And then I tried Oblivion... and I'm still hip-deep in it... and this is easily the best RPG since the Ultima days. There is some absolutely stellar writing in here
"Stellar writing"...? Where!? Name one scene. After the opening bit it was "go get this, go kill that. Don't bother me until you do it."
, more quests than you can shake a stick at
Quantity != quality. What I found playing 50-60 hours of the damned thing (I ended up just playing it to kill time. Great way to kill time is go close a portal which become a sleep-walking affair after awhile) is that 90% of the quests were low-quality filler of the fetch-n-slash variety. No story to figure out an immerse in.
and nearly unbelievable freedom of action. And it is freakin' GORGEOUS.
And why does freedom of action == interesting? There's no time pressure in the game. I literally abandoned the main quest for like a year in game time. What's the point? Yeah, pretty graphics, but so do a lot of games. Hell, Assassin's Creed blows the doors of Oblivion. You haven't convinced my of anything.
It's not perfect; the levelling and experience portions don't come off quite the way I think they were intended.
And the "conversation" part where you sweet talk characters into telling you things becomes PAINFULLY tedious after about the 10th time you do it. It's so ridiculously simple and automatic that I wonder who had the bright idea to put that into the game. I just got one of the Charm spells and saved myself half an hour of buttering up per character. Also, the weapon system sucks. Magic weapons deplete so damn fast and it's really, really hard to find any kind of non-magic weapon that's useful in the higher quests. You waste so much time doing the Oblivion equivalent of gold farming I just got bored and uninstalled it because I got "Company of Heroes" which actually IS an interesting game to play.
Did I mention the sheer tedium? The game play is largely doing the same things over and over again until you can do them in your sleep. Need to close a portal? Give me a couple hours and it's as good as done. And the tedium of going from place to place. Not to bad if you've visited there before (the map lets you click on a location and elapse the clock appropriately), but if I have to do another stupid @#$! sweep-n-search mission, I'm gonna HURT someone. I never thought I'd say this, but Diablo II gets pure RPG action right. And the story is a hell of a lot more interesting than Oblivion's so-called story.
There could be more variety in the voice acting. There could be more individuality in the cave systems etc - but those are minor quibbles for what has been, for me, the most immersive RPG in a very, very long time.
Immersed in what!? Oooh, a large world I can roam around in! I bet you find Second Life absolutely riviting.
I was with you until this part. Ultima Underworld pales next to Oblivion? Oblivion is one of the most retarded, "streamlined" RPGs ever made. It's an example of the modern-day, marketing-driven tech demos that this article is criticizing. Go play Daggerfall from 10 years ago and remember that it came from the same company!
I was beginning to think I was the only person on the face of planet Earth who felt that way. As I once quipped on Slashdot: "Oblivion is an RPG for thumb-bashers who want to play an RPG but without all that gay story and s---."
I mean, come on. You get 30 seconds of dialog then spend 5 hours trying to accomplish the quest, 4 hours of which was spent trying to build up enough cash and/or magic in order to complete the quest. Ultima IV, you had to change the way you played the frakking game to win to stay in synch with the story.
hat IS sad, however, is that people don't consider $15 a good deal for an hours worth of music.
You missed the point TFA made: that hour's worth of music wasn't worth the $15. Modern manufactured pop icons have 2-3 good tracks and a WHOLE lot of filler. I have a hard time thinking of a North American CD I bought in the last 10 years that had more than 3 good tracks on it. Weird Al comes to mind, but even his last album wasn't that good. I think it's time to re-introduce the idea of the "singles" artist. The artist that produces mostly singles than produces an album of the best singles every 2-3 years.
Also it might be better is small record stores accept that the market has fractured. People's musical tastes are all over the map these days, and it might be better to provide multiple niche sections in your store than a single giant library. Also stock CDs from independent bands, especially in the local area, and start acting as music promoters for them in store. Listen to the stuff, find good bands and tell your customers about them. You might be surprised what happens.
Some of us would disagree LotR was a good adaptation, but it was very successful and has much to teach us. As do the Potter movies.
First lesson: Figure out what makes the books work and find a way to do it in film. Jackson definitely changed characters and plots to make things Hollywood/popcorn crowd friendly, but he did at least get the overall gist of things. The relationships and trials that kept the book going were re-created for the screen. The mythic story arc that is instinctively familiar to us all was preserved. The most famous version of this was the movie Amadeus. It's significantly different from the stage play, but Shaffer moved into Milos Forman's house for several months while the two of them figured out what was the spirit of the stage play and figured out how to execute that spirit in film. The result is an awesome film (IMHO). (Reference: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086879/trivia)
Hollywood studios tend to focus on (no pun intended) "focus group" things. For example:
Focus Group loser: "That battle scene was wickedly awesome!! But that gay talky-talky stuff bored me."
