There is an ancient Chinese(?) proverb of a man who would stand next to his neighbor's campfire when he was cooking meat and eat his bowl of rice (so the plain rice would taste better). His neighbor brought him to court for stealing the smell of his meat.
The judge pronounced that it was indeed a crime, and ordered the "thief" to bring his pitiful life savings of a few coins to the court house. Once there, he then ordered the poor man to drop the coins from one hand to the other. Thereby paying the neighbor for the smell of his meat with the sound of his money.
Maybe it was a "real" crime, but it was in a "real game" and should be dealt with there. If the crime had real world consequences, then so will the in-game "punishment".
-lwh
Re:CSS created by programmers for designers
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Dvorak Rants on CSS
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· Score: 1
I disagree, many designers in their right mind would want that, particularly when we have to use content in a multitude of mediums
And most designers would rather design separately for each of those mediums. I don't need a generic "content" flowing into five generic "designs". If you don't have real graphic control over even ONE medium, what difference does it make that you can cram the same content into SEVERAL mediums. It's useful, I'll grant you that, but that's just the kind of thing that is crap for design. Hideous.
Also what I meant about print content and design being the same is that with print, designers can make the page look pretty much exactly like they want and the user can't go home and read it however they want. They see it the way the designer designed it and can not "separate it". "The same" as in "inseparable". A far cry from internet design.
Obviously I wasn't implying that content could not be re-designed.
LH
CSS created by programmers for designers
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Dvorak Rants on CSS
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· Score: 1
No. This is essentially a programmers' setup. CSS is an attempt to separate content and form. No designer in their right mind wants that. On a printed page, content and form are identical. CSS is the opposite.
CSS may describe a visual look and feel, but its implementation is all about programming aesthetic. It's no wonder most designers mock up their sites in Photoshop. Not Eclipse, Visual Studio, or even Dreamweaver. That's where designers go from "this is what I want", to "this is the month of aggravation I have to go through to get something remotely like the mockup I did in four hours" Believe me, designers need the functionality (such as it is) of CSS but this is not the way it would be implemented by designers.
CSS and HTML to some extent were created by programmers FOR designers. I desperately pray for the day that "mark up" languages, style sheets, and their goobledy gook visual approximations disappear into the mists of time.
Also, the reason a founder can look you in the eye and screw you with worthless stock and make you believe they are sincere is because most of them are. They are clueless. Most of them (especially back in 1.0-land) don't know much more about stock and what it will mean in an earn-out, merger, or IPO than you do. In fact, most of these people ARE you three years into the future. And many of them are in the process of getting screwed too on a different level...
I joined a startup, and I should have been the first employee, but as the only tech guy I was given the option of becoming a partner. The catch was that I was going to be paid sporadically, had to take responsibility for the company and its decisions, and worry about all those things that people who run companies have to worry about. Not only things like going bankrupt, but also taking a load of people down with you. But since I was doing the work myself, I felt I had enough input into how well we'd do... and besides that, I was young and had nothing to lose.
The next person we hired we liked so much we made her the same offer. She turned us down thank you very much, and decided she'd rather draw a reliable salary. That reliable salary turned out to be MY reliable salary for a few months which I had to hand over to her because we weren't making enough money. In the end we both felt half-screwed with our choices. But we accepted the difference in pay-off as a result of our risk and both of us felt ok with our choices.
We held on, and my work was good enough to finally hire some REAL employees who were a lot better than myself. They all got stock, but in the end it's no surprise that their stock turned out to be mostly worthless. So all the employees felt shafted when we got bought out.
The funny thing is... ALL THE PARTNERS FELT SHAFTED TOO! I swear EVERYONE except for the investors and a few people who really knew what they were doing (not the original partners) felt they got hosed. It is very hard not to feel bad when people sitting right next to you become millionaires, and you become a hundred-thousandaire even though you KNOW you worked harder. But still, when you think about it, it's more than you THOUGHT you'd make.
If you've read through all of this, you deserve to hear the magic information from one who knows... First, you probably will get screwed if there is a payoff and there probably won't be one. So enjoy the foozball and the work and your friends and don't sweat it too much. Start-ups are only about big pay-offs for the partners and investors, and mostly just for the investors, and only then maybe once in ten times (companies/investments).
But if you really think you've got something and if you want a big payoff from a start-up, and you don't understand the legal mumbo-j (and you don't) get a lawyer. Pay money to get a decent offer together.
