Then someone said that current games use NiFi, but that didn't help much. There's still the question as to why it matters that N isn't using WiFi (yet) when they have released wireless games.
NiFi is a latency intolerant local communication protocol. WiFi is a long-distance routable protocol. WiFi is a lot more intelligent. NiFi connects to whatever is around. WiFi games would require a server infrastructure somewhere to route people's games properly. NiFi is local area and forms a game with whoever is handy.
NiFi is a lot simpler for Nintendo. WiFi implies a lot of backend stuff that the didn't want to deal with for the first generation.
You forgot that it should be pushed by a company that is already directly in the public's eye. Google can launch Google Maps and have the world's passing attention, but who would go to maps.northernlight.com? There are things out there better than google, but you wouldn't know it unless you had done a deep and broad search.
BTW, your plot for world domination reduces to: Make the best possible solution for users with an open API. Which, while nice, hasn't saved everybody.
Let's say you had the option of paying $350 for each copy of each release of your office software (word processor and spreadsheet program) every couple of years or so. Why not pay $5/mo for the same functionality and never have to worry about upgrades or new releases?
A: Because it won't be 5 dollars a month, that 350 dollar piece of software will be 350 dollars per year.
B: Because I'd much rather not have to worry that the makers of all 10 pieces of key software on my machine have current credit card info.
C: Because upgrades are on the provider's time schedule, not ours, and so upgrades that may break compatibility can come out at any moment.
D: Because I lose payment flexibility. If I lose my job, I'm not going to pay to upgrade my software. But I'll still have software. On the other hand, if I can't afford to keep paying for my office software, what am I going to edit my resume in?
E: Because then the provider has no incentive to improve their software. At least under the current system Microsoft has to pretend to make Office 350 dollars better every two years.
Software isn't a service. Having milk delivered is a service. Web hosting is a service. Software is a thingie. The copy of Doom on my machine is identical to the when I bought it. I don't want my HTML editing program to suddenly cease functioning because I forgot to pay that bill this month. I'd much rather pay cash to have Photoshop 7 and be guaranteed that baseline functionality into the future (with upgrading as an option) rather than having to worry about my ability to edit images being taken away.
I think the point in the article was that it brings movies to locations that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them. In such a situation, piracy isn't costing the industry money, but rather the lack of availability is encouraging piracy.
There are also scary things that you can do with digital film to discourage piracy, such as watermarking films by theater, date, and time. If you look at a modern digital film, such as Spiderman 2, you'll occasionally see some dots along the bottom of the screen. That's what they are. If that mark appears in online versions of the film, police can track down which group of people saw the movie, and if you paid in advance or with a credit card, they know who was there. Otherwise it just helps narrow their search down for them.
I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of watermarking showed up in DVD's soon.
In the old studio system it was different. You were an actor, you did your schtick, you got a check. If your movie turned out to be the next Casablanca, you got maybe a token bonus. If your movie was a flop, you still drew a nice salary.
And then that changed, and actors were willing to accept less guaranteed pay for more points. And studios were happy to offer points because it mitigates their risk. This has three effects 1: more and more expensive movies get made, as the risk is artificially spread out over multiple parties, 2: the median actor salary goes down, and 3: actors take a more active role in the production.
I'm still not sure whether the points system makes movies better, like tipping makes service in resturants better, or if it just means that most actors starve. Either way, the actor's guild is just looking for the same types of income stream with shows online that they get from syndication and overseas views.
So far, the art of modifying a person's genetic makeup is in its infancy. (In face, I'm not sure if it has ever even been done yet...)
It probably wouldn't help us anyway. Even if there were a way to change the genetic makeup of a physically mature person, you still need to change the expression of the genes to have an effect. If you change your genes to those of a person twice your height, your body size won't change as you're past your physical development. Kids, maybe. But we're still doomed.
As a side not, it is worth pointing out that the genetic mutation which greatly increases resistance to malaria is also the gene responsible for sickle cell anemia. As we don't have a lot of delta 32 gene people around, we probably don't know what the side effects on them are, but it may not be desirable.
Right now in a lot of games, especially racing games, you have motion blur added to key elements in a scene... other cars, tail lights, lamp posts, etc. You don't need to blur everything, bluring just key elements is enough to create a sense of speed for much less processor hit.
In general, though, you choose your target framerate and balance your technology and artwork around that. If you want motion blur on the main character's sword, you cut the total polys on it in half or re-balance your scene to allocate more clock cycles to the main character. The PS2 could do an insane amount of motion blur if the developers wanted to, and sometimes it does. Heck, the PS2 could probably draw Super Mario Brothers 2 at 900 frames per second, giving you the silky smoothest motion blur you have ever seen.
It is a meaningless statistic, in other words, the equivalent of saying that our system has twice the sound volume of yours.
As a side note, televisions blur themselves a bit between frames, so you get some of motion blur for free.
...but it isn't like he's spent a lot of time programming PS2 or Game Cube games. He's spent years optimizing PC code. Of course it will seem simpler to him.
Carmack also doesn't sound like he even has a PS3 dev kit. He's making an easy decision based upon the architecture he and his company is most familiar with. It's probably the right decision for him, recognizing that his company farms out console ports. But until a traditionally multiplatform developer speaks up, all judgement should be on hold, lest rampant fanboyism ruin business and artistic decisions.
Being from a PS2 house that has dabbled in other platforms, the PS2 is just fine as a system. It has quirks, but it isn't like people come to work every day dreading touching the thing. All of the systems have their individual irritations. I'm guessing that the next generation will be similar: the systems will be similar enough (revolution controller excepted) that you make your game on whatever platform will ensure the most people experience it. Fanboyism has a place, but it shouldn't be in development decisions.
Why is the government applying for patents anyway?
on
Patents vs. Secrecy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's the part that doesn't make any sense. It's paid for by taxpayer dollars (which includes the better-behaved of companies out there), so why would the NSA try to patent them? As a source of funding? As leverage in cross-licensing agreements?
