My initial reasoning for getting it was because I didn't have enough desk space.:-P Because of the small amount of real estate, I usually bring it along with my laptop, to coffeeshops, on my bed, or in front of the tv. I hate those laptop trackpads. I use a nice 7 button optical mouse for my desktop because I have the room, and my hand eye coordination seem more inclined toward the customary mouse gestures. However, while traveling, I prefer to also use a logitech trackball to plug in the laptop for the same space saving and anti-trackpad reasons. I don't game with it, but it's perfect for it's low desk foot print and the ability to use it on your lap or elsewhere (almost) as effectively as a mouse on a wide desk.
I really am disappointed with the last book. It felt very rushed, the plot very contrived. It was the first book that didn't take place largely at the school, and I really feel like it suffered as a result for it. Like she didn't know how to carry the plot effectively without the academic context in the background. Granted it was a very dark contrast to the rest of the series, with plenty of the anticipated "surprise" deaths and answers to long standing plot questions. But even those answers were rushed and literally as anti-climactic as the end. I recall reading that Rawling has had the last chapter written or in her head since she first started the series. It's the nature of most authors to let a story evolve as they write it, and I can't help but wonder after finally reading that chapter if she would have been better off letting it too evolve as she wrote the series into something else that might have been much more interesting
In spirit I'd agree - however it's arguable that traditional print media *is* directly being threatened with extinction. My guess is that people who read newspapers often are in a demographic that also uses computers and they are migrating to a new source of news. Where as the entertainment value of radio, TV, and cinema isn't nearly threatened to the same degree.
People think "snail mail" is dying too - but I can't imagine a near-future without it.
Check out a fairly low budget off the radar game called "Rogue Universe" -it's got a very sexy rendering engine that touts high-end particle/lighting/FX options for strong PC's, but suffers from lack of a decent manual, tutorial, hideous voice acting and plot cues. The dog fighting though is pretty addictive, as well as the complexities of ship types, weapons choices, configuration, and missile / payload selections once you get past the learning curve.
Don't worry - anything they release "exclusively" on xbox will most likely be immediately available via P2P, ported by various scenes to insert into the PC version for you to enjoy. Just like the vista "exclusive" Halo2 was almost immediately fully functional on XP via some creative registry/dynamic library patches.
The RTS genre that SC pioneered is pretty much dead. C&C and all the (many, way too many) clones beat that horse to death. Blizz probably knows making another RTS, even a very sexy next-gen RTS, will never have the market impact that a new StarCraft MMOG would.
I have to agree with many of the points raised over the uniqueness of LOTRo not quite distinguishing itself enough from WOW, or fantasy MMOG's in general. While eye candy and a new world of immersion are attractive to many, I feel LOTRo will fall short in that the characters are not as unique to the user as would be attractive for very long term retention. There are no adjustable player stats and skill trees are purely linear. While it's a very beautiful game, and the Tolkien content is attractive, it's over-all lack of diversity could be it's undoing.
Agreed, force feedback technology being used this way is a great concept with many practical applications, however I think using the term "force field" in the article is highly misleading, and the science journal's writer deserves a thumping for that. A hand isn't hitting an amazing new electromagnetic barrier, rather A glove is passing into a set of spatial coordinates it's programmed to respond to.
I hope this doesn't prevent the release of GTA4. Selfishly perhaps, but let the company flounder, let Rockstar's bright fire burn itself out if they can't get things under control, let NYC and Thompson litigate them them till implosion, but let us have their legacy complete and released! It will make them immortal regardless.
agreed, just finished this game second time around and I really like the AI - though you can "exploit" it sometimes. Shooting a guy in the leg and disabling him will cause others to exit cover and come to him.
Other situations where enemy scatter and take cover, their patterns of going from one side of cover to the other begins to become predictable.
Nonetheless, it's the best FPS AI I've ever seen, hands down.
Does that mean it's usable fresh water? There's no such thing as unusable water when you're packing the camper for a 12 month trip to mars and every ounce counts...
How can we expect *anything* said in the same sentence as "Team Fortress 2" to be true!? I'm waiting for dramatic press releases regarding StarCraft/Diablo 3, Duke Nukem Forever, The phantom Gaming system, Fallout 3, and other classic vaporware jumping on the DX10 bandwagon.
Agree - HW2 is *still* on my PC's today just to pass time when my net is down in single player quick skirmish's.. LOVE this game. There's still an active Mod community for it even.