However, the chances are your lawyer won't know %&* either. This sounds wrong, but it is true. They know more than you, but not as much as you think they do and not as much as the lawyers who are getting ready to screw you in the future... So to double check, or if you just don't have the cash for a lawyer upfront... (magic information coming)
ASK FOR THE SAME STOCK/DEAL AS THE INVESTORS GET.
If they tell you that the investors get "pink fluff elephant stock", ask for pink fluff elephant stock. DEMAND pink fluff elephant stock. You'll know you're on the right track if they flat out refuse you... If they tell you that would be impossible,and probably illegal, then you've got it. If you want the big payoff, keep giving up stuff until you get it. Say you'll give up 20% of your salary and BUY "p.f.e.s." with cash. Say you'll work for free. Say what ever you have to, but unless you're getting the same deal as the investors (not the partners) you are going to get logarithmically less with each drop down the ladder. It is a power curve...
The chain is like: INVESTORS(VC), INVESTORS(Angel), FOUNDERS, PARTNERS, EMPLOYEES(executive), EMPLOYEES(smart/early), EMPLOYEES(long-stay), EMPLOYEES(new), Freelance/Temp.
Also, whatever you do, don't base your future on posts you read off of Slashdot. Do your own research;)
And in case you were wondering, no one ended up hating me to my face, I didn't become a millionaire (maybe on paper for a while), and I would do it again, but totally differently (that's experience).
Most things can be PLACED into hierarchies, which is why they are useful, but most things are NOT hierarchies. In your blue over red statement, you've condensed and changed an absolutely enormous amount of information to fit into your simple hierarchy. For instance, your color choice might better be described as:
Chose a red cup in kindergarten and got teased by three children.
Had a great time sailing on uncle's boat in Florida.
Calmed by the blue of water.
Loves the red of fires.
Learned to spell red first in school.
Red is for girls, Blue is for boys learned.
Saw a field of red flowers when hiking with Mary.
There is no more hierarchy than there is a hierarchy when flipping a coin in the wind. The results can be "placed" in a hierarchy. The brain (and body) is much more likely to work in patterns and relationships of varying and changing strengths than hierarchies.
I think when you start talking about Ted Nelson, you are on the tip of an iceberg of a conversation, namely, what is the value of an idea (vrs an implementation). We give a lot of lip service to "innovation" and ideas, but it's mostly just lip service.
Just look at Steve Jobs. Steve gets some cool ideas from some people at Xerox (I forget who because their names aren't constantly blaring at me in the media as they demo the new ipod in front of a 200ft screen) and makes them better, more useable and he's a hero. Gates buys QDOS and makes it a little bit more useable/better and he's a hero, then he takes Apple's implementation of a "borrowed" idea and makes it a little more accessible and he's a gabillionaire! Meanwhile, I have no idea who invented QDOS, never mind the guy who was probably his friend who said... "hey dude, you could totally build an operating system that did...etc." and is completely anonymous.
Then again, maybe that's as it should be. Making stuff is hard.
I've met and talked with Ted Nelson a few times, and I would never presume to speak for him or explain his ideas for him, but I think I can give a little perspective that might help clear up Ted's "thing".
Ted Nelson is personally an incredibly scattered individual, and his whole thought process seems to be like a million mixed-media post-it notes flying around in a tornado through space and time. That is basically why he makes no sense to people (and vice-versa I'd guess). I truly believe that his driving motivation is to create a system of information that WORKS LIKE HE DOES. I don't in any way mean that to be insulting, it is pretty amazing really and I am strongly PRO Ted Nelson. But with that in mind, he needs everything to connect to everything in every single way and be visible from every different angle. In his brain, he doesn't have to leave one program and export his thoughts to another program, and negotiate the copyrights so that he can think properly. And he KNOWS that it's possible, but not too many people are really looking at the big picture. I don't think he's saying there's anything WRONG with the internet, he's just looking about 50 years into the future and wants to get there... sooner.
Remember, this is a guy who thought up hypertext and micro payments at a time when people were literally telling him he was insane. In the next thirty years they went from saying "that could never physically happen" to "even though it's probably technically possible people won't want that to happen" to "oh, yeah, that's obvious and totally unavoidable. Duh Ted. Why are you even talking to me about this ?". So the guy is a visionary and a long term thinker.
Though I do admit that sometimes it seems (like all visionaries) he doesn't seem to have enough respect for the people who are actually creating useful and IMPLEMENTABLE technology. Still, we've been exploring this stuff for 20+ years now, and major "conceptual" advances are just going so unbearably slowly.
So maybe that adds some perspective. It's just my opinion anyway...