Kevin: Good evening. I am Sir Simon Milligan. And welcome to the Pit of Ultimate Darkness. Where's the reverb? I asked for reverb. (reverb goes on) Not now. Never mind.
Tonight, we dive into the diseased human mind. Join me, the grey matter is warm. Within each of us are several personalities. For example, are any of us the same person when we talk to our parents as we are when we say, "I go with a prostitute?" J-just an example.
You see, in the normal mind these personalities are integrated. However, in the freakish...unnormal mind, these personalities splinter, forming separate and distinct people, living within a single brain, like this one!! (shows brain, drops it)
Now, in the tradition of 3 Faces of Eve, yet less ambitious than Cybill, join me in welcoming the multiple personalities of my brimstone baby, Manservant Hecubus. (Hecubus rises)
Dave: Good evening, master. Kevin: Good evening. And now for the sleep of ages. Leba! Seba! Kootie! (Hecubus falls asleep) Hecubus, can you hear me? Dave: Yes, master. Kevin: Is there anyone else in you brain I can speak to? Dave: Hold the phone, master. (changes) Hello. How ya doing, pally? Kevin: And who am I talking to? Dave: Ed. Ed's the name. Kevin: And what do you do, Ed? Dave: Uh, nothin'. Kevin: Really, then how do you know when you're done? (Laughs, become serious) EVIL! Now, is there anyone else I can speak to? Dave: Sure, just a sec. (changes) Hello. Kevin: And who am I talking to now? Dave: Ted. Ed said you wanted to talk to me. Kevin: Gee, Ted. You sound an awful lot like Ed. Dave: Yeah? Never heard that before. Kevin: May I speak to Ed again? Dave: Sure. (changes) Hello. Kevin: Hello, is this Ed? Dave: No, this is Fred. Ted musta heard you wrong. Ed, phone for you. (changes) Hello. Kevin: Now Ed? Dave: Yeah. (laughs) Kevin: What's so funny? Dave: It's still Fred. I fooled ya! Kevin: Evil. May I please speak to Ed? Dave: Sure. (changes) Hello, Ed here. (laughs) Kevin: Okay, who is this? Dave: Oh, it's Ed. I just think what Fred did was pretty damn funny. (changes) Kevin: Oh, let me guess who this is. Jed? Dave: No. My name Julio! Julio the bus driver!! Ay, ay! Kevin: Now we're cooking with evil gas. Tell me, Julio, how long have you been around? Dave: No, it's still Fred. God, you're gullible. Kevin: Enough of this farce. Hecubus, awaken. (slaps him) Dave: Master, where have I been? Kevin: Oh, shut up. I hope this evening's performance has taught you to value your flimsy grasp on sanity. At any given moment, any one of you can snap! (snaps) Dave: Hello, Ed here. Geez, you know , these tights really bind at the crotch. Kevin: So from all of us at the snake pit, goodnight. And please remember to floss. (to Dave) Where did you go to acting school?
Not to be too pessimistic, but has anyone else detected a spike in BS from Israeli companies? There was the vocal lie detector, the compression algorithm that could compress arbitrary data, unbreakable encryption, etc, etc. Are Israeli companies earning a bad reputation, or is it just a Slashdot filter?
I get much of my stuff from http://mwhodges.home.att.net/ you may need to recalculate it for being percapita though.
I'm seeing 100k per citizen. Are 3 out of 4 people not working? Mind you, that also includes corporate debt... a debt with doesn't get counted against individual citizens.
I would be vary wary of that, real-estate lost 90% of it's value during the great depression, and to tell you the truth - we are more overleveraged now then we were then.
Oh yes, it's a dumb investment right now. But if you have a morgage, and most people do, you probably got one at a more reasonable time. On average, your house has as much or more real-world value now as it did when you bought it. The real-world value doesn't matter to the people who bought track housing off of a google IPO at 7 million dollars, but that actual value is increasing as more people come online.
nfortunately most debt is foriegn owned nowdays, Japan alone has some 650bln of us bonds.
According to the site you linked, only 20% of debt is foreign owned. Not that is a particularly reassuring figure, mind you.
The problem with debt isn't who it's owned to, it's that it pre-obligates money that would otherwise be spent in more productive ways...I think debt for things other than investments that increase productivity are a bad idea.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, remember that certain things require debt to get off the ground. My small business (still around somewhere, BTW) required an outlay in costs to start. It wasn't much, but it did require an outlay, and without that the business wouldn't have started. I've also done a little work in the past for a realtor who would generally look for unsecured investors but who would also take out loans on certain properties. He'd get other people's money, buy burnt-out, broken down properties, fix them up, and sell them at quite a profit (good gig, but lots more work than you would think). His business relied on debt to generate value.
And sure, at the end of a project he would have 500,000 dollars pre-obligated to his creditors, but he also walked away with an extra 100 grand for himself that he wouldn't otherwise have. And society got a three-floor condo to house three families that it otherwise wouldn't have.
Also from what I understand, 90% of society are debtors and 10% creditors. Yup. 90% are also workers and 10% bosses. Society is pretty pyramid shaped. But societies are generally like that.
There is a difference between investing and loaning, with a loan money is owed no matter how good or poorly it does. With investment in things like stock, that is not the case.
With investments, though, there is still the assumption that value will return. If a project collapses and your investors lose all of their money, your investors are still getting screwed. I'd count investments as important in the equation as well. Likewise, investing debts are not necessarily as bad as it could be.
The global economy is teetering on the edge of a cliff, I would peronally and strongly recommend having some precious metals on hand. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this as gold is at an 18 year high now (http://www.kitco.com/)
Sounds like a gold bubble:). Don't forget, gold also only has value because of accepted norms. Sure, you can use a little bit of it in electronics, but ultimately it has value for jewelry... and if the global economy collapses, who needs that?
