermostat. Condensation is not a problem in Texas last I knew, so a slight oversimplification would be hey, circulating 50, maybe 60 degree water through a concrete base slab works.
That's a damn big improvement, power wise, over central AC, the single biggest energy guzzler you can put in your home.
You need to provide a LOT more detail than that if you want that statistic to be taken seriously.
It really isn't that much of an issue. Now in this area we only get 2-3 hailstorms a year, granted, but the company I worked for previously installed panels for ten years and I never heard of having to replace them because of hail.
Even if it did happen, I bet a good homeowner's insurance could cover it. That's just speculation though.
They are fairly resistant to such things you know :P
I would certainly never recommend anyone try doing ANYTHING to the grid without discussing it with their local power company and meeting appropriate safety guidelines.
I'm a big proponent of Solar energy, but come on. Payed off in two years and NETTING $300/month in payback? MAYBE if you include the energy they use in that figure, and if that is quite a stretch.
However yes, many locales do have this sort of net metering set up. You have to demonstrate that you can do it safely but it's just common enough that even utilities up here in Maine have policies on it.
Hardly. Buying your energy from a nuclear power plant will never net YOU, a homeowner, a net profit. Maybe if you live in the town that houses one you'll see something from their tax money.
;) But it does frequently exist, and a net zero or close to it for energy manufactured from a clean and renewable resource, for many, is maybe worth forgoing marble countertops.
If you aren't actually OFF the grid, most areas have a net metering program where you can sell excess power to the grid during the day and buy back power at night. This eliminates all the battery banks, a substantial chunk of the cost. If you furthermore design a home to be energy efficient to begin with, you can have an "affordable' solar system. I use quotes as it is undeniably a greater up front cost, but there is a return, though admittedly not much and it takes awhile to accrue.
If you ARE off the grid, then many people go with solar simply based on the economics of having a power line run to your home, if one doesn't already exist, can very quickly outstrip the cost of an entire solar electric system.
And for $1000 US or less, you can get solar hot water collection to at least augment your domestic hot water needs as well, with a definite payback period of less than ten years.
Not that payback is currently the best reason to go with solar. If someone hits a baseball into your panels, there goes your chance of payback for awhile
Interesting that I routinely deal with homes that will think nothing of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to use Antique Jerusalem Stone on the floors, but mention Solar and the first question is, "what's the payback".
ok, which Digital Extremes programmer are you :D
Actually, this is starting to sound a lot like an experimental analog robot project a scientist at los alamos was working on that I read about a year ago.
s /
Unfortunately, I have no links and can't remember the magazine, but the gist of it was this scientist was making problem-solving robotic insects out of about $100 in radio shack off the shelf electronic components and no digital programming whatsoever. The robots used the fluctuations in the electric current in their bodies, somehow, to determine when they were hungry, when they were getting energy, etc.
And when faced with obstacles, these robots would actually problem solve, with no processing capacity at all. No one was sure why it worked either according to that article.
A brief experiement showed they did have a very short term "memory" of sorts, in that if they overcame an obstacle and were immediately replaced at the same obstacle, they would solve the problem much faster. However this did not seem to hold true for long.
Perhaps these robots are a hybrid digital/analog processor of sorts or fully analog? I'm glad to see research continuing in this direction as the mysterious article I read seemed to indicate strongly that analog processing of this kind would be critical to our understanding of our minds, which are at most only partially digital in nature.
Here is one story on him: http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9804/30/t_t/robot
a google search on "los alamos analog robot" turns up several others.
interesting how that works, eh? regardless, even the evil barbie will not claim a young mind with good parental guidance ;)
Exactly..
When are Barbies going to be regulated for causing unrealistic standards to be set in young children's minds? Or obsession with materialism and shallow values?
Personally I'd say that of all things, the blatantly over the top games like GTA3, Doom and the like are FAR LESS detrimental than those toys are are accepted as ok.. simply BECAUSE they are so extreme. Any sane person knows they are not acceptable behaviour in real life.
The line isn't so clear with some other outlets for young people eh? Not that I'm really advocating regulating Barbie, just pointing out that practically any outlet can result in misuse or negative impact on a child. Ultimately the only responsibility that can be expected lies with the parents to make sure their children have a clear line in their minds between fantasy worlds and reality.
well just in case you check your profile sometime;
that is one of the sides of quake that UT2k3 is borrowing from; the new builds on the weapons are much less spammy.
That's one of the major reasons why I think UT2003 will beat out quake, at least until the next installment; between the movement and weapon options, the reduced spam, faster weapon switching, and better implementation of team games, i really believe it will become the "pro" game of choice.
With the major exceptions of Unreal actually understanding how team games should work and what makes them fun.
