A "Gold Standard" version of Wow would simply mean there is a fixed amount of gold in the world. Since none of the NPCs actually exchange gold with each other or function as anything other than animated figurines, any gold-giving NPC would permanently run out of gold at some point and any gold-receiving NPC would constantly increase their inaccessible stash.
The reason there's no massive inflation in Wow is two-fold: 1) Since player actions are what generates gold, the amount of gold in the world is roughly equal to (the number of players in the world) * (the amount of gold-generating work they are doing). Gold-supply scales perfectly with player-supply.
2) NPC item prices are fixed and don't respond to the 'market'
Game designers "don't see the point" of real AI in games? Not surprising. Let me summarize the basic fallacy of the whole gaming industry: They think games are like every other medium (movies, music, etc); a static experience produced in a studio and then handed down to consumers to passively enjoy. But the real potential of the gaming medium is giving players the ability to write their own experiences.
Because game designers insist on dictating the sequence of events, there isn't ROOM for real AI. You want this NPC to make meaningful, autonomous decisions about game events and communicate them to you? No wait, that would conflict with all the scripted crap we paid some actress to recite in a studio. Want to try winning that 'bad guy' over to your side? Sorry, but we spent sooo much time on this elaborate boss fight coming up... just sit back, trust us, we've got a GREAT idea for what you should do. And everyone else who plays this game. Every time they play it. Just keep going through the ONLY door that opens and keep killing EVERYTHING you see. You're going to feel like a real rebel cowboy hero after you perform the exact sequence of events we require of you and the 10 million others who played this game.
AI is essentially dynamic decision making. What's the point of dynamic decision making if everything that matters in the game is already pre-determined?
You make good arguments, and to some degree, I accept them. However I would guess that you are male, only because you didn't really address the other side of the issue: the rights of the mother. See, the question is not exactly "should we kill fetuses?", it's more a question of "how do we value the rights of the fetus in relation to the rights of the mother?"
A fetus is in nearly every sense a parasite. It grows into the uterine lining and 'hijacks' the mother's blood vessels. But a mother's body typically will not reject this parasite on its own, for obvious reasons. What rights does a woman have to control her own body, with the assistance of doctors?
Rarely do I see people offer any good policy suggestions in response to the abortion problem, they're either for full criminalization or full legalization. But the spectrum of possibility is far more diverse than that. Here's my suggestion: every abortion request should go before a judge. Abortion judges should be required to abide by a minimum federal list of standards for allowing abortion, including health of the mother, cases of non-consensual sex/fertilization, or the stupidity of a minor. Beyond that, locality-specific standards should apply. I personally don't think adult irresponsibility should ever lead to an abortion. Make the mother have the child, then if she still doesn't want it, give the child state-funded care and make the mother and father pay for it. (Requires DNA test at time of birth, which I think all children should have anyway, if only to shut down the Murray Show).
But honestly, despite being a blue voter all the way, I don't think the federal government has the authority to guarantee or deny abortion rights to cases not involving health of the mother, non-consensuality or minors. I think beyond that, each abortion request needs to be considered on its own merits by local magistrates.
Also, cases should be kept secret if the mother requests that. Nobody should be discouraged from requesting an abortion through fear of exposure/retribution. And people should have the option to 'order' their child mandatory, implanted birth control. Judges should also be able to order mandatory contraception in extreme cases, or when the mother/father simply don't have the income to provide for more children.
Now looking at my opinions as a whole, I would say they are expressly pro-life and almost guaranteed to reduce unnessecary abortions. But the funny thing is, the real 'pro-life' nuts out there would hate these ideas, because the foundation of their anti-abortion ideas are actually anti-sex ideas. They see abortion as a way of 'cheating' God's design for sex, a way of avoiding the consequences and they think of contraception in the same way. You can always tell the real nuts because they're the ones telling poor people NOT to use condoms. *roll eyes*
Let me explain what you mean. You're complaining about a system where 'rewards' (loot, xp, money, etc) materialize out of thin air. When you killed that merloc and looted its corpse, the money you got from it didn't come from anywhere, the merloc didn't 'earn' it. The merloc didn't spend 10 years eating saltwater fish to grow the [Thick Merloc Scale] you tore off it. It never gathered the raw materials for a [Cracked Short Bow]. In five minutes another identical merloc is going to appear with some more crap on it, all out of thin air. You think that's stupid. Of course it's stupid. The alternative is to have a system where players and non-player characters have to compete for persistent, LIMITED materials/resources/loot/energy. A system where not everyone can be winners, and hard work doesn't always pay off.
