Okay, first i'd like the say that all the "Port it to linux! Port it to linux!" cr** is getting really old. I admit, i use windows more often than linux (mainly because i'm too stingy to spend the exorbinant amount people want for external 56k modems my comp came with a winmodem). But i like linux. It's a great OS and i respect the ideas behind it. However, i dont expect companies to start releasing programs for it en masse anytime soon. Why? because they would lose money. There simply aren't enough linux users yet to make it worthwhile to rewrite the software, do more marketing, and ship units to stores when your buyer base is so small compared to that of windows users. Hell, they arent even releasing a Mac version of it immediately and there are considerably more mac users out there than linuxians. On top of that.. i dont know about you, but while i'm willing to wait longer for the game so that i'll have a better game, i'm not willing to wait forever and i'm not willing to wait so that they can port it to linux before shipping. Imagine how you would feel as a linux user if a Blizzard came out with StarCraft 2 for linux, announced a release of december 1, then pushed it back 6 months so they could make a windows port to release simultaneously? Anyway.. so long as i'm ranting, i wish blizzard Would do what another poster suggested. After they release their game and sales die down enough that the prices start to drop, let other companies take a crack at releasing add-ons. I can understand not wanting to dilute your game with crappy add-ons by 3rd parties, but if they controlled it they could keep some quality management.. and just look at the waves of horrible 'add-on' packs from 3rd parties with loads of SC maps. They're not anything you cant download for free and many times are worse.
Well, that's enough ranting for now. I await the release with baited breath and clutching my pre-order ticket.
A trillion useless units and 3d graphics doesnt make a game better. I played SC, i loved it, i played TA.. i got bored with the fact that the AI was moronic and 2 players with any idea of what strategy is will stalemate until someone starts lobbing nukes and when back to SC. Tried TA Kingdoms and gore bored even faster.. went back to SC. SC is just more fun.. it's like pac-man, tetris, defender, space invaders, etc etc etc. A game that relies on actual playability to make it fun instead of flashy features. Dreamweaver
...to make a tree that's actually tackier than the silver aluminum ones with pink tinsel. Now, if we can get a glowing tree that grows shiny silver, gold, and red spherical fruits that produce their own insecticides and taste like popcorn balls. Oh, and make the rest of the tree taste like peppermint so when you're done with it you dont have to drag it out to the curb.. Dreamweaver
To reply to the actual post rather than the moderation of said post..
Software patents do suck, but Amazon is still the biggest online bookseller out there with the widest selection of books and (in many cases) the best price (i'm not saying other places dont have a lower one, but amazon's are pretty good) and coupled with the selection it makes them a reasonably good choice to look to when you need a link for a book, software patent deviltry aside Also, in this case it's Neil's fault, he's the one who posted the link.. shame on you Mr. Gaiman;)
I'm pretty sure this is a different sandman than the one you're talking about.. this one's a kinda tall guy, pale skin, wears alot of black, presides over the Dreaming, has Death for a sister.. ringing any bells? Dreamweaver
Okay, we have a government that barely manages to sqeek along in its daily functions without coming to a grinding halt. We have law enforcement agencies that spend more time busting people with a taillight out than it does looking for murderers, and we have an intelligence agency that, and get this, didnt know a country had nuclear weapons until they blew one up.
So where exactly are these geniuses coming from who built and maintain echelon and all of the other supposed government conspiracy centers? Either the government has technology a few decades beyond the rest of the world or they've got a beowful cluster the size of NY city hidden away somewhere to monitor the sheer volume of net traffic out there. Sure, they dont need to bother with actually scanning 99% of it, but they still need to filter every bit sent and decide if it's part of an email message and then store it and process it if it is. Now think about how much data is sent per second over the US's data networks. Remember when those 4 lines got cut out in ohio or wherever? Me and some friends of mine sat down the day that happened and figured out that those 4 lines transmitted the equivalent of a filing cabinet full of cd's every 3 seconds. That was 4 lines out in ohio, can you Imagine the volume of traffic there exists to monitor?
Beyond the sheer amount of crap they need to monitor, lets look at this supposed filtering software of theirs. Not only does it decrypt every form of encryption known to man on the fly (it would have to be since there's no way theyre going to store that amount of info for later processing) but it also scans for intent in the message. Nothing does this. So far as I know there's no software anywhere in the world that anybody has written that can figure out what a person meant from what they wrote. If it were even possible with current technology dont you think there'd be a program out there somewhere available for spell and grammar checking documents using something that wont try to replace people's names or come up with such ringing substitutions as "in the african american" (yes, i know that was a hoax, but you get my drift)?
And all this from the same government that spent millions trying to figure out if the president was getting his knob polished by his secretary. Dont get me wrong, I'm an american and I quite like my country, but I also realize that our government is really rather corrupt and generally inept most of the time.. i truly cannot imagine that same government not only having a network like echelon supposedly is, but also keeping it secret from everyone except the UK..
Dreamweaver
The Snow Crash intellectual virus a reality?
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 3
I've noticed something that I thought had to be unique to my experiences.. that being that Nobody Buys Snow Crash By Themselves. I've yet to meet anybody who has gone to the bookstore, seen this book, picked it up, and liked it. Eveybody had a friend who handed them their battered, much-read copy and said, 'Hey, you're gonna like this'. The book somehow got introduced to the geek culture and has been spreading from carrier to carrier ever since. You may not be actually handed the book, but more likely than not you heard from a fellow geek that it was good and you went out and bought it.. I know i'll never lend my copy again, I've had to buy it twice now since my first copy never came home. So is the nam-shub of stephenson subliminaly planted throughout the book? Did the publisher soak the paper stock in the blood of geeks? Or perhaps there's really no Mr. Stephenson at all.. the book came in on a comet from out beyond the oort cloud;) --insert spooky x-files music here--
It might be able to work.. but i've got my doubts. While alot of people would probably add to the game in good ways, there are probably 10 times as many people who know enough to cheat and would. Look at all the tons of people who wrote/used diablo trainers.. and that was without the source. The only working example of this sort of thing i can think of is a MUD.. if you know how to code and the people running the game think you're trustworthy you get a copy of the source to work with.. if you show yourself to be untrustworthy and cheat, you get banned etc. That wouldnt work with something like Everquest because there'd be way too many players wanting to code and too few people in charge.. not to mention that there'd be no real way to keep a person who has the source from continuing to cheat.
