Some artists just don't come across in recordings. Actual Proof, for example, is a little band in the North East that plays incredible live Drum 'n Bass, but on disk it comes out as light jazz.
There are a few revenue streams that haven't been mentioned yet. At the risk of breaking the "me-too" format, here are some of them.
Licensed movie soundtracks Licensed TV soundtracks Licensed videogame soundtracks Commercials Corporate anthems Ringtones (cough cough) Grants Webcasting fees Radio writer's fees
I would argue against a market "equilibrium," but I should get back to work. My art, sadly, is not government sponsored.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
#:apt-get install camaro
No package by that name. #:apt-get install thunderbird
Try "apt-get install firefox" #:apt-get install mini
Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos Ctrl-C
Process interrupted
#:apt-get install pinto
Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?
I have it on good authority that Asheron's Call 2, while not a tremendous success, did break even. The company who created it, Turbine, had enough free cash to buy back the rights to Asheron's Call 1 from Microsoft, which should be considered a very successful MMPORPG (still going strong after all of these years, first MMPORPG with larger, ever-changing story archs). They've even announced an Asheron's Call 1 expansion.
These are now the people working on LotR and DnD. They've learned that a flexible presentation in their engine allowing for tremendous dramatic plot changes is far more important than having the highest resolution textures (At one point during development they bragged that the texture on the wall of one of the houses was the size of Asheron's Call 1's entire displayed texture budget). While they may not be able to do anything dramatically different with LotR, this should give great freedom to the DnD team to come up with original experiences for players. Like when they teleported 1/2 of the Asheron's Call 1 players into an undersea disco for an evening of boogying down, then denied any knowledge of having done so. Or the giant menacing figure that appeared in the sky one day, only to land a month later.
I agree that action-based MMPORPG's are the future. Lag isn't as bad as it once was, but it continues to cripple our designs. There are, of course, ways around lag. You could have players enter an X like shell when attempting to fight with another, effectively going from a MMPORPG to a somewhat lag-free standard FPS and back again. X, in this case, referring to the Anime. You can offload more of the processing to the client side, allowing for more cheating (at least you have a game worth cheating on). You can predictively process on the client, and Re-synch the game world as needed. You can limit movement to a square-by-square tile world, making processing calculations very simple.
Yahoo's Puzzle Pirates is a good example of where the genre is going. Light games somewhat divorced from the click-click-click nature of their predecessors, removed of the 3D graphics which can easily sink a project, and (so far) tremendously successful. Gunbound, ostensibly a MMPOAC (Massively Multiplayer Online Artillery Clone), is really just a Artillery Clone with a good lobby.
Point and click isn't the future. Drama is the future. Gaming is the future. Lag? Lag is the rural electrification on the phone bill of the MMPORPG designer's notebook.
It's a well meaning idea, but it would cause more problems than it would solve. It would just encourage sloppy code; people would rationalize "I don't need to fix errors because it doesn't matter", which is a very bad habit to get into when programming, ignoring errors, or even warnings
The same logic could be applied to any security system, from the automatic door lock on the front of your house to Airbags in your car. Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell. Antibiotics prevent the growth of the immune system. Why have a lock on your trigger, if it will encourage you to leave it in a place where your kids can find it.
The fact of the matter is, if the code works, it's good code. This is a shell scripting language we're talking about here... Not exactly assembly. Programmers would be better off spending more time thinking about the higher structure of their applications and less time hunting down trivial mistakes.
Of course, I know that this isn't quite what the article is talking about, but it's the principle of the thing. Augmentation would be an improvement.
I tried a linux rescue floppy (which I had handy) the freshmeat compact flash linux project, and Pee Wee linux. I had no luck with any of them, and suspected that my two P3 motherboards were not capable of booting off of CF (a suggestion that was common on the forums). I was at the time looking for "Compact Flash" distributions, not "Embedded," but it looks like someone is working on an Embedded Debian project.
Good thing that's not off the ground yet. I don't have much hair left from the last attempt.