Executive: "Note -- audiences care more about SFX than dialog."
[Later]
Executive Note: "Your movie is dragging during the dialog scenes, please reduce the dialog and increase the action in your movie."
The Potter movies work because Rowling waited until a studio showed up and said "We'll let you have some input (but not creative control) and we have some very passionate fans of your books in our studio at the executive level down to the director level who want to be faithful to your books." Although I'm not a Chris Columbus fan, but he really seemed to give a damn as did Kloves (the screenwriter). They figured out the elements that were the heart of the book and kept them on the screen. Although I felt they dropped the ball with Goblet of Fire where it felt like they concentrated too hard on plot event faithfulness at the expense of everything else, but I digress.
Second lesson: Get people who give a damn. People who like and care about the material tend to make better films than those that don't. It's not a 100% formula (there are countless projects the director/writer/producer loved but aren't very good), but it's better than getting people who don't give a damn. Corollary: I've read several books about pitching in Hollywood (TV and movies) and one thing everyone's said is the executives don't really listen to the content of your pitch but how you deliver it. Apparently, executives do prefer people who are passionate about a project than not. I guess it's more fun to crush their spirit that way.;-)
Third lesson: It's OK to get the creator's input. The successful ABC adaptations of Stephen King's books had lots of King input on them -- he was the producer and screenwriter!! The Potter films let Rowling in at the early stages to provide notes and the directors apparently discuss any changes to her story with her first. And to her credit, Rowling appreciates that films are different and simply focuses on making sure the movies don't violate the spirit of the books or the characters. The original author usually has a good idea of what made the book a success than an executive who read a report by one of his readers.
Wouldn't be the first time
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SCO Vs. Groklaw
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Remember that fictional movie critic Sony created awhile back? Maybe Pamela eloped with him?:-)
That's a half-truth. Industry can do the same thing (*cough* CORBA *cough*). The more important lesson here is: don't design for a particular base or technology. E.g., an encryption standard based on a single vendor's proprietary chip that no one else can make.
You know those imperial units you love to use? Their official definition is actually in metric. America has been on-board with metric for a long time, and you are allowed to use it in trade & commerce (and is often used -- buy a 2 liter bottl of pop recently?). American Imperial is just a special case of metric.;-)
(sadly, this post will get ignored because it's Saturday and at the end of a 900+ message thread:-))
OK, it's not quite the classic example but I think it works:
You buy a machine to manufacture widgets and as a by-product, it flings heavy iron balls of scrap out. Now it costs money to fix it so the iron balls just don't fling around and smash windows. But if the owner of the machine merely uses some of his profits to replace the broken windows of his neighbors, then that's good then, right?
That was the point of the LA times article: if those companies were NOT behaving like that, the foundation wouldn't need to be spending money to fix the problems the companies cause.
Man, what a difference 20 years can make. I remember when real hackers and geeks thought Novel and IBM were the enemy of independent, freedom-minded programmers.:-)
With the serial numbers filed off (and a new voice over). England's Horizon program is a truly awesome science documentary series, even covering some things that might not be considered traditional science programming. I haven't seen Horizon straight from the Beeb in a few years and wikipedia sites this article about it being dumbed down, but the best Nova episodes were simply episodes from Horizon.
He comes in and saved do-it-them-selfers from themselves. And there was one couple who hired a "contractor" to remodel their basement. The electrical wiring job Holmes found almost made everyone gape in amazement the house wasn't a pile of cinders. And people wonder why I insist on hiring people to do work I feel I'm not competent enough to do, and don't mind paying more than that lovely man who advertised in the Weekly Shopper who only wants cash, no cheques please and who changes his phone # every couple of weeks.
To me, Oblivion is role-playing game designed by people who never really played RPGs. I described it as "An RPG for thumb-bashers and FPS-addicts without that gay story and puzzle shit". The FPS style combat was tedious -- I derive no fun from fighting games. Although I do feel a little like Homer Simpson when I say "Doesn't everyone realise RPGs reached perfection with Diablo II?":-)
I carefully read Osama's list of justifications for attacking America, and economic exploitation was not among them. His principal complaints were American military and political intervention in the Middle East--especially troops in Saudi Arabia, sanctions in Iraq, and occupation in Palestine.
