Let us take the simple game of tic-tac-toe (three by three) as our game space. Not too hard. Tic-tac-toe, checkers
Jonathan Schaffer also thought that checkers was simple. Years of effort building Chinook fixed that. He just announced after ~17 years of effort that three of the ~150 3-move ballot openings are draws, and I'm just amazed that he managed that. It's *not* a simple game- it only looks like it.
Lots of games have them. I can buy Morrowind, or I can buy MW+Tribunal, or MW+Bloodmoon or both. Doesn't stop Morrowind from being a good game, even if it doesn't have all the content of the Gold collectors edition.
Oblivion is going the way of smaller expansions and lower prices. (No new land+dozens of quests for $20-40, but rather one or two new quest arcs for $2.) I personally don't like this, but it's a valid market choice- if it works for Oblivion why not GTA3?
Welcome to capitalism. The government doesn't have the right to tell companies how to practice their business
Bull. (At least in the US) Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Charging for packets that are bounced around the entire country certainly counts as interstate commerce- Google is in one state, the core Verizon servers (and office) in another and I'm in a third.
The federal government could easily pass a Net Neutrality bill and pass muster with the Supremes- they've used the Commerce clause in far less obvious ways.
HEADLINE ALERT: some random guy on slashdot disagrees with a large collection of professional writers on the art and aesthetics of writing--obviously the writers are wrong, and the random slashdot guy is right!
Who said I'm right? It's obvious from the discussion that people have different tastes. Personally, I think this was a weak ballot that left off a lot of good stuff. Judging by comments, it seems that some people agree with me, others don't. Ah well.
And McDevitt keeps steadily getting better and better; in the last couple of years, he's moved from my "keep an eye on" column to my "must-buy" column. The Hercules Text is actually one of my least favorites of McDevitt's works. (If you want a good early McDevitt, try A Talent for War).
Oh come on. Tell me with a straight face that Chindi was good- it's utter and total tripe. I look at my collection of McDevitts and see a writer who has really forgotten a lot of how to write, especially endings, in his quest to write a ton of stuff- too many ideas, not enough polish. (Alistair Renyolds is another that's writing too fast for his own good.) A Talent for War is the other McDevitt I think is actually good, with Engines of God in the not bad category. But over and over he just lets books die at the end (Eternity Road, Ancient Shores). It's a shame because I really like his archeological take on SF.
Haldeman is wildly uneven- I read the first few dozen pages of Camouflage but couldn't get into it, so I assumed it was one of his misses. Perhaps it's better than I thought at first.
The surprising thing was how much I liked it despite all that. I did NOT find it "too strange"--much the opposite. Compared to China Miévelle, Gene Wolfe or even Tim Powers, it was downright pedestrian!
Perhaps, but the really odd stuff isn't usually on the ballot. Mieville, Wolfe and Powers managed once each since 2000, and of the three only Wolfe has won, back in 1973. I've got far wierder than S&N- try The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad sometime.
If you don't agree with the Nebula voters (and I admit that I often don't), then ignore the awards! Writers are strange beasts, and have different criteria for what they like than you or I. I've frequently been perplexed at what wins the Nebula, but I just chalk it up to "writers are odd".:)
Oh, I do ignore them- I find I generally read less than half of what's on the ballot. I have a very short list of authors I actually buy- Banks, Mieville, Simmons, Morgan, Vinge, Stross, Gaiman and a few others. I find that I usually prefer the Hugo winner over the Nebula, although both have given awards to Sawyer which is just beyond me.
The Golden Age and *really* bad books
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The Golden Age series was an odd one for me to like. I'm very big into characterization- if I can't believe the characters are real I generally lose interest rapidly, which is why I have such a short author list. Wright never managed this, but I still really enjoyed the series (although it was wildy uneven in places) probably because his world-building was good enough for me to overlook the fact that the characters were more or less lifeless props that he moved around to forward the story.
That said, if you *really* want bad stuff, try Baxter's Titan, McDevitt's Chindi or anything at all by Peter Hamilton. I know I can't write very well, but those books make me think I could be an editor. At least I could tell Baxter to burn some works, McDevitt to learn to write an ending (he *used* to know) and Hamilton to stop jamming random scientific words together to make something sound sophisticated- those of us with more than a high school science education simply choke on the stupidity.
Now, I haven't read Norrell, but people whose judgement I trust have told me that it's exactly the kind of pretentious crap that has ruined mainstream writing and is now invading SF, thickly layered language games that distract the reader from any virtues the story itself might have.
