First, let me say I would be interested to read both your papers and what you cite in your research. I think this is a non-trivial problem, yet possibly also a simple one (though I don't know why people disagree with me:).
A couple terms are needed: I'll use "classical art" to represent nongame art (physical, structural, sequential, etc.), and "video games" as the blanket term for console, PC, electronic, arcade, etc., games. I don't use the compound word because I'm ornery and video games are only one small subset of the vast game universe.
"The game part is where you are trying to beat/master a system...it's the cognitive orientation of the player." And earlier "The videogame mode of attention is not an aesthetic mode."
You've called it a mode of attention, however your unspoken words are "And that is the only way you can approach video games." That cognitive mindset is simply one mindset - albeit a highly popular and (currently) completely expected one - people use when approaching something (currently) labelled as a game. And I would argue that that mindset/response is a totally taught response, a response ingrained by positive feedback: problem solving in a very specific context. This leads to gaming editorials about how people have no morals while gaming. However a person's first video game experience leaves them asking "What do I do?" to which a gamer replies, "Here's how you beat this game". The newbie has to keep forcing themselves into the mindset for a while until it becomes second nature. They may even be surprised at the language used as people generally think of games something to be played, not the gamer's re-contexting of having to beat them. Do you beat Trivial Pursuit?
However it is not a *required* mindset to use, view, or consider a video game. The video game does not force you to beat it. You decide if and when you want to beat it. Or instead if you just want to play it. The classical art does not force you to view/think/feel about it, many will simply shut it out of their experience, or you may form an emotional reaction or connection with it while experiencing it.
Your descriptions also leave out the fact that there are at least 2 mindsets for beating a video game: Play the game as the designers/team intended (suspending disbelief), or to beat the game's ruleset (meta-gaming).
Taking the first point, I'm not seeing how that is different from classical art: There is a product, there is an observer/participant, there is a reaction to abide by the required suspension of disbelief, and the observer/participant attempt to live within the non-real world for a short time - sometimes an imperceptible amount of time.
As for the second point, I would argue that as soon as people try beating the game's ruleset, when they start meta-gaming even if it is 'merely' to MinMax their character or to only use one cheat code, it is because the player had no patience for the video game *as*presented*. Simply, their mindset was in dissonance to that the designers/team expected at the time they experienced it. You could also say that the observer/participant decided to try continuing participating - but with some help/different limitations.
Can the designer/team be faulted if the observer/participant takes their expression and picks it apart to MinMax their game to the highest edge of the rules? Can the photographer be blamed that a print of their masterpiece is used to line a bird cage, or to make a collage or retrospective book?
Some classical art, especially things labelled interactive art, provoke the same reactions, especially when people's assumptions are questioned: it becomes something to figure out or otherwise solve. Their reaction to the art is such that they no longer participate in the suspension of disbelief, and may even try analyzing it with their mind instead of feeling it with their emotions.
Some people postulate that video games also have a different vein of mindsets to which people gravitate: ex
Imagine you are watching a limp balloon. The balloon starts to fill up, but it looks like it is getting too full. Suddenly there is a break in the balloon and water comes pouring out of it, so you scramble and put a cork in it to seal the hole. Briefly the balloon stalls, but eventually it starts getting larger again. After staring at it a long time, another hole breaks and water pours out again. You pick up another cork and stop the water. This happens several more times, and you learn to get anxious every time you see the balloon filling up again. It happens irregularly, so you must be eternally vigilant, watching constantly. But at least you have an infinite pile of corks.
-- -- -- -- (YMMV) This is how parents treat their children in the U.S.A. - if there is an outburst, it is stopped. Angry, sad, even afraid and people can be judged to be too happy as well. It is disapproved-of, it is criticized, and it is outlawed. Unfortunately it isn't just parents, this treatment typically comes from everyone in a kid's life: siblings, teachers, classmates (even in your clique), relatives, the whole society.
Some (emotional) leaks are implicitly ignored or encouraged (1), and some are stoppered more harshly than others(2). People learn to favor certain stoppers and start applying them themselves(3).
