Judging from the demonstrations and the media coverage thereof, globalization seems to be kinda like a Phish concert, but with tear gas.
Re:We're still waiting for the Citizen Kane
on
Are Videogames Art?
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· Score: 2
The trouble with making a true "classic" is that technology in gaming advances so quickly as to make games obsolete before they gain mass acceptance. Not just commercially unviable, but almost *completely* unlocatable and unplayable.
Or think of it this way: would you call a movie an all-time classic if you knew that in five years the color would fade, in ten the sound would get garbled, and in twenty the film masters would disintegrate?
Think of all the Amiga & DOS games created back in "the day". The games themselves are disappearing because they've been abandoned by their authors and legal problems prevent them from being preserved. If you can locate the games, the emulators for those systems still aren't quite up to snuff yet, so you might not have a great experience with it. Think of all the DirectX games from as early as last year that are unplayable on Windows 2000 due to compatability problems!
Also, the technical bar is raised every year making early games unplayable except to computer history enthusiasts. Thus it is very difficult for a game to be appreciated over the timespan neccessary to be considered a classic.
Since all computer and video games have no purpose other than to entertain...
I will not point out the inaccuracies of the above statement or provide counterexamples, but suffice to say that "the above statement is false in the general case":)
I don't think we should limit the defintion of "art" to things that mimic traditional visual artforms. There are many other artful aspects to the design of a video game.
Take the game rules for Civilization, for instance. No one can argue that the design of this game is unique and first-of-a-kind, and fit the author's intentions of what he was trying to convey. The story is not designed, but emerges as a result of the rules of the game. IMHO that is worth more than all the hackneyed scifi FPS plotlines in existence.
I think art is created when a person realizes a vision of something that does not yet exist. The pioneering game designers of the early days did this. People create art, companies create "assets".
When I signed up for college, my marketing details were broadcast to most of the free world on behalf of my beloved alma mater. I would rather the gub'ment poke through them while looking for bad guys than receive yet another offer for a class ring or some such garbage.
The easiest thing to do with VoiceXML would be to wait for Microsoft to appropriate it, embrace it, extend it, and make it a free download. They already have pretty decent speech recognition & synthesis (not the best, but servicable) so chances are they will have the majority of the niche users that actually want to talk to their computers.
Why do we need to first build a base on the Moon? There's no resources there, no way to make fuel, no building materials. It's just a gravity well that we'd be better off avoiding. If you use Mars' atmosphere as a brake, it actually costs less delta-v (and therefore fuel) to land on Mars than on the Moon.
Altough its unconventional, Zubrin's Mars Direct plan makes a lot of sense. I suggest everyone interested in space exploration pick up a copy of his book.
Still, we need to lessen the cost of Earth low orbit. That should be the administration's first goal. Sadly, this goal isn't compatible with NASA's current corporate welfare programs (ISS and Shuttle) that please the constituents.
Yes, you can make a C function that does a specific thing, that for all intents and purposes, works perfectly for the domain in which it is implemented.
Now, add 3rd party libraries that have little documentation and no support. Add the Win32 API. Add broken C++ compilers. Add deadlines. Add marketing breathing down your neck asking you to do the impossible. Add clueless newbies hacking apart your code while you aren't looking. Add "best practices" that end up generating 10x more code that works 1/2 as well.
Most unmanned spacecraft are already extremely autonomous. Due to the cosmologically slow speed of light, and the inavailability of rocket scientists in outer space, they have to be. Their algorithms for failure handling are often so complex that they border on AI.
The situation you described is called "adaptive guidance". Consider the problem of launching the Shuttle into orbit. A human is typically not involved in the loop at any point except to monitor systems and choose an abort mode if a failure should arise (and even then, the MC's are the ones who usually make the call). The algorithm(s) are not for sissies, they involve nested intregals and all sorts of fun stuff.
During reentry (which is a similar problem to aerobraking) the humans are only involved in the loop during the final approach stage, and that is not even neccessary -- it's just good to have a human already in the loop, so they can better detect and respond to a problem. And yes, you can measure pressure at Mach 25, but what do you do with it? How do you know what the pressure is one second later, when you've traveled 7 km?
The reason that the Shuttle can perform reliabily is that we have a very exact model of the Earth's atmosphere, including variations due to solar flares, and the time of day. Our model of Mars is not quite as refined, and the accuracy is more critical-- just a velocity different of a few 1/10's of km/s can make the difference between aerocapture, burning up, or spinning off into space.
I think one of the reasons that Linux/BSD/etc are more resiliant than MS OS's is that there is much more diversity in the open-source gene pool. There are so many Linux distros, BSD variants, installation options, etc. that a worm might have a hard time propogating for very long, due to the high variablity among servers.
MS OS's, on the other hand, install to almost exactly the same configuration every time, and users don't usually bother to change many options. And there are only a handful of MS OS's, compared to open-source land.