Do yourself a favor and try it. I put it as the clear winner because of one thing: it has believable *people*, not cardboard cutouts. Strange and Norrell aren't very likeable, but they are believeable, and that puts the book above 99% of all SF writing from the very beginning. Haldemann only occasionally manages it, which is why I've stopped buying his stuff even though The Forever War is one of the top ten SF books of all time. McDevitt managed it exactly twice so far as I can tell- after that I was wasting money. The last two books of his I read were so bad I've sworn him off. (Chindi is up there with Baxter's Titan in the "How the Hell did this crap get published" sweepstakes) If you want a quick, fun read there are plenty of good novels out there right now that didn't appear in this list: try Salzi's Old Man's War which came out last year- I loved it, but it's not in Norrell's class.
The language games are simply to create an atmosphere, and frankly she succeeds- it feels like something written 100+ years ago. I normally hate tricks like this, but she does it so well it is deserving of the Hugo it won and the Nebula it didn't.
Not all "difficult" reads are great literature- I fully agree with you that most is pretentious crap. But that doesn't mean that none of it is.
I wonder about the Nebulas
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I look over the list and see two contenders that shouldn't even be on an awards list, much less win (Haldeman and McDevitt, the former is slipping and the latter hasn't had a decent book since The Hercules Text), yet another in an unending series (give it a rest Terry), and one that's so obscure that even Amazon doesn't carry it (Ryman).
I haven't seen Wright's fantasy anywhere (despite living in Virginia about an hour from his home), although I'd buy it based on the wonderful Golden Age, so I can't speak to it.
At least to me the only entry on that list worthy of the award is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I suspect it's simply too strange for most of the folks to vote for. But it's everything an award like this *should* recognize- beautiful world building, wonderful characters and a prose style that really sets the tone for a different world. (I can't remember the last piece of fiction with laugh-out-loud footnotes). It's not an easy read, but it's a *great* read nonetheless.
There's simply so many other good books published in the last year to have this list. If you want fantasy, where's The Prince of Nothing series? I don't know if Banks' The Algebraist is eligible since it was published in England earlier, but even though it's not Banks' best it still outclasses almost the entire list. Olympos wasn't perfect, but again should have been up there.
Two reasons: First, because this is what the Army needs, right now. Imagine a supply convoy moving around Iraq without drivers, just combat guards. Fewer drivers=fewer IED deaths + soldiers who can be actual soldiers and MPs, not truck drivers. (Then again, having been a support platoon leader, I'm not sure I want some of those drivers holding a gun...)
Second, because it's a challenge! Last year's competition was not easy- look at the one two years ago, where most of the contestants barely made it out of the starting gate. (Or didn't) When proposed, it was an absurd reach- no robot had come anywhere close to the Grand Challenge specs; they were all busy managing 5-10 mph on easy courses. Nobody would have been interested if the challenge had been 10mph for 10 miles. Would they get the same number of entrants this year if the challenge was basically the same as before?
I agree, this is a serious reach. But honestly, it's not impossible. You have a *lot* more to navigate by in the city- all sorts of yellow and white paint lines on the road, existing high-detail maps and standardized road signs. Most of the drive will be free of serious obstacles, although I assume DARPA will throw in a some shell holes and road blocks to make it interesting. The radars to track other cars already exist- you can buy a car today with sophisticated cruise control that maintains correct distances. My guess is that robots will be better in city driving than humans very soon- 360 degree radar, much faster reaction times, no Starbucks latte and cell phone...
I suspect the next Grand Challenge will be something like "Start at Depot A, navigate across 300 miles of varying terrain, drop off at city center B". Speaking as that ex-platoon guy, most of the drivers in my unit couldn't *read*, much less read a map. They had to be led the entire way by someone who could. (Or at least, pretended he could- this was in the days before GPS.) Bring on the robots.
The small college I work at used to do this before I arrived. They don't anymore for many of the reasons listed below. It's unmanageable long-term, basically due to scope creep. Sure, you'll fix their laptop when it gets infected with a virus. You'll help them with (obscure program) that has conflict with (driver of obscure program). In fact, you'll spend hour after hour at it, and they'll bring it back the next day after they visited "Spyware 'R Us" for the 37th time. Remember that you'll have *no* control over this hardware and software. If they turn off their firewall because it blocks some site they must must must get to there's *nothing* you can do about it, except pick up the pieces. Remember- wipe and reimage won't work here, since you won't have an image and all their files aren't backed up anywhere else.
Then they'll wonder why they can't get connected to their cable modem. Guess who will be driving out to their house since you can't troubleshoot that at the office? Yes, this actually became the expectation where I work. IT makes house calls. I wondered if they asked Buildings and Grounds to mow their lawns for them.
Next, what kind of liability are you going to run when the employee blames you for deleting (really really super important file)? Yes, I know you had nothing to do with the hard disk crash, but tell the CEO's son that when he just lost the first draft of his novel.