A bit more on-topic, the collapse or not of society will depend largely upon the details of how much that debt load is, and how much of that debt is "good," and how much would need to be absorbed through dillution of the currency or defaulting. But neither of those spell the end of civilization as we know it... just a downgrade in our quality of life relative to other areas of the world. And likewise
I've never seen a game go from gold to boxes in less than a month. Sure, Microsoft could do it... push x 360 certification to the front of the queue, push disks and boxes through manufacturing, get major all-night distribution, and have a decent volume of stuff available on launch day. But they really should have some killer system-selling titles ready to go already... at least the required token launch puzzler.
I agree that delaying games to get them right is the right thing to do, but they ought to delay the entire system to do so... a launch with no titles doesn't usually fly in the US. I get the feeling that the first batch of approved titles are going to be the build that happened to come in on the last day before they would miss the launch window.
There is still time to correct launch mistakes, but it seems clear that they haven't hit one out of the park yet... that like so many systems before this one they won't have a killer app until their competitors come out.
If you don't mind building up your laptop a little bit, get an 80mm fan and place it in front of wherever your laptop intake is. Run it to the 5v USB line, or a 12v firewire line (5v USB ought to be enough, but some laptops don't power their USB line). Make sure to give this fan an opening... if on the bottom, give it enough feet to get a good, clear airflow.
If you have a standard workspace, build a cool stand. Take an old monitor stand, mount some fans underneath pointing upwards, and drill a heck of a lot of holes. If you get really quiet fans, and feed them off of a 5v wall wart, you can run them constantly without any noticable noise. Or give your laptop some little rubber feet, and run the fans across the desk (though that has the annoyance of blowing air across your hands).
You can also take the fan and run it into a plastic bladder with holes poked in it. This gets targeted air underneath your laptop, but usually looks terrible.
And if it is overheating in your lap: open your legs. Nothing cools a laptop faster than spreading them. No seriously, it improves the airflow and... why are you all snickering? Geeze... Kids.
Also, I hate to tell you this but it will not get better. Between federal, state, corporate, housing, and credit cards, there is over 400K of debt for every worker in the USA and that doesn't even include things like public education that must be funded anyhow. They can not pay it back without a default, or printing up money and screwing you over.
Not that I disagree with your post, but can you cite sources for this? The numbers I've seen are closer to 40K. I would guess that a disproportionate amount of that number is in morgages. Shouldn't morgage debt count separatley, as an investment, being secured by a tangible property which can be resold and which usually accrues value (unless there are too many speculators)? The difference between that and credit card (or federal) debt is pretty significant.
Isn't a lot of that debt also to ourselves? I owe rent to the owner, my roommate owes rent to me, her company owes her salary to her, etc. A more realistic example would be a car company who owes money to it's creditors, but who also is owed money by the people who buy cars from it. Isn't that debt being counted twice?
I'm not convinced that zero debt is the overall goal. All investments are debt to someone. If I invest 1,000 dollars in a local company so that they can re-tool their factory, that's 1,000 dollars in debt that basically guarantees a return to society much larger than the expense. Corporate debt is how the buying power of money is shifted from institutions that have it, to upstarts that need it. Sure, Sony may go a half-billion dollars in debt to create a new fab plant for the Cell chip that powers the Playstation 3, but they'll make it back.
If not all debts are necessarily bad, we have to figure what kinds are bad and what kinds aren't. Student Loans are as annoying as hell, but the benefit to society (and a single worker's earning potential) greatly outweighs the cost of being in debt. Credit card debts are always bad, and are basically the work of the devil. Sometimes you need to go into a little debt to buy a used car to get to work on time... That's much better than not working. But buying a 25k new SUV is a bad investment.
Of course, I do agree that we're all screwed, and that the "company store" of debt plays a large part in that. But I'm not convinced that exactly how we're screwed is as you are portraying it.
Not to feed a troll, but I see a lot more crashes going to black screens (dos) than blue screens (NT / 2k).
The local rock gym just upgraded their Point of Sale system, and the new one is... also running dos. The ATM's up the street all run dos. The supermarket and bookstores are running on Win2k, but the hardware store is on dos. You can usually tell, simply because the DOS stuff at POS terminals is usually all text with a solid background. Ugly and dos-looking, in other words.
Most cameras run on DOS. There are even mame flavors for it.
While I have no hard and fast numbers, I would doubt that most portable devices which have an OS could support embedded Windows 2k, despite Microsoft's hype. The Pocket PC was supposed to be the showroom for embedded Windows, and look what a power hog that is (compared to the 68k and other chips which dominate cheap devices).
When what you really need is an OS that can deal with a Fat32 Compact Flash Card, take some standard input and give some standard output, and you need it to cost 50 dollars or less, what do you need embedded Windows for?
In terms of storytelling, Halflife was only minorly stronger than Doom, and barely any different in terms of plotline. "Nasty government scientists in their wasteland underground lab experiment with teleporters and unlease weird monsters"
In FPS terms, Halflife added tremendously to the genre. Pretty much all stories can be reduced down to a few essential plotlines. The strength of storytelling comes in moments like when you have a chat with the guard at the door about his family, only moments later to watch him beg for his life before being slaughtered by invaders. It's not the overall arc that makes storytelling, it is individual moments that suck you in.
And yes, counterstrike gave Half-Life legs. But Half-Life was immensley popular before CounterStrike.
Ad impressions from a demographic that advertisers don't desire anyhow- does that really qualify as "payment"?
No, I'm talking cash. People that pay out 10 dollars a month for advanced features, membership, etc. Not to sound too much like a publisher, but the numbers on those games are pretty good.
The federal government wants to make it more difficult for "criminals, terrorists and spies" by opening more backdoors in the system? Isn't that exactly the sort of thing that would make it easier for criminals, terrorists, and spies to get the info they need?
2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
Which change would've hurt Half-life's sales more- replacing the mild puzzle-solving with Doom-style "red/blue keycards", or removing the gun-shooting and monster-dodging? The answer should tell you which genre it's really from.
