Most Blizzard RTS's have a speed option you can adjust with the + and - key to slow down stop or resume action. So Single player SC 2 might be okay. But yeah if you can't multi task you will be permanantely dominated in all multiplaye rgames.
But Blizzard's graphics teams are total rubbish!! Have you not played anything else they've made? Starcraft came out in 1998 and looked out-of-date even then, with its 3-frame sprite animations. Warcraft 3 is a visual disaster. World of Warcraft looks hilariously bad in terms of graphical fidelity. N64 Zelda games use about as many polygons per character.
compare War 3 to it's contempararies or Sc or WOW to it's and you'll find that despite the graphics being a bit behind it aged better due to better art direction. EQ2 had the best and shiniest graphics at launch and it went with a photo realistic and right now it's looks dated while WOW went with a stylized art direction which leans on graphic glitz less and thus ages better.
Re:You love it... You should buy it.
on
Protoss For a Day
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Total War seems to do this a bit. I played the Shogun game a bit and watched the demo for Medieval sputter and wheeze on my computer. I like how you are ordering about formations rather than individual units along with the modeling of morale and courage. Of course, Starcraft isn't that kind of game. It looks like Starcraft 2 is shooting to just be a graphical update of the original game. I suppose that's fair. There are more than enough fans who will pay full price for exactly that and say "thank you" to boot. But I won't be surprised if the AI is every bit as dumb as it was ten years ago.
Blizzard purposely provides less "auto-cast" options to encourage micromanagement. It's a keystone of their game style and it's the divide between C&C/TA and Blizzard RTS's. It means there is a huge skill divide that does not exist in the "mass rush" style games like Supcom/TA/C&C/most RTS's. It's pretty much why a lot of skilled players prefer War 3/ SC to the list above. Thats why the total population stillplaying SupCom/TA/C&C all is less then half of the active player sin war 3.
The pathing AI is much better so you have less of the "running around" you had in SC or War 2. but ti's still nto perfect and it atcually become a strategy to make bases confuse th epathing. In SC it allowed you to take on an arbitrary number of melee units of the player didn't tell them to atatck the impeding object. In war 3 after 2 secnds of not beign able to atatck due to pathing they attack the nearest object which is a improvement. I suspect SC 2 will be similiar.
If you dont' like micro I guess SC 2 won't be for you.
As much as I love the Starcraft/Command and Conquer games, I won't buy them. At least not for several years. I was sorely disappointed that Command and Conquer 3 wouldn't run on a one year old top of the line computer (and I returned it to the store). PC games are ridiculous, as far as requirements go. I'm looking forward to buying Starcraft 2 from the bargain bin in a few years when I own a PC capable of playing it.
C&C3 was made by someone else so beign disappointe din EA is unrelated to SC2. And you'll likely have to wait a while. War 3 didn't hit those bins for a good 5 years. The warchest is still a good $50 CND. Blizzard games are known to be in high demand for a long tiem after launch. Also if you plan to get into online play, in 5 years you'll be woefully behind the curve. But from the tone of your post I don't think your into competative online play.
I am not anonymous, I agree with his very valid criticism. Satire has been one of the most effective forms of social critique. It sticks in the minds of common folk and it jabs the people in power. Is it any coincidence that only in abusive pseudo fascists states are there laws forbidding you to infringe on the "dignity" of a public figure? It's because it's effective thus they want it removed.
What "dose of propaganda" are you referring to? Are you one of those religious nuts that refuses to believe in evolution? Or just a malcontent who things schools are sanctioned by the government in trying to turn all of our children into Socialists? Either way, it's no wonder kids are turning out badly with parents who have such disdain for our educational system.
propaganda: Information that is spead for the purpose of promoting some cause.
Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda. At its root, the denotation of propaganda is 'to propagate (actively spread) a philosophy or point of view'. The most common use of the term (historically) is in political contexts; in particular to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments or political groups.
For instance Patriotism or the confidence in authority and state. You assumed it to be negative but it is something that is served to us purposely or not. It has it's uses as it gives coherence to the populace but it also gives a certain slant on information. I am in fact a socialist so your criticism of that is inane. Kansas and it's reluctance to teach evolution is propaganda but so is a lot of choices in how it teaches certain issues such as WW I, the war of 1812 etc... All of it plays into creating a certain view of the world. Namely of the primacy of America in history. Which is propaganda.
As for the rote memorization and other teaching methods, I hate to burst your bubble, but some things are a pain in the ass to learn, and the best way to do it is to memorize it. If you think that memorization doesn't serve an educational function, please don't ever sing the alphabet song to your kid. That kind of thing is way too rigorous. Don't teach them to spell, either, I guess they'll just pick it up through, I dunno, sleeping with a book under their pillow and absorbing it through osmosis I guess.
Hate to burst your bubble but memorization isn't the best way to learn. Do you want to memorize the ATP->ADP pathway or would it be more beneficial to know why? Want to memorize the events leading up to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or would it be more useful to know why? For basic stuff rote memorization is good. For more advanced ideas knowing why is better. If you don't ask "Why" you rarely get a "why" in k-12. Often the teacher you have doesn't know the "why" either.