The escape velocity of earth is mach23, which is about 16200mph. Obviously 600mph wouldnt be enough to fling you out of orbit (the current world landspeed record is just over the speed of sound, which is 700some mph), but it's enough to decrease the amount of fuel needed to get you out of orbit. Since the mass of the object (shuttle in this case) doesnt necessitate huge costs to get it moving using a maglev launch system you can get the thing in the air at almost mach1 for, as they said, about $100. Once in the air, you have the option of either using one of those new super turbines to get it up to about mach4 or just cut on the jets. In either case, the fuel needed is lowered by some amount. As the fuel for the first 600mph isnt required you also dont need fuel to boost that fuel up, so it decreases a little more. The maglev thing isnt (yet anyway) an alternative to chemical rockets (or any other booster system) but it's a way to decrease costs per launch.
We wont even go into how much the lizards thing wouldnt work (besides the warm blood there's the bone structure, and the other non-lizardly fe.. nevermind, i said i wouldnt). But the main problem isnt how the water got there, it's where it went. If it dropped out of the sky in a big splash, rained normally down, or anything else.. where'd it all go? It apparently drained away, but to where? That's one whole helluvalot of water and noplace for it to go. Dreamweaver
Bravo, i wholeheartedly agree on all points. Now, to the rest of the repliers because so many of you said the same things:
You're wrong about your assumptions/Not all christians believe that/etc Well, when it comes to creationism vs. evolutionism you kind of Have to lump alot of christian beliefs together because there's no united front. With evolutionism there are questions about specific dates, but in general it's all the same idea(s), you can go read in many, many books and get the same things out of it. With creationism, you cant. Did god pop up and do This on day1, That on day2 etc? Did each day last 24 modern hours or a billion modern years? Did god create animals by saying Exist dog! Exist cat! or did he do it via evolution? or something else? You pick the idea that you hear most often and say why you think it's wrong. Sure, it's not fair but what choice do non-creationists have? Christianity is like dogs (please, no flames before reading the rest of the metaphore). You can point at a chiuaua and say Dog! or a wolf and say Dog! or at a great dane and say Dog! etc. but are they the same? nope, not at all.. but you dont really have a choice 'cause they're all dogs. You can point at Roman catholocism and say Christian! or at non-roman catholics and say Christian! or at protestants and say Christian! etc. Are those all the same? nope, but you cant really seperate them because by their nature they're All christians. So when you say "christian beliefs dont make sense because:" which one are you using? can you say "Roman catholic beliefs dont make sense:"? No, beacuse not Only roman catholics say that and usually not All roman catholics say it. Science is testing and recording.. religion is interpretation, that's why the 2 dont work together
Well god Did make the earth, but he used evolution Fine, dandy.. he's a pretty smart dude then. So why are you complaining? I've never heard of a class where the teacher said "Evolution is the progression of life forms from a generic base to more specialized forms. Oh, and god is a lie." Usually they just dont mention god at all.. if they do they shouldnt unless someone asks, then just say "No, god does not necessarily factor into evolution". You dont have to preach to teach. The problem is that evo-creationists seem to want the teacher to say "And lo, god said unto the bacterium, 'Thou shalt evolve!' and it did and it was good". Well.. why? you dont need god for evolution, why go into it? Just leave it alone and tell your kid when he gets home "God uses evolution to create life, but without god man wouldnt have souls. See, timmy, look here in chapter 4, verse 9....". Religion's a personal belief, dont foist it off on people who dont want it and we wont try to tell you you're wrong. Dreamweaver
You cant hang on to every idea until everybody who ever thought it was true is dead.. science doesnt work like that. Evolution has plenty of proof behind it and creationism has extreamly little. If we hung on to every idea and continued to teach it as an 'alternative' explenation to what the scientific community generally considers correct we'd still have medical schools were doctors are taught that sickness is caused by 'bad humours' and if someone feels ill they need to have said humours bled out. Astronomy courses would require the teaching of the old crystalline sphere idea as an 'alternative' to solar systems and galaxies because someone, somewhere probably things the whole solar system thing is a bunch of hooey (just look at what they did to poor galileo). If we didnt give up on old, outmoded things eventually we'd stagnate as a society. Because of how science works, you cant Prove something is absolutely true or absolutely wrong so you cant say to just wait until one or the other happens to evolution. Heck, for all we can prove, virii and bacterium could Be the 'bad humours' of old.. malignant little spirits that just happen to look like biological organisms. Dreamweaver
1) learnt? 2) I cant attest to the truth of what you said, but if it doesnt work on all elements it's a coincidence. 3) Electron spin is as fundamental a part of QM as any other particle spin, not something introduced externally.
I guess i misstated myself.. i didnt mean it's good because it Is a fractal, but because it's Like a fractal. fractals usually use 1 of a number of standard formulae to generate the shape, or else a variation on a standard formula. This, from what i could get out of the article and webpage.. which isnt much, apparently works Like a fractal in that the object is described with a formula. The difference being that the formula is derived from the shape, rather than the shape from the formula. ie: if you want a simple curve, come up with a formula to describe it rather than looking for a fractal that looks like it. Dreamweaver
Alot of you seem confused about why this is a cool thing. The point isnt that the graphics look amazing right now.. it's that they're generated in a fundamentally different, possibly better way.
Of course polygons look prettier.. look at the current difference between painted pictures and polygon graphics. With a painting the artist is simply putting the colors on a flat surface in such a way that it simulates reality. Relatively easy to do since you just need to put colors there in a suggestive way (i cant do it myself for beans, but you get the point).