In the wild, hybrids seem to be more resistant to disease, more adaptable, and generally hardier. Linux/BSD are mutts.
No matter what form of security you implement, someone will find a way around it if determined enough. Come on, I'm talking to/.'ers here, you know this!
Security through obscurity isn't even an option here. Every time we prosecute terrorists, we essentially give them the handbook for our investigation methods via the public court case. Tbese are not dumb criminals, they are very intelligent and will find a way to work around anything we throw at them.
Airport security was only one opening which the terrorists expolited. We can try to close it, but there are others we haven't even thought of yet.
Knowing more *will* help, insofar as making you more informed then the rest of the spoon-fed populace, and maybe able to enlighten a few other people with your knowledge. But don't watch CNN or any of the mainstream networks that are geared toward angry, emotional soccer moms. This is not yet a time for mourning, it's a time to educate ourselves, make the right decisions, and preserve the stability of our nation.
Research the history of the conflict, get to know all sides of the story, get to know the people we will eventually be fighting. Something as simple as going to the "world trade center attack" category on Yahoo! and surfing around is a good start.
Ponder the incredible ripple effect an attack would have on the rest of the world, and how difficult are the decisions we face. There are a million variables in the diplomatic equation in this crisis -- I hope Joshua is working on the problem full-time.
It is a fallacy to assume that if you can mimic a three-year old brain in two years, you can duplicate an adult human brain in ten years.
Even so, these Turing tests aren't really accurate. The judges often mistake a computer for a person, and vice-versa, just by their nature of not really paying attention and not knowing what to look for.
This is extremely difficult in practice, as it equates to acting. The speech may sound pretty good, but it can't insert all the aural cues that a human actor can. You may as well expect a virtual actor to act out a virtual movie using nothing but the text input of the script.
Instead of TTS, what is needed is a program that takes the speech input of one actor and modifies it to sound like another. This is already sort of done with vocoders used for music production.
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Judging from the demonstrations and the media coverage thereof, globalization seems to be kinda like a Phish concert, but with tear gas.
The trouble with making a true "classic" is that technology in gaming advances so quickly as to make games obsolete before they gain mass acceptance. Not just commercially unviable, but almost *completely* unlocatable and unplayable.
Or think of it this way: would you call a movie an all-time classic if you knew that in five years the color would fade, in ten the sound would get garbled, and in twenty the film masters would disintegrate?
Think of all the Amiga & DOS games created back in "the day". The games themselves are disappearing because they've been abandoned by their authors and legal problems prevent them from being preserved. If you can locate the games, the emulators for those systems still aren't quite up to snuff yet, so you might not have a great experience with it. Think of all the DirectX games from as early as last year that are unplayable on Windows 2000 due to compatability problems!
Also, the technical bar is raised every year making early games unplayable except to computer history enthusiasts. Thus it is very difficult for a game to be appreciated over the timespan neccessary to be considered a classic.
Since all computer and video games have no purpose other than to entertain...
:)
I will not point out the inaccuracies of the above statement or provide counterexamples, but suffice to say that "the above statement is false in the general case"
I don't think we should limit the defintion of "art" to things that mimic traditional visual artforms. There are many other artful aspects to the design of a video game.
Take the game rules for Civilization, for instance. No one can argue that the design of this game is unique and first-of-a-kind, and fit the author's intentions of what he was trying to convey. The story is not designed, but emerges as a result of the rules of the game. IMHO that is worth more than all the hackneyed scifi FPS plotlines in existence.
I think art is created when a person realizes a vision of something that does not yet exist. The pioneering game designers of the early days did this. People create art, companies create "assets".
...but it doesn't matter how well defined your abs are if they are hidden by a layer of lard :)
When I signed up for college, my marketing details were broadcast to most of the free world on behalf of my beloved alma mater. I would rather the gub'ment poke through them while looking for bad guys than receive yet another offer for a class ring or some such garbage.
The easiest thing to do with VoiceXML would be to wait for Microsoft to appropriate it, embrace it, extend it, and make it a free download. They already have pretty decent speech recognition & synthesis (not the best, but servicable) so chances are they will have the majority of the niche users that actually want to talk to their computers.
Why do we need to first build a base on the Moon? There's no resources there, no way to make fuel, no building materials. It's just a gravity well that we'd be better off avoiding. If you use Mars' atmosphere as a brake, it actually costs less delta-v (and therefore fuel) to land on Mars than on the Moon.
Altough its unconventional, Zubrin's Mars Direct plan makes a lot of sense. I suggest everyone interested in space exploration pick up a copy of his book.
Still, we need to lessen the cost of Earth low orbit. That should be the administration's first goal. Sadly, this goal isn't compatible with NASA's current corporate welfare programs (ISS and Shuttle) that please the constituents.
Yes, you can make a C function that does a specific thing, that for all intents and purposes, works perfectly for the domain in which it is implemented.