I had meant that in most tech circles old motherboards float around like like used grocery bags. Via's C3 is compatible with almost all P3 boards. The one I'm not using right now is a actually a small micro-ATX, not a full mini, which I had picked up for a project for 30 bucks online but which became redundant when upgrading my main P3 to an AMD. The C3 800 (which, by spec, is not fanless, but can be run as such with a good heat sink) was picked up for 20 on the Silent PC Review boards, but again was made unnecessary as the P3 800 can be run on a low enough air volume in the summer (and none in the winter) to make it functionally silent.
I had originally meant the statement illustratively, but I don't actually have a use for the thing right now. What were you thinking of doing with it?
Have they even been into one of their shops recently? On any given morning the place is packed beyond all reason. Adding a laptop listening station and headphones will only add to that problem.
There are three types of people in starbucks: Those freaky, overhyped, quad-shot espresso people, who are terminally late to work and just forgot to pick up their kids from soccer practice; the blue collar men in dirty clothes who are so relaxed you would think someone slipped prozac into their spam; and the college kids / young pros with their laptops who come to get some work done in the peace and quiet of a store full of caffeine withdrawal victims screaming for soy milk in their peppermint no-whip half-caf grande white mochas. None of the above seem like the type who would hang out to pay for music... too busy, occupied, or just poor. Admittedly, this might fly in the retail store locations (the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, for example), as they draw a more relaxed, less goal-oriented crowd, but I can hardly see their host stores being happy about the competition.
Starbucks does this every now and then. They had that crazy arrangement with Kozmo before they went Kaput, whereby drop-off stations were strategically placed in every Starbucks in exchange for some significant quantity of realbucks. Kozmo might actually have made it if it wasn't for that tremendous monetary commitment.
Personally, I don't see this arrangement being significantly more successful than that one.
Oh well. They've got the money to try, I guess. Someday they'll find another use for their successful cafe chain. Besides, of course, being the seat of power for Mister Evil. Sorry, Doctor Evil.
*full disclosure- used to be a Barrista. I was young, I needed the money.
I was hoping the plumber could run Cat5 and add some lighting while he was pulling up the floor to fix the bathtub. Or maybe add PVC plumbing tubes between the rooms for on-demand rewiring. Now that you mention it, my sink has been dripping, I could use another outlet, and I would like to use my laptop while going to the bathroom.
Wait. That sounded wrong. But the rest of the idea, a highly skilled, well paid complulectrician, would be welcome in my house.
Well, yes, in fact, you do have a "crosshairs" sound queue. It actually sounds like a sitting duck quacking. Your opponents have footsteps when they walk. There is also a sound queue for scraping along the wall (positioned to let you know the angle of the wall), and a queue to let you know that you are facing a narrow hallway. I forget what the queues for weapons and powerups sounded like. All of the queues that require aiming do a form of mutated 3D sound, so that it gets significantly louder when you are facing directly at it, and quieter when you aren't.
It also had buttons for 90 degree turns, and all of the blind players that were any good didn't do any rotating at all, just strafing and making 90 degree hops. They generally wiped the floor with the sighted players at the demo. Man, could those guys hop.
BTW, the Quake levels they created were entirely 2D. Much easier to play that way.
Having attempted twice in the past to boot Linux from CF, I would not recommend including the procedure in an article. Hardly plug-n-ATI, there are few Distros that will fit on a consumer level CF card, and even fewer motherboards that will boot them. I've personally never managed it. That's not to say that it can't be done (it can, obviously), just that it is probably out of the scope of the article. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with the forums if they recommended it.
Boot from the HDD, then spin it down and live in RAM. Unless you are uploading pictures, your picture frame server will be quiet. Of course, I do want $parent_poster to try it, succeed, get swept up, and release an solid CF Distro based upon Debian that doesn't have me tearing my hair out.
BTW, Pricewatch lists 256MB CF cards for 45 dollars, shipped. That should save you the hassle of bidding.