Now a graphics program, you create a 3d object out of polygons, then place texture images over them. This is more difficult because you have to create the actual 3d object.. like sculpting.. you cant just suggest 3d with shadow, you have to Make 3d and let the light create the shadow naturally. The textures arent really roughness or shininess, just images that Look rough or shiny and make any light sources react the way they probably would.. this saves memory by making the shape Look more complex than it really is. A smooth cylinder might look just like a tree trunk because it has a rough-appearing texture. But it's not really a tree. If you get too close you get flattening of the texture.. especially in realtime engines for games because it cant raytrace fast enough with modern computers, so uses simple rendering. It can look really, really good.. but can also look REALLY bad.
Now, i may have misunderstood the article and webpage for this technology, but what i got out of it is that this uses something like a fractal generation system, using a formulae and number of iterations, to generate real objects. Not just a mesh of points some of which have polygons drawn between them, but something closer to a physical reality. Like a fractal, it would look fine up close or far away, and like a fractal because it's based on iterating a simple algorithm over and over it would just be a matter of doing math rather than crunching z-buffer coordinates into 2d images like we do in polygon rendering engines.
What's really important here is the oppertunity for data transfer. All those cyberpunk novels make use of the ubiquitous virtual worlds where people and environments are rendered seemlessly, usually using small computers, in realtime, with wireless modem links. So far this has been no more than a dream because no personal computer could hope to handle that kind of load, No computer can raytrace in realtime with a complex scene, and there'd be no way to send that much data with anything like current modems. This technology doesnt make this all come true in a flash, but it does improve the chances immensely. You can simply transfer location data and a formula rather than mesh coordinates and transforms.. much, much less data. You dont need to do the kind of heavy number crunching for raytracing because of the way the objects are generated, and you dont have to worry about things like textures because you can just make the actual object bumpy, smooth, jagged, whatever.
Now the biggest complaint is obviously that it doesnt compare to modern polygon graphics. There's a simple reason for this.. it's not a highly funded, industrially motivated, relatively old technology. It's fairly new and being developed by a few guys. You cant expect miracles overnight.. but what he's got looks pretty good considering how new it is. You all talk about how wonderful demos look with current tech.. sure they do.. that's what theyre for. This demo is to demonstrate that his technology Does work. If you had a time machine that could send a penny 5 minutes into the future, would you complain because it didnt look cool?
Anyway, it's obviously no sure thing, but it does have a good deal of promise, and polygons cant last forever. Personally i think realtime rendered 3d games look like crap. Raytraced scenes can look very nice, but all too often suffer from virtual unreality (that plasticy look everything tends to take on.. obvious fractalism in complex objects etc).. This or something like it that builds up from basic principles into a complex object will eventually be needed.. just think about human interaction in a virtual environment, you cant very well create polygon meshes for every possability.. what if you broke a chair, how does it generate the broken ends and interior wood grain? If you bite into a cookie, how would you go about creating realistic crumbs in realtime? Dreamweaver
Much like the free computer and free internet service, Free Prosthetics. Need a new heart? no problem. All you have to do is sign this agreement to have advertisements superimposed on your periphery vision and we'll get you a brand new one grown fresh over at MIT. And dont worry about detrimental effects on your vision, our test cat only bumps into walls 1 time in 3. Dreamweaver
Do what? It's not exactly going to kill MS if people think dvorak is better.. hell, if tomorrow morning everyone woke up thinking 'dvorak good, qwerty bad' it'd probably take MS a month to get a dvorak version of their various keyboards churning out.. methinks perhaps you're just taking the oppertunity to bash the evil ms empire Dreamweaver
I'm going to have to disagree with you here.. while i havent seen ladyhawke, i've seen the other three and they're probably among the worst examples of good fantasy in film i've seen. On top of being weighted down with being musicals, they completely butchered the stories on which they were supposedly based (we wont go into the amazing amount of butchering that was done to snow white or beauty and the beast even before disney got their mitts on them). At least in most amazingly cheesey fantasy/sf movies they stay generally true to the story, rather than completely ripping it apart to make a fun movie.
As for a Good fantasy movie.. i'm going to have to go with Clash of the Titans for all time best. Sure the stop-motion effects look cheap now, but they were pretty darn good back then. That's the kind of thing i'm hoping for out of the d&d movie. It's essentially impossible to make a movie with deep characters without making it hideously boring because you cant explain thoughts, emotions, or background references in a movie the way you can in a book. So all you can hope for is believable characters and a good plot, both of which clash of the titans had.. even if it did mess with the mythology a bit. And as for mortal kombat and masters of the univers.. it cant be That bad.. those were based on a video game and a line of toys, d&d has hundreds, if not thousands, of books to work off of. Dreamweaver
The word you're hunting for here is mu.. the little u with a thingy is the lowercase greek leter mu:) (i'm going out on a limb here because i dont actually know.. but i'd guess that's why they picked mu for micro.. they already had an m, so grabbed the greek equivalent). Dreamweaver
Point 1: 'Why are we so arrogat to presume that *we* are the only creatures in the universe that are persons'
On the whole, we're not. Most people think there's intelligent life other than us out there someplace. The difference is that you want us to believe that there are not only other 'persons' made up of the typical molecules.. but also this amazing super-person who somehow came into beig without anybody else (if we would just be molecules without this person, who made him/her/it?) and then went on to make everything and everyone else.. that's the part that's a bit hard to swallow.
Point 2: 'We are finite. God is infinite.'
So this 'person' is somehow not only exactly like us in that it's made up of the same type of matter, but is also somehow made up of all matter? So are we floating around somewhere in it's eye? Or maybe an arm? And if it's infinite, wouldnt that mean it contains all the 'evil' and 'wrong' things in the whole of the universe as well as all the 'good' things? Doesnt sound too perfect to me.. Anthropromorphic infinity is silly at best.. afterall, can the amazing first-person-infinite-man create the proverbial stone that he cant lift? Yeah it's an old and silly question, but it points out the main flaw in a supposedly 'infinite' being.. infinity in that sense is impossible.