I know it's not that popular around here, but web interfaces are so hard to make that it's a miracle if you get anything that looks half-way decent. Most desktop apps rely on sophisticated interfaces that browsers just plain can't handle. Sure, 100 of the smartest people in the world at Google can come up with something that works, but it still looks like a web page!.
People don't want to work for any amount of time on an interface that looks like (or IS) made in html. Sure, I'll type in this stupid "text box" while I get ready to post this, but I'm not going to use it for five hours, never mind ten months. To try to make Open Office in a web browser is just swimming upstream.
Interface design is hard enough as it is. As a developer, for five times the work, you'll get a product that looks like half of what it would on a desktop app. Besides the fact that you have to stuff your web app INTO ANOTHER PROGRAM (the browser) to get it to work (which makes it just as much a "platform" as any other), web standards suck for design.
Web standards were designed to separate information from presentation, but then they never really bothered to come up with a real presentation mechanism that was as powerful as the information standards. In other words, this dynamically widthed paragraph of indeterminate font, color, and size has a word in it that is "strong" which makes it look... like however it looks. Fracking web design.
Also, if you are under 13, you may look, but not participate in, this wiki.
I think after hitting the wiki and immediately being confronted with 20 pictures from goatse I feel that maybe the wiki thing was a bad idea.
Things like this are a prime example of why large companies rarely innovate first. But so what? Obviously they misunderstood the nature of a wiki, but I'd rather have companies trying things that fail than just sitting around waiting for smaller companies to innovate (and then copying them once they are successful). I mean, sure it's funny how bad this is turning out, but I hope it doesn't discourage the LA Times and other companies from experimenting more liberally.
Just PLEASE have someone take down the wiki while you figure out how to stop people from inserting... "images".
Yeah, I think you're right. The US gets a little bit slower every day because of all this patent/copyright warfare. But it's mostly just companies within the US fighting with each other and slowing down innovation and general economic health within America. The US is trying to reach out and impose this structure on the rest of the world, but there is enough sensible resistence out there to make world-wide (submission) adoption highly questionable.
You think SPAM is going to have an effect on this election? SPAM!? You must be living in a different America my friend, because you can send Men In Black to beat me with rubber hoses while writing "Kerry Killed Your Cat HA HA!" in blood on my wall and I will still drag myself on broken arms to the polls to cast my vote against Bush on election day.
So no, we're well $#%@ beyond spam making a difference at this point...
You can't solve the problem, because you don't have the skills to do it.
It's NOT a technical problem. It's a problem of DESIGN, which is different. So OSS programmers can make some kick-*ss software, but most people are not going to be able to use it unless someone gets humble fast and says, "Oh f*ck, I don't know how to design ANYTHING because... I'M A PROGRAMMER! I need a DESIGNER!"
I know it's hard, and it takes a project leader with almost saint-like patience and humility to let his/her project be co-designed from conception to completion by someone who knows close to nothing about programming, but that's the only way. You're not a designer so just suck it up, and if you want your software to be popular, and useable by people, make sure a user interface designer is on your team and do what they tell you to do.
Also understand that you are going to have to do almost double the amount of work you would normaly have to do to get a good interface. Don't get mad at your designer... It takes a lot of work. You will have to grit your teeth and do strenuous amounts of work to get something that satisfies your designers' requirements. Don't bitch about it, just do it. That's how it works. It's hard, and yes, most of the work is going to fall on the programmer(s).
But in the end, the reason why Open Source hasn't taken over MS is because of the UI and the marketing. Linux? Most people can't use it. I mean, I've used *NIX, and I hate it. Most people do. In fact, most people don't even bother to learn it enough to hate it. What non-programmer is going to commit 300+ commands to memory just to search and type and use email. Uh, yeah.
So don't be so full of yourself. You can't do everything well. Beg, borrow, or pay a designer, do the work, and watch people actually start using your sh*t.
Then you can get an open source MARKETER and start REALLY doing some damage to MS.
From a useability perspective, it's not a conflict, but two groups who want to access information in different ways. If you have the time/money/know-how design a CLI into your GUI (or vice-versa). That way if I haven't played NetHack for a while, I can use pull down menus for commands until I'm 1337 enough to remember how to eat a lizard corpse on my own.
Yeah, I know some people know, but it isn't that common. I.E. I think you'd agree that MOST people who would know that Bill Murray was in Stripes, wouldn't know who directed it.
I'm just saying it's the same with video games and it's not something the gaming industry can really change the way the article suggested.
I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems to me that movies and games are already fairly similar in the way they are promoted and perceived.