But we get plenty of that in real life, which is why we play games. Games where EVERYONE can be a winner, and the least amount of effort (clicking buttons, sitting in chairs, barely thinking) can ALWAYS produce 'rewards'.
You can't have it both ways, either a realistic system where rewards are limited and people lose as often as they win, or a fantasy system where rewards appear out of thin air.
You're not paying attention. The Justice Dept sent a letter to congress describing their legal position. Their position is that the NSA program does NOT comply with the content of the 1978 FISA law. They use the only exemption to the FISA law, "except when authorized by statute", to argue that congress' Authorization to Use Military Force against Al Qaeda is such a statute. (Nevermind that the administration specifically asked congress for additional text in the AUMF to give the president unlimited powers in the US and congress said no freaking way.)
We don't know the details of the NSA program. Your assertion that "NO calls that were within the US between US Persons were intercepted without a warrant" is just as uninformed as anything anyone else has said here about the program. What we DO know is the administration's legal argument. Let me walk you through it:
During the time we are in a state of war with "terrorists" (read: the rest of our lives), the president has _unchecked_ authority to do anything, so long as it can be loosely related to fighting those terrorists. Why "unchecked"? Let's go through the list of non-executive branches. Congress: Nowhere in the AUMF does it say "the president gets secret access to any information he can get his hands on". They can't RE-criminalize warrantless searches. Furthermore, the NSA operation was a secret even from Congress. Changes to NSA policy are supposed to go through the House and Senate Intelligence Committes, telling a few congressmen and swearing them to secrecy does not allow them to provide oversight. Under the Justice Dept. interpretation of the law, what oversight does Congress have?
Judicial? The program was a secret, and TELLING anyone about the program was a crime. So for the telcos who were approached by the NSA, what legal recourse did they have?
So regardless of the program's details, through their legal defense the administration has declared they have the right to secretly destroy privacy rights with no oversight whatsoever. The administration has declared constitutional checks and balances void when it comes to limiting executive power. Now we will see conservatives divided between those who actually ARE patriots and will defend our system of government, and those would are simply apologists for whatever the administration does.
>>Can't have Card's anti-war message coming through too clearly now.
Huh? Card is a hawk. I thought the message of the book was "Blow the shit out of your enemies because they are evil, ignore your weak human feelings of remorse."
Card is a Mormon. Mormons love to seperate people into "worthy" and "unworthy" categories. I know because my family is mormon. In Ender's Game, he invents prefectly evil enemies with no redeeming qualities. They are foils; fabricated devices for creating lots of guiltless Ender vs evil battles. It makes for a neat fantasy. I don't see an anti-war message though.
**SPOILER ALERT** If I remember right, in the end Ender gets to have his cake and eat it too. He gets to be the hero for defeating those nasty nasty bugs, but he gets to remain innocent because he didn't know he was committing genocide. I suppose his latent guilt is supposed to engender some sympathy. At least the kids will sleep easy at night. "Ender sure kicks ass! I'm glad he's not intentionally killing anyone though!"
Agree completely with parent. You'd think that a media conglomerate with $13bn in revenues would at some point come to the obvious conclusion that electronic distribution is the future. Amazingly they still manage to convince themselves that nothing will change and they can maintain their strangehold with legal claims and belligerence.
You missed the part where Valve and Vivendi renegotiated their contract to allow for electronic distribution over Steam.
Vivendi's legal claim is that Newell 'misled' them by saying he didn't think Valve would make much money with Steam. That's like letting someone punch you in the stomach and then complaining when it hurts too much, it's laughable. If I was a lawyer for VUG I'd be embarassed to describe that claim to a judge.
Who modded THAT up? Informative?!? Explain to me exactly why ATI would have a copy of the HL2 SOURCE CODE. You think Valve is contracting ATI to proofread their source comments for them or something?!?
What kind of yellowpaper conspiracy bullshit is this? Are we supposed to believe that Core/Eidos is in on this too, since the FX cards suck ass at DX9 features in Tomb Raider AOD? How about Bungine/Microsoft/Gearbox, since FX cards have been shown to perform poorly on the new features in Halo PC? Let's see, who else... oh, obviously FutureMark is in on it too, since FX cards can't compete in 3DMark03!
How about doing some research before posting crap like this. According to Valve, nVidia not only put HL2 benchmark-specific hacks in their 5x drivers (like camera-path specific occlusion culling), but they also put hacks in the 5.x 'press beta' that they never intend to release. THAT's Valve's reason for demanding that reviewers only use publicly available drivers.