For the U.S.A. I'll make some wild guesses about the break-downs of those 3:
1) Violence 75% Being Mean/lashing out verbally/emotionally 30% 2) Sensuality 80% Feminity(for males)/Masculinity(for females) 75% Homosexuality 95%(more severe but happens less often) 3) Obsessive/Compulsive* 95% (is there anything else?)
*O/S is split among the following (% of population): Consumerism 50%, Work 40%, Alcohol 40%, Food(eat/repulsed) 40%, Sports 20%, Religion 20%, Exercise/body image 20%, Games 15%, Politics 15%, Family/home 10%, TV/movies/Celebrities 10%, music 5%, Gambling 5%, Crime 2%, Drugs.3%, Spelling/Grammar.0001%, other 55%
Disclaimer: I was born in the U.S.A. and have lived here for > 30 years, but.. well I think I have some sense of the larger picture(s).
I'm folding in a different thread, but I think the sign of a good show (either for me or similar people) is that the show *was* cancelled on network TV!
There have been several shows over the years including FireFly, The Tick, Costello, Cupid, and most recently Keen Eddie which were on for typically a half-season or less (usually Spring filler) before being dropped. Those were some amazing shows, and at least these ones were hilarious and insightful - two characteristics I love in a show.
But there is also a contrarian trend of shows where they were dropped from network TV when they were loved, then somehow were brought back to life - but as the living dead. Shows in this group are: The Drew Carey Show, Family Guy and.. I can't remember. Really, after the love people had for them in the first 2+ seasons, they came back as... Less fun, certainly. Less something else too... Spirited?
BTW, I almost immediately got the FG DVD set - and watch it more than the new shows.
YMMV,
8-PP
Re:Playability vs Graphics
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
Part response to parent, part deepening parent's question:
During published interviews with Brian Reynolds, he is quoted as saying that 'you can only fit so much into a 50x50 (pixel) space" (approx.) It annoys me immensely that they seem to be foisting the erroneous concept that somehow a zoomable 3D version will fit more (useful) information into the same screen real estate. Of course I was one of those peeved when the clean squares of Civ (I) were supplanted by those horrible diamonds in the last versions. I was happy to see FreeCiv had that option, though it didn't hold my interest long enough.
So thank you for allowing us to have the squares back!
The deeper questions, then, are: 1. What is the interaction between the game designers and the interface designers and the graphics people - what sort of synergism does it take to develop the GUI we see in current screenshots, and what is the timeline of that? 1b. Was it frozen with only a couple minor tweaks over the last 6 months, or were there significant overhaul(s) recently, say during alpha and beta test periods? 1c. *Is* there a UI person/group, how much influence were they allowed? 1d. Were the modellers/skinners given a certain single or multiple resolutions they needed to have products look especially crisp at?
2. Was the game first developed for it's interface and instead the gameplay was tweaked until the end? Or a meeting-in-the-middle (development timeline-wise)?
3. Oh, and will we finally be able to use *any* resolution we want? It is a bit painful playing Civ III scaled up to fit on a big monitor - turns out even Colonization (my favorite!) can use more monitor real estate! (at least in portrait mode)
Thanks for answers, thanks for Colonization, and thanks for Civ 4!
8-PP
Re:The Wisdom of Alpha Centauri
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
Brian's next game - He is about the only gaming person in the industry I truly respect
Um.. if you want Sid to respond you might want to rephrase that, like: ".. only other gaming person.."!
Short answer: Yup. Addendum: It would be even better if it had multiple tuners built in, like another 7-tuner Japanese model pointed out a couple months ago.
Longer answer: My SO and I are casual TV watchers, and as far as watching TV it goes in cycles - some weeks we like it/are excited to watch, and other weeks we may see only a couple shows. But the TV stations don't care about us, so we time-shift what we like including a lot of reruns (I just got her hooked on Gilmore Girls, and STTNG is hopefully about to reach the series finale soon). Also waiting for a couple series to start up again and getting a couple movies from movie channels (some have been sitting there for a couple months). And I don't want to spring the ungodly amounts to buy the series so I keep some old ST:DS9 shows around, and we have some favorite John Stewarts,...