First comes the title.
Movies = Jaws (I, II, etc.) Game = Doom (I, II, etc.)
Second comes the onscreen talent. This is who everyone knows and loves.
Movies = Bill Murray Games = Crash Bandicoot
Then most people don't know anything after that.
Do you know who directed/wrote/produced "Stripes"? Probably not. Same with games. The studios don't control this, the people do. They fall in love with the MOVIE or the GAME. If you aren't in it... too bad.
Anyway, it's not the public that decides what game designers get hired and what they get to do. Production companies know who good designers/writers/directors are and will hopefully hire them.
If you want fame and easy access to parties, you're just on the wrong side of the screen.
Well, I agree with a lot of what you are saying... But the main point I am making is that as the technology to create MMO's gets better, it will take smaller and smaller teams to create them, which will serve smaller and smaller niches and create more games with more diversity. More people will play MMO's once they are not all essentially the same.
There won't be ONE standard, but several...
The big companies will always write their own stuff, and most people will flock to the big games, but they will also license their engines to smaller companies who right now couldn't even THINK of knocking out an MMO. There may even be companies that host MMO's like web hosting companies. I mean, once upon a time it was unthinkable to have your own ecommerce site. Now you can have one for free!
As to niche worlds. I definitely think it's possible. I mean, I'm not saying it will be easy, but MUD's have managed to do it. Mods have managed to do it. And not all small games have to hold everyone's interest forever. Sometimes you might "run out of content" or get bored occasionally, but if I'm only paying $10 a year, I could live with that. Don't forget, content creating tools will also get better. AI tools will be like Photoshop or video editing tools are now. In the FUTURE!! Ok,not the near future, but...
>If what you say could be successful, it would have happened already for single-player games. But it hasn't.
It has kind of. Remember that video game platforms used to have just one game on them. Pong, etc. Then multiple developers started writing to one machine. This WILL happen with software too, and the most obvious clue that it will happen is the HUGE mod scene. People are making new games with the technology of the old games. Or at a lower level, many design companies use "game engines" like ID's etc. allowing much smaller teams create new games. This will happen for MMO's too. There are probably already MMO engines out there. It won't be too long (3.5-10 years?)
Also, addressing point 2) The games won't necessarily be IN each other. But it might be like Mario World. You finish exploring the castle and decide to race Mario Karts or play a mini game etc. Or it may be totally separate. You finish playing EverQuest 4 and then go play SpaceBalls, built on the same engine, but totally different game.
As to your last comment, I am not saying that making a good game won't take a team of talented artists, designers, coders, etc. It will just be that it may only take two to five instead of twenty. It may only take 100,000 players instead of 10 million to make the game sustainable.
I agree, but from a behind the scenes perspective we could also call it a standard.
And yes you can keep your Katana, though it may sometimes turn into a six-shooter, light saber, or a set of retractable claws depending where you're playing.
True, but companies will really only start innovating when the games can be supported by a smaller number of users. The technology to do this is very close though. I think...
Two opposite things will happen that will allow more growth and diversity in the MMO market. First, the tools that are used to create MMO's will become more sophisticated and easy to use allowing smaller and smaller groups of designers to create worlds. Soon very small shops will be able to create intriguing niche worlds/games that will only require a small group of dedicated players to maintain.
Secondly, the big boys/girls in the field will finally figure out that the real money isn't in creating a specific game or world, but creating and maintaining a META-world in which other developers can create their own games/worlds. Then independent shops can create MMO games that operate in a particular world much as they would create games that operate on a particular gaming platform. So in "Nintendo World" you would be able to race cars, adventure in dungeons, space battles, and buy in to new "games/areas" when they are created...
The MMO model has just started. I can see a future in which ALL games are actually contained (or at least accessed from) within larger meta MMO worlds.
I've been through this before with a few things. Here's what I _think_ I've learned. (BTW, I realize some of this may not make much sense...)
The bad news is, gaming will probably NEVER reliably make you feel like it once did. At least not for a long time. If ever... It's like gum that's been chewed too long. It's pretty much over.
My guess is that gaming will give you less and less satisfaction, until you basically put it away for long periods of time. You may regain some interest in it again when it becomes significantly different from what it is like now.
The good news is all those good feelings you used to associate with gaming probably have nothing to do with gaming. Gaming is an "escapist" pastime (in the best way). It was letting you feel things you needed/wanted to feel in real life but couldn't. But we all want to feel REAL things, that's why you are loosing interest. That's why you will loose interest in anything else that is essentially escapist. Gaming, although fun in it's own right, is also a crutch that you've worn down to a nub.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an ancient Chinese(?) proverb of a man who would stand next to his neighbor's campfire when he was cooking meat and eat his bowl of rice (so the plain rice would taste better). His neighbor brought him to court for stealing the smell of his meat.