And for information on NV's "magic" 5x drivers, here are some links:
Driverheaven confirms nVidia 'cheats' in Detonator 5x drivers:
Posting some ignorant fanboy's conspiracy theory e-mail is pretty lame. Yes, ATI and Valve have a business relationship. That certainly does not preclude the fact that FX cards suck at DX9!
You are wrong. The subscription service you're referring to is for renting games that Valve makes with the HL2 engine. If you go to the store and buy HL2, you have no obligation to pay a subscription. You have the game already. Subscription is an option for people who would not be inclined to pay $40x2 for expansion packs, but WOULD consider paying 10 bucks for a month or two to play them. It makes a lot of sense, and it has nothing to do with MMOGs or their pricing scheme.
People, try to understand this, the subscription option is AN OPTION TO RENT GAMES YOU WOULD NORMALLY HAVE TO BUY IN THE STORE.
Wrong. Your account is tied to your Half-Life 2 license. If you get banned from HL2 multiplayer, your ban is tied to your HL2 license, which costs about 50 bucks.
The solution, obviously, is to allow players to 'upgrade' to multiplayer if they want. Since Steam will be the HL2 launcher, all the SP-only owners will always have the option to upgrade to SP + MP with a credit card over Steam.
They will sell the regular version everywhere. The different SKUs are not retailer specific. Retailers will buy whatever they think will sell. Valve referred to the SP-only version as the 'wal-mart' version because stores like wal-mart will carry more copies of SP-only than game stores, just because the kind of people who go to game stores probably won't want SP-only.
You are completely wrong. Why do people insist on making stuff up and then getting mad about it?
what ever happened to putting it on a dsc, putting the disc in the box, and giving the customers a simple package with a working, non-crippled product in it?
Half-life 2 will be on a disc, in a box. You will also have the option of purchasing it online. If your store is out of stock, or you live in Latvia, or you just don't like going to the store, this will probably be a good option for you. Options are good.
this is going to confuse the hell out of parents and grandparents buying the game for the upcoming holiday season.
COMPUTERS confuse the hell out of parents and grandparents. Nothing is going to solve that. But the pricing model gives these people an option to spend less money and buy the single-player game only. Are you saying they shouldn't have that option?!
if anything, make the game you get in all the boxes the same, and put a soundtrack cd, a t-shirt, a map, a pewter ordinator figurine, whatever in the collectors version.. not extra game content.
That IS what they're doing. Where did you get the idea that 'extra game content' would be in the special edition? It's going to be just like the special edition of any other game. Please stop making things up and getting angry about them.
I seriously think that with the various rediculous distribution methods, this will kill the mod community for HL2 before it even has a chance of being born.
That sentence is completely illogical. You really think that giving people more options for buying the game will somehow 'kill the mod community'? How does one have anything remotely to do with the other? It seems like whenever someone is afraid of something new Valve will do they use the "BUT IT WILL KILL THE MOD COMMUNITY!!11!" statement as a last resort, as though it carries some kind of weight that automatically wins all arguments.
Ok, I'll try answering the questions. No, there will not be an 'additional monthly fee' for xbox half-life 2. The monthly subscription thing is NOT for halflife 2. It is for forthcoming games using the half-life 2 engine that Valve will develop/publish. This will include expansion packs like Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and things like Team Fortress 2. The subscription fee is just A WAY TO RENT these games, instead of paying for each one at the store.
Valve has said there will be a HL2 benchmark released before the game, so you can test your hardware against it. But there will not be a demo before release.
The new pricing model is actually pretty cool. The moms and dads who shop at wal-mart for christmas games for their kids will be able to buy the single-player version for a discount price. Game enthusiasts will be able to buy singleplayer + multiplayer for normal price. And in the future, people who want to try out expansion packs or new multiplayer games for a month or two without having to buy each of them at the store will be able to pay 10 bucks to play all of them for a month.
For some reason people have been getting pretty confused about how this works, and the inevitable "Valve is trying to screw us!" keeps popping up. If anything, the new pricing model gives people more value for their money, not less. Some people don't LIKE multiplayer, they should have an option to pay less and only purchase single player. Some people will want to try out expansion packs and TF2 without having to pay full price for each of them, they should have the option to do so. It's all about more options.
"If someone buys a DVD and watches it on the Nintendo GameCube, we wouldn't receive any revenue from that. We'd rather have them play our games."
This guy is their VP of Marketing?! No wonder Nintendo isn't winning! My dog's ass could understand marketing concepts better than this guy. I hope the interviewer laughed so hard he blew snot all over the room.
I still haven't bought a console, but Nintendo has never even been a consideration for me simply because I don't have a DVD player yet. There are about 2 games on each system I'd like to own, why would I buy the one system without DVD? Morons. "But it'll be small, so japanese school girls can carry it in their backpacks!"