In all seriousness, here are a few suggestions
Get a *written* contract for them to sign every single time they bring in the machine along with a detailed description of the problem. Make sure this contract spells out that they are responsible for backups of all important files on the machine, not you.
No personal machine can connect to your intranet, ever, for any reason. Block all the ports to anything without a known MAC address and dump them into a space where the only two machines that exist for them are windowsupdate and a site to download antivirus and antispyware tools- everything else resolves to 127.0.0.1 (Check NetReg for a free solution here)
Develop a detailed written policy about privacy. Make sure they understand that you aren't snooping, but sometimes finding out information simply can't be helped. Make it clear that stumbling across stuff like kiddie porn will be reported to the cops. Run this past your law folks
Keep stats on abusers. 5% of your folks will take 95% of the time. Make sure the powers that be know how much money these 5% are costing them.
No house calls, ever. Verizon DSL has tech support- they can bug them.
Because your *country* is quite probably physically smaller than my *state*. The entire land mass of Europe from Iceland to the Ukraine is something like 2.2 million square miles. (Ignoring Russia- they're immense) The US is 3.7 million- even dropping off Alaska we still have about 3.0 million. On a recent trip to Brussels we were talking about the differences in where we lived and I commented that the drive from my home to the airport to fly there was substantially longer than the width of their country.
It's easy to wire a lot of people when you're small and population dense. If I lived near my parents in a much more population dense area, I'd have access to Verizon FIOS at similar speeds and prices to what you list. (Assuming of course you really meant 12*M*bps. I really don't think you'd want to brag about 12*m*bps:^) But I live in the suburbs of a town in central Virginia, and only just got broadband access (1.5Mbps) a year ago after three years of dialup.
How can it be getting both easier and more expensive to produce games?
You're missing the point. To make an AAA list super title is getting more expensive. Much more expensive- you need teams of 100 people for four years to write something like Oblivion.
But not all games are AAA list super titles. You can make fun, enjoyable games much more easily than you used to. Flash gets crapped on all the time here, but it's a wonderful tool for writing games- it handles audio and video easily, can animate hundreds of sprites at a time and has a simple but powerful OO scripting language underneath. Stuff that required really hardcore programming ten years ago is now built into these tools, or there are easy to use libraries which do it all. Games like Half-Life, NWN and Oblivion ship with serious content creation tools, so powerful that you can rewrite virtually the entire scenario. You may hate Steam or XBox Live, but online delivery is getting much more available to the "little guys"- check out Darwinia or Geometry Wars.
For a gag recently I needs a Pong clone. Using Flash I did it in about an hour. (If I had used Flash in the previous six months it would have taken about 30 minutes.) I managed a Space War clone in a day. Yeah, they're old and very simple, but there's no way I could have done either twenty years ago. Ten years ago I took a course in interactive game development at USC. The class managed some really nice stuff in Director, but it was still damn clunky, as I found out when trying to handle the physics of ~100 sprites. Trivial today.
You can basically put Oblivion on that list. It does do a DVD check on boot, but that's it, and we all know how easy that is to bypass. Most MMOs should be there too, since you're locked to an account- Guild Wars has no checks at all.
1.7 million sales for Oblivion says that limited or no copy protection works.
Farmers have a commodity. (Gold, high level character, etc) Other people want these commodities and have real money to spend. There's *going* to be a marketplace no matter what you, Blizzard or anyone else wants.
I remember visiting a communist country back in the late 80s. We were deluged with requests from folks on the street to exchange money, buy our jeans and a dozen other transactions ranging from officially frowned on to downright illegal. We had something they wanted, and they'd break the law in a second to get it. Remember that most of the Chinese gold farmers are seriously poor by Western standards- this is a major step up the success ladder for them, and they don't even need to break any laws. just violate an agreement with a game company. The "War on Drugs" has utterly failed to stop drug sales despite endless "Just Say No" anti-drug messages and serious law enforcement. Here all we have is "Just Say No" and Blizzard banning a few accounts now and then.
Ban capitalism at your peril- if things can be traded, there will be a marketplace.
This has already been done by Ambrosia in Escape Velocity. It was shareware- you had 30 days to register. During that time, Captain Hector would occasionally fly by and remind you to register.
After 30 days, Captain Hector got guns and would hunt you down. He wasn't too hard to kill if you had a decent ship, but he'd be back a few minutes later to attack you again. And again. And again. And again...
Reading this, it states that no plants of the field had yet sprung up when humans were created. This does not mean there were NO plants, it means there were no CULTIVATED plants. Trees aren't "plants of the field".