If you want to display just snapshots, why not pick up an older color PDA with a cradle? They look great, run on low power, and can be had for about 100 bucks. Rigging them into a custom frame is easy, as the hardware is small.
Sure, you're not getting a 17" LCD, but let's be real... You're not getting a 17" LCD. A mini ITX board is easy to come by (I've got a spare if anyone wants one), as is a tiny HDD (Microcenter routinely sells 5gb strips for 15 dollars). Of course, you could always pick upa T-cube
Or bypass style and class altogether and get one of these things.
Most of these also leave out the truly excellent FPS Decent. Decent and Decent 2 were revolutionary for their time, creating an experience so original (and nauseating) as to never have been duplicated since. Sure, it's a ship. But it's in first person, it shoots, and it moves just like every other FPS character except that it also goes up and down and can rotate along its 3rd axis. I didn't even know I had a 6th finger until I played that game.
Imagine trying to explain to people that you need a PC because the Mac keyboard won't let you strafe down-backwards-left while rotating up-right and firing.
Decent was legendary at it's time, but because there have been few or no clones of it, it has faded into history. It deserves more recognition than this.
I see NASA has already found a client in UPN for its ad-supported astrology program. With a little luck and a significant orbit change, they can land the Microsoft account too.
The crime did involve physical units in the United States, and as such the US can claim at least some form of jurisdiction. But extradition treaties generally spell out the crimes that someone can be extradited for, and warezing from a hacked server probably isn't one of them (yet).
If you broke into Russian servers, should you face punishment in Russia?
Another article is located here, with a little more information about the crimes allegedly committed. Apparently, he believes that he committed no crime in Australia because the physical location of his dropbox and software were all at MIT.
"Most people think he's insane," said his wife, Lynette, 43, who admits to some initial dubiousness on hearing some of her husband's schemes. "But he has a way of seeing the potential. Things are obvious to him the rest of us don't see."
What, a lack of respect for intellectual property from the group that released buyoburst?
Actually, I did want to congratulate the developers for not backing down, as this is a frivolous patent. And the whole buyo bop thing is forgivable with Kyle's Quest Dungeons.
Marketing Executive: "Oh come on, Terminator 3 was a great movie. I, Robot was a great book. If we merge the two, we will have something twice as great!"
Public: "That's what you said about merging Aliens and Beverly Hills Cop. Did Pluto Nash even have a script?"
Marketing Executive: "Everyone loves the Coz!"
Public: "You're thinking about Leonard Part 6."
Marketing Executive: "Exactly. How did it get to Part 6 if it wasn't great?"
In his older books, Asimov said that the three laws of robotics could be implied or used as a plot point in other people's books, but never delineated. Many books did in fact use the laws of robotics without explaining them or citing Asimov. I don't know if he changed that stance later on in his life... I'm only about 1/2 way through reading all 500 of his books.
You forgot one major important thing. The robot is stopping the car by catching the grill of the car initially, then adding a grab to the top of the windscreen.
If we accept the calculation of deceleration vs gravitation, we see that the full weight of the car is being held for 1.5 seconds on the front grill and the windscreen. And it hardly looks like the robot has any grip on the windscreen. I'd calculate out the per square feet force, but it would be easier to do another thought experiment. Assuming the robot's hand has 2 square feet of coverage, try standing the total weight of the jeep on its front on a cinder block. What would happen?
All of this is a bit academic as the video is obviously fake for more than just physics reasons. Who would create the most advanced mechanical automation system known to man and glue door panels to the side? Why go to all of the trouble to make the most efficient energy transfer methodology but waste it powering the shoulder wheels? I know he's supposed to be a mad scientist, but how mad do you have to be to stick wheels on your shoulders? For that matter, who cleans this mad scientist's evil lair? For an autorobotics research laboratory, it's spotless.