So even though I upped our 40GB TiVO to 2x160GB (less than 300GB useable because of their BIOS, I believe), we still max out - but we have a lot of things marked "Delete as needed" so only early on when we didn't delete anything did we actually have TiVO say "Can not record - space full".
The most annoying thing is that there isn't anything saying how much space is left on the machine - you have to force it to complain about no space. Worst part of the user interface - besides it forgetting the special setting at every software upgrade:p
Actually, the 2 most annoying things are: 1) Even on best quality, there are now hick-ups in the recording of maybe a second where it goes black and the sound fritzes - but only on the recording, it looks fine if you watch it real-time. 2) If the channel doesn't come in (our Digital Cable seems to have dropped all local channels!!) TiVO starts skipping randomly up or down channels until it hits a signal, and then still keeps the original channel's information! So we've gotten a half-hour of shopping-channel labelled "Family Guy", or university speakers on death and dying labelled "Fox News at 9".
Ugh. Even with the purchased solution, things aren't all rosy.
1. Extended meetings where people aimlessly mull and nothing is produced 2. Following ingrained procedures which triple the time to do simple activities 3. Reinstalling failing software and OSes...
But then it's about what people do with their spare time?? I want solutions to the above!!!
I was shopping for a printer (never owned one) and the ~$100 Brother printer (w rebates) already has this 'feature'. At least one person on Amazon said that the head died pretty quickly and made the printer useless. Makes me want to buy Canon even more if they do have a separately-replaceable head.
...getting involved to crime and drugs....lower class have to many educational problems and past criminal behaivor. Most are turned away as unexceptable as they can't pass minimum standards... Not to bad of a deal at all.
What exactly qualifies as too unacceptable, or what minimum standards are you using?
I don't agree with the AC's vitriol, but I do agree that you messed up your terms BIG time.
Suspension of disbelief is totally the opposite of of suspension of reality.
And in my mind, all the games with the "realistic" graphics have ruined games for me - because I don't want to look at some approximation of reality! If I wanted that I would, um, not play games! I want some expressionism, some life and feeling and style!! World of Warcraft seems to be on the right path, but for most games I prefer having an ancient graphics card so all those damn "realistic" textures, etc., don't have a chance of getting drawn.
I'll say it again, if I wanted real I'd go outside. I play games to have fun, be entertained, and see pretty things.
On the one hand: any student, whether they've worked in OSS or not can apply and learn about OSS.
On the other: I haven't yet finished a college degree and while it's been nearly 10 years since I've attended a class, (and 7+ since C/++) I would like a more structured intro to OSS instead of the standard flailing around:)
Actually I'm going to guess that 99.999+% of humans are this way 99.999+% (including myself). It's probably why The Matrix resonated so well with everyone, regardless of religion or other external belief system.
Good points. Let me continue one process you started:
Information != Knowledge Knowledge != Wisdom Wisdom != Life.
If you spend too much of your time processing input/output at any of the higher steps, you never get to the ultimate conclusion.
For definitions, I'll say (weakly, since I don't know anyone else has tried this): *Information is dead but Knowledge is alive *Knowledge is fact-oriented/external but Wisdom is life-process-oriented and internal *Wisdom is passive, Life is active.
b) have a phenomenological existence that enjoys the work it has been created to do (like the Ameglian Major Cow [64.233.161.104] at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe)
It seems to me that the whole point was lost: The self awareness. The Cow referred to has been bread for centuries to not only have the desired physical characteristics (taste, tenderness, etc.) but also the desired mental characteristics - the desire to be eaten. At least it claims so, but it could have as well been conditioned into the cow during it's lifetime (carry on nature vs nuture arguments elsewhere).
If the conscious entity has no ability to discern they have a choice (eg. it was bread(?) into them) whether it be love/devotion or hate/revulsion, are they 'human', or can they behave human-ly? Or if that hasn't been bread out of them, yet they've been conditioned (Pavlov or somesuch) to think they can only safely choose one way, are they human? Or if they grew up in an environment where there never was another choice than 'the way things are' - so much so that they could never form the thought of being in a different situation, of saying 'No', or what 'no' might mean to them (think of some peasants in the Middle Ages), were they human?