A little iffy if you go back to the original Hebrew. Gen 2:5-6, "Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 2:6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground." The first term translated as shrub in Hebrew is "siakh", which refers to uncultivated plants, the second is "'esev", which refers to cultivated plants. In either case the implication of the author is most likely "before there were plants".
Note that this also contradicts Gen 1:2 and 1:6, which implies that the Earth was covered in water first and God seperated created dry land second
In this translation, it states "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." This would seem to indicate that the animals had been formed before Adam was, and they were presented to him later for naming.
Decent try, but still not quite good enough. Gen2:18 (the verse before your quote) makes it clear that animals did *not* exist before Adam was created- "The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him." You can try to claim that this refers to Eve, but she doesn't come along until 2:21 when it's obvious the animals aren't enough.
BTW, thanks for taking a serious stab at this. jdavidb doesn't seem to be real interested in an actual discussion. I'd love for some serious bible historian who can read the actual Hebrew to correct me if I'm wrong.
Ah, I see. You can't answer the question. Instead, you'll try to deflect blame onto me for asking an unclear question and cut and run from the actual issue. Do you really understand the issue and the history of the Bible?
I *have* done my homework. I have a better than layman's understanding of both evolution and early Christian history. I understand why the Bible is self-contradictory in numerous places- it's an amalgam of multiple creation myths that don't necessary have much to do with each other. In the case of Genesis, it's a mashup of two different stories: you can tell them apart by how they refer to the creator deity. Genesis 1 through 2:3 is from the polytheist version of the tale with Elohim (plural) as the creator god, 2:4 and on from the older Jewish version (YHWH). The author of the first few books managed to remove most of the polytheistic elements from the Elohim sources, although hints remain.
Now, back to the *very* simple question. Which version of the Genesis tale is the correct one? You claim that Genesis is the correct record of how life came to be. Fine: all I want to know is which one. This is not a complex question. There are even good rebuttals to the issue- I'm surprised that you don't know them. Any biblical literalist who wants to debate evolution better have them available at the drop of a hat. As a side note, I'd encourage you to do some serious reading on biblical scholarship. Elaine Pagels has some wonderful books on biblical history, although she focuses on early Christian history rather than the Old Testament. I'd also recommend Robert Alter's translation of Genesis as a really wonderful resource that captures both the scholarship and poetry of Genesis.
Please explain to me which you believe, or give me an explanation for how both can be true. Don't dodge- you're the self-proclaimed literalist. Surely you can handle the horde of self-contradictions in the Bible?
I believe the literal understanding of Genesis is the most likely explanation of what happened,
Umm, which version of Genesis? Genesis 1 is very clear: plants and animals were created first, then humans. (The order is earth, plants, sun, animals) Genesis 2 is very clear: humans were created first, then the plants and animals. (The order is earth/sun, Adam, plants, animals, Eve) Genesis 1 is very clear that men and women were created at the same time; not true in Genesis 2.
Which do you believe to be true? Why is the other one not true? How can you claim to be a biblical literalist if you don't believe that both are true, even when they contradict?
Let's say Verizon decides to try this with Google. It seems to me that Google could just turn around and say "For Quality of Service reasons, we are implementing a scheme where you need to pay for priority access to Google resources. All searches from verizon.com addresses must pay $1 per search or they will be dumped in a queue that may take 30+ minutes to respond."
Next, Google puts up a page that Verizon DSL customers see if they try to access any Google resources at all which says something like "Verizon is deliberatly degrading your connection to our pages. We cannot assure reasonable response to any requests you may have. Please contact Verizon DSL customer service at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you find you cannot access Google, or alternatively switch to provider Y ".
Now imagine that Google teams up with Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and a few other biggies to do the same. (I assume MS would pay, seeing it as a chance to overtake Google) How long do you think Verizon could stand up to this? Nobody gives a damn who carries the packets, but take away their eBay access and people will scream bloody murder
Re:MTU-related surfing problems
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It can't be the MTU. This occurs in multiple locations, including my home DSL connection and my work which have nothing in common network wise. IE works fine- it's only the "good" browsers that fail. It also works perfectly in Firefox and Opera if I delete my cache- this is the recommended fix on the net, and while it works it's a royal pain to dump cache every time I want to view my mail.
It's something with the way Javascript is written for the site, and it's really really irritating.
Am I the only person cursed to not be able to use Gmail? I'd really like to keep it as a non-work email account, but all I ever see is "Loading...". Mozilla or Opera, doesn't matter- it occurs on every PC I try. It's not based on stuff in the Inbox- it occurs with no messages at all in the Inbox. Oddly, IE works perfectly, but I simply can't use something without tabs or mouse gestures anymore.
Googling the problem doesn't help much. It turns out all I need to do is clear my internet cache. Well, gee, that's nice. I'll just do that every few minutes. Or maybe I'll just use something else. Am I just cursed?