And in another 2000 years? A few hundred years ago people hadnt even a concept of how things we now do regularly could have been accomplished. We cant make a galaxy-worth of stars at the moment, but given time i see no reason why it would be impossible. Same thing with ressurection. Every year we get better at bringing people back from what was beyond the point of no return previously. Given time and that we dont blow ourselves up, i'm sure we'll eventually be able to reconstruct a living person from any scrap of their body.
So what will it be then? Saying there's some limit to what we can eventually accomplish is just stupid.. because we cant do it now doesnt make it impossible or even unlikely. Go back a few million years and only god could make something as astoundig as fire.
It was in both (i think there were only 2 novels.. if there were more i've not read them). The command was (my spelling's probably off), 'prikazivat' or something similar. I forget what it meant.. command i think. Rather like the 'computer' command prefix in 'trek. Dreamweaver
Well, this can only go 2 ways. Either MS will fail enormously, or they'll blow the hell out of their competitors. What will decide it? Two things: (1) Will the damn thing work? Well, the obvious problem is whether or not their system even works. Nobody's gonna use or write games for a system that either crashes all the time or is just a bad game platform. And considering the hardware stats on the Playstation2 , Dreamcast, and Nintendo's new system it'd take a heck of alot to do.. slapping a PIII in there isnt gonna cut it.. But i'll give MS a little credit and assume they realize that and make a decent platform. I've never used WinCE so i dont know how stable it is. I've never seen someone slam their PalmIII against the wall, but then again i dont suppose your Palmtop crashing would be as annoying as your PC.
(2) Can they get games? I've seen alot of people posting that they'll just port PC games over.. this might work a little, but not for long. The only PC games that could be ported to a console system with a reasonably compact controller would be racing games, possibly some sports games, flight-sims, and 1st person shooters. Flight sims wouldnt work well, and it'd be harder to control a 1st person shooter without a mouse.. but you could do it. But the point is this limits your options. Most fighting games and rpgs (probably the 2 heaviest hitters in the console market) that are on PC are almost always either ported from consoles, or written with computers and 101+ keyboards in mind.. Anybody who wants to play a computer game is going to play it on a computer. Nobody wants to go out and by a new console system to play a game that's either going to perform as well or better on their PC (TV resolution isnt as good as most monitors.. just bigger) or that they can get on a system they're likely to already have.
Now, lets assume that MS gets over both of these problems.. they manage to build a stable platform and can port over games reasonably well. What about new games? Making a computer game Is different from making a console game. Companies like squaresoft, nintendo, activision, konami.. they know what they're doing with console games and have been at it for a Long time. Console games have to appeal to geeks, idiots, and kids.. The game cant be too complicated optionwise, preferably have stunning graphics, and be very multimedia oriented. MS makes computer games (when they do at all).. computer geeks will put up with alot for an interesting concept. Look at Civ and CivII.. the graphics arent much, not alot of multimedia, convoluted rules.. but it's fun once you learn to play. Civ would sink like a rock on a console. So MS either has to learn to make console games FAST or else pick up some external companies. This is where the title of this post comes in: If MS tries to do the whole thing themselves, they're going to fail. No 2 ways about it. They're a computer company, not a console company. But.... If MS gets smart and they offer squaresoft, konami, et al some whopping contracts.. which they Can afford to.. nintendo, sony, and sega wont have a chance. If MS gets to them soon, before they start making long-term deals on the new systems, the traditional companies are going to be left high and dry. It's a scary thought, but MS is big enough that they could suck up all the decent game-makers and steal the scene just by having all the big names that gamers know and trust. I mean really, the system could suck but if the next final fantasy and streetfighter games are on it, it'll make money. Which we all know is what MS cares about above all else. Dreamweaver
Maybe warcraft3 isnt the sweeping new idea blizzard says it is, maybe it's borrowed from pre-existing games.. but so what? Very few games come out that dont borrow from others for alot of elements and i cant think of Any that said "Just another game in the X genre". EVERY game is a dynamic new departure from the genre that will change the world of gaming forever. Once in a while it's true, but every marketing department on earth says the same things. Dont pick on them for it. Personally, i dont like 3d games. The media has a great deal of potential, i like rendered artwork and do a bit of it myself.. but i dont like polygonal games. I had fun with tomb raider for about 10 minutes, i liked TA for a couple of hours, i stuck with zelda64 just 'cause i love zelda games.. but i dont think Every game needs it. However, i dont think 3d is evil. Blizzard Just announced this game. You cant go off pre-prototype screenshots. Look at some of the pre-proto shots of Starcraft, it looked Really crappy, worse graphics and interface than warcraft 2. But now we have a beautiful game with a streamlined interface. Blizzard's good at what they do and i have no doubt they'll pull it off again. Even if the worst happens and WC3 sucks, or even just isnt a great game.. well.. oh well. I'll still have fun with starcraft, i'm looking forward to WC2 platinum, and i've already got money stashed away so i can get Diablo2 the day it comes out. Blizzard makes good games, and even if they manage to pull a lemon out of the hat this time, they're not going to die from it. They'll learn from their mistakes like they always do and either dump the RPS thing or fix it up.
As for all of this Warcraft is a Dune2 clone and RTS's are all the same stuff.. i have to disagree. Dune2 was pretty good, but it wasnt That good and i can only think of about 4 different fantasy based RTS's. I'd like to see a new one.. SF is getting a bit overdone, though when you consider only 1 in 10 of the new SF RTS's are even worth playing there's alot still out there. Getting a bit of environment interaction seems only logical.. I mean, in all RTS's your out there waging war.. usually in a populated world. Where are the bystanders? The independent militias? The whole RPS thing is just a way to draw attention to (what i hope anyway) is just a step-up the RTS ladder in a genre saturated with "Groundbreaking New Game"s. Dreamweaver
The title says it all. Anybody who relies on 'i have a big army so i'll overwhelm you now' is an idiot (well, in most games anyway.. i've a played a few where you really had no other choice). Though i can see why someone might have trouble if they cant even win consistently at Dune2.. took me about 2 hours to figure out how to win every time in that game Dreamweaver
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, first i'd like the say that all the "Port it to linux! Port it to linux!" cr** is getting really old. I admit, i use windows more often than linux (mainly because i'm too stingy to spend the exorbinant amount people want for external 56k modems my comp came with a winmodem). But i like linux. It's a great OS and i respect the ideas behind it.