If the entity can't say "Well, now, I'm in this situation. How do I feel about that? And do I have values and a life I can measure it against and decide for myself whether I want to continue doing it?" - are they fully human? If they never have the internal choice of saying "No" or "Yes" are they ever human? If they do not make that decision independently every moment, are they human during the other moments when that decision is denied them?
8-PP
P.S. If I didn't make it obvious, I agree that the given B and C Categories are the same - just different flavors of the same state of being. Instead lets say Category B is a hammer that hates having to pound 1/4-penny nails. Maybe it wants to pound screws instead. Maybe it wants to pound wood in artistic ways. Maybe it wants a break from normal pounding and do a rapid pounding which acts like a saw on some materials. Maybe it has no deeper desire than simply stop pounding the same nail every day. Category C, then, is a hammer that dislikes being a hammer and wants to be human but instead keeps a cat and earn it's status as a high-ranking officer of a Federation starship.
I liked lots of AC but what I disliked brought it down again, but still better than the Civ2s. Alpha Centauri was probably shunned because it was too different - though I believe it got good reviews at the time. I do think they were correct, that after a while the babble-tech names disoriented me - when I can't relate a name to a tech to a weapon or even class of improvements, I consider it confusing/poor design. But maybe I just wasn't inducted deep enough into that grade of Sci-Fi.
The original Civ was great - I still prefer their 2D GUI and used that interface when I tried FreeCiv a while ago. Colonization, though, was the best in my mind: Music, workers who can learn and specialize, a pretty determined story, distinct empires, and a hierarchy of goods (milder and more useful than Settlers)... Sounds like it's time to reinstall it, if it actually works anywhere anymore:(
Okay, I'm posting again without the article in front of me, but IIRC a games mag this month had an article with Sid and he said there would be 3 different ways of playing Civ4 - primarily because the networking/multiplayer was deep in the bones of the game. The first 2 would be fast - something like an hour or so and then several hours for a complete game, while the last is the typical "Play for 40 days and 40 nights" style:)
However I thought they also said the number of total turns had been reduced, which I am repulsed by on principle. If true, the XML config files they're blustering about better allow it to be set higher.
Re: Battleships vs Warriors - actually that is factually true, just like in real life Tanks are at the mercy of infantry. People will always have a chance to conquer machines, just not a 100% chance in most circumstances. To make it more correct, Civ would have to implement some combined-arms kinds of rules. Tribal warriors versus mechanized infantry, though, has much smaller chances.
Exactly - they need to be very careful about what they do with the 3D or it will be as bad as the change to diamonds in Civ2, or the inverted sliver polygons on the backside of hills in Alpha Centauri!
One of the quotes from Sid in a computer game mag this month was something like "You can only put so much into 50x50 pixels" - er, except 3D doesn't give you anymore pixels! It is possible to be precise with 2D, but with 3D you put it all the effort into the tech/engine/models and then blame the user if they can't see what they need? That's just poor design Sid, and the whole X blocking Y proliferation makes for a worse game and frustrated users.
The same article also said Sid was keeping hands-off for Civ4 - some general direction only - but isn't that what he's done since Civ (when he's around at all)? Isn't that why people keep complaining that it's really just a name now with no quality to it?
I actually start fairly far back - I use a program to overwrite freespace in chunks (1GB or 4GB) and leave the last overwrite chunk there. Then I can either: 1. delete a chunk if I need more disk space, or 2. make more chunks when I want to make sure more space is overwritten.
If I knew how to put hooks into an FS (like Subversion's Tortoise does) I'd have it done automatically, but I haven't looked into that yet.
Question: What's with the random writes? Why not just write standard patterns to overwrite unused space? Is the Journalling compressing the data instead of storing it raw on the disk? Or is this more in the 'regular patterns don't hide the original data' sorts of vein?