I have to admit I'm not really worried about this. We're going to end up with a situation exactly the same as with movies: there are a few, large studios that can pony up the tens of millions it takes to make a big-budget, special effects laden extravaganza. Often these are great- look at the upcoming Snakes on a Plane, possibly the greatest film of the decade. Yet there are dozens of indy filmakers out there working on shoestring budgets, often turning out great stuff for peanuts. There are multiple film festivals worldwide to showcase these films to good sized audiences. Are you going to make $100mil in the opening weekend? No, but you don't need to. Technology is a great leveler here- the entire rig to shoot, edit and create a movie length DVD is down to $20k or so.
We're seeing the exact same thing in games. There's no way a single hacker or even a small group can write WoW/Oblivion/Doom3- you need tens of millions, years of effort and a hundred people minimum. But again technology is a great leveler- we have dirt cheap computers and development kits that allow even minimal programmers to assemble good looking stuff that's fun to play. You can't do WoW, but you can exploit MM niches that nobody big would dare try such as Puzzle Pirates or A Tale in the Desert. You can't do Civ4, but you can do Oasis. XBoxLive is being supported in large part by Geometry Wars.
I think we'll end up with a fairly healthy ecosystem when we're done- you'll get your blockbusters and many might even be good, but there will always be a horde of smaller folks turning out cheap/niche stuff that doesn't need to sell a million copies. (Or indeed, any at all)
You just have to be willing to put up with some pop-in for grass. I've got a AMD-64 3000, 1GB RAM and an nVidia 6600- the first two barely meet the spec, the latter is below.
Still, I can play it at 800x600, 2xAA with good graphical detail. I've skipped shadows, bloom, some of the other effects and set the detail pop-ins fairly short and the framerate stays up save during big combats.
It does get a bit twitchy when taking on 5-10 foes at a time- I find for these combats it's far better not to try going toe-to-toe and instead conjur up something, let the AI beat on that and shell them sith spells from a distance.
I wanted to find the mystery behind the disappearance of the Dwarves.
Did you do the Mage Guild quests? That's one of the first ones you get, although it appears to be an absurd, impossible quest. (But, of course, it's not. Dig around in some sick places...)
I fully agree on PS:T as far as an RPG goes- it had by far the best story of any RPG to date. The BGs left me cold, to be honest- the characters in PS:T are so much more detailed and so much more interesting. What other game has you getting people to believe that a tree can grow, or feature a defective robot within a fantasy game that spends its entire time confused?
The story in Oblivion so far isn't quite there and the combat is a bit twitchy for my tastes, but otherwise it's been very impressive. I wish some of the characters had the depth of PS:T, where you could literally spend a half hour going through dialog options.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it appears the going rate for two chicks at a time is $1 million, at least according to Lawrence...
Jonathan Schaffer also thought that checkers was simple. Years of effort building Chinook fixed that. He just announced after ~17 years of effort that three of the ~150 3-move ballot openings are draws, and I'm just amazed that he managed that. It's *not* a simple game- it only looks like it.
Oblivion is going the way of smaller expansions and lower prices. (No new land+dozens of quests for $20-40, but rather one or two new quest arcs for $2.) I personally don't like this, but it's a valid market choice- if it works for Oblivion why not GTA3?
Bull. (At least in the US) Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution empowers the United States Congress "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Charging for packets that are bounced around the entire country certainly counts as interstate commerce- Google is in one state, the core Verizon servers (and office) in another and I'm in a third.
The federal government could easily pass a Net Neutrality bill and pass muster with the Supremes- they've used the Commerce clause in far less obvious ways.
HEADLINE ALERT: some random guy on slashdot disagrees with a large collection of professional writers on the art and aesthetics of writing--obviously the writers are wrong, and the random slashdot guy is right!
Who said I'm right? It's obvious from the discussion that people have different tastes. Personally, I think this was a weak ballot that left off a lot of good stuff. Judging by comments, it seems that some people agree with me, others don't. Ah well.
And McDevitt keeps steadily getting better and better; in the last couple of years, he's moved from my "keep an eye on" column to my "must-buy" column. The Hercules Text is actually one of my least favorites of McDevitt's works. (If you want a good early McDevitt, try A Talent for War).
Oh come on. Tell me with a straight face that Chindi was good- it's utter and total tripe. I look at my collection of McDevitts and see a writer who has really forgotten a lot of how to write, especially endings, in his quest to write a ton of stuff- too many ideas, not enough polish. (Alistair Renyolds is another that's writing too fast for his own good.) A Talent for War is the other McDevitt I think is actually good, with Engines of God in the not bad category. But over and over he just lets books die at the end (Eternity Road, Ancient Shores). It's a shame because I really like his archeological take on SF.