Personally I'm very excited that UT2003 seems to be using some of the good ideas that Quake did have, and combining it with both their own new ideas and the best from UT itself. The spam has been cut down, the teamplay enhanced..
Overall, I think this game promises to offer much better gameplay from newbie to elite levels than anything else out there or anything else coming out any time soon. If you're a hardcore gamer, I don't think quake will even come close whether you're into 1v1 or full scale team CTF.
Nope, you didn't miss it, Assault has officially been canned from the UT2003 release. Interestingly enough, the other gametypes available are all "double objective" gametypes;
-Capture the Flag,
-Domination 2 (control point on each end, hold both simultaneously for 5 seconds to score a point for your team),
-Bombing Run ("bomb" or "ball" in the middle, carry it to the opponent's base to score, kind of like football, and you can throw it to a teammate as well).
My guess is the multiple objective game of Assault had far too few players to justify the surely formidable task of creating new maps for it. Domination was pretty small too, but I'm sure it's not too hard to make a good DOM map now with the tweaks from the old style.
It's too bad though, with some work Assault could have been a much better gametype the second time around.
i agree with you utterly, I just believe that it is the activists that get the dialogues started, plant the seeds, and allow change to begin.
:D
no harm in considering the future of our evolution, after all
between globalism as it relates to corporation and as it relates to PEOPLE.
There are definitely two movements in the world focusing on globalism; that which is corporate, and focused on maintaining control of the global market, is one. The track record on that movement shows that it is really a movement by and for coporations to gain power in relation to the governments of the world, in order for them to pursue their business for maximum gain.. often at the expense of the people under them.
The second movement is a social globalism; environmentalists and labor union activists are the first to join forces under this banner. The idea is simple, very simple indeed: inequity creates violence, or even inequity IS violence to some members of these groups. Certainly even if you don't believe inequity is violence, inherently, you can see how exploitation and economic hardship is not good for the world as a whole; it's the stuff of revolutions and violent upheavals.
Hopefully, as the corporate movement gains in power, the social movement can provide a counter balance, though personally I worry about that. Whether you believe in an unfettered free market or not, you cannot argue the right of people to take power by working together; and by organizing they can achieve just this for their uphill battle. Corporations have the advantage; by their very nature, they are already organized, and they have capital to make their messages heard by people in power all over the world. The social organizations will likewise need to organize and unify to a degree never before seen in the world, across national boundaries. The nature of a corporation is to do as little as possible in order to secure its goals... it's up to the people to make sure that "as little as possible" is still in their own best interests.
I think this whole discussion is pretty flimsy in its relation to open source software, but the mindsets are similiar. Why work only for yourself, when you can work for everyone? As some modern interpetations of Darwin would say, the evolutionary winner is not the species which individually is most adapted to its surroundings, but rather, that which is most predisposed to co-operate. For now, the biggest tool to achieving co-operation is money; giving the edge to corporate power. the social movements, as of now, are mostly fringe activists who are motivated by means beyond money.
here's hoping they can achieve enough successes to draw people to the cause as they work to support the dignity of the human race. Even if you aren't an environmentalist; I suggest checking out the Green party/Green party USA website, there is plenty of great discussion of these topics there.
http://greenparty.org/
You know, to a large part I agree with this statement, however I do believe it's easy to say that creativity is being "stifled" by technology at this point... if you don't look a little deeper.
First of all, games like pac man and donkey kong are still being made but now they are seen as passe and you'll only find them in little flash or java games. Why? because the creativity of 20 solid years of consumer electronic-based video games has zeroed in on things that people want to play!
There are still fanciful arcade-esque games, like sonic/mario/crash bandicoot types, that have no bearing on reality whatsoever. They are still fairly popular too. But a substantial number of gamers are of the "sim" type; they want to do things larger than life, not necessarily just some abstract contest. Cards and board games are fine for that end of things. For the "sim" focused gamer, heightening the suspension of disbelief, "being there" is what gives the rush, whether it's combat, FPS, or adventure game.
Let's not ignore the large Real time strategy games either; they still use complex interactions coupled with great graphics to acheive a wonderful gaming experience, yet with an unavoidable level of abstraction.
You can boil down the games being released today into a very few basic categorys: RPG, RTS, FPS, combat, racing, sport, maybe one or two others I am not thinking of right now. Now it's easy to say that indicates a lack of creativity, but look at the options we had twenty years ago: a side-scroll "jump and bop", maze game, top view shooter? There weren't that many different ideas really, it's just everything was so abstract (and so new!) it was harder to see the rip offs.
In short, the only thing different now is the originals of the genres have been created. I can't forsee too many new separate genres coming up, I mean, how long can it really continue? Movies are not inventing new genres very often because most of them HAVE BEEN DONE already. different scales (massively multipler for example) may continue to alter things but overall I would say the creativity is still there; we're just in a mature stage in video game developement. The basic structures are settling, the creativity is in the details now.
