I don't remember it all that well, since I last played it when I was about 4, but ET for the Atari 2600 seemed to have ET walking around a field full of holes that he would fall into. Ocassionally, he could get back out of the holes. Usually not.
As is often the case, games are making some of the greatest demands on hardware. Many current games fill 300 or more MB by themselves, and right now I'm sitting on 225 MB with Mozilla, Word, and mIRC open.
To me the best gay character in a game is great, because it was completely unintentional. The character is Crassius Curio in the game Morrowind. He was intended to be a very lecherous, but straight character. However, there was a bug that caused him to give the dialogue for female players regardless of the character's actual gender. The result: he comes across as absolutely, flamingly gay.
The hands-on aspects of aiming and firing guns probably has nothing to do with FPS skills. On the other hand, I see a strong correlation between people who play FPS's and those who are able to effectively use cover in RL Laser Tag games.
I can think of better things to deter thieves than $18,000 portable objects. Unless they came equipped with weaponry. Then I could think of better things to make me feel safe in my home.
This sounds a lot like the main idea in the book "Beyond Contact" - rather than try to send aliens little pictures coded in radio (like a lot of reverse-SETI ideas) send them a description of a VM followed by lots of little programs.
This news is especially interesting in light of the conspiracy theories around the Xbox. Basically the idea is that the Xbox is a testbed/honeypot for palladium.
What if instead of choosing PPC for the Xbox2 and porting Windows, they first chose to port Windows. Perhaps Xbox2 is a testbed for Windows-on-PPC, subsidizing the cost for writing the port through console licensing and mitigating the risk that PPC won't achieve wide adoption. The payoff is being able to continue to market Windows as a standard platform for both the desktop and server if PPC gains wider adoption.
With.NET gaining ground, Windows apps will become cross-platform easily. It makes sense that MS would want its APIs to dominate on all hardware platforms. They don't really need an alliance with Intel anymore.
anything that pushes back Longhorn has to be considered a good thing. Longhorn will no doubt come with some compelling features that will make Linux a harder sell.
What should not be considered a good thing is emphasizing ideology over advancing the state of the art in OSes.
An interim release between XP service pack 2 and Longhorn indicates that Longhorn is going the way of Chicago and NT 5.0. Those, if you'll recall, were overly-hyped software releases that were delayed... and delayed. And delayed.
I can only recommend what I learned to program with growing up. Unfortunately, they're not all that easy to find anymore.
I think HyperCard was the ideal introduction to programming. You some simple GUI apps in a WYSIWYG way, and every kid who learns to use it immediately grasps its potential for making games. It requires 0 programming knowledge up-front, but as kids start wanting to do more elaborate things, they can jump right in to the HyperTalk language, whose syntax is more English-like than any programming language I've seen since.
Take a look at this sample code:
on mouseUp
answer "Should I add up the first N numbers?" with "Cancel" or "Continue"
if it = "Cancel" then
exit mouseUp
end if
ask "Add up the numbers from 1 to what?"
put it into TheLargestNumber
put 0 into SumOfAllNumbers
put 1 into NumberToAdd
repeat TheLargestNumber times
add NumberToAdd to SumOfAllNumbers
add 1 to NumberToAdd
end repeat
answer "The sum is" && SumOfAllNumbers & "."
end mouseUp
Unfortunately, Apple has pretty much abandoned HyperCard.
The other language I learned with was QBasic, since it came free on DOS systems at that time. It's not a language to use for any serious purpose, but it makes a good language for kids to learn because it doesn't force the issue about functions, data types, objects, etc. up front. Kids can just learn those things as they go. It is also a big advantage to have high level things like graphics, music, random number generation, etc. as basic parts of the language not requiring external libraries or much knowedge of types, objects, functions, etc.
There are almost certainly other languages out there with similar advantages for first time users, such as Perl maybe (though it would need libraries for a lot of things built into QBasic.) Basically anything that requires no more than one line for a "hello world" program should fit the bill.