The judge pronounced that it was indeed a crime, and ordered the "thief" to bring his pitiful life savings of a few coins to the court house. Once there, he then ordered the poor man to drop the coins from one hand to the other. Thereby paying the neighbor for the smell of his meat with the sound of his money.
Maybe it was a "real" crime, but it was in a "real game" and should be dealt with there. If the crime had real world consequences, then so will the in-game "punishment".
-lwh
I disagree, many designers in their right mind would want that, particularly when we have to use content in a multitude of mediums
And most designers would rather design separately for each of those mediums. I don't need a generic "content" flowing into five generic "designs". If you don't have real graphic control over even ONE medium, what difference does it make that you can cram the same content into SEVERAL mediums. It's useful, I'll grant you that, but that's just the kind of thing that is crap for design. Hideous.
Also what I meant about print content and design being the same is that with print, designers can make the page look pretty much exactly like they want and the user can't go home and read it however they want. They see it the way the designer designed it and can not "separate it". "The same" as in "inseparable". A far cry from internet design.
Obviously I wasn't implying that content could not be re-designed.
LH
No. This is essentially a programmers' setup. CSS is an attempt to separate content and form. No designer in their right mind wants that. On a printed page, content and form are identical. CSS is the opposite.
CSS may describe a visual look and feel, but its implementation is all about programming aesthetic. It's no wonder most designers mock up their sites in Photoshop. Not Eclipse, Visual Studio, or even Dreamweaver. That's where designers go from "this is what I want", to "this is the month of aggravation I have to go through to get something remotely like the mockup I did in four hours" Believe me, designers need the functionality (such as it is) of CSS but this is not the way it would be implemented by designers.
CSS and HTML to some extent were created by programmers FOR designers. I desperately pray for the day that "mark up" languages, style sheets, and their goobledy gook visual approximations disappear into the mists of time.
LWH
Yeah, what hirschma said...
Also, the reason a founder can look you in the eye and screw you with worthless stock and make you believe they are sincere is because most of them are. They are clueless. Most of them (especially back in 1.0-land) don't know much more about stock and what it will mean in an earn-out, merger, or IPO than you do. In fact, most of these people ARE you three years into the future. And many of them are in the process of getting screwed too on a different level...
LH
I have to agree in principle with this...
,and probably illegal, then you've got it. If you want the big payoff, keep giving up stuff until you get it. Say you'll give up 20% of your salary and BUY "p.f.e.s." with cash. Say you'll work for free. Say what ever you have to, but unless you're getting the same deal as the investors (not the partners) you are going to get logarithmically less with each drop down the ladder. It is a power curve...
;)
I joined a startup, and I should have been the first employee, but as the only tech guy I was given the option of becoming a partner. The catch was that I was going to be paid sporadically, had to take responsibility for the company and its decisions, and worry about all those things that people who run companies have to worry about. Not only things like going bankrupt, but also taking a load of people down with you. But since I was doing the work myself, I felt I had enough input into how well we'd do... and besides that, I was young and had nothing to lose.
The next person we hired we liked so much we made her the same offer. She turned us down thank you very much, and decided she'd rather draw a reliable salary. That reliable salary turned out to be MY reliable salary for a few months which I had to hand over to her because we weren't making enough money. In the end we both felt half-screwed with our choices. But we accepted the difference in pay-off as a result of our risk and both of us felt ok with our choices.
We held on, and my work was good enough to finally hire some REAL employees who were a lot better than myself. They all got stock, but in the end it's no surprise that their stock turned out to be mostly worthless. So all the employees felt shafted when we got bought out.
The funny thing is... ALL THE PARTNERS FELT SHAFTED TOO! I swear EVERYONE except for the investors and a few people who really knew what they were doing (not the original partners) felt they got hosed. It is very hard not to feel bad when people sitting right next to you become millionaires, and you become a hundred-thousandaire even though you KNOW you worked harder. But still, when you think about it, it's more than you THOUGHT you'd make.
If you've read through all of this, you deserve to hear the magic information from one who knows... First, you probably will get screwed if there is a payoff and there probably won't be one. So enjoy the foozball and the work and your friends and don't sweat it too much. Start-ups are only about big pay-offs for the partners and investors, and mostly just for the investors, and only then maybe once in ten times (companies/investments).