Here's a thought: Public education was never intended to be the be-all and end-all of a child's education. You are supposed to be (gasp!) a partner in your child's education. If there's something you think your kid needs to learn that the school isn't teaching them, you are supposed to teach them. People who drop their kids off in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, and expect all of their educational needs to be met with no fuss and no muss are idiots, and there are a depressing number of those people around now.
The only point I was rebutting is that school is primarily about learning to learn. It isn't. Your entire post is tangential to this. They don't teach you how to learn. They throw things at you and hope it sticks. The purpose of it is to keep you busy while your parents work. Socializing you is a benefit too as you pointed out but my post centered only on denying that school teaches you how to learn. "good" teachers will attempt to make you gain critical thinking and bad ones will throw stuff at you and hope it sticks. This system has been in a slow slide and I do not think "private" education is the fix. There needs to be a bigger focus on school at a financial level as well as a focus on it from a cultural perspective since in common adolescent culture school is a negative place. Parents participation would help, but popular media should stop portraying the studious as socially inept mo
School is most importantly about learning to learn.
Not really, your retention level is low. They don't really teach critical thinking until college/university. Before then it's rote memorization unless you were fortunate to find a "good" teacher. Grade school, middle school, and high school is much more about keeping your kids busy while you worked and giving the kids a good early dose of propaganda and start them on a career path. They may learn stuff too but chances are it wasn't taught in a way they'd really retain much.
The last one being fairly comprehensive. I personally don't see whats wrong with most of the suits but they have some parity with Lik Sang in my eyes.
Also the N64 was as much hubris as the PS3. They were one of the primary manufactures of game carts so they profited more from using the carts rather then CD's since they didn't press CD's. Even the mini-Rom employed in the GC. While PS3 goes bluray to help Sony's format and line Sony's pockets with extra licensing fees.
Much of the criticism of Sony and MS that works it's way into Console rants is also old news. Ninetendo is like a friend of mine. When she was young thin and attractive she was a total bitch. But in the last 10 years she's gotten fat, learned her lesson, and has become a genuinely good person. Nintendo was a bully, got smacked, learned their lesson. They've been good now. Give them 3 years and we may hear of Nintendo's root-kit equivalent.
While I would agree that Microsoft isn't better than Sony, Nintendo's faults are comparatively minor. They censored games during the NES/SNES times, and they forced games to not come out on other consoles during that time. But other than that, I can't remember a lot of bad things they did, especially not during the last decade or so.
The first run NES was a piece of crap hardware they were forced to recall. If you don't like DRM Ninetendo has had it since the NES (pretty mild lock out pins). For a time any company could only release 5 games a year irregardless of quality. During the NES/SNES era they were no better then Sony in regards to arrogance. If you wanted to sell games you had to play by their rules they were fairly arbitrary in their censorship and demands before licencing. It bit them in the ass with the N64 and they've atoned since. They also litigated third party unlicenced vendors into oblivion similiar to what Sony did to Lik Sang.
5: Single most important reason why user-generated content is a loser -- because if they could do a better job than a random program, they'd be doing it for money.
Right the user maps for warcraft 3 and all the mods for FPS's all crap. Counter strike.. crap. Doom TC's Crap. Team Fortress crap. Capture the flag in quake. Crap. DOTA, who plays that. Defence maps crap. Yeah user generated content is terrible.
User contend is what drives youtube, what drives most FPS's and even blizzard RTS's or never winter nights. There is a wealth of creative people who may not want to do it full time and thus they make things like Planescape clone from neverwinter nights. The success of failure of the PS3 will not determine the size of your penis so you stop with the numbered sentences that say "I have an illogical emotional investment in or against a piece of hardware and the company behind it."
Not allowing 2D games on the U.S. PS1 or PS2 except for sequels or classics collections. FUD against Sega Dreamcast. The XCP rootkit. DVDs with ARccOS copy authentication that failed even on some Sony brand players. Exploding laptop batteries. Killing Lik-Sang. Astroturf blogging. Read More...
Wow thats quiet a rap sheet, fortunately Microsoft is much bet... wait minute. Fortunate Nintendo is much... the point seems moot. With MS being a massive predatory monopolistic giant and Nintendo having a similiarly striped history you must opt for the wonder swan?
As for your bandit example, well, in a simulation the value of removing bandits would depend on the number of bandits present. It seems like you are still thinking in terms of static content with static spawn points. That is not what I'm going for. In a sim-driven game, once you killed enough bandits near North Rend, there wouldn't be any more bandits near North Rend! This would have knock-on effects in the sim, more goods would flow in prompting lower prices, while bandit hunters would leave, perhaps leaving an opening for some PC banditry. With no more bandit hunters in North Rend, eventually the bandits would move back in.
In a situation like this, it would be much more difficult for players to find the optimal strategy for a given situation because all situations would be unique. Instead of reading a FAQ and doing exactly what it says, players would have to think on their feet.
There are more munchkins then RP'ers. if grinding bandits is profitable (in money, xp, or reputation) then they will be grinded to nothing (see UO in the beggining) if not then they will be ignored and all your work will be for naught.