Now if it came with a japanese schoolgirl... THAT would be marketing.
The Country of Venezuelais now the property of the United States government.
The nation and it's inhabitants were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.
Venezuela pled guilty to conspiring to violate federal copyright laws by illegally "modifying" the digital time-keeping mechanism of clocks. Under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Clockwork Act), the modification of clocks to display an unauthorized time is illegal, no matter what American or non-American police state you live in. "If people were allowed to make their clocks show whatever time they wanted, it might allow them to read a time that the manufacturer never intended, like 14 o'clock" declared Ayatollah Ashcroft in a press conference today. "Not only is that illegal, it's wrong, and naughty. Next thing you know they'll be bathing in the nude or teaching women to read."
As a result, the country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government. The country and it's people will immediately be put to their rightly intended use: the production of inferior quality candles to be used in Catholic rituals.
"'I wake with the sun,' said Rene Osurna, who works at a shipping company. 'And if you're two minutes late to the office, and everybody else is too, there's no problem.'"
You work at a SHIPPING COMPANY and you don't care what time it is?! Are you on powerful anti-depressants? If you're two minutes late to the plane with your packages, there IS a problem.
2:09 PM, Feb 23, 2003 Shortly after receiving a telephone call from US President Bush, Tony Blair announced that he was wrong about alternative energy, that it is actually part of an "Axis of Evilnessity". Blair also said he recently read in some college essays on the internet that alternative energy would help fund terrorism. It was also revealed that the UK will be joining a "league of allies" in the US-led "War on Liberals". "I believe, and I think the people of the UK stand behind me on this, that we should do whatever Bush says, if it helps kill terrorists."
>>In this case, each band member got 0.476% of the total gross of the sales of the album they worked on.
At my job, I get approximately 0.307% of the total gross of the sales of the software I work on.
Your math may be accurate, but that doesn't make it relevant. Consider this:
Your software product generated 10 million in sales. This was a combined effort of about 200 to 300 people. You get 1/325th of the revenue.
Your 4-man electrical band produced music that generated 10 million in sales. This music could be distributed/sold over the internet, and the only costs would be 1) Studio time - 200,000 2) Music Video/Marketing - 600,000 3) Electronic Retailer fees - 20% - 2 million 4) Interest on the 800,000 in loans - 10% - 80,000.
We'll round it up and say it costs 3 million to produce, market, and sell the album. 7 million / 4 = 1.75 million = almost TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than 40,000. If you and three other programmers spent a full year of your life coding a hot new software product, on your own, using LOANS to pay for expenses, you sure as hell would want more than ".476%" of the revenue!
Sounds like you're only interested in the 'adventure' aspect of the Dune books. As with most sci-fi, the adventure/plot of Dune is secondary to the anaolgies and ideas the author is trying to describe.
The second and third books are totally essential to the Dune story, the whole central theme of the trilogy (the problems with messiahs/heroes)doesn't even take shape until the second book. I would recommend people NOT read just the first book, it provides an unbalanced vision of the whole. If you're expecting a "Captain Action Verses The Monkeys From Mars!" type novel, don't bother reading any of the books at all, you won't get it.
Stop reading the books when they become boring to you. For me, the whole last two books were boring. There were no new ideas, just more superhuman powers. Books 1 through 4 though, were FASCINATING. Everytime I read God Emperor I feel a little more enlightened.
Re:This won't fix bad games.
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Infinite Games?
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Come on man, use a little imagination. Take this for example: Online games like Everquest and Counter-Strike are popular because of the experience of interacting with other players. In essence, the players are creating an infinite amount of content for each other. Counter-Strike is like chess in that every game starts the same and there is no plot, but every game is distinctly different and interesting. Replace human players with convincing AI and voila, you have an egrossing single-player game of near infinite possibilities.
>>Even if we had an AI smart enough to behave like a human, we will never have an AI smart enough to be as creative as humans can.
And why is that? There are a lot of people who think otherwise. If an AI can 'behave' like a human, isn't creativity part of our behavior?
Books and movies need a pre-written plot. Games do not, that's the difference. A person can have as much fun building a city or managing a galactic empire or playing a team sport/battle in a game as they can reading/interacting with a story someone else wrote. In the examples I just mentioned, the 'story' of the game is almost fully created by the players/AI. Like someone else mentioned, a basketball game does not have a pre-written plot, but there is still a story to it that is played out on the court, by the interaction of independent intelligences.
I loved all the old adventure games too. But in the end, I have more fun for a longer period of time participating in a fully interactive experience than just completing the 'puzzles' in a plot somebody else wrote.