Haldeman is wildly uneven- I read the first few dozen pages of Camouflage but couldn't get into it, so I assumed it was one of his misses. Perhaps it's better than I thought at first.
The surprising thing was how much I liked it despite all that. I did NOT find it "too strange"--much the opposite. Compared to China Miévelle, Gene Wolfe or even Tim Powers, it was downright pedestrian!
Perhaps, but the really odd stuff isn't usually on the ballot. Mieville, Wolfe and Powers managed once each since 2000, and of the three only Wolfe has won, back in 1973. I've got far wierder than S&N- try The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad sometime.
If you don't agree with the Nebula voters (and I admit that I often don't), then ignore the awards! Writers are strange beasts, and have different criteria for what they like than you or I. I've frequently been perplexed at what wins the Nebula, but I just chalk it up to "writers are odd". :)
Oh, I do ignore them- I find I generally read less than half of what's on the ballot. I have a very short list of authors I actually buy- Banks, Mieville, Simmons, Morgan, Vinge, Stross, Gaiman and a few others. I find that I usually prefer the Hugo winner over the Nebula, although both have given awards to Sawyer which is just beyond me.
That said, if you *really* want bad stuff, try Baxter's Titan, McDevitt's Chindi or anything at all by Peter Hamilton. I know I can't write very well, but those books make me think I could be an editor. At least I could tell Baxter to burn some works, McDevitt to learn to write an ending (he *used* to know) and Hamilton to stop jamming random scientific words together to make something sound sophisticated- those of us with more than a high school science education simply choke on the stupidity.
Do yourself a favor and try it. I put it as the clear winner because of one thing: it has believable *people*, not cardboard cutouts. Strange and Norrell aren't very likeable, but they are believeable, and that puts the book above 99% of all SF writing from the very beginning. Haldemann only occasionally manages it, which is why I've stopped buying his stuff even though The Forever War is one of the top ten SF books of all time. McDevitt managed it exactly twice so far as I can tell- after that I was wasting money. The last two books of his I read were so bad I've sworn him off. (Chindi is up there with Baxter's Titan in the "How the Hell did this crap get published" sweepstakes) If you want a quick, fun read there are plenty of good novels out there right now that didn't appear in this list: try Salzi's Old Man's War which came out last year- I loved it, but it's not in Norrell's class.
The language games are simply to create an atmosphere, and frankly she succeeds- it feels like something written 100+ years ago. I normally hate tricks like this, but she does it so well it is deserving of the Hugo it won and the Nebula it didn't.
Not all "difficult" reads are great literature- I fully agree with you that most is pretentious crap. But that doesn't mean that none of it is.
I haven't seen Wright's fantasy anywhere (despite living in Virginia about an hour from his home), although I'd buy it based on the wonderful Golden Age, so I can't speak to it.
At least to me the only entry on that list worthy of the award is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but I suspect it's simply too strange for most of the folks to vote for. But it's everything an award like this *should* recognize- beautiful world building, wonderful characters and a prose style that really sets the tone for a different world. (I can't remember the last piece of fiction with laugh-out-loud footnotes). It's not an easy read, but it's a *great* read nonetheless.
There's simply so many other good books published in the last year to have this list. If you want fantasy, where's The Prince of Nothing series? I don't know if Banks' The Algebraist is eligible since it was published in England earlier, but even though it's not Banks' best it still outclasses almost the entire list. Olympos wasn't perfect, but again should have been up there.
Second, because it's a challenge! Last year's competition was not easy- look at the one two years ago, where most of the contestants barely made it out of the starting gate. (Or didn't) When proposed, it was an absurd reach- no robot had come anywhere close to the Grand Challenge specs; they were all busy managing 5-10 mph on easy courses. Nobody would have been interested if the challenge had been 10mph for 10 miles. Would they get the same number of entrants this year if the challenge was basically the same as before?
I agree, this is a serious reach. But honestly, it's not impossible. You have a *lot* more to navigate by in the city- all sorts of yellow and white paint lines on the road, existing high-detail maps and standardized road signs. Most of the drive will be free of serious obstacles, although I assume DARPA will throw in a some shell holes and road blocks to make it interesting. The radars to track other cars already exist- you can buy a car today with sophisticated cruise control that maintains correct distances. My guess is that robots will be better in city driving than humans very soon- 360 degree radar, much faster reaction times, no Starbucks latte and cell phone...
I suspect the next Grand Challenge will be something like "Start at Depot A, navigate across 300 miles of varying terrain, drop off at city center B". Speaking as that ex-platoon guy, most of the drivers in my unit couldn't *read*, much less read a map. They had to be led the entire way by someone who could. (Or at least, pretended he could- this was in the days before GPS.) Bring on the robots.