Slashdot Mirror
First, let me say I would be interested to read both your papers and what you cite in your research. I think this is a non-trivial problem, yet possibly also a simple one (though I don't know why people disagree with me :).
A couple terms are needed: I'll use "classical art" to represent nongame art (physical, structural, sequential, etc.), and "video games" as the blanket term for console, PC, electronic, arcade, etc., games. I don't use the compound word because I'm ornery and video games are only one small subset of the vast game universe.
"The game part is where you are trying to beat/master a system...it's the cognitive orientation of the player." And earlier "The videogame mode of attention is not an aesthetic mode."
You've called it a mode of attention, however your unspoken words are "And that is the only way you can approach video games." That cognitive mindset is simply one mindset - albeit a highly popular and (currently) completely expected one - people use when approaching something (currently) labelled as a game. And I would argue that that mindset/response is a totally taught response, a response ingrained by positive feedback: problem solving in a very specific context. This leads to gaming editorials about how people have no morals while gaming. However a person's first video game experience leaves them asking "What do I do?" to which a gamer replies, "Here's how you beat this game". The newbie has to keep forcing themselves into the mindset for a while until it becomes second nature. They may even be surprised at the language used as people generally think of games something to be played, not the gamer's re-contexting of having to beat them. Do you beat Trivial Pursuit?
However it is not a *required* mindset to use, view, or consider a video game. The video game does not force you to beat it. You decide if and when you want to beat it. Or instead if you just want to play it. The classical art does not force you to view/think/feel about it, many will simply shut it out of their experience, or you may form an emotional reaction or connection with it while experiencing it.
Your descriptions also leave out the fact that there are at least 2 mindsets for beating a video game: Play the game as the designers/team intended (suspending disbelief), or to beat the game's ruleset (meta-gaming).
Taking the first point, I'm not seeing how that is different from classical art: There is a product, there is an observer/participant, there is a reaction to abide by the required suspension of disbelief, and the observer/participant attempt to live within the non-real world for a short time - sometimes an imperceptible amount of time.
As for the second point, I would argue that as soon as people try beating the game's ruleset, when they start meta-gaming even if it is 'merely' to MinMax their character or to only use one cheat code, it is because the player had no patience for the video game *as*presented*. Simply, their mindset was in dissonance to that the designers/team expected at the time they experienced it. You could also say that the observer/participant decided to try continuing participating - but with some help/different limitations.
Can the designer/team be faulted if the observer/participant takes their expression and picks it apart to MinMax their game to the highest edge of the rules? Can the photographer be blamed that a print of their masterpiece is used to line a bird cage, or to make a collage or retrospective book?
Some classical art, especially things labelled interactive art, provoke the same reactions, especially when people's assumptions are questioned: it becomes something to figure out or otherwise solve. Their reaction to the art is such that they no longer participate in the suspension of disbelief, and may even try analyzing it with their mind instead of feeling it with their emotions.
Some people postulate that video games also have a different vein of mindsets to which people gravitate: ex
On-the-money insights. Sorry I don't have any mod points!
Are you otherwise involved in MMOGs or other gaming communities? Or have you just been thinking about this topic?
8-PP
Imagine you are watching a limp balloon.
.3%, Spelling/Grammar .0001%, other 55%
.. well I think I have some sense of the larger picture(s).
The balloon starts to fill up, but it looks like it is getting too full.
Suddenly there is a break in the balloon and water comes pouring out of it, so you scramble and put a cork in it to seal the hole.
Briefly the balloon stalls, but eventually it starts getting larger again.
After staring at it a long time, another hole breaks and water pours out again. You pick up another cork and stop the water.
This happens several more times, and you learn to get anxious every time you see the balloon filling up again.
It happens irregularly, so you must be eternally vigilant, watching constantly. But at least you have an infinite pile of corks.
-- -- -- --
(YMMV) This is how parents treat their children in the U.S.A. - if there is an outburst, it is stopped. Angry, sad, even afraid and people can be judged to be too happy as well. It is disapproved-of, it is criticized, and it is outlawed. Unfortunately it isn't just parents, this treatment typically comes from everyone in a kid's life: siblings, teachers, classmates (even in your clique), relatives, the whole society.