The reason scripted events, set spawn rates and the semi-static world are popular is because it's easier to play balance by a few orders of magnitude then a algorithmic world. And it's easier to fix probelms. Your suggestiosn did happen inUO, made the game umplayable and they went to the current static model.
This game, beyond most, incredibly irks me. I put up with a lot of marginalizing and foolishness from video games and plots... but Heavenly Sword seems, to me, the pinnacle of what I hate about female protagonists in games. Here we have the finest example of hyper-sexualizing women in games. A woman, barely 100 pounds, swinging weapons of ungodly size and weight and crushing countless minions. Does she cover herself in protective armor to shield herself from the damaging blows of foes? Of course not, she's a woman... she wears a couple bands of fabric covering her nipples and her crotch. She's petite, nimble, sexy and a total badass too... not to mention she has the flamboyant red hair of many female video game leads.
Well then again Male leads are similiarly shallow. See Dante from devil may cry who is pretty close to Leon in RE4 who resembles Raiden from MGS2 etc... Squall is like Cloud who resembles every strong but silent type. the protagonist from GOW resembels every barbarian roid monster in existance.
There are vanishingly little few arch types that appears in video games male or female. You minus well complaing about HP bars and the unquity of crates.
The other sticking point is that anyone who's followed the genre for more than a couple years knows the popular games are stagnating to a degree. And anyone who has any appreciable knowledge of the genre knows they've been stuck for more than 10 years -- all the most popular games are still pretty much derivatives of Diku, itself not a very big step away from D&D. One would more accurately say that massmogs have been largely stagnant since the first bastard child of Gygax and Bartle.
You can level the same accusation against every genre. Jrpg's have been the same old save the world trip for a decade. FPS have been the same old kill things in slo mo for a decade. Crpg's have been the same all munkin those stats and pick the pre typed reply for about a decade. Side scrollers have been side scroller sfor a decade (Odin sphere vs SOTN). etc...
People like those archtypes. Innovation != fun. Mixing new and exciting things into a game that requires 2-3 years to make and multi millions of dollars is pretty dangerous. It'll likely be mroe of small low risk ventures like progress quest or what not making the innovations which slowly trickly into the main players.
If each shard is a simulation, they will develop differently. And by generic, I mean not specific. In the example I give, instead of using the same exact NPCs for each quest, the game would look for existing NPCs that fit the criteria for the quest. The game play is not generic. Get it?
So what if only one guy can overthrow the king? In a system like I describe, someone else could then overthrow the PC who overthrew the king. Or an NPC could. Not everyone will ever get a chance to play out all the quests. You won't even know the specific quests from stuff just happening because of the simulation.
It seems you want a medievil fantasy world simulator. It's be more algorithmic then scripted. But the changes are small. What's the difference between going to shady bar #13 in city #46a-bb2 and getting a quest or flying to North Rend and getting a quest from the shaddy bar there? well the difference is the cities beceom more generic. Why should I ever go to north rend if all the quests are available here? What are the perks of being king? you have to stop dungeon crawling and spend all your time administrating and collecting taxes? or would it just be a resource provider. King entitle you to 30 gold every months etc.. A set up like the latter already exists in games like EVE. Control an area, derive resources. Want to be king, become CEO of your corp and expand yoru terrortory.
There are a lot of touches you could introduce I suppose. Like bandits around northrend would likely have more then one person who wants them gone. So you can have multiple people with different flavor text give you exactly the same quest. But you multiply the work required to fill a MMORPG linearly. If each quest can be given by 2-8 different NPCs you now have to write that much mro eflavor text. It wouldn't matter at all unless the reward was different then people would just go with the highest reward invalidating all your effort. If they had the same reward then there is no difference and the creator just multiplied his work for nothing. If you make quest like "Bandit of lvl 20-24 give X quest" there is still no functional difference from making it "Skylar the quick in The stout Pig in centeral Northrend" and "Bandit of lvl 20-24 in any seedy bar". Except less flavor.
would love to see a game where you could start a merchant empire, overthrow a king, or build a village
The problem is only 1 person per server can overthrow any particular king. So scripting a plot even like that for 2 dozen people requiring 2 or 3 people to script is not cost effective. Buildign a merchant empire (EVE) or a village (EQ2, UO) have been done.
Every server would develop differently. Developers wouldn't write static content, but would instead script dynamic content that would draw from the present game world instead of shoe-horning new plots into every instance. For instance, rather than making quests that use the same NPCs, existing NPCs with the right characteristics would be used every time the quest was given. Rather than use the same locations, generic locations such as "any lower class bar" could be specified, and the quest might be activated any time the PC went into such a location.
I'm pretty certain making the game more generic is not a good way to add difference to a server. I'm not aware of any great demand for each shard to be significantly different.
Most new monitors are LCDS. LCD's are generally backlit and black is achieved by having all the pixels opaque. So wouldn't black cause a higher power usage? or just break even?
I got the impression from some of the news stories that two professional poker players barely beat out the machine.
I have a sneaking suspicion that, for the vast majority of players, the computer is gonna kick your ass quite handily.
For the same reasons, I suspect that everyone who wasn't at the level of Kasparov would have gotten their asses handed to them in a game of chess against older versions of computers which couldn't yet beat him.