All discussion on relative "values" aside, I felt the real point is the morality, the psychological side of the issue. If you were a hiring from a pool and you learned that an applicant stole items or cheated seriously in an MMOG (even if it wasn't truly illegal in any sense of the word) would you hire them? I wouldn't. Because it speaks clearly to their character and personality. If someone feels it's ok to steal from someone online, I don't trust them to be completely honest IRL.
While I'm all for civil liberties and freedoms, I can't wait for the internet to evolve to where individuals are accountable for what we do and say online just like we are in the "real" world. A thief is a thief, someone without respect for others, be it a mugger in a dark ally or joe whitebread jacked into a MMOG.
Agreed. There's nothing more "robotic" about a mechanical arm in a factory then any mechanical device someone could be a twit and die around. This story is sensationalist drivel. Programming a robotic arm with "robotic laws of safety" would mean spending millions and millions more on each arm making sure they are programed to be "aware" (in whatever sense) of their surroundings rather then just a mechanism. Weight that vs. simple training, safety mechanisms and procedures which were already in place and it's a no brainer, pun intended.
Compuserve was around long before AOL. I credit them with laying the table with all the bad manners AOL excercised later on when they bought them. I blame them for lowering the default intelligence required to participate online, which was the chisel cracking open the floodgates that was AOL. The lack of accountibility, idiocy, and random utter garbage that is the majority of the internet grew exponentially by the second after compuserve started up.
We all know that a PC you buy and a PC you build have basically the same parts, and that building it yourself is cheaper. That said, I've told every non-geek person for years who has pestered me to "build them a powerful pc" that when you buy a machine, you're paying for that 800 number in the manual, not the pile of parts. That number is worth every penny of an overpriced off the shelf PC because it removes YOU from the responsibility of fixing it.
Kliener Perkin's little darling - Buy fiber and lets give T1's and T3's to every floor in every office building in every city and run it all from the same hub. Wait.. they have to sell it to actual customers? And you have to go through other providers? RUN!
good point, last mile bandwidth becomes pointless unless all our data exists soley in RAM, rather then on rewritable media like a hard drive. No hard drive can ever hope to read or write fast enough to cope with a fraction of that throughput, so such technology is only useful between telco hubs... I doubt the end user would ever notice the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking geosynchronous orbit club sounded better. Definitely puts a new spin on the phrase "going around the world" with your GF.
I really am disappointed with the last book. It felt very rushed, the plot very contrived. It was the first book that didn't take place largely at the school, and I really feel like it suffered as a result for it. Like she didn't know how to carry the plot effectively without the academic context in the background. Granted it was a very dark contrast to the rest of the series, with plenty of the anticipated "surprise" deaths and answers to long standing plot questions. But even those answers were rushed and literally as anti-climactic as the end. I recall reading that Rawling has had the last chapter written or in her head since she first started the series. It's the nature of most authors to let a story evolve as they write it, and I can't help but wonder after finally reading that chapter if she would have been better off letting it too evolve as she wrote the series into something else that might have been much more interesting
In spirit I'd agree - however it's arguable that traditional print media *is* directly being threatened with extinction. My guess is that people who read newspapers often are in a demographic that also uses computers and they are migrating to a new source of news. Where as the entertainment value of radio, TV, and cinema isn't nearly threatened to the same degree.
People think "snail mail" is dying too - but I can't imagine a near-future without it.
Check out a fairly low budget off the radar game called "Rogue Universe" -it's got a very sexy rendering engine that touts high-end particle/lighting/FX options for strong PC's, but suffers from lack of a decent manual, tutorial, hideous voice acting and plot cues. The dog fighting though is pretty addictive, as well as the complexities of ship types, weapons choices, configuration, and missile / payload selections once you get past the learning curve.
Don't worry - anything they release "exclusively" on xbox will most likely be immediately available via P2P, ported by various scenes to insert into the PC version for you to enjoy. Just like the vista "exclusive" Halo2 was almost immediately fully functional on XP via some creative registry/dynamic library patches.
The RTS genre that SC pioneered is pretty much dead. C&C and all the (many, way too many) clones beat that horse to death. Blizz probably knows making another RTS, even a very sexy next-gen RTS, will never have the market impact that a new StarCraft MMOG would.