Some (emotional) leaks are implicitly ignored or encouraged (1), and some are stoppered more harshly than others(2). People learn to favor certain stoppers and start applying them themselves(3).
For the U.S.A. I'll make some wild guesses about the break-downs of those 3:
1) Violence 75% Being Mean/lashing out verbally/emotionally 30%
2) Sensuality 80% Feminity(for males)/Masculinity(for females) 75% Homosexuality 95%(more severe but happens less often)
3) Obsessive/Compulsive* 95% (is there anything else?)
*O/S is split among the following (% of population): Consumerism 50%, Work 40%, Alcohol 40%, Food(eat/repulsed) 40%, Sports 20%, Religion 20%, Exercise/body image 20%, Games 15%, Politics 15%, Family/home 10%, TV/movies/Celebrities 10%, music 5%, Gambling 5%, Crime 2%, Drugs
Disclaimer: I was born in the U.S.A. and have lived here for > 30 years, but
8-PP
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
8-PP
I'm folding in a different thread, but I think the sign of a good show (either for me or similar people) is that the show *was* cancelled on network TV!
There have been several shows over the years including FireFly, The Tick, Costello, Cupid, and most recently Keen Eddie which were on for typically a half-season or less (usually Spring filler) before being dropped. Those were some amazing shows, and at least these ones were hilarious and insightful - two characteristics I love in a show.
But there is also a contrarian trend of shows where they were dropped from network TV when they were loved, then somehow were brought back to life - but as the living dead. Shows in this group are: The Drew Carey Show, Family Guy and.. I can't remember. Really, after the love people had for them in the first 2+ seasons, they came back as... Less fun, certainly. Less something else too... Spirited?
BTW, I almost immediately got the FG DVD set - and watch it more than the new shows.
YMMV,
8-PP
Part response to parent, part deepening parent's question:
During published interviews with Brian Reynolds, he is quoted as saying that 'you can only fit so much into a 50x50 (pixel) space" (approx.) It annoys me immensely that they seem to be foisting the erroneous concept that somehow a zoomable 3D version will fit more (useful) information into the same screen real estate. Of course I was one of those peeved when the clean squares of Civ (I) were supplanted by those horrible diamonds in the last versions. I was happy to see FreeCiv had that option, though it didn't hold my interest long enough.
So thank you for allowing us to have the squares back!
The deeper questions, then, are:
1. What is the interaction between the game designers and the interface designers and the graphics people - what sort of synergism does it take to develop the GUI we see in current screenshots, and what is the timeline of that?
1b. Was it frozen with only a couple minor tweaks over the last 6 months, or were there significant overhaul(s) recently, say during alpha and beta test periods?
1c. *Is* there a UI person/group, how much influence were they allowed?
1d. Were the modellers/skinners given a certain single or multiple resolutions they needed to have products look especially crisp at?
2. Was the game first developed for it's interface and instead the gameplay was tweaked until the end? Or a meeting-in-the-middle (development timeline-wise)?
3. Oh, and will we finally be able to use *any* resolution we want? It is a bit painful playing Civ III scaled up to fit on a big monitor - turns out even Colonization (my favorite!) can use more monitor real estate! (at least in portrait mode)
Thanks for answers, thanks for Colonization, and thanks for Civ 4!
8-PP
8-PP
Short answer: Yup.
:p
Addendum: It would be even better if it had multiple tuners built in, like another 7-tuner Japanese model pointed out a couple months ago.
Longer answer: My SO and I are casual TV watchers, and as far as watching TV it goes in cycles - some weeks we like it/are excited to watch, and other weeks we may see only a couple shows. But the TV stations don't care about us, so we time-shift what we like including a lot of reruns (I just got her hooked on Gilmore Girls, and STTNG is hopefully about to reach the series finale soon). Also waiting for a couple series to start up again and getting a couple movies from movie channels (some have been sitting there for a couple months). And I don't want to spring the ungodly amounts to buy the series so I keep some old ST:DS9 shows around, and we have some favorite John Stewarts,...