The author doesn't help his case by saying that now consoles are diverging from personal computers, what with IBM designing all of the processors and ATI designing the graphics cards. If you go back through the GamaSutra archives, you'll see that parallel processing is nothing new in gaming systems... The PS1 had two main processors, a DSP, and all sorts of other chips to utilize. Should I even mention the architecture of the Sega CD or 32X? Or anything with an Fx chip? Or the myriad of games that scheduled the audio chip for processing duties? The 68000 paired with a z80 twin architecture was used in both the Genesis and the Neo Geo.
The console has always diverged from the general purpose computer... Far more in the early days than now, when the computer vs console wars were described as "a brain without a spine versus a spine without a brain." Ask an emulation programmer some day how similar the architectures are. I hate to use the words "kids these days," but sometimes I wonder if gaming magazines are still hiring straight out of high school, with people who are still totally clueless about what happened just a few years ago.
He doesn't help his case any about saying that videogames are all about visuals. There have been many stunningly beautiful games that played terribly and faded into the anals of history. This, of course, leads to the total lack of discussion about the gameplay potential for the graphics tricks that he mentions. Wide dynamic range lighting means that when someone shines a bright light source at the player, the player cannot see what is happening near that light. It also means that you must get close to dark alleys to see what is in them, etc, etc. Depth of field allows you to mask things you don't want the player to see just yet, like pop-in or enemies that will come into play later.
While it is an interesting article from the standpoint of looking to future directions the graphics aspect of programming a game will take, it is badly marred by these inaccurate, sweeping generalizations. Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I'd doubt this guy had enjoyed playing a game in a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had mod points, you would have one.
Some artists just don't come across in recordings. Actual Proof, for example, is a little band in the North East that plays incredible live Drum 'n Bass, but on disk it comes out as light jazz.
There are a few revenue streams that haven't been mentioned yet. At the risk of breaking the "me-too" format, here are some of them.
Licensed movie soundtracks
Licensed TV soundtracks
Licensed videogame soundtracks
Commercials
Corporate anthems
Ringtones (cough cough)
Grants
Webcasting fees
Radio writer's fees
I would argue against a market "equilibrium," but I should get back to work. My art, sadly, is not government sponsored.
This really isn't much different than open-source vs closed-source though, is it...if the person selling it wants to lock you out of the internals, well, your choices include not buying from them.
#:apt-get install camaro
No package by that name.
#:apt-get install thunderbird
Try "apt-get install firefox"
#:apt-get install mini
Downloading "mini-dinstall" from repos
Ctrl-C
Process interrupted
#:apt-get install pinto
Warning: you are about to install package "pinto" from repository "www.ford.com/unstable" Do you wish to continue?
Ctrl-C
I have it on good authority that Asheron's Call 2, while not a tremendous success, did break even. The company who created it, Turbine, had enough free cash to buy back the rights to Asheron's Call 1 from Microsoft, which should be considered a very successful MMPORPG (still going strong after all of these years, first MMPORPG with larger, ever-changing story archs). They've even announced an Asheron's Call 1 expansion.
These are now the people working on LotR and DnD. They've learned that a flexible presentation in their engine allowing for tremendous dramatic plot changes is far more important than having the highest resolution textures (At one point during development they bragged that the texture on the wall of one of the houses was the size of Asheron's Call 1's entire displayed texture budget). While they may not be able to do anything dramatically different with LotR, this should give great freedom to the DnD team to come up with original experiences for players. Like when they teleported 1/2 of the Asheron's Call 1 players into an undersea disco for an evening of boogying down, then denied any knowledge of having done so. Or the giant menacing figure that appeared in the sky one day, only to land a month later.
I agree that action-based MMPORPG's are the future. Lag isn't as bad as it once was, but it continues to cripple our designs. There are, of course, ways around lag. You could have players enter an X like shell when attempting to fight with another, effectively going from a MMPORPG to a somewhat lag-free standard FPS and back again. X, in this case, referring to the Anime. You can offload more of the processing to the client side, allowing for more cheating (at least you have a game worth cheating on). You can predictively process on the client, and Re-synch the game world as needed. You can limit movement to a square-by-square tile world, making processing calculations very simple.