Just as important as the language is your role in teaching. Don't just drop the kid off with a manual, but don't teach it like a class, either. Just show him a few things like console i/o, for loops, and while loops. If he's really interested he'll churn out a library of little "games" with just those structures (plus random number generation.)
Avoid introducing concepts until he can see the use for them. I remember being very skeptical of arrays until I was trying to write a program that needed them. Generalizing that, I would present a programming challenge, and after he's chewed on it awhile, introduce the language feature that makes it possible.
1. Game company makes a popular franchise 2. Publisher/parent company decides too much profit is at stake to leave the franchise in the hands of the people who created it. 3. Quality goes down due to publisher interference. 4. Original talent quits in frustration.
Tomb Raider, Civilization, Ultima...
Maybe one day publishers will stop thinking they know how to develop games.
It's not clear to me that this does anything other than change the text string containing the name of the card. It seems under some conditions people get better overclocking, but that could easily be due to room temperatures and the like. Are there any particular features in the 5950 not present in the 5900?
What I want to see is a machine that operates carbon + electricty -> food in less labor and land area per calorie than farming plants.
No one would want to eat it now, especially not the organic farming fans (mmm... organic parasites, yum!), but don't forget we're multiplying exponentially still, and you can only pile on so much fertilizer.
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I don't remember it all that well, since I last played it when I was about 4, but ET for the Atari 2600 seemed to have ET walking around a field full of holes that he would fall into. Ocassionally, he could get back out of the holes. Usually not.
In my area there are two cable companies, as well as at least 2 satellite companies.
As is often the case, games are making some of the greatest demands on hardware. Many current games fill 300 or more MB by themselves, and right now I'm sitting on 225 MB with Mozilla, Word, and mIRC open.
To me the best gay character in a game is great, because it was completely unintentional. The character is Crassius Curio in the game Morrowind. He was intended to be a very lecherous, but straight character. However, there was a bug that caused him to give the dialogue for female players regardless of the character's actual gender. The result: he comes across as absolutely, flamingly gay.
The hands-on aspects of aiming and firing guns probably has nothing to do with FPS skills. On the other hand, I see a strong correlation between people who play FPS's and those who are able to effectively use cover in RL Laser Tag games.
This sounds like a lame excuse for MMOG developers.
Can't think outside the Everquest clone box? Blame the license and the fans.
I can think of better things to deter thieves than $18,000 portable objects. Unless they came equipped with weaponry. Then I could think of better things to make me feel safe in my home.
The goal isn't to get there. It's to get there and stay there. To do that, we first need to learn how to stay on the moon.
Mozilla seriously needs more threading. I hate not being able to interact with anything for a few seconds whenever a tab is loading in the background.
This sounds a lot like the main idea in the book "Beyond Contact" - rather than try to send aliens little pictures coded in radio (like a lot of reverse-SETI ideas) send them a description of a VM followed by lots of little programs.
This news is especially interesting in light of the conspiracy theories around the Xbox. Basically the idea is that the Xbox is a testbed/honeypot for palladium.
.NET gaining ground, Windows apps will become cross-platform easily. It makes sense that MS would want its APIs to dominate on all hardware platforms. They don't really need an alliance with Intel anymore.
What if instead of choosing PPC for the Xbox2 and porting Windows, they first chose to port Windows. Perhaps Xbox2 is a testbed for Windows-on-PPC, subsidizing the cost for writing the port through console licensing and mitigating the risk that PPC won't achieve wide adoption. The payoff is being able to continue to market Windows as a standard platform for both the desktop and server if PPC gains wider adoption.
With
anything that pushes back Longhorn has to be considered a good thing. Longhorn will no doubt come with some compelling features that will make Linux a harder sell.
What should not be considered a good thing is emphasizing ideology over advancing the state of the art in OSes.
An interim release between XP service pack 2 and Longhorn indicates that Longhorn is going the way of Chicago and NT 5.0. Those, if you'll recall, were overly-hyped software releases that were delayed ... and delayed. And delayed.
And renamed.