However, i dont expect companies to start releasing programs for it en masse anytime soon. Why? because they would lose money. There simply aren't enough linux users yet to make it worthwhile to rewrite the software, do more marketing, and ship units to stores when your buyer base is so small compared to that of windows users. Hell, they arent even releasing a Mac version of it immediately and there are considerably more mac users out there than linuxians.
On top of that.. i dont know about you, but while i'm willing to wait longer for the game so that i'll have a better game, i'm not willing to wait forever and i'm not willing to wait so that they can port it to linux before shipping. Imagine how you would feel as a linux user if a Blizzard came out with StarCraft 2 for linux, announced a release of december 1, then pushed it back 6 months so they could make a windows port to release simultaneously?
Anyway.. so long as i'm ranting, i wish blizzard Would do what another poster suggested. After they release their game and sales die down enough that the prices start to drop, let other companies take a crack at releasing add-ons. I can understand not wanting to dilute your game with crappy add-ons by 3rd parties, but if they controlled it they could keep some quality management.. and just look at the waves of horrible 'add-on' packs from 3rd parties with loads of SC maps. They're not anything you cant download for free and many times are worse.
Well, that's enough ranting for now. I await the release with baited breath and clutching my pre-order ticket.
Dreamweaver
A trillion useless units and 3d graphics doesnt make a game better. I played SC, i loved it, i played TA.. i got bored with the fact that the AI was moronic and 2 players with any idea of what strategy is will stalemate until someone starts lobbing nukes and when back to SC. Tried TA Kingdoms and gore bored even faster.. went back to SC. SC is just more fun.. it's like pac-man, tetris, defender, space invaders, etc etc etc. A game that relies on actual playability to make it fun instead of flashy features.
Dreamweaver
...to make a tree that's actually tackier than the silver aluminum ones with pink tinsel.
Now, if we can get a glowing tree that grows shiny silver, gold, and red spherical fruits that produce their own insecticides and taste like popcorn balls. Oh, and make the rest of the tree taste like peppermint so when you're done with it you dont have to drag it out to the curb..
Dreamweaver
To reply to the actual post rather than the moderation of said post..
;)
Software patents do suck, but Amazon is still the biggest online bookseller out there with the widest selection of books and (in many cases) the best price (i'm not saying other places dont have a lower one, but amazon's are pretty good) and coupled with the selection it makes them a reasonably good choice to look to when you need a link for a book, software patent deviltry aside
Also, in this case it's Neil's fault, he's the one who posted the link.. shame on you Mr. Gaiman
Dreamweaver
I'm pretty sure this is a different sandman than the one you're talking about.. this one's a kinda tall guy, pale skin, wears alot of black, presides over the Dreaming, has Death for a sister.. ringing any bells?
Dreamweaver
Okay, we have a government that barely manages to sqeek along in its daily functions without coming to a grinding halt. We have law enforcement agencies that spend more time busting people with a taillight out than it does looking for murderers, and we have an intelligence agency that, and get this, didnt know a country had nuclear weapons until they blew one up.
So where exactly are these geniuses coming from who built and maintain echelon and all of the other supposed government conspiracy centers? Either the government has technology a few decades beyond the rest of the world or they've got a beowful cluster the size of NY city hidden away somewhere to monitor the sheer volume of net traffic out there. Sure, they dont need to bother with actually scanning 99% of it, but they still need to filter every bit sent and decide if it's part of an email message and then store it and process it if it is. Now think about how much data is sent per second over the US's data networks. Remember when those 4 lines got cut out in ohio or wherever? Me and some friends of mine sat down the day that happened and figured out that those 4 lines transmitted the equivalent of a filing cabinet full of cd's every 3 seconds. That was 4 lines out in ohio, can you Imagine the volume of traffic there exists to monitor?
Beyond the sheer amount of crap they need to monitor, lets look at this supposed filtering software of theirs. Not only does it decrypt every form of encryption known to man on the fly (it would have to be since there's no way theyre going to store that amount of info for later processing) but it also scans for intent in the message. Nothing does this. So far as I know there's no software anywhere in the world that anybody has written that can figure out what a person meant from what they wrote. If it were even possible with current technology dont you think there'd be a program out there somewhere available for spell and grammar checking documents using something that wont try to replace people's names or come up with such ringing substitutions as "in the african american" (yes, i know that was a hoax, but you get my drift)?
And all this from the same government that spent millions trying to figure out if the president was getting his knob polished by his secretary. Dont get me wrong, I'm an american and I quite like my country, but I also realize that our government is really rather corrupt and generally inept most of the time.. i truly cannot imagine that same government not only having a network like echelon supposedly is, but also keeping it secret from everyone except the UK..
Dreamweaver
I've noticed something that I thought had to be unique to my experiences.. that being that Nobody Buys Snow Crash By Themselves. I've yet to meet anybody who has gone to the bookstore, seen this book, picked it up, and liked it. Eveybody had a friend who handed them their battered, much-read copy and said, 'Hey, you're gonna like this'. The book somehow got introduced to the geek culture and has been spreading from carrier to carrier ever since. You may not be actually handed the book, but more likely than not you heard from a fellow geek that it was good and you went out and bought it.. I know i'll never lend my copy again, I've had to buy it twice now since my first copy never came home. ;) --insert spooky x-files music here--
So is the nam-shub of stephenson subliminaly planted throughout the book? Did the publisher soak the paper stock in the blood of geeks? Or perhaps there's really no Mr. Stephenson at all.. the book came in on a comet from out beyond the oort cloud
Dreamweaver
It might be able to work.. but i've got my doubts. While alot of people would probably add to the game in good ways, there are probably 10 times as many people who know enough to cheat and would.