It's in the Doom genre, but it added a much deeper storytelling aspect to it that Doom never had. Remove that, and it wouldn't have sold well at all. But transplant that story to another structure, and the game still could have done well.
Unreal Tournament followed the Quake 3 model. Half Life did not follow the Doom model.
Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience.
Yes they do. The average gameplayer may be 30, but people of that age and above spent far less money and time on games (console especially). The folks who buy 8+ full-price games per year are kids or college students, sucking parental earnings.
Ok, allow me to revise my statement. In my talks with publishers, producers, directors, and other industry professionals, far more people are interested in reaching out and expanding the market than want to stick to the stereotypical core. Most video game developers consider themselves part of their target market, and few of them are between 13-25. The average game purchaser age is 38, but as you point out that's skewed. And a surprisingly large percentage of gamers are women, thanks to a string of quality high profile titles that helped pique their interest in the hobby.
It is true that the younger set have more time to spend on videogames, but it is also true that the older set have more disposable income. There is a pretty big difference between having 3,000 dollars a month in income with 2,000 in fixed expenses, or getting 5 bucks a week for taking out the trash.
Furthermore, the most effective way to get adults of 30+ to play a game is for them to build a video-game habit as teens. Middle-aged people who didn't grow up with games are unlikely to start.
I'm not seeing this. A surprisingly large portion of the game playing population are retired folk with time on their hands. They largely play social games online, such as pop cap or MSN games, but they do pay and they do play. And they're simply too old to have been introduced to any videogames when they were teens. I also see a lot of female gamers who started in their late 20's or mid 30's with the Sims.
You need a gateway to bring people in, and it is easier to find that gateway when you're younger and still have more flexible tastes. But those gateways exist, and people can get interested in gaming no matter what age they are... the same what that some people start surfing when they're 60.
Let's not forget that Thompson does this for profit, a hell of a lot more than the Penny Arcade guys get. Thompson has orchistrated multiple lawsuits and class-action suits against the industry over the years, and has profitedly handsomly from it. Thompson inhabits a space that attempts to restrict expression for personal profit. That's a lot more tenuous than the position of Penny Arcade where they express themselves and get paid for it.
Thompson is very relevant to Penny Arcade. They've sold "I hate Jack Thompson" t-shirts for years. He claims that Electronic Arts sells pornography via Sims2 to children and that videogames caused Columbine. Penny Arcade is a webcomic about videogame culture. Thompson is a part of that culture. There is a clear connection there, and a clear reason for Penny Arcade to e-mail this very public figure.
He then called them. On the phone. In meatspace. Of his own volition. Which of course they post about, as Penny Arcade is a blog that posts about videogame relevant experiences these two people have. That's what they do. And having tons of readers, some respond by making baseless threats. That's the nature of the modern instantaneous communication and not at all PA's fault. If you haven't had at least one nut job claim you're going to be staring down the end of a 357, you're not trying hard enough.
And Thompson did a lot to fan the flames. Like pretending to contact the police, when in fact he was faxing everyone but them. And now the feds. Oh, and the whole open challenge to the video game industry PR stunt followed by "my promise to donate to charity was a farce." And he happened to be in the news anyway, what with the National Institute on Media and the Family distancing itself from him.
Not to put it too bluntly, but Penny Arcade has raised over 1/2 million dollars for toys for children's hospitals. Jack Thompson just copped out on making a promised 10,000 dollar donation to charity. That's basically what they said to him, and it's true.
Either way, he's a lawyer. He's supposed to be held to a higher moral standard. He's not supposed to make baseless threats, scream obscenities at media people, or mislead about legal actions he's pursuing.
On the other hand, the Penny Arcade blog, the modern equivalent of a morning radio show, has been posting inflammatory things like:
Jack is not special. He is not a unique snow flake as they say. He is just the latest vocal opponent of whatever is "corrupting" our youth at the moment. When my dad was growing up it was rock and roll devil music. Then it was comic books then movies and rap music. Today its videogames. If we were to succeed in getting Jack blacklisted from the major news outlets someone else would simply take his place. Imagine him as an actor playing a part in a play. The point is that Jack Thompson is not important. If he were to be fired a new actor would simply take up the role. The same lines would still be delivered in the same way and the same audience would pay to see it. We are actually fortunate that the current actor is so impotent in his role. Imagine what might happen if some charming, efficacious attorney took his place. The more I consider it the more I think we may be lucky to have Jack playing the part of the alarmist. The alternative might be someone who is actually capable.
Close. I'm too sleepy to find the links again, but HD-DVD requires the ability to rip content but allows companies to charge an arbitrarily high fee for it. In practical terms, it requires that all disks have Microsoft DRM tech on them, but doesn't require that the consumer has real access to it. Because the tech is required to be on HD-DVD's, expect it to be more present on that platform. And expect to spend 10-20 bucks if you want to do it.
Blu-Ray doesn't require such a thing, but is compatible with it for any studios that want to take advantage of it.
Still, it would be a good step, if I didn't usually watch movies on a Mac.
The most eggregious part of both standards, though, is that the actual high-density content on the disks won't play unless you have a DRM Protected TV and / or computer monitor. Protected TV's are rare. Protected computer monitors aren't even available. So while you may have spent 1,000 dollars on an awesome studio display, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks will still perform the same as a standard DVD disk. This is what Gates refers to when he says the studios got too much power over the standard. Standard DVD images are certainly good enough to pirate anyway, considering how much they are downsampled in the ripping process. This will only hurt paying consumers, and has to be the biggest block with the scheme. Even if I wanted to buy a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive, it wouldn't do me any good as they will refuse to work with my computer monitors.
Unless that much is changed before launch, or protected monitors and TV's become far more common, I predict a DIVX-level death for both of these technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
Then someone said that current games use NiFi, but that didn't help much. There's still the question as to why it matters that N isn't using WiFi (yet) when they have released wireless games.