Yahoo's Puzzle Pirates is a good example of where the genre is going. Light games somewhat divorced from the click-click-click nature of their predecessors, removed of the 3D graphics which can easily sink a project, and (so far) tremendously successful. Gunbound, ostensibly a MMPOAC (Massively Multiplayer Online Artillery Clone), is really just a Artillery Clone with a good lobby.
Point and click isn't the future. Drama is the future. Gaming is the future. Lag? Lag is the rural electrification on the phone bill of the MMPORPG designer's notebook.
It's a well meaning idea, but it would cause more problems than it would solve. It would just encourage sloppy code; people would rationalize "I don't need to fix errors because it doesn't matter", which is a very bad habit to get into when programming, ignoring errors, or even warnings
The same logic could be applied to any security system, from the automatic door lock on the front of your house to Airbags in your car. Spell checkers discourage people from learning to spell. Antibiotics prevent the growth of the immune system. Why have a lock on your trigger, if it will encourage you to leave it in a place where your kids can find it.
The fact of the matter is, if the code works, it's good code. This is a shell scripting language we're talking about here... Not exactly assembly. Programmers would be better off spending more time thinking about the higher structure of their applications and less time hunting down trivial mistakes.
Of course, I know that this isn't quite what the article is talking about, but it's the principle of the thing. Augmentation would be an improvement.
I tried a linux rescue floppy (which I had handy) the freshmeat compact flash linux project, and Pee Wee linux. I had no luck with any of them, and suspected that my two P3 motherboards were not capable of booting off of CF (a suggestion that was common on the forums). I was at the time looking for "Compact Flash" distributions, not "Embedded," but it looks like someone is working on an Embedded Debian project.
Good thing that's not off the ground yet. I don't have much hair left from the last attempt.
Which *BSD did you use?
You mean you used to be a coffee pourer at a shitass coffee place.*
I just said that. I was a Barrista.
*Please don't use company hype to justify you're crappy job.
And I am not a crappy job.
I had meant that in most tech circles old motherboards float around like like used grocery bags. Via's C3 is compatible with almost all P3 boards. The one I'm not using right now is a actually a small micro-ATX, not a full mini, which I had picked up for a project for 30 bucks online but which became redundant when upgrading my main P3 to an AMD. The C3 800 (which, by spec, is not fanless, but can be run as such with a good heat sink) was picked up for 20 on the Silent PC Review boards, but again was made unnecessary as the P3 800 can be run on a low enough air volume in the summer (and none in the winter) to make it functionally silent.
I had originally meant the statement illustratively, but I don't actually have a use for the thing right now. What were you thinking of doing with it?
Have they even been into one of their shops recently? On any given morning the place is packed beyond all reason. Adding a laptop listening station and headphones will only add to that problem.
There are three types of people in starbucks: Those freaky, overhyped, quad-shot espresso people, who are terminally late to work and just forgot to pick up their kids from soccer practice; the blue collar men in dirty clothes who are so relaxed you would think someone slipped prozac into their spam; and the college kids / young pros with their laptops who come to get some work done in the peace and quiet of a store full of caffeine withdrawal victims screaming for soy milk in their peppermint no-whip half-caf grande white mochas. None of the above seem like the type who would hang out to pay for music... too busy, occupied, or just poor. Admittedly, this might fly in the retail store locations (the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, for example), as they draw a more relaxed, less goal-oriented crowd, but I can hardly see their host stores being happy about the competition.
Starbucks does this every now and then. They had that crazy arrangement with Kozmo before they went Kaput, whereby drop-off stations were strategically placed in every Starbucks in exchange for some significant quantity of realbucks. Kozmo might actually have made it if it wasn't for that tremendous monetary commitment.
Personally, I don't see this arrangement being significantly more successful than that one.
Oh well. They've got the money to try, I guess. Someday they'll find another use for their successful cafe chain. Besides, of course, being the seat of power for Mister Evil. Sorry, Doctor Evil.