Slashdot Mirror
A "Gold Standard" version of Wow would simply mean there is a fixed amount of gold in the world. Since none of the NPCs actually exchange gold with each other or function as anything other than animated figurines, any gold-giving NPC would permanently run out of gold at some point and any gold-receiving NPC would constantly increase their inaccessible stash.
The reason there's no massive inflation in Wow is two-fold:
1) Since player actions are what generates gold, the amount of gold in the world is roughly equal to (the number of players in the world) * (the amount of gold-generating work they are doing). Gold-supply scales perfectly with player-supply.
2) NPC item prices are fixed and don't respond to the 'market'
Game designers "don't see the point" of real AI in games? Not surprising. Let me summarize the basic fallacy of the whole gaming industry: They think games are like every other medium (movies, music, etc); a static experience produced in a studio and then handed down to consumers to passively enjoy. But the real potential of the gaming medium is giving players the ability to write their own experiences.
Because game designers insist on dictating the sequence of events, there isn't ROOM for real AI. You want this NPC to make meaningful, autonomous decisions about game events and communicate them to you? No wait, that would conflict with all the scripted crap we paid some actress to recite in a studio. Want to try winning that 'bad guy' over to your side? Sorry, but we spent sooo much time on this elaborate boss fight coming up... just sit back, trust us, we've got a GREAT idea for what you should do. And everyone else who plays this game. Every time they play it. Just keep going through the ONLY door that opens and keep killing EVERYTHING you see. You're going to feel like a real rebel cowboy hero after you perform the exact sequence of events we require of you and the 10 million others who played this game.
AI is essentially dynamic decision making. What's the point of dynamic decision making if everything that matters in the game is already pre-determined?
You make good arguments, and to some degree, I accept them. However I would guess that you are male, only because you didn't really address the other side of the issue: the rights of the mother. See, the question is not exactly "should we kill fetuses?", it's more a question of "how do we value the rights of the fetus in relation to the rights of the mother?"
A fetus is in nearly every sense a parasite. It grows into the uterine lining and 'hijacks' the mother's blood vessels. But a mother's body typically will not reject this parasite on its own, for obvious reasons. What rights does a woman have to control her own body, with the assistance of doctors?
Rarely do I see people offer any good policy suggestions in response to the abortion problem, they're either for full criminalization or full legalization. But the spectrum of possibility is far more diverse than that. Here's my suggestion: every abortion request should go before a judge. Abortion judges should be required to abide by a minimum federal list of standards for allowing abortion, including health of the mother, cases of non-consensual sex/fertilization, or the stupidity of a minor. Beyond that, locality-specific standards should apply. I personally don't think adult irresponsibility should ever lead to an abortion. Make the mother have the child, then if she still doesn't want it, give the child state-funded care and make the mother and father pay for it. (Requires DNA test at time of birth, which I think all children should have anyway, if only to shut down the Murray Show).
But honestly, despite being a blue voter all the way, I don't think the federal government has the authority to guarantee or deny abortion rights to cases not involving health of the mother, non-consensuality or minors. I think beyond that, each abortion request needs to be considered on its own merits by local magistrates.
Also, cases should be kept secret if the mother requests that. Nobody should be discouraged from requesting an abortion through fear of exposure/retribution. And people should have the option to 'order' their child mandatory, implanted birth control. Judges should also be able to order mandatory contraception in extreme cases, or when the mother/father simply don't have the income to provide for more children.
Now looking at my opinions as a whole, I would say they are expressly pro-life and almost guaranteed to reduce unnessecary abortions. But the funny thing is, the real 'pro-life' nuts out there would hate these ideas, because the foundation of their anti-abortion ideas are actually anti-sex ideas. They see abortion as a way of 'cheating' God's design for sex, a way of avoiding the consequences and they think of contraception in the same way. You can always tell the real nuts because they're the ones telling poor people NOT to use condoms. *roll eyes*
Let me explain what you mean. You're complaining about a system where 'rewards' (loot, xp, money, etc) materialize out of thin air. When you killed that merloc and looted its corpse, the money you got from it didn't come from anywhere, the merloc didn't 'earn' it. The merloc didn't spend 10 years eating saltwater fish to grow the [Thick Merloc Scale] you tore off it. It never gathered the raw materials for a [Cracked Short Bow]. In five minutes another identical merloc is going to appear with some more crap on it, all out of thin air. You think that's stupid. Of course it's stupid. The alternative is to have a system where players and non-player characters have to compete for persistent, LIMITED materials/resources/loot/energy. A system where not everyone can be winners, and hard work doesn't always pay off.