NiFi is a latency intolerant local communication protocol. WiFi is a long-distance routable protocol. WiFi is a lot more intelligent. NiFi connects to whatever is around. WiFi games would require a server infrastructure somewhere to route people's games properly. NiFi is local area and forms a game with whoever is handy.
NiFi is a lot simpler for Nintendo. WiFi implies a lot of backend stuff that the didn't want to deal with for the first generation.
they've replaced the working politicians with expendable clones
How is that any different than regular politicians?
You forgot that it should be pushed by a company that is already directly in the public's eye. Google can launch Google Maps and have the world's passing attention, but who would go to maps.northernlight.com? There are things out there better than google, but you wouldn't know it unless you had done a deep and broad search.
BTW, your plot for world domination reduces to:
Make the best possible solution for users with an open API.
Which, while nice, hasn't saved everybody.
Let's say you had the option of paying $350 for each copy of each release of your office software (word processor and spreadsheet program) every couple of years or so. Why not pay $5/mo for the same functionality and never have to worry about upgrades or new releases?
A: Because it won't be 5 dollars a month, that 350 dollar piece of software will be 350 dollars per year.
B: Because I'd much rather not have to worry that the makers of all 10 pieces of key software on my machine have current credit card info.
C: Because upgrades are on the provider's time schedule, not ours, and so upgrades that may break compatibility can come out at any moment.
D: Because I lose payment flexibility. If I lose my job, I'm not going to pay to upgrade my software. But I'll still have software. On the other hand, if I can't afford to keep paying for my office software, what am I going to edit my resume in?
E: Because then the provider has no incentive to improve their software. At least under the current system Microsoft has to pretend to make Office 350 dollars better every two years.
Software isn't a service. Having milk delivered is a service. Web hosting is a service. Software is a thingie. The copy of Doom on my machine is identical to the when I bought it. I don't want my HTML editing program to suddenly cease functioning because I forgot to pay that bill this month. I'd much rather pay cash to have Photoshop 7 and be guaranteed that baseline functionality into the future (with upgrading as an option) rather than having to worry about my ability to edit images being taken away.
I think the point in the article was that it brings movies to locations that otherwise wouldn't be able to afford them. In such a situation, piracy isn't costing the industry money, but rather the lack of availability is encouraging piracy.
There are also scary things that you can do with digital film to discourage piracy, such as watermarking films by theater, date, and time. If you look at a modern digital film, such as Spiderman 2, you'll occasionally see some dots along the bottom of the screen. That's what they are. If that mark appears in online versions of the film, police can track down which group of people saw the movie, and if you paid in advance or with a credit card, they know who was there. Otherwise it just helps narrow their search down for them.
I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of watermarking showed up in DVD's soon.
In the old studio system it was different. You were an actor, you did your schtick, you got a check. If your movie turned out to be the next Casablanca, you got maybe a token bonus. If your movie was a flop, you still drew a nice salary.
And then that changed, and actors were willing to accept less guaranteed pay for more points. And studios were happy to offer points because it mitigates their risk. This has three effects 1: more and more expensive movies get made, as the risk is artificially spread out over multiple parties, 2: the median actor salary goes down, and 3: actors take a more active role in the production.
I'm still not sure whether the points system makes movies better, like tipping makes service in resturants better, or if it just means that most actors starve. Either way, the actor's guild is just looking for the same types of income stream with shows online that they get from syndication and overseas views.
So far, the art of modifying a person's genetic makeup is in its infancy. (In face, I'm not sure if it has ever even been done yet...)
It probably wouldn't help us anyway. Even if there were a way to change the genetic makeup of a physically mature person, you still need to change the expression of the genes to have an effect. If you change your genes to those of a person twice your height, your body size won't change as you're past your physical development. Kids, maybe. But we're still doomed.
As a side not, it is worth pointing out that the genetic mutation which greatly increases resistance to malaria is also the gene responsible for sickle cell anemia. As we don't have a lot of delta 32 gene people around, we probably don't know what the side effects on them are, but it may not be desirable.
Don't worry. I don't think there's intelligent design behind it.
Don't worry, whatever little evidence of intelligent design you may have uncovered is outweighed by a towering mountain of evidence for stupid design.
Right now in a lot of games, especially racing games, you have motion blur added to key elements in a scene... other cars, tail lights, lamp posts, etc. You don't need to blur everything, bluring just key elements is enough to create a sense of speed for much less processor hit.
In general, though, you choose your target framerate and balance your technology and artwork around that. If you want motion blur on the main character's sword, you cut the total polys on it in half or re-balance your scene to allocate more clock cycles to the main character. The PS2 could do an insane amount of motion blur if the developers wanted to, and sometimes it does. Heck, the PS2 could probably draw Super Mario Brothers 2 at 900 frames per second, giving you the silky smoothest motion blur you have ever seen.
It is a meaningless statistic, in other words, the equivalent of saying that our system has twice the sound volume of yours.
As a side note, televisions blur themselves a bit between frames, so you get some of motion blur for free.
...but it isn't like he's spent a lot of time programming PS2 or Game Cube games. He's spent years optimizing PC code. Of course it will seem simpler to him.
Carmack also doesn't sound like he even has a PS3 dev kit. He's making an easy decision based upon the architecture he and his company is most familiar with. It's probably the right decision for him, recognizing that his company farms out console ports. But until a traditionally multiplatform developer speaks up, all judgement should be on hold, lest rampant fanboyism ruin business and artistic decisions.
Being from a PS2 house that has dabbled in other platforms, the PS2 is just fine as a system. It has quirks, but it isn't like people come to work every day dreading touching the thing. All of the systems have their individual irritations. I'm guessing that the next generation will be similar: the systems will be similar enough (revolution controller excepted) that you make your game on whatever platform will ensure the most people experience it. Fanboyism has a place, but it shouldn't be in development decisions.