*full disclosure- used to be a Barrista. I was young, I needed the money.
I was hoping the plumber could run Cat5 and add some lighting while he was pulling up the floor to fix the bathtub. Or maybe add PVC plumbing tubes between the rooms for on-demand rewiring. Now that you mention it, my sink has been dripping, I could use another outlet, and I would like to use my laptop while going to the bathroom.
Wait. That sounded wrong. But the rest of the idea, a highly skilled, well paid complulectrician, would be welcome in my house.
Well, yes, in fact, you do have a "crosshairs" sound queue. It actually sounds like a sitting duck quacking. Your opponents have footsteps when they walk. There is also a sound queue for scraping along the wall (positioned to let you know the angle of the wall), and a queue to let you know that you are facing a narrow hallway. I forget what the queues for weapons and powerups sounded like. All of the queues that require aiming do a form of mutated 3D sound, so that it gets significantly louder when you are facing directly at it, and quieter when you aren't.
It also had buttons for 90 degree turns, and all of the blind players that were any good didn't do any rotating at all, just strafing and making 90 degree hops. They generally wiped the floor with the sighted players at the demo. Man, could those guys hop.
BTW, the Quake levels they created were entirely 2D. Much easier to play that way.
Fading into history, one letter at a time. :)
Having attempted twice in the past to boot Linux from CF, I would not recommend including the procedure in an article. Hardly plug-n-ATI, there are few Distros that will fit on a consumer level CF card, and even fewer motherboards that will boot them. I've personally never managed it. That's not to say that it can't be done (it can, obviously), just that it is probably out of the scope of the article. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with the forums if they recommended it.
Boot from the HDD, then spin it down and live in RAM. Unless you are uploading pictures, your picture frame server will be quiet. Of course, I do want $parent_poster to try it, succeed, get swept up, and release an solid CF Distro based upon Debian that doesn't have me tearing my hair out.
BTW, Pricewatch lists 256MB CF cards for 45 dollars, shipped. That should save you the hassle of bidding.
If you want to display just snapshots, why not pick up an older color PDA with a cradle? They look great, run on low power, and can be had for about 100 bucks. Rigging them into a custom frame is easy, as the hardware is small.
Sure, you're not getting a 17" LCD, but let's be real... You're not getting a 17" LCD. A mini ITX board is easy to come by (I've got a spare if anyone wants one), as is a tiny HDD (Microcenter routinely sells 5gb strips for 15 dollars). Of course, you could always pick up a T-cube
Or bypass style and class altogether and get one of these things.
Note: above links courtesy of Mini Itx.com.
Most of these also leave out the truly excellent FPS Decent. Decent and Decent 2 were revolutionary for their time, creating an experience so original (and nauseating) as to never have been duplicated since. Sure, it's a ship. But it's in first person, it shoots, and it moves just like every other FPS character except that it also goes up and down and can rotate along its 3rd axis. I didn't even know I had a 6th finger until I played that game.
Imagine trying to explain to people that you need a PC because the Mac keyboard won't let you strafe down-backwards-left while rotating up-right and firing.
Decent was legendary at it's time, but because there have been few or no clones of it, it has faded into history. It deserves more recognition than this.
I see NASA has already found a client in UPN for its ad-supported astrology program. With a little luck and a significant orbit change, they can land the Microsoft account too.
The crime did involve physical units in the United States, and as such the US can claim at least some form of jurisdiction. But extradition treaties generally spell out the crimes that someone can be extradited for, and warezing from a hacked server probably isn't one of them (yet).
If you broke into Russian servers, should you face punishment in Russia?
Wisdom takes time to build.
How old was Strom Thurmond when he died?
Another article is located here, with a little more information about the crimes allegedly committed. Apparently, he believes that he committed no crime in Australia because the physical location of his dropbox and software were all at MIT.