But we get plenty of that in real life, which is why we play games. Games where EVERYONE can be a winner, and the least amount of effort (clicking buttons, sitting in chairs, barely thinking) can ALWAYS produce 'rewards'.
You can't have it both ways, either a realistic system where rewards are limited and people lose as often as they win, or a fantasy system where rewards appear out of thin air.
You're not paying attention. The Justice Dept sent a letter to congress describing their legal position. Their position is that the NSA program does NOT comply with the content of the 1978 FISA law. They use the only exemption to the FISA law, "except when authorized by statute", to argue that congress' Authorization to Use Military Force against Al Qaeda is such a statute. (Nevermind that the administration specifically asked congress for additional text in the AUMF to give the president unlimited powers in the US and congress said no freaking way.)
We don't know the details of the NSA program. Your assertion that "NO calls that were within the US between US Persons were intercepted without a warrant" is just as uninformed as anything anyone else has said here about the program. What we DO know is the administration's legal argument. Let me walk you through it:
During the time we are in a state of war with "terrorists" (read: the rest of our lives), the president has _unchecked_ authority to do anything, so long as it can be loosely related to fighting those terrorists. Why "unchecked"? Let's go through the list of non-executive branches. Congress: Nowhere in the AUMF does it say "the president gets secret access to any information he can get his hands on". They can't RE-criminalize warrantless searches. Furthermore, the NSA operation was a secret even from Congress. Changes to NSA policy are supposed to go through the House and Senate Intelligence Committes, telling a few congressmen and swearing them to secrecy does not allow them to provide oversight. Under the Justice Dept. interpretation of the law, what oversight does Congress have?
Judicial? The program was a secret, and TELLING anyone about the program was a crime. So for the telcos who were approached by the NSA, what legal recourse did they have?
So regardless of the program's details, through their legal defense the administration has declared they have the right to secretly destroy privacy rights with no oversight whatsoever. The administration has declared constitutional checks and balances void when it comes to limiting executive power. Now we will see conservatives divided between those who actually ARE patriots and will defend our system of government, and those would are simply apologists for whatever the administration does.
>>Can't have Card's anti-war message coming through too clearly now.
Huh? Card is a hawk. I thought the message of the book was "Blow the shit out of your enemies because they are evil, ignore your weak human feelings of remorse."
Card is a Mormon. Mormons love to seperate people into "worthy" and "unworthy" categories. I know because my family is mormon. In Ender's Game, he invents prefectly evil enemies with no redeeming qualities. They are foils; fabricated devices for creating lots of guiltless Ender vs evil battles. It makes for a neat fantasy. I don't see an anti-war message though.
**SPOILER ALERT** If I remember right, in the end Ender gets to have his cake and eat it too. He gets to be the hero for defeating those nasty nasty bugs, but he gets to remain innocent because he didn't know he was committing genocide. I suppose his latent guilt is supposed to engender some sympathy. At least the kids will sleep easy at night. "Ender sure kicks ass! I'm glad he's not intentionally killing anyone though!"
Agree completely with parent. You'd think that a media conglomerate with $13bn in revenues would at some point come to the obvious conclusion that electronic distribution is the future. Amazingly they still manage to convince themselves that nothing will change and they can maintain their strangehold with legal claims and belligerence.
You missed the part where Valve and Vivendi renegotiated their contract to allow for electronic distribution over Steam.
Vivendi's legal claim is that Newell 'misled' them by saying he didn't think Valve would make much money with Steam. That's like letting someone punch you in the stomach and then complaining when it hurts too much, it's laughable. If I was a lawyer for VUG I'd be embarassed to describe that claim to a judge.
i played it, that was awesome. takes a little frustration to get used to the controls, but lots of fun once you do. very well done.
Who modded THAT up? Informative?!? Explain to me exactly why ATI would have a copy of the HL2 SOURCE CODE. You think Valve is contracting ATI to proofread their source comments for them or something?!?
What kind of yellowpaper conspiracy bullshit is this? Are we supposed to believe that Core/Eidos is in on this too, since the FX cards suck ass at DX9 features in Tomb Raider AOD? How about Bungine/Microsoft/Gearbox, since FX cards have been shown to perform poorly on the new features in Halo PC? Let's see, who else... oh, obviously FutureMark is in on it too, since FX cards can't compete in 3DMark03!
e x. htm
How about doing some research before posting crap like this. According to Valve, nVidia not only put HL2 benchmark-specific hacks in their 5x drivers (like camera-path specific occlusion culling), but they also put hacks in the 5.x 'press beta' that they never intend to release. THAT's Valve's reason for demanding that reviewers only use publicly available drivers.