That's the part that doesn't make any sense. It's paid for by taxpayer dollars (which includes the better-behaved of companies out there), so why would the NSA try to patent them? As a source of funding? As leverage in cross-licensing agreements?
Why does the government do this?
Tonight, we dive into the diseased human mind. Join me, the grey matter is warm. Within each of us are several personalities. For example, are any of us the same person when we talk to our parents as we are when we say, "I go with a prostitute?" J-just an example.
You see, in the normal mind these personalities are integrated. However, in the freakish...unnormal mind, these personalities splinter, forming separate and distinct people, living within a single brain, like this one!! (shows brain, drops it)
Now, in the tradition of 3 Faces of Eve, yet less ambitious than Cybill, join me in welcoming the multiple personalities of my brimstone baby, Manservant Hecubus. (Hecubus rises)
Dave: Good evening, master.
Kevin: Good evening. And now for the sleep of ages. Leba! Seba! Kootie! (Hecubus falls asleep) Hecubus, can you hear me?
Dave: Yes, master.
Kevin: Is there anyone else in you brain I can speak to?
Dave: Hold the phone, master. (changes) Hello. How ya doing, pally?
Kevin: And who am I talking to?
Dave: Ed. Ed's the name.
Kevin: And what do you do, Ed?
Dave: Uh, nothin'.
Kevin: Really, then how do you know when you're done? (Laughs, become serious) EVIL! Now, is there anyone else I can speak to?
Dave: Sure, just a sec. (changes) Hello.
Kevin: And who am I talking to now?
Dave: Ted. Ed said you wanted to talk to me.
Kevin: Gee, Ted. You sound an awful lot like Ed.
Dave: Yeah? Never heard that before.
Kevin: May I speak to Ed again?
Dave: Sure. (changes) Hello.
Kevin: Hello, is this Ed?
Dave: No, this is Fred. Ted musta heard you wrong. Ed, phone for you. (changes) Hello.
Kevin: Now Ed?
Dave: Yeah. (laughs)
Kevin: What's so funny?
Dave: It's still Fred. I fooled ya!
Kevin: Evil. May I please speak to Ed?
Dave: Sure. (changes) Hello, Ed here. (laughs)
Kevin: Okay, who is this?
Dave: Oh, it's Ed. I just think what Fred did was pretty damn funny. (changes)
Kevin: Oh, let me guess who this is. Jed?
Dave: No. My name Julio! Julio the bus driver!! Ay, ay!
Kevin: Now we're cooking with evil gas. Tell me, Julio, how long have you been around?
Dave: No, it's still Fred. God, you're gullible.
Kevin: Enough of this farce. Hecubus, awaken. (slaps him)
Dave: Master, where have I been?
Kevin: Oh, shut up. I hope this evening's performance has taught you to value your flimsy grasp on sanity. At any given moment, any one of you can snap! (snaps)
Dave: Hello, Ed here. Geez, you know , these tights really bind at the crotch.
Kevin: So from all of us at the snake pit, goodnight. And please remember to floss. (to Dave) Where did you go to acting school?
How many people have SCO licenses?
low level business person who did not understand the company's obligations under the antitrust settlement.
Ballmer?
Not to be too pessimistic, but has anyone else detected a spike in BS from Israeli companies? There was the vocal lie detector, the compression algorithm that could compress arbitrary data, unbreakable encryption, etc, etc. Are Israeli companies earning a bad reputation, or is it just a Slashdot filter?
I get much of my stuff from http://mwhodges.home.att.net/ you may need to recalculate it for being percapita though.
:). Don't forget, gold also only has value because of accepted norms. Sure, you can use a little bit of it in electronics, but ultimately it has value for jewelry... and if the global economy collapses, who needs that?
I'm seeing 100k per citizen. Are 3 out of 4 people not working? Mind you, that also includes corporate debt... a debt with doesn't get counted against individual citizens.
I would be vary wary of that, real-estate lost 90% of it's value during the great depression, and to tell you the truth - we are more overleveraged now then we were then.
Oh yes, it's a dumb investment right now. But if you have a morgage, and most people do, you probably got one at a more reasonable time. On average, your house has as much or more real-world value now as it did when you bought it. The real-world value doesn't matter to the people who bought track housing off of a google IPO at 7 million dollars, but that actual value is increasing as more people come online.
nfortunately most debt is foriegn owned nowdays, Japan alone has some 650bln of us bonds.
According to the site you linked, only 20% of debt is foreign owned. Not that is a particularly reassuring figure, mind you.
The problem with debt isn't who it's owned to, it's that it pre-obligates money that would otherwise be spent in more productive ways...I think debt for things other than investments that increase productivity are a bad idea.
I agree wholeheartedly. However, remember that certain things require debt to get off the ground. My small business (still around somewhere, BTW) required an outlay in costs to start. It wasn't much, but it did require an outlay, and without that the business wouldn't have started. I've also done a little work in the past for a realtor who would generally look for unsecured investors but who would also take out loans on certain properties. He'd get other people's money, buy burnt-out, broken down properties, fix them up, and sell them at quite a profit (good gig, but lots more work than you would think). His business relied on debt to generate value.
And sure, at the end of a project he would have 500,000 dollars pre-obligated to his creditors, but he also walked away with an extra 100 grand for himself that he wouldn't otherwise have. And society got a three-floor condo to house three families that it otherwise wouldn't have.
Also from what I understand, 90% of society are debtors and 10% creditors. Yup. 90% are also workers and 10% bosses. Society is pretty pyramid shaped. But societies are generally like that.
There is a difference between investing and loaning, with a loan money is owed no matter how good or poorly it does. With investment in things like stock, that is not the case.
With investments, though, there is still the assumption that value will return. If a project collapses and your investors lose all of their money, your investors are still getting screwed. I'd count investments as important in the equation as well. Likewise, investing debts are not necessarily as bad as it could be.