This, of course, begs the question of how long it will take for the on-line casinos to start putting poker playing bots into the mix to skew the odds even further to the house. I mean, if you have a computer program which will beat everyone else, why not just dial it down so it only wins 30% of the time or so and nobody will be any wiser.
Cheers
The house takes a Rake. They don't care much if you win or lose so long as there is enough action going on. They employ players to encourage action and attract players vs to take the players money. Having Phil Laak under your employ would attract players and his style would encourage bets. You'll end up making mroe then the portion phil would pay back to you for backing him.
If you're playing cards in Hold'em, against decent players, you WILL lose.
Hold'em is all about betting - if, when, and how much. And THAT you determine by the behavior of your opponent. It's not a strategy game, but a psychological exercise./i>
Likely pointed out by dozens, but it's about math and psychology. Once you have a good grasp of the stastistic portion then a grasp of the psychological portion improves your game. at hihg levels each player can computer pot odds, implied odds etc.. so just a good grasp of the stastistics don't help. Perhaps before Brunson published his book, a good grasp of the math and lack of tells or good psychology and good acting would be enough to be a high level player. Today you need both since all the high level players have a good grasp of the math.
one person per building around per 5-6 years. as i said before, you probably didnt read, the buildings and demographic from occupation to age and habits in this 10-15 000 population area are almost identical. 7 people dying from cancer in a year in the same building is phenomenonal. there are no "random chance" occurences recorded in this area a prior. whence do i know ? because this has been the talk of whole city for a long while.
Your story is meaningless because there is no control, no double blind, no anything. You have a populationw hich X happened to but nothign to compare it against no histories no data to draw any significant interpretation. You have 1 case study in confirmation bias perhaps.
now, the point is, i moved in this neighborhood when i was 4.5, and i grew up playing around in here, there and right next to that apartment block, where one of my family's long time friends and their son who is a long time friend (since we were born) live.
i can assure you that there are almost nothing that will affect the entire building changed there in the last 25 years.
cell tower is comfortably far from me. so no need to move. but, my friend's parents have started to feel ill and observed irregularities after tower was erected at next building, and they moved out to another city soon after. they are fine now.
It's called a negative placebo effect. They coudl have errected a simple tower with no power and your friends parents would have beene xactly the same. Or so TFA strongly suggest.
unfortunately i cant trust statistics, law, courts, common belief or anything else to work out their common slow mechanics, that is a matter of life and death. Apparently more so for other people around here too, noone is accepting any cell towers in any place near them. So, im safe as far as im concerned.
So you would prefer if no one drove? or rode in a plane? no one went to see a doctor, had an operation, went swimming etc... all rleate to life and death. All related to stats, law, courts, common belief etc... What a bad belief system.
Yes, a somewhat inflationary economy is a good thing. And if it were only 4% per year, that would be manageable, though ideally it should be a bit lower.
But the parent poster was right that the current administration has created a wildly inflationary economy which is just as dangerous as a deflationary economy. If you watch the trends in currency exchange, you'll notice that the dollar has been losing roughly 10% per year to the euro and pound. This is no doubt due to the massive amount of debt being incurred for the war in Iraq/Afganistan. As an investor, I've stopped investing in the US markets. Even what are considered to be good returns aren't as much as sitting on euros and pounds. An offshore savings account earning 1% per year will likely have out-performed most portfolios of investors in the US, and at a significantly lower (read: zero) risk.
Of course this isn't due to havign an unbacked currency but instead due to massive debt incurred due to some poor foreign policy decisions and some poor economic decisions.
Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board. http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX2/index.htm
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Hmmm...
Look at the quality of hardware. A computer circa 1990 would be heavy, lots of metal, durable, and ussually higher quality in the materials and workmanship. Today Computers are flimsy, have the same or higher fail rate, and are made from elss material with poorer workmanship.
In general the same thing happening to Cars happen to Computers. They are cheaper because manufacturing advances have dropped the cost of manufacturing. They are also flimsier and generally less well made. They may contain better technology but the amoutn of effort and resources that go into one has been reduced thus the price has been reduced. A common consumer grade car has gone down in price after adjustment for inflation over it's corresponding version 40 years ago. Ditto with computers, although the rate of change is greater.
Slashdot Mirror
Most Blizzard RTS's have a speed option you can adjust with the + and - key to slow down stop or resume action. So Single player SC 2 might be okay. But yeah if you can't multi task you will be permanantely dominated in all multiplaye rgames.
But Blizzard's graphics teams are total rubbish!! Have you not played anything else they've made? Starcraft came out in 1998 and looked out-of-date even then, with its 3-frame sprite animations. Warcraft 3 is a visual disaster. World of Warcraft looks hilariously bad in terms of graphical fidelity. N64 Zelda games use about as many polygons per character.
compare War 3 to it's contempararies or Sc or WOW to it's and you'll find that despite the graphics being a bit behind it aged better due to better art direction. EQ2 had the best and shiniest graphics at launch and it went with a photo realistic and right now it's looks dated while WOW went with a stylized art direction which leans on graphic glitz less and thus ages better.