Perhaps a Newton.. actually was one of the idiots who had one :) Yeah, I know it was a PDA, but if you go by size and weight lol)
I have to agree with many of the points raised over the uniqueness of LOTRo not quite distinguishing itself enough from WOW, or fantasy MMOG's in general. While eye candy and a new world of immersion are attractive to many, I feel LOTRo will fall short in that the characters are not as unique to the user as would be attractive for very long term retention. There are no adjustable player stats and skill trees are purely linear. While it's a very beautiful game, and the Tolkien content is attractive, it's over-all lack of diversity could be it's undoing.
Agreed, force feedback technology being used this way is a great concept with many practical applications, however I think using the term "force field" in the article is highly misleading, and the science journal's writer deserves a thumping for that. A hand isn't hitting an amazing new electromagnetic barrier, rather A glove is passing into a set of spatial coordinates it's programmed to respond to.
I hope this doesn't prevent the release of GTA4. Selfishly perhaps, but let the company flounder, let Rockstar's bright fire burn itself out if they can't get things under control, let NYC and Thompson litigate them them till implosion, but let us have their legacy complete and released! It will make them immortal regardless.
Damn, player names "RANGRANG" and "KEKEKEK" were already taken! *sigh*
agreed, just finished this game second time around and I really like the AI - though you can "exploit" it sometimes. Shooting a guy in the leg and disabling him will cause others to exit cover and come to him.
Other situations where enemy scatter and take cover, their patterns of going from one side of cover to the other begins to become predictable.
Nonetheless, it's the best FPS AI I've ever seen, hands down.
What sucks is that most of that price is the software licenses.
How can we expect *anything* said in the same sentence as "Team Fortress 2" to be true!? I'm waiting for dramatic press releases regarding StarCraft/Diablo 3, Duke Nukem Forever, The phantom Gaming system, Fallout 3, and other classic vaporware jumping on the DX10 bandwagon.
Agree - HW2 is *still* on my PC's today just to pass time when my net is down in single player quick skirmish's.. LOVE this game. There's still an active Mod community for it even.
Borat.. Mahir.. It's all the same AND frivolous :P Yakov Smirnoff did it first, best, and thankfully moved on.
All discussion on relative "values" aside, I felt the real point is the morality, the psychological side of the issue. If you were a hiring from a pool and you learned that an applicant stole items or cheated seriously in an MMOG (even if it wasn't truly illegal in any sense of the word) would you hire them? I wouldn't. Because it speaks clearly to their character and personality. If someone feels it's ok to steal from someone online, I don't trust them to be completely honest IRL.
While I'm all for civil liberties and freedoms, I can't wait for the internet to evolve to where individuals are accountable for what we do and say online just like we are in the "real" world. A thief is a thief, someone without respect for others, be it a mugger in a dark ally or joe whitebread jacked into a MMOG.
Agreed. There's nothing more "robotic" about a mechanical arm in a factory then any mechanical device someone could be a twit and die around. This story is sensationalist drivel. Programming a robotic arm with "robotic laws of safety" would mean spending millions and millions more on each arm making sure they are programed to be "aware" (in whatever sense) of their surroundings rather then just a mechanism. Weight that vs. simple training, safety mechanisms and procedures which were already in place and it's a no brainer, pun intended.
Compuserve was around long before AOL. I credit them with laying the table with all the bad manners AOL excercised later on when they bought them. I blame them for lowering the default intelligence required to participate online, which was the chisel cracking open the floodgates that was AOL. The lack of accountibility, idiocy, and random utter garbage that is the majority of the internet grew exponentially by the second after compuserve started up.
We all know that a PC you buy and a PC you build have basically the same parts, and that building it yourself is cheaper. That said, I've told every non-geek person for years who has pestered me to "build them a powerful pc" that when you buy a machine, you're paying for that 800 number in the manual, not the pile of parts. That number is worth every penny of an overpriced off the shelf PC because it removes YOU from the responsibility of fixing it.
Kliener Perkin's little darling - Buy fiber and lets give T1's and T3's to every floor in every office building in every city and run it all from the same hub. Wait.. they have to sell it to actual customers? And you have to go through other providers? RUN!
"I wasn't unaware" that this would be so in-depth.
good point, last mile bandwidth becomes pointless unless all our data exists soley in RAM, rather then on rewritable media like a hard drive. No hard drive can ever hope to read or write fast enough to cope with a fraction of that throughput, so such technology is only useful between telco hubs... I doubt the end user would ever notice the difference.