Look at all the tons of people who wrote/used diablo trainers.. and that was without the source. The only working example of this sort of thing i can think of is a MUD.. if you know how to code and the people running the game think you're trustworthy you get a copy of the source to work with.. if you show yourself to be untrustworthy and cheat, you get banned etc. That wouldnt work with something like Everquest because there'd be way too many players wanting to code and too few people in charge.. not to mention that there'd be no real way to keep a person who has the source from continuing to cheat.
Dreamweaver
The escape velocity of earth is mach23, which is about 16200mph.
Obviously 600mph wouldnt be enough to fling you out of orbit (the current world landspeed record is just over the speed of sound, which is 700some mph), but it's enough to decrease the amount of fuel needed to get you out of orbit. Since the mass of the object (shuttle in this case) doesnt necessitate huge costs to get it moving using a maglev launch system you can get the thing in the air at almost mach1 for, as they said, about $100. Once in the air, you have the option of either using one of those new super turbines to get it up to about mach4 or just cut on the jets. In either case, the fuel needed is lowered by some amount. As the fuel for the first 600mph isnt required you also dont need fuel to boost that fuel up, so it decreases a little more.
The maglev thing isnt (yet anyway) an alternative to chemical rockets (or any other booster system) but it's a way to decrease costs per launch.
Dreamweaver
We wont even go into how much the lizards thing wouldnt work (besides the warm blood there's the bone structure, and the other non-lizardly fe.. nevermind, i said i wouldnt). But the main problem isnt how the water got there, it's where it went. If it dropped out of the sky in a big splash, rained normally down, or anything else.. where'd it all go? It apparently drained away, but to where? That's one whole helluvalot of water and noplace for it to go.
Dreamweaver
Bravo, i wholeheartedly agree on all points. Now, to the rest of the repliers because so many of you said the same things:
You're wrong about your assumptions/Not all christians believe that/etc
Well, when it comes to creationism vs. evolutionism you kind of Have to lump alot of christian beliefs together because there's no united front. With evolutionism there are questions about specific dates, but in general it's all the same idea(s), you can go read in many, many books and get the same things out of it. With creationism, you cant. Did god pop up and do This on day1, That on day2 etc? Did each day last 24 modern hours or a billion modern years? Did god create animals by saying Exist dog! Exist cat! or did he do it via evolution? or something else? You pick the idea that you hear most often and say why you think it's wrong. Sure, it's not fair but what choice do non-creationists have?
Christianity is like dogs (please, no flames before reading the rest of the metaphore). You can point at a chiuaua and say Dog! or a wolf and say Dog! or at a great dane and say Dog! etc. but are they the same? nope, not at all.. but you dont really have a choice 'cause they're all dogs. You can point at Roman catholocism and say Christian! or at non-roman catholics and say Christian! or at protestants and say Christian! etc. Are those all the same? nope, but you cant really seperate them because by their nature they're All christians. So when you say "christian beliefs dont make sense because:" which one are you using? can you say "Roman catholic beliefs dont make sense:"? No, beacuse not Only roman catholics say that and usually not All roman catholics say it. Science is testing and recording.. religion is interpretation, that's why the 2 dont work together
Well god Did make the earth, but he used evolution
Fine, dandy.. he's a pretty smart dude then. So why are you complaining? I've never heard of a class where the teacher said "Evolution is the progression of life forms from a generic base to more specialized forms. Oh, and god is a lie." Usually they just dont mention god at all.. if they do they shouldnt unless someone asks, then just say "No, god does not necessarily factor into evolution". You dont have to preach to teach. The problem is that evo-creationists seem to want the teacher to say "And lo, god said unto the bacterium, 'Thou shalt evolve!' and it did and it was good". Well.. why? you dont need god for evolution, why go into it? Just leave it alone and tell your kid when he gets home "God uses evolution to create life, but without god man wouldnt have souls. See, timmy, look here in chapter 4, verse 9....". Religion's a personal belief, dont foist it off on people who dont want it and we wont try to tell you you're wrong.
Dreamweaver
You cant hang on to every idea until everybody who ever thought it was true is dead.. science doesnt work like that. Evolution has plenty of proof behind it and creationism has extreamly little. If we hung on to every idea and continued to teach it as an 'alternative' explenation to what the scientific community generally considers correct we'd still have medical schools were doctors are taught that sickness is caused by 'bad humours' and if someone feels ill they need to have said humours bled out. Astronomy courses would require the teaching of the old crystalline sphere idea as an 'alternative' to solar systems and galaxies because someone, somewhere probably things the whole solar system thing is a bunch of hooey (just look at what they did to poor galileo). If we didnt give up on old, outmoded things eventually we'd stagnate as a society. Because of how science works, you cant Prove something is absolutely true or absolutely wrong so you cant say to just wait until one or the other happens to evolution. Heck, for all we can prove, virii and bacterium could Be the 'bad humours' of old.. malignant little spirits that just happen to look like biological organisms.
Dreamweaver
1) learnt?
2) I cant attest to the truth of what you said, but if it doesnt work on all elements it's a coincidence.
3) Electron spin is as fundamental a part of QM as any other particle spin, not something introduced externally.
Dreamweaver
I guess i misstated myself.. i didnt mean it's good because it Is a fractal, but because it's Like a fractal. fractals usually use 1 of a number of standard formulae to generate the shape, or else a variation on a standard formula. This, from what i could get out of the article and webpage.. which isnt much, apparently works Like a fractal in that the object is described with a formula. The difference being that the formula is derived from the shape, rather than the shape from the formula. ie: if you want a simple curve, come up with a formula to describe it rather than looking for a fractal that looks like it.
Dreamweaver
Alot of you seem confused about why this is a cool thing. The point isnt that the graphics look amazing right now.. it's that they're generated in a fundamentally different, possibly better way.
Of course polygons look prettier.. look at the current difference between painted pictures and polygon graphics. With a painting the artist is simply putting the colors on a flat surface in such a way that it simulates reality. Relatively easy to do since you just need to put colors there in a suggestive way (i cant do it myself for beans, but you get the point).