Total War seems to do this a bit. I played the Shogun game a bit and watched the demo for Medieval sputter and wheeze on my computer. I like how you are ordering about formations rather than individual units along with the modeling of morale and courage. Of course, Starcraft isn't that kind of game. It looks like Starcraft 2 is shooting to just be a graphical update of the original game. I suppose that's fair. There are more than enough fans who will pay full price for exactly that and say "thank you" to boot. But I won't be surprised if the AI is every bit as dumb as it was ten years ago.
Blizzard purposely provides less "auto-cast" options to encourage micromanagement. It's a keystone of their game style and it's the divide between C&C/TA and Blizzard RTS's. It means there is a huge skill divide that does not exist in the "mass rush" style games like Supcom/TA/C&C/most RTS's. It's pretty much why a lot of skilled players prefer War 3/ SC to the list above. Thats why the total population stillplaying SupCom/TA/C&C all is less then half of the active player sin war 3.
The pathing AI is much better so you have less of the "running around" you had in SC or War 2. but ti's still nto perfect and it atcually become a strategy to make bases confuse th epathing. In SC it allowed you to take on an arbitrary number of melee units of the player didn't tell them to atatck the impeding object. In war 3 after 2 secnds of not beign able to atatck due to pathing they attack the nearest object which is a improvement. I suspect SC 2 will be similiar.
If you dont' like micro I guess SC 2 won't be for you.
As much as I love the Starcraft/Command and Conquer games, I won't buy them. At least not for several years. I was sorely disappointed that Command and Conquer 3 wouldn't run on a one year old top of the line computer (and I returned it to the store). PC games are ridiculous, as far as requirements go. I'm looking forward to buying Starcraft 2 from the bargain bin in a few years when I own a PC capable of playing it.
C&C3 was made by someone else so beign disappointe din EA is unrelated to SC2. And you'll likely have to wait a while. War 3 didn't hit those bins for a good 5 years. The warchest is still a good $50 CND. Blizzard games are known to be in high demand for a long tiem after launch. Also if you plan to get into online play, in 5 years you'll be woefully behind the curve. But from the tone of your post I don't think your into competative online play.
I am not anonymous, I agree with his very valid criticism. Satire has been one of the most effective forms of social critique. It sticks in the minds of common folk and it jabs the people in power. Is it any coincidence that only in abusive pseudo fascists states are there laws forbidding you to infringe on the "dignity" of a public figure? It's because it's effective thus they want it removed.
What "dose of propaganda" are you referring to? Are you one of those religious nuts that refuses to believe in evolution? Or just a malcontent who things schools are sanctioned by the government in trying to turn all of our children into Socialists? Either way, it's no wonder kids are turning out badly with parents who have such disdain for our educational system.
Look up the word propaganda.
propaganda
[ dictionary: glossary ] [ prahp - ah - gan - dah ]
propaganda: Information that is spead for the purpose of promoting some cause.
Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda. At its root, the denotation of propaganda is 'to propagate (actively spread) a philosophy or point of view'. The most common use of the term (historically) is in political contexts; in particular to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments or political groups.
For instance Patriotism or the confidence in authority and state. You assumed it to be negative but it is something that is served to us purposely or not. It has it's uses as it gives coherence to the populace but it also gives a certain slant on information. I am in fact a socialist so your criticism of that is inane. Kansas and it's reluctance to teach evolution is propaganda but so is a lot of choices in how it teaches certain issues such as WW I, the war of 1812 etc... All of it plays into creating a certain view of the world. Namely of the primacy of America in history. Which is propaganda.
As for the rote memorization and other teaching methods, I hate to burst your bubble, but some things are a pain in the ass to learn, and the best way to do it is to memorize it. If you think that memorization doesn't serve an educational function, please don't ever sing the alphabet song to your kid. That kind of thing is way too rigorous. Don't teach them to spell, either, I guess they'll just pick it up through, I dunno, sleeping with a book under their pillow and absorbing it through osmosis I guess.
Hate to burst your bubble but memorization isn't the best way to learn. Do you want to memorize the ATP->ADP pathway or would it be more beneficial to know why? Want to memorize the events leading up to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or would it be more useful to know why? For basic stuff rote memorization is good. For more advanced ideas knowing why is better. If you don't ask "Why" you rarely get a "why" in k-12. Often the teacher you have doesn't know the "why" either.
Here's a thought: Public education was never intended to be the be-all and end-all of a child's education. You are supposed to be (gasp!) a partner in your child's education. If there's something you think your kid needs to learn that the school isn't teaching them, you are supposed to teach them. People who drop their kids off in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, and expect all of their educational needs to be met with no fuss and no muss are idiots, and there are a depressing number of those people around now.
The only point I was rebutting is that school is primarily about learning to learn. It isn't. Your entire post is tangential to this. They don't teach you how to learn. They throw things at you and hope it sticks. The purpose of it is to keep you busy while your parents work. Socializing you is a benefit too as you pointed out but my post centered only on denying that school teaches you how to learn. "good" teachers will attempt to make you gain critical thinking and bad ones will throw stuff at you and hope it sticks. This system has been in a slow slide and I do not think "private" education is the fix. There needs to be a bigger focus on school at a financial level as well as a focus on it from a cultural perspective since in common adolescent culture school is a negative place. Parents participation would help, but popular media should stop portraying the studious as socially inept mo
School is most importantly about learning to learn.