So even though I upped our 40GB TiVO to 2x160GB (less than 300GB useable because of their BIOS, I believe), we still max out - but we have a lot of things marked "Delete as needed" so only early on when we didn't delete anything did we actually have TiVO say "Can not record - space full".
The most annoying thing is that there isn't anything saying how much space is left on the machine - you have to force it to complain about no space. Worst part of the user interface - besides it forgetting the special setting at every software upgrade
Actually, the 2 most annoying things are:
1) Even on best quality, there are now hick-ups in the recording of maybe a second where it goes black and the sound fritzes - but only on the recording, it looks fine if you watch it real-time.
2) If the channel doesn't come in (our Digital Cable seems to have dropped all local channels!!) TiVO starts skipping randomly up or down channels until it hits a signal, and then still keeps the original channel's information! So we've gotten a half-hour of shopping-channel labelled "Family Guy", or university speakers on death and dying labelled "Fox News at 9".
Ugh. Even with the purchased solution, things aren't all rosy.
8-PP
Explain, please.
8-PP
The SlashTitle made me think of:
...
1. Extended meetings where people aimlessly mull and nothing is produced
2. Following ingrained procedures which triple the time to do simple activities
3. Reinstalling failing software and OSes
But then it's about what people do with their spare time?? I want solutions to the above!!!
8-PP
I was shopping for a printer (never owned one) and the ~$100 Brother printer (w rebates) already has this 'feature'. At least one person on Amazon said that the head died pretty quickly and made the printer useless. Makes me want to buy Canon even more if they do have a separately-replaceable head.
8-PP
Amazon hasn't been able to process their own GCs for at least 6 weeks now, so all GC orders are stuck eternally in processing!
:)
You might consider getting them a Best Buy GC - maybe their Geek Squad can fix Amazon's problem
8-PP
8-PP
I don't agree with the AC's vitriol, but I do agree that you messed up your terms BIG time.
Suspension of disbelief is totally the opposite of of suspension of reality.
And in my mind, all the games with the "realistic" graphics have ruined games for me - because I don't want to look at some approximation of reality! If I wanted that I would, um, not play games! I want some expressionism, some life and feeling and style!! World of Warcraft seems to be on the right path, but for most games I prefer having an ancient graphics card so all those damn "realistic" textures, etc., don't have a chance of getting drawn.
I'll say it again, if I wanted real I'd go outside. I play games to have fun, be entertained, and see pretty things.
YMMV,
8-PP
On the one hand: any student, whether they've worked in OSS or not can apply and learn about OSS.
:)
On the other: I haven't yet finished a college degree and while it's been nearly 10 years since I've attended a class, (and 7+ since C/++) I would like a more structured intro to OSS instead of the standard flailing around
The mentorship sounds cool too! Hmmm....
8-PP
:)
Actually I'm going to guess that 99.999+% of humans are this way 99.999+% (including myself). It's probably why The Matrix resonated so well with everyone, regardless of religion or other external belief system.
8-PP
Good points. Let me continue one process you started:
Information != Knowledge
Knowledge != Wisdom
Wisdom != Life.
If you spend too much of your time processing input/output at any of the higher steps, you never get to the ultimate conclusion.
For definitions, I'll say (weakly, since I don't know anyone else has tried this):
*Information is dead but Knowledge is alive
*Knowledge is fact-oriented/external but Wisdom is life-process-oriented and internal
*Wisdom is passive, Life is active.
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If the conscious entity has no ability to discern they have a choice (eg. it was bread(?) into them) whether it be love/devotion or hate/revulsion, are they 'human', or can they behave human-ly? Or if that hasn't been bread out of them, yet they've been conditioned (Pavlov or somesuch) to think they can only safely choose one way, are they human? Or if they grew up in an environment where there never was another choice than 'the way things are' - so much so that they could never form the thought of being in a different situation, of saying 'No', or what 'no' might mean to them (think of some peasants in the Middle Ages), were they human?