Rather, it already, by the grace of God, exists. As for oil, it is a commodity that will be subject to the price of the market according to supply and demand. We believe that the current prices are not realistic due to the Saudi regime playing the role of a US agent and the pressures exercised by the US on the Saudi regime to increase production and flooding the market that caused a sharp decrease in oil prices.
I should add OBL has an economics degree.
Although wealth disparity has been exacerbated within this country, wages in some 3rd-world countries (China for example) have converged somewhat with 1st-world wages, which tends to reduce the disparity
And I'm not suggesting that the future is bright. I have no idea what the future will bring. Unlike the idiotic devotees of Marxism, I have no preposterous pretenses about laws of historical development which predict everything that will happen. There are no laws of history which we can discern that govern all of historical development. As an example, most of the 20th century was marked with crises and wars that were surprises to almost everyone and that cannot have been predicted by any theory that was then available.
Actually, I (and other historians and politicians) find it depressingly easily to predict historical development from the past. The most notorious failures are people who insisted "history was over" in one way or the other, and that a given situation cannot possible be compared to other things: a view called exceptionalism. But human drives and emotions have remained unchanged for thousands of years. One can make some good predictions about given situations, and more importantly, history tells us what can work. (P.S., just about every major war in the 20th century was predicted -- ask Winston Churchil about WW2).
If you notice, in my previous posts, I do believe in free markets. Throughout history, free markets seem to have the least negatives (still negatives, but the lesser of all evils). More importantly, the freedom of individuals to do what they will seem to improve society & prosperity. It's only when one or more individuals decide to curtail other individuals' freedoms that problems arise. Whether they be the robber barons of old or governments of today. And the current version of globalization is, IMHO, a hideous amalgamation of the two. True free trade benefits everyone; social mobility benefits everyone, and seems to result in more peaceful societies. Current globalism is about corporations using governments to co-erce populations into channeling money & productivity to themselves.
Nevertheless, globalization presents a serious and realistic hope that many people in the world will enjoy a standard of living somewhat above the crushing poverty and desparation that had been the norm for almost everyone until recently. As such I find it amazing that so many people who claim sympathy with the poor would oppose globalization so vociferously. In my opinion, we have an ethical obligation not just to voice sympathy with the poor but to take steps which we have reason to believe could actually ameliorate their plight. As such we have an ethical obligation to be rational and effective, not just sympathetic
Thus far, globalization has been a tremendous boon to foreigners. Since the mid-1990s, when globalization began picking up the pace, the world has had an economic growth rate of over 5% annually--more than in any prior time in history. As a result, wages in some very populous places (Coastal China, for example) have quadrupled. That increase in wages has had a dramatic and positive effect on poverty in countries that were previously extremely impoverished. Bear in mind that in the early 1970's China had a per-capita GDP that was scarcely higher than sub-saharan Africa.
And as other reports, including the Economist, have noticed, distribution of wealth is exarcebated by this new growth. Only a fraction of the population enjoys the new prosperity while the vast majority have not experienced a change in their living conditions for the last 30 years. Simply pointing out that some people have prosopered and that the whole GDP have prosopered does not mean everyone benefited.
India still has tremendous proverty and economic problems because most of their population lack the basic education to take advantage of the Bangalore boom. Poverty in China is still so horrible that illegal immigration from China has never been so high. They'd rather fast endentured servitude in a sweatshop here in North America than enjoy the "economic growth" of China.
I believe that capitalism and rising prosperity in those places will also greatly benefit world stability to the benefit of America. Obviously there will still be sources of instability (religious extremism and territorial disputes are two examples that may not be mitigated by prosperity) but we will no longer face violent confrontations over imagined "exploitation" or competing economic systems.
Osama bin Laden has been spreading the myth of Western economic exploitation as an explanation for why the Islamic world is still laging behind the West. Socialists are coming to power in South America fueld by popular movements (sometimes spilling over into violence) that feel they are being exploited by globalism and multi-national corporations.
Take the rose-colored filters off, my friend, that economists use to simplify a terrifying complicated world. Free markets can work, but our current global economic system is not free (as in freedom). It still relies on heavy handed corporate & government actions to interfere with worker rights, popular movements and the ability of communities to determine their destinies. As I said in another post, the only thing wrong with globalism, as practiced, is the use of Government to interfere with the market's ability to improve the lives of workers. If workers were free to chose their working conditions, wages and labour orginization, then we'd have functional competition and their lives would improve and we wouldn't be losing jobs by the tens of thousands.