But if you really think you've got something and if you want a big payoff from a start-up, and you don't understand the legal mumbo-j (and you don't) get a lawyer. Pay money to get a decent offer together.
However, the chances are your lawyer won't know %&* either. This sounds wrong, but it is true. They know more than you, but not as much as you think they do and not as much as the lawyers who are getting ready to screw you in the future... So to double check, or if you just don't have the cash for a lawyer upfront... (magic information coming)
ASK FOR THE SAME STOCK/DEAL AS THE INVESTORS GET.
If they tell you that the investors get "pink fluff elephant stock", ask for pink fluff elephant stock. DEMAND pink fluff elephant stock. You'll know you're on the right track if they flat out refuse you... If they tell you that would be impossible
The chain is like: INVESTORS(VC), INVESTORS(Angel), FOUNDERS, PARTNERS, EMPLOYEES(executive), EMPLOYEES(smart/early), EMPLOYEES(long-stay), EMPLOYEES(new), Freelance/Temp.
Also, whatever you do, don't base your future on posts you read off of Slashdot. Do your own research
And in case you were wondering, no one ended up hating me to my face, I didn't become a millionaire (maybe on paper for a while), and I would do it again, but totally differently (that's experience).
LWH
There is no more hierarchy than there is a hierarchy when flipping a coin in the wind. The results can be "placed" in a hierarchy. The brain (and body) is much more likely to work in patterns and relationships of varying and changing strengths than hierarchies.
I think when you start talking about Ted Nelson, you are on the tip of an iceberg of a conversation, namely, what is the value of an idea (vrs an implementation). We give a lot of lip service to "innovation" and ideas, but it's mostly just lip service.
Just look at Steve Jobs. Steve gets some cool ideas from some people at Xerox (I forget who because their names aren't constantly blaring at me in the media as they demo the new ipod in front of a 200ft screen) and makes them better, more useable and he's a hero. Gates buys QDOS and makes it a little bit more useable/better and he's a hero, then he takes Apple's implementation of a "borrowed" idea and makes it a little more accessible and he's a gabillionaire! Meanwhile, I have no idea who invented QDOS, never mind the guy who was probably his friend who said... "hey dude, you could totally build an operating system that did...etc." and is completely anonymous.
Then again, maybe that's as it should be. Making stuff is hard.
I've met and talked with Ted Nelson a few times, and I would never presume to speak for him or explain his ideas for him, but I think I can give a little perspective that might help clear up Ted's "thing".
Ted Nelson is personally an incredibly scattered individual, and his whole thought process seems to be like a million mixed-media post-it notes flying around in a tornado through space and time. That is basically why he makes no sense to people (and vice-versa I'd guess). I truly believe that his driving motivation is to create a system of information that WORKS LIKE HE DOES. I don't in any way mean that to be insulting, it is pretty amazing really and I am strongly PRO Ted Nelson. But with that in mind, he needs everything to connect to everything in every single way and be visible from every different angle. In his brain, he doesn't have to leave one program and export his thoughts to another program, and negotiate the copyrights so that he can think properly. And he KNOWS that it's possible, but not too many people are really looking at the big picture. I don't think he's saying there's anything WRONG with the internet, he's just looking about 50 years into the future and wants to get there... sooner.
Remember, this is a guy who thought up hypertext and micro payments at a time when people were literally telling him he was insane. In the next thirty years they went from saying "that could never physically happen" to "even though it's probably technically possible people won't want that to happen" to "oh, yeah, that's obvious and totally unavoidable. Duh Ted. Why are you even talking to me about this ?". So the guy is a visionary and a long term thinker.
Though I do admit that sometimes it seems (like all visionaries) he doesn't seem to have enough respect for the people who are actually creating useful and IMPLEMENTABLE technology. Still, we've been exploring this stuff for 20+ years now, and major "conceptual" advances are just going so unbearably slowly.
So maybe that adds some perspective. It's just my opinion anyway...
I know it's not that popular around here, but web interfaces are so hard to make that it's a miracle if you get anything that looks half-way decent. Most desktop apps rely on sophisticated interfaces that browsers just plain can't handle. Sure, 100 of the smartest people in the world at Google can come up with something that works, but it still looks like a web page!.
People don't want to work for any amount of time on an interface that looks like (or IS) made in html. Sure, I'll type in this stupid "text box" while I get ready to post this, but I'm not going to use it for five hours, never mind ten months. To try to make Open Office in a web browser is just swimming upstream.