If the entity can't say "Well, now, I'm in this situation. How do I feel about that? And do I have values and a life I can measure it against and decide for myself whether I want to continue doing it?" - are they fully human? If they never have the internal choice of saying "No" or "Yes" are they ever human? If they do not make that decision independently every moment, are they human during the other moments when that decision is denied them?
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P.S. If I didn't make it obvious, I agree that the given B and C Categories are the same - just different flavors of the same state of being.
Instead lets say Category B is a hammer that hates having to pound 1/4-penny nails. Maybe it wants to pound screws instead. Maybe it wants to pound wood in artistic ways. Maybe it wants a break from normal pounding and do a rapid pounding which acts like a saw on some materials. Maybe it has no deeper desire than simply stop pounding the same nail every day.
Category C, then, is a hammer that dislikes being a hammer and wants to be human but instead keeps a cat and earn it's status as a high-ranking officer of a Federation starship.
I liked lots of AC but what I disliked brought it down again, but still better than the Civ2s. Alpha Centauri was probably shunned because it was too different - though I believe it got good reviews at the time. I do think they were correct, that after a while the babble-tech names disoriented me - when I can't relate a name to a tech to a weapon or even class of improvements, I consider it confusing/poor design. But maybe I just wasn't inducted deep enough into that grade of Sci-Fi.
:(
The original Civ was great - I still prefer their 2D GUI and used that interface when I tried FreeCiv a while ago. Colonization, though, was the best in my mind: Music, workers who can learn and specialize, a pretty determined story, distinct empires, and a hierarchy of goods (milder and more useful than Settlers)... Sounds like it's time to reinstall it, if it actually works anywhere anymore
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Okay, I'm posting again without the article in front of me, but IIRC a games mag this month had an article with Sid and he said there would be 3 different ways of playing Civ4 - primarily because the networking/multiplayer was deep in the bones of the game. The first 2 would be fast - something like an hour or so and then several hours for a complete game, while the last is the typical "Play for 40 days and 40 nights" style :)
However I thought they also said the number of total turns had been reduced, which I am repulsed by on principle. If true, the XML config files they're blustering about better allow it to be set higher.
Re: Battleships vs Warriors - actually that is factually true, just like in real life Tanks are at the mercy of infantry. People will always have a chance to conquer machines, just not a 100% chance in most circumstances. To make it more correct, Civ would have to implement some combined-arms kinds of rules. Tribal warriors versus mechanized infantry, though, has much smaller chances.
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Exactly - they need to be very careful about what they do with the 3D or it will be as bad as the change to diamonds in Civ2, or the inverted sliver polygons on the backside of hills in Alpha Centauri!
One of the quotes from Sid in a computer game mag this month was something like "You can only put so much into 50x50 pixels" - er, except 3D doesn't give you anymore pixels! It is possible to be precise with 2D, but with 3D you put it all the effort into the tech/engine/models and then blame the user if they can't see what they need? That's just poor design Sid, and the whole X blocking Y proliferation makes for a worse game and frustrated users.
The same article also said Sid was keeping hands-off for Civ4 - some general direction only - but isn't that what he's done since Civ (when he's around at all)? Isn't that why people keep complaining that it's really just a name now with no quality to it?
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Bump! For both!!
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..looks like mediochre sci-fi, to me.
Very little of this trailer was ochre, but none of the TV episodes were mediocre.
YMMV,
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Yes, it definitely takes a long time.
I actually start fairly far back - I use a program to overwrite freespace in chunks (1GB or 4GB) and leave the last overwrite chunk there. Then I can either:
1. delete a chunk if I need more disk space, or
2. make more chunks when I want to make sure more space is overwritten.
If I knew how to put hooks into an FS (like Subversion's Tortoise does) I'd have it done automatically, but I haven't looked into that yet.
Question: What's with the random writes? Why not just write standard patterns to overwrite unused space? Is the Journalling compressing the data instead of storing it raw on the disk? Or is this more in the 'regular patterns don't hide the original data' sorts of vein?
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