Now, add 3rd party libraries that have little documentation and no support. Add the Win32 API. Add broken C++ compilers. Add deadlines. Add marketing breathing down your neck asking you to do the impossible. Add clueless newbies hacking apart your code while you aren't looking. Add "best practices" that end up generating 10x more code that works 1/2 as well.
Now run screaming into the night.
"And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those lousy k1dd13z!"
Civilization also advances by building the Great Library, or Darwin's Voyage!
:) )
(sorry, had to make the lame Civ joke
Ahhh, but we want it to *stay* in orbit, that's why this problem is hard :)
Most unmanned spacecraft are already extremely autonomous. Due to the cosmologically slow speed of light, and the inavailability of rocket scientists in outer space, they have to be. Their algorithms for failure handling are often so complex that they border on AI.
The situation you described is called "adaptive guidance". Consider the problem of launching the Shuttle into orbit. A human is typically not involved in the loop at any point except to monitor systems and choose an abort mode if a failure should arise (and even then, the MC's are the ones who usually make the call). The algorithm(s) are not for sissies, they involve nested intregals and all sorts of fun stuff.
During reentry (which is a similar problem to aerobraking) the humans are only involved in the loop during the final approach stage, and that is not even neccessary -- it's just good to have a human already in the loop, so they can better detect and respond to a problem. And yes, you can measure pressure at Mach 25, but what do you do with it? How do you know what the pressure is one second later, when you've traveled 7 km?
The reason that the Shuttle can perform reliabily is that we have a very exact model of the Earth's atmosphere, including variations due to solar flares, and the time of day. Our model of Mars is not quite as refined, and the accuracy is more critical-- just a velocity different of a few 1/10's of km/s can make the difference between aerocapture, burning up, or spinning off into space.
17'$ 34$y 70 |)3f347 c4r|\|1v0r3, ju$7 c0|\|v3r7 4|| y0ur 73x7 70 |337 $p34|!
Damn, we /.'ed the securityfocus server... that's a DOS attack, isn't it?
Quick, smash your DSL modems, clear your logs, and run for the hills before the Feds arrive!
I couldn't live in a cache-less society! Just think how long locatedb would take to index!
I think one of the reasons that Linux/BSD/etc are more resiliant than MS OS's is that there is much more diversity in the open-source gene pool. There are so many Linux distros, BSD variants, installation options, etc. that a worm might have a hard time propogating for very long, due to the high variablity among servers.
MS OS's, on the other hand, install to almost exactly the same configuration every time, and users don't usually bother to change many options. And there are only a handful of MS OS's, compared to open-source land.
In the wild, hybrids seem to be more resistant to disease, more adaptable, and generally hardier. Linux/BSD are mutts.
No matter what form of security you implement, someone will find a way around it if determined enough. Come on, I'm talking to /.'ers here, you know this!
Security through obscurity isn't even an option here. Every time we prosecute terrorists, we essentially give them the handbook for our investigation methods via the public court case. Tbese are not dumb criminals, they are very intelligent and will find a way to work around anything we throw at them.
Airport security was only one opening which the terrorists expolited. We can try to close it, but there are others we haven't even thought of yet.
Knowing more *will* help, insofar as making you more informed then the rest of the spoon-fed populace, and maybe able to enlighten a few other people with your knowledge. But don't watch CNN or any of the mainstream networks that are geared toward angry, emotional soccer moms. This is not yet a time for mourning, it's a time to educate ourselves, make the right decisions, and preserve the stability of our nation.
Research the history of the conflict, get to know all sides of the story, get to know the people we will eventually be fighting. Something as simple as going to the "world trade center attack" category on Yahoo! and surfing around is a good start.
Ponder the incredible ripple effect an attack would have on the rest of the world, and how difficult are the decisions we face. There are a million variables in the diplomatic equation in this crisis -- I hope Joshua is working on the problem full-time.
What I say to those who give up the magical serum without a fight...
:)
LIES! LIES! LIES!!!!!
Kerouac wrote On The Road on *coffee*, not bennys (as is popularly believed).
Ask Mr. Knuth about his drug of choice...
It is a fallacy to assume that if you can mimic a three-year old brain in two years, you can duplicate an adult human brain in ten years.
Even so, these Turing tests aren't really accurate. The judges often mistake a computer for a person, and vice-versa, just by their nature of not really paying attention and not knowing what to look for.
This is extremely difficult in practice, as it equates to acting. The speech may sound pretty good, but it can't insert all the aural cues that a human actor can. You may as well expect a virtual actor to act out a virtual movie using nothing but the text input of the script.
Instead of TTS, what is needed is a program that takes the speech input of one actor and modifies it to sound like another. This is already sort of done with vocoders used for music production.
They still haven't made a computer that can hit the ball... this requires significantly more smarts to do in the general case.
But Bruce, Linus, Bill, and Alan are going to heaven ... isn't that worth a 1000% cut in pay? Mmm... maybe not.
G)enerator of A)rrogant C)laims.