I have no idea what they are talking about. Spore (that this cartoon is obviously a dig at) looks like an incredible game. Yesterday, I watched the hour-long presentation that Will Wright gave on it, and I have to say that they only way that I'm not getting that game is if, when it comes out, I'm either in a coma, or dead.
A lot of the time PA will talk about the subject of the cartoon on the news page, but nothing on this. They need to say exactly what problem they have with it.
I would like to see a game with a dynamic system based on all kinds of sociology and psychology (basically culture in general) including religion. The probem with a lot of the games that involve culture is that the 'cultures' in them are preset and unchangable.
A game where you get to mold the details of a culture and see how it develops and how it interacts with other cultures would be fantatic.
A primitive version of what I am thinking of would be something like NationStates. With that, you just set up a style of government, and you deal with issues that it sends you every day. I am thinking more along the lines of something realtime where you not only delt with issues that it gives you, but also initiated events yourself, actively influencing the culture.
The culture would have various subcultures in it: religious, intellectual, militant, pacifist, apathetic, civil-rights-loving, and others groups of that nature. There would also be a counterculture element, if the culture moves in one direction, a certain low percentage of the population would move in the opposite direction.
In the real world, naturally an individual person can belong to more than one subculture. But of course in the game we are looking at the cumulative effect, not at individuals.
Some subcultures might work well together and a person could easily be a member of both, like intellectual and freedom-loving, while others are almost entirely incompatible in the same person, like pacifist and militant. Subcultures like that would even be aligned against each other.
There would be two numbers attached to each of the subcultures, one would be the number of people in that subculture (the sum of all of these could very well be greater than the population, since an individual can be in more than one subculture). The other would be how strong that subculture is, perhaps what percentage of the 'Ideosphere' (for lack of a better term) the ideals of that culture take up. For instance, if two subcultures have approximatly the same number of people, but the people in one are more vehement in their beliefs, then that subculture would have a higher percentage.
The player would decide what kind of government the country would have: democratic, totalitatian, theocratic, etc. I am thinking that a good way to do this is instead of selecting a pre-defined type of government, all the various types could be broken down into thier defining elements, and the player could modify those elements at will, perhaps even mid-game.
The user would deal with issues that are raised (or that he raises himself) involving economy, education, censorship, foreign policy, how the government works, civil rights, the government's attitude toward those rights, and other things of that nature. How the player deals with the issues would define how the culture changes and develops.
I think that if there are going to be wars in the game, then they should be fought automatically. The player would be more concerned with the affect of the war on the populous. Although the player would be able to divert resources to the military; this would also have an affect on the culture, as would where the resources came from.
I am not sure what kind of interface the game would have. If nothing graphically representational can be though of, it might just be a series of menus, charts, and dialog boxes, kind of like the game Uplink
Something like that would definitely be worth my money.
Which would you rather play? A game with great gameplay but mediocre graphics, or a game with great graphics and mediocre gameplay? The new consoles seem to be designed for incredible graphics at the expense of gameplay. Check out the Gamer's Manifesto
Something this high-profile will help the business world see even more clearly the sheer, unadulterated power of Open Source.
I predict that the most innovative and enjoyable apps and games will come from developers who are working independently, on thier own, or in small groups, out of pure love of code. That is the way it has always been.
The difference is continuity. If you replace a tiny piece of yourself, you are still the same person. The new peice is integrated into the rest of your previous self. Do it again, you are still the same person. Regardless of how many time it is done, you are still the same person, even if every original peice of you is replaced. However, if you replace everything at once, there is no longer any 'previous self' for the new peices to be integrated into, and continuity is lost.
Slashdot Mirror
Almost akin to saying the president of the US must be a crackhead beacuse we have crackheads in the US.
I thought that the way Bush acts was reason enough to assume that he's a crackhead.
Rodi, Mr Glickman's not going to like this
...shiny metal ass
That was how they explained it in the novelization of SW:ANH. The hazards were black holes.
'Curious', yeah. That's what we'll call it.
We both know that we just want to get our hands on these guys and do horrible things to thier most valued bits until they release the patents.
From elsewhere in the article...
Did you know you can't have mini-games during a loading screen because of patent law?
What's that smell? I think it's smoke. Oh look, it's coming from Bill Gates' ears.
Check out the Ring LCD Game It's the one at the bottom.
Oh, wait. Never mind. They did put it on the news page.