I agree Globalization works both ways, but your arguments are weak. Most 3rd world countries were already out sourcing destinations for manufacturing and primary industries (raw materials). Their GDP was many times larger than their GNP. The wealth being created wasn't staying in country. The technology and know-how was not being passed to the locals so they could make their own companies and compete. They were effectively colonies. The 3rd world knew this and pushed for global free trade, with the hopes that somehow what little capital and knowledge was transferred could make them competitive.
The big problem is Government. India has restrictions up the wazoo to favor local industries, and corruption at the local levels prevent workers from getting their rights protected. Child labor is illegal in India, slavery is illegal in India. Yet both are responsible for a large amount of garment and textile work coming out of India, and the local NGOs are complaining that the government of India not only does not WANT to enforce the laws, they seem to PROTECT these employers. India's government is preventing workers from taking responsibility for their own lives to improve their working conditions. THAT is the problem with the current outsourcing trend.
High-tech, being more visible and having a more educated, motivated work force, is an exception thankfully. If you hadn't noticed, the wages for high-tech people in India is rising faster than multinationals want and have gone to a country which is infamous for using Government to oppress the people: China. China does even more things to prevent the people from improving their lot in life, and thus depresses wages and working conditions. Without the freedom to price themselves out of the market, how can we in the West compete with virtual slaves?
Free-trade can be good among equals. It allows us to take advantage of our differences to create wealth and opportunity. But the current trend of globalization seems to be about finding ways to stamp on the face of workers for the benefit of a few, and corporations are delighting to deal with totalitarian regimes, and even co-operating with these governments to keep their power.
This isn't free-trade globalization, this is humanity getting f----d over.
And yes, eventually people WILL object and fight back... with violence and extremist Socialism. Do we really want to go back to the 1980s again?
Irwin's most valuable contrib -- Loving reptiles
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As the parent said, before Irwin, people HATED crocs, venmous snakes & spiders, etc. No one on TV made as passionate and convincing case for the "ugly critters" like Steve Irwin. Thanks to him, I realised I still had a prejudice against reptiles. I.e., I didn't care so much about the extinction of crocodiles, venemous snakes, etc. But thanks to him, you realise -- hey, they maybe ugly, but they're usually MORE important than the cute and cudly field mouse (a pest of biblical proportions in Australia and a very serious ecological threat) and rabbits (another thing that SHOULD be erradicated in Australia).
So many nature specials, etc. focus on the cute mammals and tend to show reptiles as the villains about to much on that harmless wildebeast. Well, without crocks, wildebeasts could eat themselves and their enviornment to extinction. Reptiles are a very good and very important part of nature.
Steve Irwin had the courage to share his love of reptiles with the world and drag us kicking and screaming to realise how important they are in the circle of life. ANd more importantly, he reached out to the NON-science and NON-nature people to make them understand it too, so if someone opposes a crocodile cull in Aussie to make life better for the big ranchers, the public is now more likely to support that person.
Reptiles have lost their biggest fan and lobbiest. God rest ye, Steve. And I hope your wife and children will get through this ordeal.
I'm a little annoyed this simply just RIPPED out the 3-D mesh stuff for this Beta but so far...
SWEET! I wrote a simple bounce-ball w/ paddle in a couple hours. Most of that was learning how to use the API. In terms of coding time, I'd say it took me less than an hour. The API docs included is almost useless, but I can only hope MS gets a basic idea: enable amatuer developers. This is how MS built up its developer base in the first place with GW-Basic and QuickBasic. Think how many developers got started writing for MS platforms with that. And VB, which had to have been the most pirated language since TurboPascal, enabled Windows to become entrenched everywhere.
Good call. Now we need to do something like this for SDL for some good competition.:-)
These guys actually blew up the bathroom in a plane with a cut down bomb for testing. After blowing up a movie theater seat.
Yeah, with nitroglycerin. The article from the Register said it was TATP, and proceded to explain his knowledge from researching TATP that it is highly unlikely TATP could be used to bring down a plane. TATP != nitroglycerin. And just looking up one aspect of the article seems to check out so far. The rest would be hard to check out without performing the experiments or talking to someone who has made it.
Ah, the painful memories of a half-assed Turbo Pascal. It didn't quite want to be Object Pascal, didn't quite want to be real Pascal, didn't want to become a modern professional language either.