Now a graphics program, you create a 3d object out of polygons, then place texture images over them. This is more difficult because you have to create the actual 3d object.. like sculpting.. you cant just suggest 3d with shadow, you have to Make 3d and let the light create the shadow naturally. The textures arent really roughness or shininess, just images that Look rough or shiny and make any light sources react the way they probably would.. this saves memory by making the shape Look more complex than it really is. A smooth cylinder might look just like a tree trunk because it has a rough-appearing texture. But it's not really a tree. If you get too close you get flattening of the texture.. especially in realtime engines for games because it cant raytrace fast enough with modern computers, so uses simple rendering. It can look really, really good.. but can also look REALLY bad.
Now, i may have misunderstood the article and webpage for this technology, but what i got out of it is that this uses something like a fractal generation system, using a formulae and number of iterations, to generate real objects. Not just a mesh of points some of which have polygons drawn between them, but something closer to a physical reality. Like a fractal, it would look fine up close or far away, and like a fractal because it's based on iterating a simple algorithm over and over it would just be a matter of doing math rather than crunching z-buffer coordinates into 2d images like we do in polygon rendering engines.
What's really important here is the oppertunity for data transfer. All those cyberpunk novels make use of the ubiquitous virtual worlds where people and environments are rendered seemlessly, usually using small computers, in realtime, with wireless modem links. So far this has been no more than a dream because no personal computer could hope to handle that kind of load, No computer can raytrace in realtime with a complex scene, and there'd be no way to send that much data with anything like current modems. This technology doesnt make this all come true in a flash, but it does improve the chances immensely. You can simply transfer location data and a formula rather than mesh coordinates and transforms.. much, much less data. You dont need to do the kind of heavy number crunching for raytracing because of the way the objects are generated, and you dont have to worry about things like textures because you can just make the actual object bumpy, smooth, jagged, whatever.
Now the biggest complaint is obviously that it doesnt compare to modern polygon graphics. There's a simple reason for this.. it's not a highly funded, industrially motivated, relatively old technology. It's fairly new and being developed by a few guys. You cant expect miracles overnight.. but what he's got looks pretty good considering how new it is. You all talk about how wonderful demos look with current tech.. sure they do.. that's what theyre for. This demo is to demonstrate that his technology Does work. If you had a time machine that could send a penny 5 minutes into the future, would you complain because it didnt look cool?
Anyway, it's obviously no sure thing, but it does have a good deal of promise, and polygons cant last forever. Personally i think realtime rendered 3d games look like crap. Raytraced scenes can look very nice, but all too often suffer from virtual unreality (that plasticy look everything tends to take on.. obvious fractalism in complex objects etc).. This or something like it that builds up from basic principles into a complex object will eventually be needed.. just think about human interaction in a virtual environment, you cant very well create polygon meshes for every possability.. what if you broke a chair, how does it generate the broken ends and interior wood grain? If you bite into a cookie, how would you go about creating realistic crumbs in realtime?
Dreamweaver
Much like the free computer and free internet service, Free Prosthetics. Need a new heart? no problem. All you have to do is sign this agreement to have advertisements superimposed on your periphery vision and we'll get you a brand new one grown fresh over at MIT. And dont worry about detrimental effects on your vision, our test cat only bumps into walls 1 time in 3.
Dreamweaver
Do what? It's not exactly going to kill MS if people think dvorak is better.. hell, if tomorrow morning everyone woke up thinking 'dvorak good, qwerty bad' it'd probably take MS a month to get a dvorak version of their various keyboards churning out.. methinks perhaps you're just taking the oppertunity to bash the evil ms empire
Dreamweaver
I'm going to have to disagree with you here.. while i havent seen ladyhawke, i've seen the other three and they're probably among the worst examples of good fantasy in film i've seen. On top of being weighted down with being musicals, they completely butchered the stories on which they were supposedly based (we wont go into the amazing amount of butchering that was done to snow white or beauty and the beast even before disney got their mitts on them). At least in most amazingly cheesey fantasy/sf movies they stay generally true to the story, rather than completely ripping it apart to make a fun movie.
As for a Good fantasy movie.. i'm going to have to go with Clash of the Titans for all time best. Sure the stop-motion effects look cheap now, but they were pretty darn good back then. That's the kind of thing i'm hoping for out of the d&d movie. It's essentially impossible to make a movie with deep characters without making it hideously boring because you cant explain thoughts, emotions, or background references in a movie the way you can in a book. So all you can hope for is believable characters and a good plot, both of which clash of the titans had.. even if it did mess with the mythology a bit. And as for mortal kombat and masters of the univers.. it cant be That bad.. those were based on a video game and a line of toys, d&d has hundreds, if not thousands, of books to work off of.
Dreamweaver
The word you're hunting for here is mu.. the little u with a thingy is the lowercase greek leter mu :) (i'm going out on a limb here because i dont actually know.. but i'd guess that's why they picked mu for micro.. they already had an m, so grabbed the greek equivalent).
Dreamweaver
Point 1: 'Why are we so arrogat to presume that *we* are the only creatures in the universe that are persons'
On the whole, we're not. Most people think there's intelligent life other than us out there someplace. The difference is that you want us to believe that there are not only other 'persons' made up of the typical molecules.. but also this amazing super-person who somehow came into beig without anybody else (if we would just be molecules without this person, who made him/her/it?) and then went on to make everything and everyone else.. that's the part that's a bit hard to swallow.
Point 2: 'We are finite. God is infinite.'
So this 'person' is somehow not only exactly like us in that it's made up of the same type of matter, but is also somehow made up of all matter? So are we floating around somewhere in it's eye? Or maybe an arm? And if it's infinite, wouldnt that mean it contains all the 'evil' and 'wrong' things in the whole of the universe as well as all the 'good' things? Doesnt sound too perfect to me.. Anthropromorphic infinity is silly at best.. afterall, can the amazing first-person-infinite-man create the proverbial stone that he cant lift? Yeah it's an old and silly question, but it points out the main flaw in a supposedly 'infinite' being.. infinity in that sense is impossible.