Not to say people don't just release eye candy hoping it'll sell with no concept of what makes a good game; but good games and creativity is still there in spades IMO, it's just gotten more subtle because of necessity.
the countries that are "doing it right" are the third world nations that are slowly moving ahead with energy plans, i'm sorry, I can't recall specific countries.
the premise was, however, that building a conventional energy infrastructure in these countries would be prohibitively expensive, whereas a decentralized energy plan utilizing non-point source energy like solar and wind power generation actually made more economic sense, given their lack of a standing infrastructure to utilize. Later, if they grow, these decentralized networks can be tied together if necessary.
the end result is that they would have a large, decentralized, and self-sufficient energy network; stable energy costs, and minimal reoccuring expenses related to energy.
as for not being able to store solar or wind power, that's patentedly untrue. Ignoring batteries, a simple pump and tank of water can store energy quite simply; power the pump to push water up hill, release it and run it back down to turn a generator when you need the power. simple. if you have a water supply (and if you don't, you're not living there..) and any kind of incline handy, you're all set.
is that in most cases, there are benefits beyond "saving the planet" to living a more Green lifestyle. Most Green design not only provides environmental benefit but also benefits such as self-sufficiency, health benefits, or even just creature comfort (a good natural-lighting design in a building can immesurable enhance the space, for example).
Even beyond Global warming, there are a slew of inarguable truths that indicate a stance that is green-er (not Green, but greener) is necessary. Ever taken a trip to a solid waste facility? All those guys can talk about is how they are running out of space because of all the unnecessary trash we generate. In areas such as that, greener developements (less packaging, for example) saves everyone money! yes, money! believe it or not, green lifestyle can actually be economically feasible.
The only question on my mind is, when the oil starts getting low OR we no longer have a decent source (presumably because the oil producing nations have a "shortage"), is America going to retain its status against now-developing countries that are doing it right from the beginning? Are we larger enough to convert when necessary?
If not, we need to start planning, because we have an achilles heel, and its name is oil, no matter how you slice it.
when they weren't busy beating them for being too slow with the beer.
:P hehe.
who cares?
"sports" are not for atheletes at all. Chess is a multi million dollar worldwide competition. Whether you want to call it "sport" or "competition" or whatever is completely immaterial; the difference is, there is visible action in gaming, and it's getting more realistic every year.
You seriously think when you can't tell whether a player model is a human being or pixels on a screen, that the origin is somehow going to affect the spectator?
No way. Even *if* it only caught the "star trek" crowd, that's more than enough to make it a success. The jocks can go suck down protein shakes and grow beerguts at 25 just like those oh so sedentary video gamers. So what.
All the "lame ass geeks" do is make fun of grown men putting on stretch pants and jumping into big piles of other grown men. Does that change anything? no. Do the frat boy jocks have a damn thing to do with this topic? no. Do more than one out of 100,000 make any money in their sports? Probably not.
Plus, I'm a "lame ass geek" who's girlfriend used to be the captain of the cheerleading squad, so
HA! you show me one quake player who eats better than any high school athelete
-go read about the #1 Quake 1v1 deathmatcher. He follows a regimen just like any other athlete, minus the steroids and potential physical injury in game. You ever have a day where you feel "not quite on?"... that's what he trains to avoid; to be lightning sharp. Not to throw balls further, or run faster, but to process and respond with blazing intensity. The *video game* doesn't excercise his mind; he excercises it to excel in his competition. Again, like chess, which is a world competition, but much more intense.
and playing video games to exrcise your mind??? TRY CONVERSATION!!! or a book, most anything is better than the repetitiveness of a video game!
-Repetitiveness? Was pac-man the last game you played? Have you EVER played a team game online? I doubt it. Check out Capture the Flag for Unreal Tournament; you have a "field", the rules of the game are programmed, and you and your teammates try to "run" the flag from one side to the other; sounds kinda like football doesn't it? Oh wait, football fields come in one variety, not dozens, they don't have "guns", all they can do is line up, throw balls and run. Boy that must be repetitive, huh? But it's not; they have plays and strategies and no two games are alike; Just like online team gaming.
maybe you don't play the sports you watch, and i'd agree that millions of Americans don't necessarily play them either. but i do, and so do all my friends. Maybe more people should? This would definately reduce your risk of heart disease, among many other ailments...
-Yeah, sports are popular and televised because they reduce your risk of heart disease, how foolish of me not to make that connection before. Just cause someone plays games doesn't mean they don't go outside man, not that this comment had a damn thing to do with the topic at hand. Anyway, I don't *watch* sports, I *play* them.. online.