I can't recall the exact year though.:-( In one of the Siggraph presentation videos, there was a presentation about a system to take a 2-D photo and create a 3-D model (w/ skin texture from the photo) from it. They created an "average" face from hundreds of 3-D face scans and then used information from the photo to build up the 3-D model of the new face from the average face. I was wondering when it would show up in a practical application. TFA seems to indicate his team may have done this on their own though. But since they will be at SIGGRAPH, I'm sure the original team will pipe up.:-)
Back when I played D2 on-line, I preferred being the Amazon because it gave me more options for Arrow skills and magik to support arrow skills. I dislike "up close and personal" combat, and I don't want to deplete mana casting missile spells all the time. It's as simple as that.
At any rate, even though the money may not provide the same bang per buck as a telescope or another ISS module, it's the kind of experience that you just can't get by peering through a lens. It's like the difference between reading a book about driving, and actually driving. Real driving may be a lot more expensive, and inherently dangerous, but you'll never truly know how until you do it.
I think people are mis-understanding me. Going to the Moon and beyond are good. Very good. But I don't think these guys are serious. They'll spend a lot of money, there will be cost over-runs, congress will realise the election's coming up and they'll kill Orion before it even launches. That's my depressing belief. But in the meantime, to pay for this expensive PR stunt, they'll cut things that actually ARE working and in space. We'll get a net loss of space development.
And don't get me started on Spaceship One. That's like climbing to the top of a tree and saying you're half way to the moon. Talk to me when they achieve orbit over 120 miles.
Slashdot Mirror
"Stellar writing"...? Where!? Name one scene. After the opening bit it was "go get this, go kill that. Don't bother me until you do it."
Quantity != quality. What I found playing 50-60 hours of the damned thing (I ended up just playing it to kill time. Great way to kill time is go close a portal which become a sleep-walking affair after awhile) is that 90% of the quests were low-quality filler of the fetch-n-slash variety. No story to figure out an immerse in.
And why does freedom of action == interesting? There's no time pressure in the game. I literally abandoned the main quest for like a year in game time. What's the point? Yeah, pretty graphics, but so do a lot of games. Hell, Assassin's Creed blows the doors of Oblivion. You haven't convinced my of anything.
And the "conversation" part where you sweet talk characters into telling you things becomes PAINFULLY tedious after about the 10th time you do it. It's so ridiculously simple and automatic that I wonder who had the bright idea to put that into the game. I just got one of the Charm spells and saved myself half an hour of buttering up per character. Also, the weapon system sucks. Magic weapons deplete so damn fast and it's really, really hard to find any kind of non-magic weapon that's useful in the higher quests. You waste so much time doing the Oblivion equivalent of gold farming I just got bored and uninstalled it because I got "Company of Heroes" which actually IS an interesting game to play.
Did I mention the sheer tedium? The game play is largely doing the same things over and over again until you can do them in your sleep. Need to close a portal? Give me a couple hours and it's as good as done. And the tedium of going from place to place. Not to bad if you've visited there before (the map lets you click on a location and elapse the clock appropriately), but if I have to do another stupid @#$! sweep-n-search mission, I'm gonna HURT someone. I never thought I'd say this, but Diablo II gets pure RPG action right. And the story is a hell of a lot more interesting than Oblivion's so-called story.
Immersed in what!? Oooh, a large world I can roam around in! I bet you find Second Life absolutely riviting.
I was beginning to think I was the only person on the face of planet Earth who felt that way. As I once quipped on Slashdot: "Oblivion is an RPG for thumb-bashers who want to play an RPG but without all that gay story and s---."
I mean, come on. You get 30 seconds of dialog then spend 5 hours trying to accomplish the quest, 4 hours of which was spent trying to build up enough cash and/or magic in order to complete the quest. Ultima IV, you had to change the way you played the frakking game to win to stay in synch with the story.
You missed the point TFA made: that hour's worth of music wasn't worth the $15. Modern manufactured pop icons have 2-3 good tracks and a WHOLE lot of filler. I have a hard time thinking of a North American CD I bought in the last 10 years that had more than 3 good tracks on it. Weird Al comes to mind, but even his last album wasn't that good. I think it's time to re-introduce the idea of the "singles" artist. The artist that produces mostly singles than produces an album of the best singles every 2-3 years.