Dreamweaver
And in another 2000 years? A few hundred years ago people hadnt even a concept of how things we now do regularly could have been accomplished. We cant make a galaxy-worth of stars at the moment, but given time i see no reason why it would be impossible. Same thing with ressurection. Every year we get better at bringing people back from what was beyond the point of no return previously. Given time and that we dont blow ourselves up, i'm sure we'll eventually be able to reconstruct a living person from any scrap of their body.
So what will it be then? Saying there's some limit to what we can eventually accomplish is just stupid.. because we cant do it now doesnt make it impossible or even unlikely. Go back a few million years and only god could make something as astoundig as fire.
Dreamweaver
It was in both (i think there were only 2 novels.. if there were more i've not read them). The command was (my spelling's probably off), 'prikazivat' or something similar. I forget what it meant.. command i think. Rather like the 'computer' command prefix in 'trek.
Dreamweaver
Well, this can only go 2 ways. Either MS will fail enormously, or they'll blow the hell out of their competitors. What will decide it? Two things:
(1) Will the damn thing work?
Well, the obvious problem is whether or not their system even works. Nobody's gonna use or write games for a system that either crashes all the time or is just a bad game platform. And considering the hardware stats on the Playstation2 , Dreamcast, and Nintendo's new system it'd take a heck of alot to do.. slapping a PIII in there isnt gonna cut it.. But i'll give MS a little credit and assume they realize that and make a decent platform.
I've never used WinCE so i dont know how stable it is. I've never seen someone slam their PalmIII against the wall, but then again i dont suppose your Palmtop crashing would be as annoying as your PC.
(2) Can they get games?
I've seen alot of people posting that they'll just port PC games over.. this might work a little, but not for long. The only PC games that could be ported to a console system with a reasonably compact controller would be racing games, possibly some sports games, flight-sims, and 1st person shooters. Flight sims wouldnt work well, and it'd be harder to control a 1st person shooter without a mouse.. but you could do it. But the point is this limits your options. Most fighting games and rpgs (probably the 2 heaviest hitters in the console market) that are on PC are almost always either ported from consoles, or written with computers and 101+ keyboards in mind.. Anybody who wants to play a computer game is going to play it on a computer. Nobody wants to go out and by a new console system to play a game that's either going to perform as well or better on their PC (TV resolution isnt as good as most monitors.. just bigger) or that they can get on a system they're likely to already have.
Now, lets assume that MS gets over both of these problems.. they manage to build a stable platform and can port over games reasonably well. What about new games? Making a computer game Is different from making a console game. Companies like squaresoft, nintendo, activision, konami.. they know what they're doing with console games and have been at it for a Long time. Console games have to appeal to geeks, idiots, and kids.. The game cant be too complicated optionwise, preferably have stunning graphics, and be very multimedia oriented. MS makes computer games (when they do at all).. computer geeks will put up with alot for an interesting concept. Look at Civ and CivII.. the graphics arent much, not alot of multimedia, convoluted rules.. but it's fun once you learn to play. Civ would sink like a rock on a console. So MS either has to learn to make console games FAST or else pick up some external companies. This is where the title of this post comes in:
If MS tries to do the whole thing themselves, they're going to fail. No 2 ways about it. They're a computer company, not a console company. But....
If MS gets smart and they offer squaresoft, konami, et al some whopping contracts.. which they Can afford to.. nintendo, sony, and sega wont have a chance. If MS gets to them soon, before they start making long-term deals on the new systems, the traditional companies are going to be left high and dry. It's a scary thought, but MS is big enough that they could suck up all the decent game-makers and steal the scene just by having all the big names that gamers know and trust. I mean really, the system could suck but if the next final fantasy and streetfighter games are on it, it'll make money. Which we all know is what MS cares about above all else.
Dreamweaver
Maybe warcraft3 isnt the sweeping new idea blizzard says it is, maybe it's borrowed from pre-existing games.. but so what? Very few games come out that dont borrow from others for alot of elements and i cant think of Any that said "Just another game in the X genre". EVERY game is a dynamic new departure from the genre that will change the world of gaming forever. Once in a while it's true, but every marketing department on earth says the same things. Dont pick on them for it.
Personally, i dont like 3d games. The media has a great deal of potential, i like rendered artwork and do a bit of it myself.. but i dont like polygonal games. I had fun with tomb raider for about 10 minutes, i liked TA for a couple of hours, i stuck with zelda64 just 'cause i love zelda games.. but i dont think Every game needs it. However, i dont think 3d is evil. Blizzard Just announced this game. You cant go off pre-prototype screenshots. Look at some of the pre-proto shots of Starcraft, it looked Really crappy, worse graphics and interface than warcraft 2. But now we have a beautiful game with a streamlined interface. Blizzard's good at what they do and i have no doubt they'll pull it off again.
Even if the worst happens and WC3 sucks, or even just isnt a great game.. well.. oh well. I'll still have fun with starcraft, i'm looking forward to WC2 platinum, and i've already got money stashed away so i can get Diablo2 the day it comes out. Blizzard makes good games, and even if they manage to pull a lemon out of the hat this time, they're not going to die from it. They'll learn from their mistakes like they always do and either dump the RPS thing or fix it up.
As for all of this Warcraft is a Dune2 clone and RTS's are all the same stuff.. i have to disagree. Dune2 was pretty good, but it wasnt That good and i can only think of about 4 different fantasy based RTS's. I'd like to see a new one.. SF is getting a bit overdone, though when you consider only 1 in 10 of the new SF RTS's are even worth playing there's alot still out there. Getting a bit of environment interaction seems only logical.. I mean, in all RTS's your out there waging war.. usually in a populated world. Where are the bystanders? The independent militias? The whole RPS thing is just a way to draw attention to (what i hope anyway) is just a step-up the RTS ladder in a genre saturated with "Groundbreaking New Game"s.
Dreamweaver
The title says it all. Anybody who relies on 'i have a big army so i'll overwhelm you now' is an idiot (well, in most games anyway.. i've a played a few where you really had no other choice). Though i can see why someone might have trouble if they cant even win consistently at Dune2.. took me about 2 hours to figure out how to win every time in that game
Dreamweaver