I have no idea what they are talking about. Spore (that this cartoon is obviously a dig at) looks like an incredible game. Yesterday, I watched the hour-long presentation that Will Wright gave on it, and I have to say that they only way that I'm not getting that game is if, when it comes out, I'm either in a coma, or dead.
A lot of the time PA will talk about the subject of the cartoon on the news page, but nothing on this. They need to say exactly what problem they have with it.
I would like to see a game with a dynamic system based on all kinds of sociology and psychology (basically culture in general) including religion. The probem with a lot of the games that involve culture is that the 'cultures' in them are preset and unchangable.
A game where you get to mold the details of a culture and see how it develops and how it interacts with other cultures would be fantatic.
A primitive version of what I am thinking of would be something like NationStates. With that, you just set up a style of government, and you deal with issues that it sends you every day. I am thinking more along the lines of something realtime where you not only delt with issues that it gives you, but also initiated events yourself, actively influencing the culture.
The culture would have various subcultures in it: religious, intellectual, militant, pacifist, apathetic, civil-rights-loving, and others groups of that nature. There would also be a counterculture element, if the culture moves in one direction, a certain low percentage of the population would move in the opposite direction.
In the real world, naturally an individual person can belong to more than one subculture. But of course in the game we are looking at the cumulative effect, not at individuals.
Some subcultures might work well together and a person could easily be a member of both, like intellectual and freedom-loving, while others are almost entirely incompatible in the same person, like pacifist and militant. Subcultures like that would even be aligned against each other.
There would be two numbers attached to each of the subcultures, one would be the number of people in that subculture (the sum of all of these could very well be greater than the population, since an individual can be in more than one subculture). The other would be how strong that subculture is, perhaps what percentage of the 'Ideosphere' (for lack of a better term) the ideals of that culture take up. For instance, if two subcultures have approximatly the same number of people, but the people in one are more vehement in their beliefs, then that subculture would have a higher percentage.
The player would decide what kind of government the country would have: democratic, totalitatian, theocratic, etc. I am thinking that a good way to do this is instead of selecting a pre-defined type of government, all the various types could be broken down into thier defining elements, and the player could modify those elements at will, perhaps even mid-game.
The user would deal with issues that are raised (or that he raises himself) involving economy, education, censorship, foreign policy, how the government works, civil rights, the government's attitude toward those rights, and other things of that nature. How the player deals with the issues would define how the culture changes and develops.
I think that if there are going to be wars in the game, then they should be fought automatically. The player would be more concerned with the affect of the war on the populous. Although the player would be able to divert resources to the military; this would also have an affect on the culture, as would where the resources came from.
I am not sure what kind of interface the game would have. If nothing graphically representational can be though of, it might just be a series of menus, charts, and dialog boxes, kind of like the game Uplink
Something like that would definitely be worth my money.
Yeah. Exactly
Why dont all IPv4 addresses simply automatically get a secondary address where 255.255.255.255 would become 0.0.0.0.255.255.255.255
No different from prefixing everything with 'e-' or 'i-'.
Which would you rather play? A game with great gameplay but mediocre graphics, or a game with great graphics and mediocre gameplay? The new consoles seem to be designed for incredible graphics at the expense of gameplay. Check out the Gamer's Manifesto
Something this high-profile will help the business world see even more clearly the sheer, unadulterated power of Open Source.
I predict that the most innovative and enjoyable apps and games will come from developers who are working independently, on thier own, or in small groups, out of pure love of code. That is the way it has always been.
impossible to pronounce: ECMAScript.
Ek-ma-script?
Do answer that question you are going to have to define 'human'.
Good luck
Or the Dwarf King's Axe from The Fifth Elephant
I was actually going to post that, but I couldn't get the page to load so I could grab the URL, so I decided 'the hell with it'
I thought the idea was to use some exotic form of energy to hold them open.
Don't forget "Permutation City" which also has a great deal to do with people's minds being copied into computers.
By the way, check out the sig.
The difference is continuity. If you replace a tiny piece of yourself, you are still the same person. The new peice is integrated into the rest of your previous self. Do it again, you are still the same person. Regardless of how many time it is done, you are still the same person, even if every original peice of you is replaced. However, if you replace everything at once, there is no longer any 'previous self' for the new peices to be integrated into, and continuity is lost.
"Star Trek" teleporter? No
"Stargate" teleporter? Yes
R2-D2 is obviously a direct instrument of the Force.