Chicago = Windows 95
NT 5.0 = Windows 2000
The book passages in question are from that fictional Wholly Remarkable Book, not the novels.
Wake me when someone writes a game in assembler and it still requires a 2GHz machine
You mean from cryonic freeze? That's how long it would take to do.
I can only recommend what I learned to program with growing up. Unfortunately, they're not all that easy to find anymore.
I think HyperCard was the ideal introduction to programming. You some simple GUI apps in a WYSIWYG way, and every kid who learns to use it immediately grasps its potential for making games. It requires 0 programming knowledge up-front, but as kids start wanting to do more elaborate things, they can jump right in to the HyperTalk language, whose syntax is more English-like than any programming language I've seen since.
Take a look at this sample code:
on mouseUp
answer "Should I add up the first N numbers?" with "Cancel" or "Continue"
if it = "Cancel" then
exit mouseUp
end if
ask "Add up the numbers from 1 to what?"
put it into TheLargestNumber
put 0 into SumOfAllNumbers
put 1 into NumberToAdd
repeat TheLargestNumber times
add NumberToAdd to SumOfAllNumbers
add 1 to NumberToAdd
end repeat
answer "The sum is" && SumOfAllNumbers & "."
end mouseUp
Unfortunately, Apple has pretty much abandoned HyperCard.
The other language I learned with was QBasic, since it came free on DOS systems at that time. It's not a language to use for any serious purpose, but it makes a good language for kids to learn because it doesn't force the issue about functions, data types, objects, etc. up front. Kids can just learn those things as they go. It is also a big advantage to have high level things like graphics, music, random number generation, etc. as basic parts of the language not requiring external libraries or much knowedge of types, objects, functions, etc.
There are almost certainly other languages out there with similar advantages for first time users, such as Perl maybe (though it would need libraries for a lot of things built into QBasic.) Basically anything that requires no more than one line for a "hello world" program should fit the bill.
Just as important as the language is your role in teaching. Don't just drop the kid off with a manual, but don't teach it like a class, either. Just show him a few things like console i/o, for loops, and while loops. If he's really interested he'll churn out a library of little "games" with just those structures (plus random number generation.)
Avoid introducing concepts until he can see the use for them. I remember being very skeptical of arrays until I was trying to write a program that needed them. Generalizing that, I would present a programming challenge, and after he's chewed on it awhile, introduce the language feature that makes it possible.
This seems to be a recurring pattern:
1. Game company makes a popular franchise
2. Publisher/parent company decides too much profit is at stake to leave the franchise in the hands of the people who created it.
3. Quality goes down due to publisher interference.
4. Original talent quits in frustration.
Tomb Raider, Civilization, Ultima...
Maybe one day publishers will stop thinking they know how to develop games.
There, Inc. seems like a very strange choice to develop a fighting simulation - all you do in their existing game is dance and buy clothes...
It will never be time for Linux on the desktop as long as there is any reason to ask end users to compile a kernel.
Forget vector units... I'd like to see multiplatform FPS's make proper use of MICE on PC ports. "Enter the Matrix", "Deus Ex 2" - I'm talking to you.
Is there a 64bit solution in development, or is this yet another project to keep our old hardware useful?
It seems to me that in the current marketplace there's more of a burden to make 64 bits useful.
It's not clear to me that this does anything other than change the text string containing the name of the card. It seems under some conditions people get better overclocking, but that could easily be due to room temperatures and the like. Are there any particular features in the 5950 not present in the 5900?
Dial-up can move about four bucks' worth of music downstream an hour.
Or by the RIAA's estimation, $20,000.
What I want to see is a machine that operates
carbon + electricty -> food
in less labor and land area per calorie than farming plants.
No one would want to eat it now, especially not the organic farming fans (mmm... organic parasites, yum!), but don't forget we're multiplying exponentially still, and you can only pile on so much fertilizer.
[quote]it seems anybody in the market for such a pricey system would demand 1GB Ram[/quote]
A better question is why anyone needs a 64 bit processor with less than 4GB RAM.