And for information on NV's "magic" 5x drivers, here are some links:
Driverheaven confirms nVidia 'cheats' in Detonator 5x drivers:
http://www.driverheaven.net/article...mark3/ind
See last page for image quality comparison.
See this for detonator 5x driver improvements:
http://www.athlonmb.com/article-dis...57&PageI D=1
Around 3 fps. WOW
Posting some ignorant fanboy's conspiracy theory e-mail is pretty lame. Yes, ATI and Valve have a business relationship. That certainly does not preclude the fact that FX cards suck at DX9!
You are wrong. The subscription service you're referring to is for renting games that Valve makes with the HL2 engine. If you go to the store and buy HL2, you have no obligation to pay a subscription. You have the game already. Subscription is an option for people who would not be inclined to pay $40x2 for expansion packs, but WOULD consider paying 10 bucks for a month or two to play them. It makes a lot of sense, and it has nothing to do with MMOGs or their pricing scheme.
People, try to understand this, the subscription option is AN OPTION TO RENT GAMES YOU WOULD NORMALLY HAVE TO BUY IN THE STORE.
Wrong. Your account is tied to your Half-Life 2 license. If you get banned from HL2 multiplayer, your ban is tied to your HL2 license, which costs about 50 bucks.
The solution, obviously, is to allow players to 'upgrade' to multiplayer if they want. Since Steam will be the HL2 launcher, all the SP-only owners will always have the option to upgrade to SP + MP with a credit card over Steam.
They will sell the regular version everywhere. The different SKUs are not retailer specific. Retailers will buy whatever they think will sell. Valve referred to the SP-only version as the 'wal-mart' version because stores like wal-mart will carry more copies of SP-only than game stores, just because the kind of people who go to game stores probably won't want SP-only.
You are completely wrong. Why do people insist on making stuff up and then getting mad about it?
Half-life 2 will be on a disc, in a box. You will also have the option of purchasing it online. If your store is out of stock, or you live in Latvia, or you just don't like going to the store, this will probably be a good option for you. Options are good.
COMPUTERS confuse the hell out of parents and grandparents. Nothing is going to solve that. But the pricing model gives these people an option to spend less money and buy the single-player game only. Are you saying they shouldn't have that option?!
That IS what they're doing. Where did you get the idea that 'extra game content' would be in the special edition? It's going to be just like the special edition of any other game. Please stop making things up and getting angry about them.
That sentence is completely illogical. You really think that giving people more options for buying the game will somehow 'kill the mod community'? How does one have anything remotely to do with the other? It seems like whenever someone is afraid of something new Valve will do they use the "BUT IT WILL KILL THE MOD COMMUNITY!!11!" statement as a last resort, as though it carries some kind of weight that automatically wins all arguments.
Ok, I'll try answering the questions. No, there will not be an 'additional monthly fee' for xbox half-life 2. The monthly subscription thing is NOT for halflife 2. It is for forthcoming games using the half-life 2 engine that Valve will develop/publish. This will include expansion packs like Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and things like Team Fortress 2. The subscription fee is just A WAY TO RENT these games, instead of paying for each one at the store.
Valve has said there will be a HL2 benchmark released before the game, so you can test your hardware against it. But there will not be a demo before release.
The new pricing model is actually pretty cool. The moms and dads who shop at wal-mart for christmas games for their kids will be able to buy the single-player version for a discount price. Game enthusiasts will be able to buy singleplayer + multiplayer for normal price. And in the future, people who want to try out expansion packs or new multiplayer games for a month or two without having to buy each of them at the store will be able to pay 10 bucks to play all of them for a month.
For some reason people have been getting pretty confused about how this works, and the inevitable "Valve is trying to screw us!" keeps popping up. If anything, the new pricing model gives people more value for their money, not less. Some people don't LIKE multiplayer, they should have an option to pay less and only purchase single player. Some people will want to try out expansion packs and TF2 without having to pay full price for each of them, they should have the option to do so. It's all about more options.
"If someone buys a DVD and watches it on the Nintendo GameCube, we wouldn't receive any revenue from that. We'd rather have them play our games."
This guy is their VP of Marketing?! No wonder Nintendo isn't winning! My dog's ass could understand marketing concepts better than this guy. I hope the interviewer laughed so hard he blew snot all over the room.
I still haven't bought a console, but Nintendo has never even been a consideration for me simply because I don't have a DVD player yet. There are about 2 games on each system I'd like to own, why would I buy the one system without DVD? Morons. "But it'll be small, so japanese school girls can carry it in their backpacks!"