Also it might be better is small record stores accept that the market has fractured. People's musical tastes are all over the map these days, and it might be better to provide multiple niche sections in your store than a single giant library. Also stock CDs from independent bands, especially in the local area, and start acting as music promoters for them in store. Listen to the stuff, find good bands and tell your customers about them. You might be surprised what happens.
Some of us would disagree LotR was a good adaptation, but it was very successful and has much to teach us. As do the Potter movies.
;-)
First lesson: Figure out what makes the books work and find a way to do it in film. Jackson definitely changed characters and plots to make things Hollywood/popcorn crowd friendly, but he did at least get the overall gist of things. The relationships and trials that kept the book going were re-created for the screen. The mythic story arc that is instinctively familiar to us all was preserved. The most famous version of this was the movie Amadeus. It's significantly different from the stage play, but Shaffer moved into Milos Forman's house for several months while the two of them figured out what was the spirit of the stage play and figured out how to execute that spirit in film. The result is an awesome film (IMHO). (Reference: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086879/trivia)
Hollywood studios tend to focus on (no pun intended) "focus group" things. For example:
Focus Group loser: "That battle scene was wickedly awesome!! But that gay talky-talky stuff bored me."
Executive: "Note -- audiences care more about SFX than dialog."
[Later]
Executive Note: "Your movie is dragging during the dialog scenes, please reduce the dialog and increase the action in your movie."
The Potter movies work because Rowling waited until a studio showed up and said "We'll let you have some input (but not creative control) and we have some very passionate fans of your books in our studio at the executive level down to the director level who want to be faithful to your books." Although I'm not a Chris Columbus fan, but he really seemed to give a damn as did Kloves (the screenwriter). They figured out the elements that were the heart of the book and kept them on the screen. Although I felt they dropped the ball with Goblet of Fire where it felt like they concentrated too hard on plot event faithfulness at the expense of everything else, but I digress.
Second lesson: Get people who give a damn. People who like and care about the material tend to make better films than those that don't. It's not a 100% formula (there are countless projects the director/writer/producer loved but aren't very good), but it's better than getting people who don't give a damn. Corollary: I've read several books about pitching in Hollywood (TV and movies) and one thing everyone's said is the executives don't really listen to the content of your pitch but how you deliver it. Apparently, executives do prefer people who are passionate about a project than not. I guess it's more fun to crush their spirit that way.
Third lesson: It's OK to get the creator's input. The successful ABC adaptations of Stephen King's books had lots of King input on them -- he was the producer and screenwriter!! The Potter films let Rowling in at the early stages to provide notes and the directors apparently discuss any changes to her story with her first. And to her credit, Rowling appreciates that films are different and simply focuses on making sure the movies don't violate the spirit of the books or the characters. The original author usually has a good idea of what made the book a success than an executive who read a report by one of his readers.
Remember that fictional movie critic Sony created awhile back? Maybe Pamela eloped with him? :-)
That's a half-truth. Industry can do the same thing (*cough* CORBA *cough*). The more important lesson here is: don't design for a particular base or technology. E.g., an encryption standard based on a single vendor's proprietary chip that no one else can make.
*ahem*
;-)
:-))
You know those imperial units you love to use? Their official definition is actually in metric. America has been on-board with metric for a long time, and you are allowed to use it in trade & commerce (and is often used -- buy a 2 liter bottl of pop recently?). American Imperial is just a special case of metric.
(sadly, this post will get ignored because it's Saturday and at the end of a 900+ message thread
OK, it's not quite the classic example but I think it works:
You buy a machine to manufacture widgets and as a by-product, it flings heavy iron balls of scrap out. Now it costs money to fix it so the iron balls just don't fling around and smash windows. But if the owner of the machine merely uses some of his profits to replace the broken windows of his neighbors, then that's good then, right?
That was the point of the LA times article: if those companies were NOT behaving like that, the foundation wouldn't need to be spending money to fix the problems the companies cause.
Man, what a difference 20 years can make. I remember when real hackers and geeks thought Novel and IBM were the enemy of independent, freedom-minded programmers. :-)
With the serial numbers filed off (and a new voice over). England's Horizon program is a truly awesome science documentary series, even covering some things that might not be considered traditional science programming. I haven't seen Horizon straight from the Beeb in a few years and wikipedia sites this article about it being dumbed down, but the best Nova episodes were simply episodes from Horizon.