Not really, your retention level is low. They don't really teach critical thinking until college/university. Before then it's rote memorization unless you were fortunate to find a "good" teacher. Grade school, middle school, and high school is much more about keeping your kids busy while you worked and giving the kids a good early dose of propaganda and start them on a career path. They may learn stuff too but chances are it wasn't taught in a way they'd really retain much.
Never heard of that. Sounds interesting. Any sources?
Even so, as I said, all of the things you've mentioned happened a long time ago, mostly during the NES and SNES era.
here and here.
The last one being fairly comprehensive. I personally don't see whats wrong with most of the suits but they have some parity with Lik Sang in my eyes.
Also the N64 was as much hubris as the PS3. They were one of the primary manufactures of game carts so they profited more from using the carts rather then CD's since they didn't press CD's. Even the mini-Rom employed in the GC. While PS3 goes bluray to help Sony's format and line Sony's pockets with extra licensing fees.
Much of the criticism of Sony and MS that works it's way into Console rants is also old news. Ninetendo is like a friend of mine. When she was young thin and attractive she was a total bitch. But in the last 10 years she's gotten fat, learned her lesson, and has become a genuinely good person. Nintendo was a bully, got smacked, learned their lesson. They've been good now. Give them 3 years and we may hear of Nintendo's root-kit equivalent.
While I would agree that Microsoft isn't better than Sony, Nintendo's faults are comparatively minor. They censored games during the NES/SNES times, and they forced games to not come out on other consoles during that time. But other than that, I can't remember a lot of bad things they did, especially not during the last decade or so.
The first run NES was a piece of crap hardware they were forced to recall. If you don't like DRM Ninetendo has had it since the NES (pretty mild lock out pins). For a time any company could only release 5 games a year irregardless of quality. During the NES/SNES era they were no better then Sony in regards to arrogance. If you wanted to sell games you had to play by their rules they were fairly arbitrary in their censorship and demands before licencing. It bit them in the ass with the N64 and they've atoned since. They also litigated third party unlicenced vendors into oblivion similiar to what Sony did to Lik Sang.
5: Single most important reason why user-generated content is a loser -- because if they could do a better job than a random program, they'd be doing it for money.
Right the user maps for warcraft 3 and all the mods for FPS's all crap. Counter strike.. crap. Doom TC's Crap. Team Fortress crap. Capture the flag in quake. Crap. DOTA, who plays that. Defence maps crap. Yeah user generated content is terrible.
User contend is what drives youtube, what drives most FPS's and even blizzard RTS's or never winter nights. There is a wealth of creative people who may not want to do it full time and thus they make things like Planescape clone from neverwinter nights. The success of failure of the PS3 will not determine the size of your penis so you stop with the numbered sentences that say "I have an illogical emotional investment in or against a piece of hardware and the company behind it."
Not allowing 2D games on the U.S. PS1 or PS2 except for sequels or classics collections. FUD against Sega Dreamcast. The XCP rootkit. DVDs with ARccOS copy authentication that failed even on some Sony brand players. Exploding laptop batteries. Killing Lik-Sang. Astroturf blogging. Read More...
Wow thats quiet a rap sheet, fortunately Microsoft is much bet... wait minute. Fortunate Nintendo is much... the point seems moot. With MS being a massive predatory monopolistic giant and Nintendo having a similiarly striped history you must opt for the wonder swan?
As for your bandit example, well, in a simulation the value of removing bandits would depend on the number of bandits present. It seems like you are still thinking in terms of static content with static spawn points. That is not what I'm going for. In a sim-driven game, once you killed enough bandits near North Rend, there wouldn't be any more bandits near North Rend! This would have knock-on effects in the sim, more goods would flow in prompting lower prices, while bandit hunters would leave, perhaps leaving an opening for some PC banditry. With no more bandit hunters in North Rend, eventually the bandits would move back in.
In a situation like this, it would be much more difficult for players to find the optimal strategy for a given situation because all situations would be unique. Instead of reading a FAQ and doing exactly what it says, players would have to think on their feet.
There are more munchkins then RP'ers. if grinding bandits is profitable (in money, xp, or reputation) then they will be grinded to nothing (see UO in the beggining) if not then they will be ignored and all your work will be for naught.
The reason scripted events, set spawn rates and the semi-static world are popular is because it's easier to play balance by a few orders of magnitude then a algorithmic world. And it's easier to fix probelms. Your suggestiosn did happen inUO, made the game umplayable and they went to the current static model.
This game, beyond most, incredibly irks me. I put up with a lot of marginalizing and foolishness from video games and plots... but Heavenly Sword seems, to me, the pinnacle of what I hate about female protagonists in games. Here we have the finest example of hyper-sexualizing women in games. A woman, barely 100 pounds, swinging weapons of ungodly size and weight and crushing countless minions. Does she cover herself in protective armor to shield herself from the damaging blows of foes? Of course not, she's a woman... she wears a couple bands of fabric covering her nipples and her crotch. She's petite, nimble, sexy and a total badass too... not to mention she has the flamboyant red hair of many female video game leads.