Then they'll wonder why they can't get connected to their cable modem. Guess who will be driving out to their house since you can't troubleshoot that at the office? Yes, this actually became the expectation where I work. IT makes house calls. I wondered if they asked Buildings and Grounds to mow their lawns for them.
Next, what kind of liability are you going to run when the employee blames you for deleting (really really super important file)? Yes, I know you had nothing to do with the hard disk crash, but tell the CEO's son that when he just lost the first draft of his novel.
In all seriousness, here are a few suggestions
Good luck. You'll need it.
How comes you're not there yet?
Because your *country* is quite probably physically smaller than my *state*. The entire land mass of Europe from Iceland to the Ukraine is something like 2.2 million square miles. (Ignoring Russia- they're immense) The US is 3.7 million- even dropping off Alaska we still have about 3.0 million. On a recent trip to Brussels we were talking about the differences in where we lived and I commented that the drive from my home to the airport to fly there was substantially longer than the width of their country.
It's easy to wire a lot of people when you're small and population dense. If I lived near my parents in a much more population dense area, I'd have access to Verizon FIOS at similar speeds and prices to what you list. (Assuming of course you really meant 12*M*bps. I really don't think you'd want to brag about 12*m*bps :^) But I live in the suburbs of a town in central Virginia, and only just got broadband access (1.5Mbps) a year ago after three years of dialup.
You're missing the point. To make an AAA list super title is getting more expensive. Much more expensive- you need teams of 100 people for four years to write something like Oblivion.
But not all games are AAA list super titles. You can make fun, enjoyable games much more easily than you used to. Flash gets crapped on all the time here, but it's a wonderful tool for writing games- it handles audio and video easily, can animate hundreds of sprites at a time and has a simple but powerful OO scripting language underneath. Stuff that required really hardcore programming ten years ago is now built into these tools, or there are easy to use libraries which do it all. Games like Half-Life, NWN and Oblivion ship with serious content creation tools, so powerful that you can rewrite virtually the entire scenario. You may hate Steam or XBox Live, but online delivery is getting much more available to the "little guys"- check out Darwinia or Geometry Wars.
For a gag recently I needs a Pong clone. Using Flash I did it in about an hour. (If I had used Flash in the previous six months it would have taken about 30 minutes.) I managed a Space War clone in a day. Yeah, they're old and very simple, but there's no way I could have done either twenty years ago. Ten years ago I took a course in interactive game development at USC. The class managed some really nice stuff in Director, but it was still damn clunky, as I found out when trying to handle the physics of ~100 sprites. Trivial today.
1.7 million sales for Oblivion says that limited or no copy protection works.
I remember visiting a communist country back in the late 80s. We were deluged with requests from folks on the street to exchange money, buy our jeans and a dozen other transactions ranging from officially frowned on to downright illegal. We had something they wanted, and they'd break the law in a second to get it. Remember that most of the Chinese gold farmers are seriously poor by Western standards- this is a major step up the success ladder for them, and they don't even need to break any laws. just violate an agreement with a game company. The "War on Drugs" has utterly failed to stop drug sales despite endless "Just Say No" anti-drug messages and serious law enforcement. Here all we have is "Just Say No" and Blizzard banning a few accounts now and then.
Ban capitalism at your peril- if things can be traded, there will be a marketplace.
After 30 days, Captain Hector got guns and would hunt you down. He wasn't too hard to kill if you had a decent ship, but he'd be back a few minutes later to attack you again. And again. And again. And again...
Reading this, it states that no plants of the field had yet sprung up when humans were created. This does not mean there were NO plants, it means there were no CULTIVATED plants. Trees aren't "plants of the field".
A little iffy if you go back to the original Hebrew. Gen 2:5-6, "Now no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. 2:6 Springs would well up from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground." The first term translated as shrub in Hebrew is "siakh", which refers to uncultivated plants, the second is "'esev", which refers to cultivated plants. In either case the implication of the author is most likely "before there were plants".
Note that this also contradicts Gen 1:2 and 1:6, which implies that the Earth was covered in water first and God seperated created dry land second
In this translation, it states "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." This would seem to indicate that the animals had been formed before Adam was, and they were presented to him later for naming.
Decent try, but still not quite good enough. Gen2:18 (the verse before your quote) makes it clear that animals did *not* exist before Adam was created- "The Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him." You can try to claim that this refers to Eve, but she doesn't come along until 2:21 when it's obvious the animals aren't enough.
BTW, thanks for taking a serious stab at this. jdavidb doesn't seem to be real interested in an actual discussion. I'd love for some serious bible historian who can read the actual Hebrew to correct me if I'm wrong.