Now if it came with a japanese schoolgirl... THAT would be marketing.
The Country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government.
The nation and it's inhabitants were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws.
Venezuela pled guilty to conspiring to violate federal copyright laws by illegally "modifying" the digital time-keeping mechanism of clocks. Under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Clockwork Act), the modification of clocks to display an unauthorized time is illegal, no matter what American or non-American police state you live in. "If people were allowed to make their clocks show whatever time they wanted, it might allow them to read a time that the manufacturer never intended, like 14 o'clock" declared Ayatollah Ashcroft in a press conference today. "Not only is that illegal, it's wrong, and naughty. Next thing you know they'll be bathing in the nude or teaching women to read."
As a result, the country of Venezuela is now the property of the United States government. The country and it's people will immediately be put to their rightly intended use: the production of inferior quality candles to be used in Catholic rituals.
Now even the clocks are on strike! Chavez, you know it's time to step down when time itself refuses to advance while you're in power.
"'I wake with the sun,' said Rene Osurna, who works at a shipping company. 'And if you're two minutes late to the office, and everybody else is too, there's no problem.'"
You work at a SHIPPING COMPANY and you don't care what time it is?! Are you on powerful anti-depressants? If you're two minutes late to the plane with your packages, there IS a problem.
2:09 PM, Feb 23, 2003
Shortly after receiving a telephone call from US President Bush, Tony Blair announced that he was wrong about alternative energy, that it is actually part of an "Axis of Evilnessity". Blair also said he recently read in some college essays on the internet that alternative energy would help fund terrorism. It was also revealed that the UK will be joining a "league of allies" in the US-led "War on Liberals". "I believe, and I think the people of the UK stand behind me on this, that we should do whatever Bush says, if it helps kill terrorists."
>>In this case, each band member got 0.476% of the total gross of the sales of the album they worked on.
At my job, I get approximately 0.307% of the total gross of the sales of the software I work on.
Your math may be accurate, but that doesn't make it relevant. Consider this:
Your software product generated 10 million in sales. This was a combined effort of about 200 to 300 people. You get 1/325th of the revenue.
Your 4-man electrical band produced music that generated 10 million in sales. This music could be distributed/sold over the internet, and the only costs would be 1) Studio time - 200,000 2) Music Video/Marketing - 600,000 3) Electronic Retailer fees - 20% - 2 million 4) Interest on the 800,000 in loans - 10% - 80,000.
We'll round it up and say it costs 3 million to produce, market, and sell the album. 7 million / 4 = 1.75 million = almost TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than 40,000. If you and three other programmers spent a full year of your life coding a hot new software product, on your own, using LOANS to pay for expenses, you sure as hell would want more than ".476%" of the revenue!
Sounds like you're only interested in the 'adventure' aspect of the Dune books. As with most sci-fi, the adventure/plot of Dune is secondary to the anaolgies and ideas the author is trying to describe.
The second and third books are totally essential to the Dune story, the whole central theme of the trilogy (the problems with messiahs/heroes)doesn't even take shape until the second book. I would recommend people NOT read just the first book, it provides an unbalanced vision of the whole. If you're expecting a "Captain Action Verses The Monkeys From Mars!" type novel, don't bother reading any of the books at all, you won't get it.
Stop reading the books when they become boring to you. For me, the whole last two books were boring. There were no new ideas, just more superhuman powers. Books 1 through 4 though, were FASCINATING. Everytime I read God Emperor I feel a little more enlightened.
Come on man, use a little imagination. Take this for example: Online games like Everquest and Counter-Strike are popular because of the experience of interacting with other players. In essence, the players are creating an infinite amount of content for each other. Counter-Strike is like chess in that every game starts the same and there is no plot, but every game is distinctly different and interesting. Replace human players with convincing AI and voila, you have an egrossing single-player game of near infinite possibilities.
>>Even if we had an AI smart enough to behave like a human, we will never have an AI smart enough to be as creative as humans can.
And why is that? There are a lot of people who think otherwise. If an AI can 'behave' like a human, isn't creativity part of our behavior?
Books and movies need a pre-written plot. Games do not, that's the difference. A person can have as much fun building a city or managing a galactic empire or playing a team sport/battle in a game as they can reading/interacting with a story someone else wrote. In the examples I just mentioned, the 'story' of the game is almost fully created by the players/AI. Like someone else mentioned, a basketball game does not have a pre-written plot, but there is still a story to it that is played out on the court, by the interaction of independent intelligences.
I loved all the old adventure games too. But in the end, I have more fun for a longer period of time participating in a fully interactive experience than just completing the 'puzzles' in a plot somebody else wrote.