Well then again Male leads are similiarly shallow. See Dante from devil may cry who is pretty close to Leon in RE4 who resembles Raiden from MGS2 etc... Squall is like Cloud who resembles every strong but silent type. the protagonist from GOW resembels every barbarian roid monster in existance.
There are vanishingly little few arch types that appears in video games male or female. You minus well complaing about HP bars and the unquity of crates.
The other sticking point is that anyone who's followed the genre for more than a couple years knows the popular games are stagnating to a degree. And anyone who has any appreciable knowledge of the genre knows they've been stuck for more than 10 years -- all the most popular games are still pretty much derivatives of Diku, itself not a very big step away from D&D. One would more accurately say that massmogs have been largely stagnant since the first bastard child of Gygax and Bartle.
You can level the same accusation against every genre. Jrpg's have been the same old save the world trip for a decade. FPS have been the same old kill things in slo mo for a decade. Crpg's have been the same all munkin those stats and pick the pre typed reply for about a decade. Side scrollers have been side scroller sfor a decade (Odin sphere vs SOTN). etc...
People like those archtypes. Innovation != fun. Mixing new and exciting things into a game that requires 2-3 years to make and multi millions of dollars is pretty dangerous. It'll likely be mroe of small low risk ventures like progress quest or what not making the innovations which slowly trickly into the main players.
All eve needs is more players and an ever growing number of star systems to explore.......
but thats just my opinion.
And maybe less accusations of a corrupt developer.
If each shard is a simulation, they will develop differently. And by generic, I mean not specific. In the example I give, instead of using the same exact NPCs for each quest, the game would look for existing NPCs that fit the criteria for the quest. The game play is not generic. Get it?
So what if only one guy can overthrow the king? In a system like I describe, someone else could then overthrow the PC who overthrew the king. Or an NPC could. Not everyone will ever get a chance to play out all the quests. You won't even know the specific quests from stuff just happening because of the simulation.
It seems you want a medievil fantasy world simulator. It's be more algorithmic then scripted. But the changes are small. What's the difference between going to shady bar #13 in city #46a-bb2 and getting a quest or flying to North Rend and getting a quest from the shaddy bar there? well the difference is the cities beceom more generic. Why should I ever go to north rend if all the quests are available here? What are the perks of being king? you have to stop dungeon crawling and spend all your time administrating and collecting taxes? or would it just be a resource provider. King entitle you to 30 gold every months etc.. A set up like the latter already exists in games like EVE. Control an area, derive resources. Want to be king, become CEO of your corp and expand yoru terrortory.
There are a lot of touches you could introduce I suppose. Like bandits around northrend would likely have more then one person who wants them gone. So you can have multiple people with different flavor text give you exactly the same quest. But you multiply the work required to fill a MMORPG linearly. If each quest can be given by 2-8 different NPCs you now have to write that much mro eflavor text. It wouldn't matter at all unless the reward was different then people would just go with the highest reward invalidating all your effort. If they had the same reward then there is no difference and the creator just multiplied his work for nothing. If you make quest like "Bandit of lvl 20-24 give X quest" there is still no functional difference from making it "Skylar the quick in The stout Pig in centeral Northrend" and "Bandit of lvl 20-24 in any seedy bar". Except less flavor.
would love to see a game where you could start a merchant empire, overthrow a king, or build a village
The problem is only 1 person per server can overthrow any particular king. So scripting a plot even like that for 2 dozen people requiring 2 or 3 people to script is not cost effective. Buildign a merchant empire (EVE) or a village (EQ2, UO) have been done.
Every server would develop differently. Developers wouldn't write static content, but would instead script dynamic content that would draw from the present game world instead of shoe-horning new plots into every instance. For instance, rather than making quests that use the same NPCs, existing NPCs with the right characteristics would be used every time the quest was given. Rather than use the same locations, generic locations such as "any lower class bar" could be specified, and the quest might be activated any time the PC went into such a location.
I'm pretty certain making the game more generic is not a good way to add difference to a server. I'm not aware of any great demand for each shard to be significantly different.
Most new monitors are LCDS. LCD's are generally backlit and black is achieved by having all the pixels opaque. So wouldn't black cause a higher power usage? or just break even?
I got the impression from some of the news stories that two professional poker players barely beat out the machine.
I have a sneaking suspicion that, for the vast majority of players, the computer is gonna kick your ass quite handily.
For the same reasons, I suspect that everyone who wasn't at the level of Kasparov would have gotten their asses handed to them in a game of chess against older versions of computers which couldn't yet beat him.
This, of course, begs the question of how long it will take for the on-line casinos to start putting poker playing bots into the mix to skew the odds even further to the house. I mean, if you have a computer program which will beat everyone else, why not just dial it down so it only wins 30% of the time or so and nobody will be any wiser.
Cheers
The house takes a Rake. They don't care much if you win or lose so long as there is enough action going on. They employ players to encourage action and attract players vs to take the players money. Having Phil Laak under your employ would attract players and his style would encourage bets. You'll end up making mroe then the portion phil would pay back to you for backing him.