I *have* done my homework. I have a better than layman's understanding of both evolution and early Christian history. I understand why the Bible is self-contradictory in numerous places- it's an amalgam of multiple creation myths that don't necessary have much to do with each other. In the case of Genesis, it's a mashup of two different stories: you can tell them apart by how they refer to the creator deity. Genesis 1 through 2:3 is from the polytheist version of the tale with Elohim (plural) as the creator god, 2:4 and on from the older Jewish version (YHWH). The author of the first few books managed to remove most of the polytheistic elements from the Elohim sources, although hints remain.
Now, back to the *very* simple question. Which version of the Genesis tale is the correct one? You claim that Genesis is the correct record of how life came to be. Fine: all I want to know is which one. This is not a complex question. There are even good rebuttals to the issue- I'm surprised that you don't know them. Any biblical literalist who wants to debate evolution better have them available at the drop of a hat. As a side note, I'd encourage you to do some serious reading on biblical scholarship. Elaine Pagels has some wonderful books on biblical history, although she focuses on early Christian history rather than the Old Testament. I'd also recommend Robert Alter's translation of Genesis as a really wonderful resource that captures both the scholarship and poetry of Genesis.
Genesis 1
Genesis 2
Please explain to me which you believe, or give me an explanation for how both can be true. Don't dodge- you're the self-proclaimed literalist. Surely you can handle the horde of self-contradictions in the Bible?
I believe the literal understanding of Genesis is the most likely explanation of what happened,
Umm, which version of Genesis? Genesis 1 is very clear: plants and animals were created first, then humans. (The order is earth, plants, sun, animals) Genesis 2 is very clear: humans were created first, then the plants and animals. (The order is earth/sun, Adam, plants, animals, Eve) Genesis 1 is very clear that men and women were created at the same time; not true in Genesis 2.
Which do you believe to be true? Why is the other one not true? How can you claim to be a biblical literalist if you don't believe that both are true, even when they contradict?
Next, Google puts up a page that Verizon DSL customers see if they try to access any Google resources at all which says something like "Verizon is deliberatly degrading your connection to our pages. We cannot assure reasonable response to any requests you may have. Please contact Verizon DSL customer service at XXX-XXX-XXXX if you find you cannot access Google, or alternatively switch to provider Y ".
Now imagine that Google teams up with Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and a few other biggies to do the same. (I assume MS would pay, seeing it as a chance to overtake Google) How long do you think Verizon could stand up to this? Nobody gives a damn who carries the packets, but take away their eBay access and people will scream bloody murder
It's something with the way Javascript is written for the site, and it's really really irritating.
Googling the problem doesn't help much. It turns out all I need to do is clear my internet cache. Well, gee, that's nice. I'll just do that every few minutes. Or maybe I'll just use something else. Am I just cursed?
We're seeing the exact same thing in games. There's no way a single hacker or even a small group can write WoW/Oblivion/Doom3- you need tens of millions, years of effort and a hundred people minimum. But again technology is a great leveler- we have dirt cheap computers and development kits that allow even minimal programmers to assemble good looking stuff that's fun to play. You can't do WoW, but you can exploit MM niches that nobody big would dare try such as Puzzle Pirates or A Tale in the Desert. You can't do Civ4, but you can do Oasis. XBoxLive is being supported in large part by Geometry Wars.
I think we'll end up with a fairly healthy ecosystem when we're done- you'll get your blockbusters and many might even be good, but there will always be a horde of smaller folks turning out cheap/niche stuff that doesn't need to sell a million copies. (Or indeed, any at all)
Still, I can play it at 800x600, 2xAA with good graphical detail. I've skipped shadows, bloom, some of the other effects and set the detail pop-ins fairly short and the framerate stays up save during big combats. It does get a bit twitchy when taking on 5-10 foes at a time- I find for these combats it's far better not to try going toe-to-toe and instead conjur up something, let the AI beat on that and shell them sith spells from a distance.
I wanted to find the mystery behind the disappearance of the Dwarves.
Did you do the Mage Guild quests? That's one of the first ones you get, although it appears to be an absurd, impossible quest. (But, of course, it's not. Dig around in some sick places...)
I fully agree on PS:T as far as an RPG goes- it had by far the best story of any RPG to date. The BGs left me cold, to be honest- the characters in PS:T are so much more detailed and so much more interesting. What other game has you getting people to believe that a tree can grow, or feature a defective robot within a fantasy game that spends its entire time confused?
The story in Oblivion so far isn't quite there and the combat is a bit twitchy for my tastes, but otherwise it's been very impressive. I wish some of the characters had the depth of PS:T, where you could literally spend a half hour going through dialog options.