He comes in and saved do-it-them-selfers from themselves. And there was one couple who hired a "contractor" to remodel their basement. The electrical wiring job Holmes found almost made everyone gape in amazement the house wasn't a pile of cinders. And people wonder why I insist on hiring people to do work I feel I'm not competent enough to do, and don't mind paying more than that lovely man who advertised in the Weekly Shopper who only wants cash, no cheques please and who changes his phone # every couple of weeks.
Are you sure you know what a RPG is?
1. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
2. Company of Heroes
That is all. I tried some of the others, but I could never really get into them.
To me, Oblivion is role-playing game designed by people who never really played RPGs. I described it as "An RPG for thumb-bashers and FPS-addicts without that gay story and puzzle shit". The FPS style combat was tedious -- I derive no fun from fighting games. Although I do feel a little like Homer Simpson when I say "Doesn't everyone realise RPGs reached perfection with Diablo II?" :-)
For those of us with even a little economics background recognizes Joel's post as a discussion on opportunity cost.
From an interview with OBL:
I should add OBL has an economics degree.
WaPo's version the AP article
Freely accessible archive of above
Actually, I (and other historians and politicians) find it depressingly easily to predict historical development from the past. The most notorious failures are people who insisted "history was over" in one way or the other, and that a given situation cannot possible be compared to other things: a view called exceptionalism. But human drives and emotions have remained unchanged for thousands of years. One can make some good predictions about given situations, and more importantly, history tells us what can work. (P.S., just about every major war in the 20th century was predicted -- ask Winston Churchil about WW2).
If you notice, in my previous posts, I do believe in free markets. Throughout history, free markets seem to have the least negatives (still negatives, but the lesser of all evils). More importantly, the freedom of individuals to do what they will seem to improve society & prosperity. It's only when one or more individuals decide to curtail other individuals' freedoms that problems arise. Whether they be the robber barons of old or governments of today. And the current version of globalization is, IMHO, a hideous amalgamation of the two. True free trade benefits everyone; social mobility benefits everyone, and seems to result in more peaceful societies. Current globalism is about corporations using governments to co-erce populations into channeling money & productivity to themselves.
And as other reports, including the Economist, have noticed, distribution of wealth is exarcebated by this new growth. Only a fraction of the population enjoys the new prosperity while the vast majority have not experienced a change in their living conditions for the last 30 years. Simply pointing out that some people have prosopered and that the whole GDP have prosopered does not mean everyone benefited.
India still has tremendous proverty and economic problems because most of their population lack the basic education to take advantage of the Bangalore boom. Poverty in China is still so horrible that illegal immigration from China has never been so high. They'd rather fast endentured servitude in a sweatshop here in North America than enjoy the "economic growth" of China.
Osama bin Laden has been spreading the myth of Western economic exploitation as an explanation for why the Islamic world is still laging behind the West. Socialists are coming to power in South America fueld by popular movements (sometimes spilling over into violence) that feel they are being exploited by globalism and multi-national corporations.
Take the rose-colored filters off, my friend, that economists use to simplify a terrifying complicated world. Free markets can work, but our current global economic system is not free (as in freedom). It still relies on heavy handed corporate & government actions to interfere with worker rights, popular movements and the ability of communities to determine their destinies. As I said in another post, the only thing wrong with globalism, as practiced, is the use of Government to interfere with the market's ability to improve the lives of workers. If workers were free to chose their working conditions, wages and labour orginization, then we'd have functional competition and their lives would improve and we wouldn't be losing jobs by the tens of thousands.
I agree Globalization works both ways, but your arguments are weak. Most 3rd world countries were already out sourcing destinations for manufacturing and primary industries (raw materials). Their GDP was many times larger than their GNP. The wealth being created wasn't staying in country. The technology and know-how was not being passed to the locals so they could make their own companies and compete. They were effectively colonies. The 3rd world knew this and pushed for global free trade, with the hopes that somehow what little capital and knowledge was transferred could make them competitive.
The big problem is Government. India has restrictions up the wazoo to favor local industries, and corruption at the local levels prevent workers from getting their rights protected. Child labor is illegal in India, slavery is illegal in India. Yet both are responsible for a large amount of garment and textile work coming out of India, and the local NGOs are complaining that the government of India not only does not WANT to enforce the laws, they seem to PROTECT these employers. India's government is preventing workers from taking responsibility for their own lives to improve their working conditions. THAT is the problem with the current outsourcing trend.