If you're playing cards in Hold'em, against decent players, you WILL lose.
Hold'em is all about betting - if, when, and how much. And THAT you determine by the behavior of your opponent. It's not a strategy game, but a psychological exercise./i>
Likely pointed out by dozens, but it's about math and psychology. Once you have a good grasp of the stastistic portion then a grasp of the psychological portion improves your game. at hihg levels each player can computer pot odds, implied odds etc.. so just a good grasp of the stastistics don't help. Perhaps before Brunson published his book, a good grasp of the math and lack of tells or good psychology and good acting would be enough to be a high level player. Today you need both since all the high level players have a good grasp of the math.
one person per building around per 5-6 years. as i said before, you probably didnt read, the buildings and demographic from occupation to age and habits in this 10-15 000 population area are almost identical. 7 people dying from cancer in a year in the same building is phenomenonal. there are no "random chance" occurences recorded in this area a prior. whence do i know ? because this has been the talk of whole city for a long while.
Your story is meaningless because there is no control, no double blind, no anything. You have a populationw hich X happened to but nothign to compare it against no histories no data to draw any significant interpretation. You have 1 case study in confirmation bias perhaps.
now, the point is, i moved in this neighborhood when i was 4.5, and i grew up playing around in here, there and right next to that apartment block, where one of my family's long time friends and their son who is a long time friend (since we were born) live.
i can assure you that there are almost nothing that will affect the entire building changed there in the last 25 years.
cell tower is comfortably far from me. so no need to move. but, my friend's parents have started to feel ill and observed irregularities after tower was erected at next building, and they moved out to another city soon after. they are fine now.
It's called a negative placebo effect. They coudl have errected a simple tower with no power and your friends parents would have beene xactly the same. Or so TFA strongly suggest.
unfortunately i cant trust statistics, law, courts, common belief or anything else to work out their common slow mechanics, that is a matter of life and death. Apparently more so for other people around here too, noone is accepting any cell towers in any place near them. So, im safe as far as im concerned.
So you would prefer if no one drove? or rode in a plane? no one went to see a doctor, had an operation, went swimming etc... all rleate to life and death. All related to stats, law, courts, common belief etc... What a bad belief system.
Yes, a somewhat inflationary economy is a good thing. And if it were only 4% per year, that would be manageable, though ideally it should be a bit lower.
But the parent poster was right that the current administration has created a wildly inflationary economy which is just as dangerous as a deflationary economy. If you watch the trends in currency exchange, you'll notice that the dollar has been losing roughly 10% per year to the euro and pound. This is no doubt due to the massive amount of debt being incurred for the war in Iraq/Afganistan. As an investor, I've stopped investing in the US markets. Even what are considered to be good returns aren't as much as sitting on euros and pounds. An offshore savings account earning 1% per year will likely have out-performed most portfolios of investors in the US, and at a significantly lower (read: zero) risk.
Of course this isn't due to havign an unbacked currency but instead due to massive debt incurred due to some poor foreign policy decisions and some poor economic decisions.
..of money for the software industry.
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Ok, I'll give you that, but can you explain why this is the opposite trend in the PC hardware industry?
Case in point, in 1992 I ordered what was then a top of the line PC:
* 486 - 66 MHz / 8 Meg memory
* 240 Meg hard drive.
* No CDROM
* No sound card.
* No networking or modem.
* Diamond Stealth 64 video card (Vesa local bus)
* Cheap case with floppy.
* 14 inch VGA muti-sync monitor.
* Mouse/keyboard.
* $2,500.00
This past Sunday 7/26 I just purchased my new baby:
* Intel D975XBX2 (Bad AXE) mobo with a load of stuff on board.
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D975XBX
* Intel QX6700 (Core 2 quad core 2.66GHz)
* 850 Watt SLI power supply.
* EVGA GeForce 8800GTX 768Meg video card.
* 4 Gig DDR2 800 MHz RAM (PC2 6400).
* 320 Gig SATA 7200 RPM drive.
* Lian-Li PC1200B II case.
* 20X CD/DVD burner SATA.
* Windows Vista Ultimate.
* $2,800.00
Please tell me why inflation and rising development costs didn't have an effect on these prices?
As an engineer I can tell you that moving from the hardware technology of 1992 to 2007 was also "a lot of work" and required "a lot of resources" and "a lot of money". Yet based on inflation, I got a system that just crushed the older one into the ground.
Hmmm...
Look at the quality of hardware. A computer circa 1990 would be heavy, lots of metal, durable, and ussually higher quality in the materials and workmanship. Today Computers are flimsy, have the same or higher fail rate, and are made from elss material with poorer workmanship.
In general the same thing happening to Cars happen to Computers. They are cheaper because manufacturing advances have dropped the cost of manufacturing. They are also flimsier and generally less well made. They may contain better technology but the amoutn of effort and resources that go into one has been reduced thus the price has been reduced. A common consumer grade car has gone down in price after adjustment for inflation over it's corresponding version 40 years ago. Ditto with computers, although the rate of change is greater.