The global economy is teetering on the edge of a cliff, I would peronally and strongly recommend having some precious metals on hand. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this as gold is at an 18 year high now (http://www.kitco.com/)
Sounds like a gold bubble
A bit more on-topic, the collapse or not of society will depend largely upon the details of how much that debt load is, and how much of that debt is "good," and how much would need to be absorbed through dillution of the currency or defaulting. But neither of those spell the end of civilization as we know it... just a downgrade in our quality of life relative to other areas of the world. And likewise
I've never seen a game go from gold to boxes in less than a month. Sure, Microsoft could do it... push x 360 certification to the front of the queue, push disks and boxes through manufacturing, get major all-night distribution, and have a decent volume of stuff available on launch day. But they really should have some killer system-selling titles ready to go already... at least the required token launch puzzler.
I agree that delaying games to get them right is the right thing to do, but they ought to delay the entire system to do so... a launch with no titles doesn't usually fly in the US. I get the feeling that the first batch of approved titles are going to be the build that happened to come in on the last day before they would miss the launch window.
There is still time to correct launch mistakes, but it seems clear that they haven't hit one out of the park yet... that like so many systems before this one they won't have a killer app until their competitors come out.
If you don't mind building up your laptop a little bit, get an 80mm fan and place it in front of wherever your laptop intake is. Run it to the 5v USB line, or a 12v firewire line (5v USB ought to be enough, but some laptops don't power their USB line). Make sure to give this fan an opening... if on the bottom, give it enough feet to get a good, clear airflow.
If you have a standard workspace, build a cool stand. Take an old monitor stand, mount some fans underneath pointing upwards, and drill a heck of a lot of holes. If you get really quiet fans, and feed them off of a 5v wall wart, you can run them constantly without any noticable noise. Or give your laptop some little rubber feet, and run the fans across the desk (though that has the annoyance of blowing air across your hands).
You can also take the fan and run it into a plastic bladder with holes poked in it. This gets targeted air underneath your laptop, but usually looks terrible.
And if it is overheating in your lap: open your legs. Nothing cools a laptop faster than spreading them. No seriously, it improves the airflow and... why are you all snickering? Geeze... Kids.
Also, I hate to tell you this but it will not get better. Between federal, state, corporate, housing, and credit cards, there is over 400K of debt for every worker in the USA and that doesn't even include things like public education that must be funded anyhow. They can not pay it back without a default, or printing up money and screwing you over.
Not that I disagree with your post, but can you cite sources for this? The numbers I've seen are closer to 40K. I would guess that a disproportionate amount of that number is in morgages. Shouldn't morgage debt count separatley, as an investment, being secured by a tangible property which can be resold and which usually accrues value (unless there are too many speculators)? The difference between that and credit card (or federal) debt is pretty significant.
Isn't a lot of that debt also to ourselves? I owe rent to the owner, my roommate owes rent to me, her company owes her salary to her, etc. A more realistic example would be a car company who owes money to it's creditors, but who also is owed money by the people who buy cars from it. Isn't that debt being counted twice?
I'm not convinced that zero debt is the overall goal. All investments are debt to someone. If I invest 1,000 dollars in a local company so that they can re-tool their factory, that's 1,000 dollars in debt that basically guarantees a return to society much larger than the expense. Corporate debt is how the buying power of money is shifted from institutions that have it, to upstarts that need it. Sure, Sony may go a half-billion dollars in debt to create a new fab plant for the Cell chip that powers the Playstation 3, but they'll make it back.
If not all debts are necessarily bad, we have to figure what kinds are bad and what kinds aren't. Student Loans are as annoying as hell, but the benefit to society (and a single worker's earning potential) greatly outweighs the cost of being in debt. Credit card debts are always bad, and are basically the work of the devil. Sometimes you need to go into a little debt to buy a used car to get to work on time... That's much better than not working. But buying a 25k new SUV is a bad investment.
Of course, I do agree that we're all screwed, and that the "company store" of debt plays a large part in that. But I'm not convinced that exactly how we're screwed is as you are portraying it.
Not to feed a troll, but I see a lot more crashes going to black screens (dos) than blue screens (NT / 2k).
The local rock gym just upgraded their Point of Sale system, and the new one is... also running dos. The ATM's up the street all run dos. The supermarket and bookstores are running on Win2k, but the hardware store is on dos. You can usually tell, simply because the DOS stuff at POS terminals is usually all text with a solid background. Ugly and dos-looking, in other words.
Most cameras run on DOS. There are even mame flavors for it.
While I have no hard and fast numbers, I would doubt that most portable devices which have an OS could support embedded Windows 2k, despite Microsoft's hype. The Pocket PC was supposed to be the showroom for embedded Windows, and look what a power hog that is (compared to the 68k and other chips which dominate cheap devices).
When what you really need is an OS that can deal with a Fat32 Compact Flash Card, take some standard input and give some standard output, and you need it to cost 50 dollars or less, what do you need embedded Windows for?
In terms of storytelling, Halflife was only minorly stronger than Doom, and barely any different in terms of plotline. "Nasty government scientists in their wasteland underground lab experiment with teleporters and unlease weird monsters"
In FPS terms, Halflife added tremendously to the genre. Pretty much all stories can be reduced down to a few essential plotlines. The strength of storytelling comes in moments like when you have a chat with the guard at the door about his family, only moments later to watch him beg for his life before being slaughtered by invaders. It's not the overall arc that makes storytelling, it is individual moments that suck you in.
And yes, counterstrike gave Half-Life legs. But Half-Life was immensley popular before CounterStrike.
Ad impressions from a demographic that advertisers don't desire anyhow- does that really qualify as "payment"?
No, I'm talking cash. People that pay out 10 dollars a month for advanced features, membership, etc. Not to sound too much like a publisher, but the numbers on those games are pretty good.
The federal government wants to make it more difficult for "criminals, terrorists and spies" by opening more backdoors in the system? Isn't that exactly the sort of thing that would make it easier for criminals, terrorists, and spies to get the info they need?