Interface design is hard enough as it is. As a developer, for five times the work, you'll get a product that looks like half of what it would on a desktop app. Besides the fact that you have to stuff your web app INTO ANOTHER PROGRAM (the browser) to get it to work (which makes it just as much a "platform" as any other), web standards suck for design.
Web standards were designed to separate information from presentation, but then they never really bothered to come up with a real presentation mechanism that was as powerful as the information standards. In other words, this dynamically widthed paragraph of indeterminate font, color, and size has a word in it that is "strong" which makes it look... like however it looks. Fracking web design.
Good luck taking over the desktop.
FROM THE LA TIMES WIKI:
Also, if you are under 13, you may look, but not participate in, this wiki.
I think after hitting the wiki and immediately being confronted with 20 pictures from goatse I feel that maybe the wiki thing was a bad idea.
Things like this are a prime example of why large companies rarely innovate first. But so what? Obviously they misunderstood the nature of a wiki, but I'd rather have companies trying things that fail than just sitting around waiting for smaller companies to innovate (and then copying them once they are successful). I mean, sure it's funny how bad this is turning out, but I hope it doesn't discourage the LA Times and other companies from experimenting more liberally.
Just PLEASE have someone take down the wiki while you figure out how to stop people from inserting... "images".
LWH
Hard to predict, but this may help...
www.space.com/spacewatch/aurora_cam.html
I have no real points, but I am modding you up in my mind...
Yeah, I think you're right. The US gets a little bit slower every day because of all this patent/copyright warfare. But it's mostly just companies within the US fighting with each other and slowing down innovation and general economic health within America. The US is trying to reach out and impose this structure on the rest of the world, but there is enough sensible resistence out there to make world-wide (submission) adoption highly questionable.
It's a good point you make.
What a strange example to use in your premise!
You think SPAM is going to have an effect on this election? SPAM!? You must be living in a different America my friend, because you can send Men In Black to beat me with rubber hoses while writing "Kerry Killed Your Cat HA HA!" in blood on my wall and I will still drag myself on broken arms to the polls to cast my vote against Bush on election day.
So no, we're well $#%@ beyond spam making a difference at this point...
You can't solve the problem, because you don't have the skills to do it.
It's NOT a technical problem. It's a problem of DESIGN, which is different. So OSS programmers can make some kick-*ss software, but most people are not going to be able to use it unless someone gets humble fast and says, "Oh f*ck, I don't know how to design ANYTHING because... I'M A PROGRAMMER! I need a DESIGNER!"
I know it's hard, and it takes a project leader with almost saint-like patience and humility to let his/her project be co-designed from conception to completion by someone who knows close to nothing about programming, but that's the only way. You're not a designer so just suck it up, and if you want your software to be popular, and useable by people, make sure a user interface designer is on your team and do what they tell you to do.
Also understand that you are going to have to do almost double the amount of work you would normaly have to do to get a good interface. Don't get mad at your designer... It takes a lot of work. You will have to grit your teeth and do strenuous amounts of work to get something that satisfies your designers' requirements. Don't bitch about it, just do it. That's how it works. It's hard, and yes, most of the work is going to fall on the programmer(s).
But in the end, the reason why Open Source hasn't taken over MS is because of the UI and the marketing. Linux? Most people can't use it. I mean, I've used *NIX, and I hate it. Most people do. In fact, most people don't even bother to learn it enough to hate it. What non-programmer is going to commit 300+ commands to memory just to search and type and use email. Uh, yeah.
So don't be so full of yourself. You can't do everything well. Beg, borrow, or pay a designer, do the work, and watch people actually start using your sh*t.
Then you can get an open source MARKETER and start REALLY doing some damage to MS.
From a useability perspective, it's not a conflict, but two groups who want to access information in different ways. If you have the time/money/know-how design a CLI into your GUI (or vice-versa). That way if I haven't played NetHack for a while, I can use pull down menus for commands until I'm 1337 enough to remember how to eat a lizard corpse on my own.
The remake of Battlestar on Sci-Fi Channel had some great space battle scenes. Some of the coolest ones on tv imho.
Of course in movies, I'd still have to go with Star Wars (4-6).
Yeah, I know some people know, but it isn't that common. I.E. I think you'd agree that MOST people who would know that Bill Murray was in Stripes, wouldn't know who directed it.
I'm just saying it's the same with video games and it's not something the gaming industry can really change the way the article suggested.
I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems to me that movies and games are already fairly similar in the way they are promoted and perceived.
First comes the title.
Movies = Jaws (I, II, etc.)
Game = Doom (I, II, etc.)