"Most people think he's insane," said his wife, Lynette, 43, who admits to some initial dubiousness on hearing some of her husband's schemes. "But he has a way of seeing the potential. Things are obvious to him the rest of us don't see."
indeed.
What, a lack of respect for intellectual property from the group that released buyo burst?
Actually, I did want to congratulate the developers for not backing down, as this is a frivolous patent. And the whole buyo bop thing is forgivable with Kyle's Quest Dungeons.
Marketing Executive: "Oh come on, Terminator 3 was a great movie. I, Robot was a great book. If we merge the two, we will have something twice as great!"
Public: "That's what you said about merging Aliens and Beverly Hills Cop. Did Pluto Nash even have a script?"
Marketing Executive: "Everyone loves the Coz!"
Public: "You're thinking about Leonard Part 6."
Marketing Executive: "Exactly. How did it get to Part 6 if it wasn't great?"
Public: [sigh]
In his older books, Asimov said that the three laws of robotics could be implied or used as a plot point in other people's books, but never delineated. Many books did in fact use the laws of robotics without explaining them or citing Asimov. I don't know if he changed that stance later on in his life... I'm only about 1/2 way through reading all 500 of his books.
You forgot one major important thing. The robot is stopping the car by catching the grill of the car initially, then adding a grab to the top of the windscreen.
If we accept the calculation of deceleration vs gravitation, we see that the full weight of the car is being held for 1.5 seconds on the front grill and the windscreen. And it hardly looks like the robot has any grip on the windscreen. I'd calculate out the per square feet force, but it would be easier to do another thought experiment. Assuming the robot's hand has 2 square feet of coverage, try standing the total weight of the jeep on its front on a cinder block. What would happen?
All of this is a bit academic as the video is obviously fake for more than just physics reasons. Who would create the most advanced mechanical automation system known to man and glue door panels to the side? Why go to all of the trouble to make the most efficient energy transfer methodology but waste it powering the shoulder wheels? I know he's supposed to be a mad scientist, but how mad do you have to be to stick wheels on your shoulders? For that matter, who cleans this mad scientist's evil lair? For an autorobotics research laboratory, it's spotless.
The author doesn't help his case by saying that now consoles are diverging from personal computers, what with IBM designing all of the processors and ATI designing the graphics cards. If you go back through the GamaSutra archives, you'll see that parallel processing is nothing new in gaming systems... The PS1 had two main processors, a DSP, and all sorts of other chips to utilize. Should I even mention the architecture of the Sega CD or 32X? Or anything with an Fx chip? Or the myriad of games that scheduled the audio chip for processing duties? The 68000 paired with a z80 twin architecture was used in both the Genesis and the Neo Geo.
The console has always diverged from the general purpose computer... Far more in the early days than now, when the computer vs console wars were described as "a brain without a spine versus a spine without a brain." Ask an emulation programmer some day how similar the architectures are. I hate to use the words "kids these days," but sometimes I wonder if gaming magazines are still hiring straight out of high school, with people who are still totally clueless about what happened just a few years ago.
He doesn't help his case any about saying that videogames are all about visuals. There have been many stunningly beautiful games that played terribly and faded into the anals of history. This, of course, leads to the total lack of discussion about the gameplay potential for the graphics tricks that he mentions. Wide dynamic range lighting means that when someone shines a bright light source at the player, the player cannot see what is happening near that light. It also means that you must get close to dark alleys to see what is in them, etc, etc. Depth of field allows you to mask things you don't want the player to see just yet, like pop-in or enemies that will come into play later.
While it is an interesting article from the standpoint of looking to future directions the graphics aspect of programming a game will take, it is badly marred by these inaccurate, sweeping generalizations. Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I'd doubt this guy had enjoyed playing a game in a long time.
Another poster has put up a mirror, though nobody seems to have noticed the original comment.
The mirror is available here.
The page doesn't load animations properly in Opera, and relies upon Quicktime to display the Mpegs. It might work in Mozilla, but it might not.
And again, adulations aplenty to xWh3lPx for the mirror.