2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
Which change would've hurt Half-life's sales more- replacing the mild puzzle-solving with Doom-style "red/blue keycards", or removing the gun-shooting and monster-dodging? The answer should tell you which genre it's really from.
It's in the Doom genre, but it added a much deeper storytelling aspect to it that Doom never had. Remove that, and it wouldn't have sold well at all. But transplant that story to another structure, and the game still could have done well.
Unreal Tournament followed the Quake 3 model. Half Life did not follow the Doom model.
Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience.
Yes they do. The average gameplayer may be 30, but people of that age and above spent far less money and time on games (console especially). The folks who buy 8+ full-price games per year are kids or college students, sucking parental earnings.
Ok, allow me to revise my statement. In my talks with publishers, producers, directors, and other industry professionals, far more people are interested in reaching out and expanding the market than want to stick to the stereotypical core. Most video game developers consider themselves part of their target market, and few of them are between 13-25. The average game purchaser age is 38, but as you point out that's skewed. And a surprisingly large percentage of gamers are women, thanks to a string of quality high profile titles that helped pique their interest in the hobby.
It is true that the younger set have more time to spend on videogames, but it is also true that the older set have more disposable income. There is a pretty big difference between having 3,000 dollars a month in income with 2,000 in fixed expenses, or getting 5 bucks a week for taking out the trash.
Furthermore, the most effective way to get adults of 30+ to play a game is for them to build a video-game habit as teens. Middle-aged people who didn't grow up with games are unlikely to start.
I'm not seeing this. A surprisingly large portion of the game playing population are retired folk with time on their hands. They largely play social games online, such as pop cap or MSN games, but they do pay and they do play. And they're simply too old to have been introduced to any videogames when they were teens. I also see a lot of female gamers who started in their late 20's or mid 30's with the Sims.
You need a gateway to bring people in, and it is easier to find that gateway when you're younger and still have more flexible tastes. But those gateways exist, and people can get interested in gaming no matter what age they are... the same what that some people start surfing when they're 60.
Let's not forget that Thompson does this for profit, a hell of a lot more than the Penny Arcade guys get. Thompson has orchistrated multiple lawsuits and class-action suits against the industry over the years, and has profitedly handsomly from it. Thompson inhabits a space that attempts to restrict expression for personal profit. That's a lot more tenuous than the position of Penny Arcade where they express themselves and get paid for it.
Thompson is very relevant to Penny Arcade. They've sold "I hate Jack Thompson" t-shirts for years. He claims that Electronic Arts sells pornography via Sims2 to children and that videogames caused Columbine. Penny Arcade is a webcomic about videogame culture. Thompson is a part of that culture. There is a clear connection there, and a clear reason for Penny Arcade to e-mail this very public figure.
He then called them. On the phone. In meatspace. Of his own volition. Which of course they post about, as Penny Arcade is a blog that posts about videogame relevant experiences these two people have. That's what they do. And having tons of readers, some respond by making baseless threats. That's the nature of the modern instantaneous communication and not at all PA's fault. If you haven't had at least one nut job claim you're going to be staring down the end of a 357, you're not trying hard enough.
And Thompson did a lot to fan the flames. Like pretending to contact the police, when in fact he was faxing everyone but them. And now the feds. Oh, and the whole open challenge to the video game industry PR stunt followed by "my promise to donate to charity was a farce." And he happened to be in the news anyway, what with the National Institute on Media and the Family distancing itself from him.
Not to put it too bluntly, but Penny Arcade has raised over 1/2 million dollars for toys for children's hospitals. Jack Thompson just copped out on making a promised 10,000 dollar donation to charity. That's basically what they said to him, and it's true.
Either way, he's a lawyer. He's supposed to be held to a higher moral standard. He's not supposed to make baseless threats, scream obscenities at media people, or mislead about legal actions he's pursuing.
On the other hand, the Penny Arcade blog, the modern equivalent of a morning radio show, has been posting inflammatory things like:
Jack is not special. He is not a unique snow flake as they say. He is just the latest vocal opponent of whatever is "corrupting" our youth at the moment. When my dad was growing up it was rock and roll devil music. Then it was comic books then movies and rap music. Today its videogames. If we were to succeed in getting Jack blacklisted from the major news outlets someone else would simply take his place. Imagine him as an actor playing a part in a play. The point is that Jack Thompson is not important. If he were to be fired a new actor would simply take up the role. The same lines would still be delivered in the same way and the same audience would pay to see it. We are actually fortunate that the current actor is so impotent in his role. Imagine what might happen if some charming, efficacious attorney took his place. The more I consider it the more I think we may be lucky to have Jack playing the part of the alarmist. The alternative might be someone who is actually capable.
That's major inducement to harass right there.
Close. I'm too sleepy to find the links again, but HD-DVD requires the ability to rip content but allows companies to charge an arbitrarily high fee for it. In practical terms, it requires that all disks have Microsoft DRM tech on them, but doesn't require that the consumer has real access to it. Because the tech is required to be on HD-DVD's, expect it to be more present on that platform. And expect to spend 10-20 bucks if you want to do it.
Blu-Ray doesn't require such a thing, but is compatible with it for any studios that want to take advantage of it.
Still, it would be a good step, if I didn't usually watch movies on a Mac.
The most eggregious part of both standards, though, is that the actual high-density content on the disks won't play unless you have a DRM Protected TV and / or computer monitor. Protected TV's are rare. Protected computer monitors aren't even available. So while you may have spent 1,000 dollars on an awesome studio display, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks will still perform the same as a standard DVD disk. This is what Gates refers to when he says the studios got too much power over the standard. Standard DVD images are certainly good enough to pirate anyway, considering how much they are downsampled in the ripping process. This will only hurt paying consumers, and has to be the biggest block with the scheme. Even if I wanted to buy a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive, it wouldn't do me any good as they will refuse to work with my computer monitors.
Unless that much is changed before launch, or protected monitors and TV's become far more common, I predict a DIVX-level death for both of these technologies.