Second comes the onscreen talent. This is who everyone knows and loves.
Movies = Bill Murray
Games = Crash Bandicoot
Then most people don't know anything after that.
Do you know who directed/wrote/produced "Stripes"? Probably not. Same with games. The studios don't control this, the people do. They fall in love with the MOVIE or the GAME. If you aren't in it... too bad.
Anyway, it's not the public that decides what game designers get hired and what they get to do. Production companies know who good designers/writers/directors are and will hopefully hire them.
If you want fame and easy access to parties, you're just on the wrong side of the screen.
Well, I agree with a lot of what you are saying... But the main point I am making is that as the technology to create MMO's gets better, it will take smaller and smaller teams to create them, which will serve smaller and smaller niches and create more games with more diversity. More people will play MMO's once they are not all essentially the same.
There won't be ONE standard, but several...
The big companies will always write their own stuff, and most people will flock to the big games, but they will also license their engines to smaller companies who right now couldn't even THINK of knocking out an MMO. There may even be companies that host MMO's like web hosting companies. I mean, once upon a time it was unthinkable to have your own ecommerce site. Now you can have one for free!
As to niche worlds. I definitely think it's possible. I mean, I'm not saying it will be easy, but MUD's have managed to do it. Mods have managed to do it. And not all small games have to hold everyone's interest forever. Sometimes you might "run out of content" or get bored occasionally, but if I'm only paying $10 a year, I could live with that. Don't forget, content creating tools will also get better. AI tools will be like Photoshop or video editing tools are now. In the FUTURE!! Ok,not the near future, but...
>If what you say could be successful, it would have happened already for single-player games. But it hasn't.
It has kind of. Remember that video game platforms used to have just one game on them. Pong, etc. Then multiple developers started writing to one machine. This WILL happen with software too, and the most obvious clue that it will happen is the HUGE mod scene. People are making new games with the technology of the old games. Or at a lower level, many design companies use "game engines" like ID's etc. allowing much smaller teams create new games. This will happen for MMO's too. There are probably already MMO engines out there. It won't be too long (3.5-10 years?)
Also, addressing point 2) The games won't necessarily be IN each other. But it might be like Mario World. You finish exploring the castle and decide to race Mario Karts or play a mini game etc. Or it may be totally separate. You finish playing EverQuest 4 and then go play SpaceBalls, built on the same engine, but totally different game.
As to your last comment, I am not saying that making a good game won't take a team of talented artists, designers, coders, etc. It will just be that it may only take two to five instead of twenty. It may only take 100,000 players instead of 10 million to make the game sustainable.
I agree, but from a behind the scenes perspective we could also call it a standard.
And yes you can keep your Katana, though it may sometimes turn into a six-shooter, light saber, or a set of retractable claws depending where you're playing.
True, but companies will really only start innovating when the games can be supported by a smaller number of users. The technology to do this is very close though. I think...
Two opposite things will happen that will allow more growth and diversity in the MMO market. First, the tools that are used to create MMO's will become more sophisticated and easy to use allowing smaller and smaller groups of designers to create worlds. Soon very small shops will be able to create intriguing niche worlds/games that will only require a small group of dedicated players to maintain.
Secondly, the big boys/girls in the field will finally figure out that the real money isn't in creating a specific game or world, but creating and maintaining a META-world in which other developers can create their own games/worlds. Then independent shops can create MMO games that operate in a particular world much as they would create games that operate on a particular gaming platform. So in "Nintendo World" you would be able to race cars, adventure in dungeons, space battles, and buy in to new "games/areas" when they are created...
The MMO model has just started. I can see a future in which ALL games are actually contained (or at least accessed from) within larger meta MMO worlds.
I've been through this before with a few things. Here's what I _think_ I've learned. (BTW, I realize some of this may not make much sense...)
:)
The bad news is, gaming will probably NEVER reliably make you feel like it once did. At least not for a long time. If ever... It's like gum that's been chewed too long. It's pretty much over.
My guess is that gaming will give you less and less satisfaction, until you basically put it away for long periods of time. You may regain some interest in it again when it becomes significantly different from what it is like now.
The good news is all those good feelings you used to associate with gaming probably have nothing to do with gaming. Gaming is an "escapist" pastime (in the best way). It was letting you feel things you needed/wanted to feel in real life but couldn't. But we all want to feel REAL things, that's why you are loosing interest. That's why you will loose interest in anything else that is essentially escapist. Gaming, although fun in it's own right, is also a crutch that you've worn down to a nub.
At least that's my experience... I think...