High-tech, being more visible and having a more educated, motivated work force, is an exception thankfully. If you hadn't noticed, the wages for high-tech people in India is rising faster than multinationals want and have gone to a country which is infamous for using Government to oppress the people: China. China does even more things to prevent the people from improving their lot in life, and thus depresses wages and working conditions. Without the freedom to price themselves out of the market, how can we in the West compete with virtual slaves?
Free-trade can be good among equals. It allows us to take advantage of our differences to create wealth and opportunity. But the current trend of globalization seems to be about finding ways to stamp on the face of workers for the benefit of a few, and corporations are delighting to deal with totalitarian regimes, and even co-operating with these governments to keep their power.
This isn't free-trade globalization, this is humanity getting f----d over.
And yes, eventually people WILL object and fight back... with violence and extremist Socialism. Do we really want to go back to the 1980s again?
As the parent said, before Irwin, people HATED crocs, venmous snakes & spiders, etc. No one on TV made as passionate and convincing case for the "ugly critters" like Steve Irwin. Thanks to him, I realised I still had a prejudice against reptiles. I.e., I didn't care so much about the extinction of crocodiles, venemous snakes, etc. But thanks to him, you realise -- hey, they maybe ugly, but they're usually MORE important than the cute and cudly field mouse (a pest of biblical proportions in Australia and a very serious ecological threat) and rabbits (another thing that SHOULD be erradicated in Australia).
So many nature specials, etc. focus on the cute mammals and tend to show reptiles as the villains about to much on that harmless wildebeast. Well, without crocks, wildebeasts could eat themselves and their enviornment to extinction. Reptiles are a very good and very important part of nature.
Steve Irwin had the courage to share his love of reptiles with the world and drag us kicking and screaming to realise how important they are in the circle of life. ANd more importantly, he reached out to the NON-science and NON-nature people to make them understand it too, so if someone opposes a crocodile cull in Aussie to make life better for the big ranchers, the public is now more likely to support that person.
Reptiles have lost their biggest fan and lobbiest. God rest ye, Steve. And I hope your wife and children will get through this ordeal.
I'm a little annoyed this simply just RIPPED out the 3-D mesh stuff for this Beta but so far...
:-)
SWEET! I wrote a simple bounce-ball w/ paddle in a couple hours. Most of that was learning how to use the API. In terms of coding time, I'd say it took me less than an hour. The API docs included is almost useless, but I can only hope MS gets a basic idea: enable amatuer developers. This is how MS built up its developer base in the first place with GW-Basic and QuickBasic. Think how many developers got started writing for MS platforms with that. And VB, which had to have been the most pirated language since TurboPascal, enabled Windows to become entrenched everywhere.
Good call. Now we need to do something like this for SDL for some good competition.
Yeah, with nitroglycerin. The article from the Register said it was TATP, and proceded to explain his knowledge from researching TATP that it is highly unlikely TATP could be used to bring down a plane. TATP != nitroglycerin. And just looking up one aspect of the article seems to check out so far. The rest would be hard to check out without performing the experiments or talking to someone who has made it.
I was waiting for someone to remember that. :-)
Ah, the painful memories of a half-assed Turbo Pascal. It didn't quite want to be Object Pascal, didn't quite want to be real Pascal, didn't want to become a modern professional language either.
I can't recall the exact year though. :-( In one of the Siggraph presentation videos, there was a presentation about a system to take a 2-D photo and create a 3-D model (w/ skin texture from the photo) from it. They created an "average" face from hundreds of 3-D face scans and then used information from the photo to build up the 3-D model of the new face from the average face. I was wondering when it would show up in a practical application. TFA seems to indicate his team may have done this on their own though. But since they will be at SIGGRAPH, I'm sure the original team will pipe up. :-)
... and she's easy on the eyes. :-)
:-)
Back when I played D2 on-line, I preferred being the Amazon because it gave me more options for Arrow skills and magik to support arrow skills. I dislike "up close and personal" combat, and I don't want to deplete mana casting missile spells all the time. It's as simple as that.
And she was easy on the eyes.
I think people are mis-understanding me. Going to the Moon and beyond are good. Very good. But I don't think these guys are serious. They'll spend a lot of money, there will be cost over-runs, congress will realise the election's coming up and they'll kill Orion before it even launches. That's my depressing belief. But in the meantime, to pay for this expensive PR stunt, they'll cut things that actually ARE working and in space. We'll get a net loss of space development.
And don't get me started on Spaceship One. That's like climbing to the top of a tree and saying you're half way to the moon. Talk to me when they achieve orbit over 120 miles.