Just getting in a closer relation to Wikipedia is a good idea for google even without any plans to get some sort of control on the wikipedia project.
I noted recently, as wikipedia has reached a level of maturity where you can mostly rely on the information you get there, it's replacing (at least for myself) google as the no.1 query engine for some sort of information i need. Usually i use Wikipedia now for single word queries where i already know exactly what i'm looking for, while i use google for queries where i just have a few words relating to the searchtopic and have to open X result sites to find out which site will offer, or get me any closer, to the needed information. So basicly wikipedia is getting a serious competitor to google offering parts of the same product (information), even surpassing google for specific queries.
Once google offers to help the wikipedia project in seemingly altrustic ways it will a) Polish up it's company image. b) Send a message to it's investors that it keeps it's finger on the best information gathering technologie which is evolving and another message that they can fight MS on a second field now (encarta). c) Face less resistance from the community if they take further steps in working even closer together with wikipedia. d) Besides beeing fairly good known to some people (expecially on slashdot), wikipedia is currently still an underdog in the public perception, but one with very good chances of becoming a hot star. Always a good idea to stay in close contact to stars.
An example for c): Think of a wiki-button on google's mainsite, which maybe will only be available for queries where they already checked if wiki has some information about the searched topic. Doing that now would kill wiki because it could not handle the traffic and would get them a lot of bad press. But once they offer to pay for the traffic (which is quite cheap for them), it would seem fair to most of the people.
As wiki is a free projekt, certainly other companies could do the same thing, but in business it always pays of to be the first.
The big question now is if this will be a good or bad for wikipedia. Some points are obvious: 1. Wiki will have better bandwith and less financial troubles. 2. Googlelabs could probably help improving the quality of wikipedia 3. Despise some fears here i guess this will help keeping wikipedia adfree (as shown above google will profit from that deal without the need of doing ads directly on wikipages)
Also some obvious bad point: 1. The content of the wiki information would be kept on servers owned by a single company. Even when google is perceived as a nice company and other wikiservers would still exists, this is bad as it gives a single company more control of another information portal. Once wikipedia gains more public perception the bandwith and server needs can (not must) make wikipedia dependant on google. 2. Once a big company gets involved the usual vultures will smell the money. Expect wikispammers soon... (we all know that it would be hard to fight, for example, wiki-edit-scripts which work like ddos-attacks).
Despise the good points i'd prefer if wikipedia could stay independant. The best way would be if enough people would recognice wiki's worth by donating money to it.
I'm also in the EU and most game companies here are working exactly that way! Well here you're mostly shamed into doing overhours and not forced - but it leads to the same thing. And you usually earn less in this industry in the EU...
That's exactly what i do usually. Small games, Tic Tac Toe has even been one of them. Other games i did where Space Invaders (with circles attacking-didn't do sprites), Backgammon, a worm game, a wizard of war clone (that one took me longer than expected), mastermind (that was too short). Programming small games is great for learning something new, as you can usually put in the things you like to learn. You can use Graphics, Sound, Menüs, Fileoperations, Inputdevices, Parsers and so on.
With cost currently running away in the game industry, small companies will either supply niche markets (which are already very small) or they have to reduce theire costs by working together. Open Source is perfect for that.
Open source engines are not yet on the same level like the Doom Engine, but i can see no reason why they shouldn't mature like other os-libs did. What is left is content (which was mentioned several times already). My guess is that within the next years open source will come up with new solutions. For example AI which can extract animation and geometry data from webcammovies, basic texture libraries which are parameterized (make this skin darker, add some pimples). Also i guess that open source games will concentrate more on ideas which will capture players for a long time (simulations don't get outdated that fast).
Seeing TMBG was my first big concert i was at. Great to see they are now one of the bands fighting for a future that does not feel completly weird. I still think of music as something to have fun, to relax to enjoy, to be impressed by the artists - not of something that's only about money and comercial things.
There's been this service described in that book from John Brunner where people just could call and say whatever they wanted. The service guaranted only a single thing: someone would listen. Maybe something similar is the reason why people do write here: They hope someone will read it. Sort of a modern prayer;-)
Yes it really is a very good introduction. Unfortunatly last time i checked it, it wasn't up-to-date and it's not possible to follow the steps through as descriped with the current version of blender. Maybe someone did update it by now (some weeks ago since i tried it) - i really hope so.
First of all, there IS a settlers game for windows out there, since more than 4 years. It's was done by funatics development in strong cooperation with Klaus Teuber (the creator of catan). There's also a version of this game for the PS1 (which does not use the same AI) and some more versions for the Settlers Card Game and for Settlers in Space (i actually don't know if it's called exactly like this in english). I've done the AI for the PC Version, but many ideas for it where also contributed by Teuber. I'm not going to do an ad - i've stopped working for that company several years ago;)
It was a hard projekt to do, but i wouldn't blame it so much on rules which are to difficult to play for AI, but more on the usual factors which happen a lot in game development. Like me not beeing very experienced at this time, very tight schedules (first project of a new company - you're not allowed to miss many milestones in such a situation) and some more problems which would probably sound familiar to anyone in this industry (like doing a peer-to-peer network solution and still trying to synchronice the game and the bots).
The basic high-level strategies are mostly getting the longest road, getting the most knights, or winning by building the most settlements and cities. Then there are a rules how to complete this goals and to check if they can be completed. At the lowest level are the ratings for individual building positions, which are mostly influenced by the amount of resources you can reach by them, by harbours or other special points (in other scenarios than the basic one) and by the danger of someone else reaching them first (or the need to reach them to block someone else). A set of rules for which resources are most useful for the player is needed (different strategies need different resouce distributions and certainly it's also important too see what others do already own, to find out which resources will be rare).
The setting of the raiders is easy - check the resourceneeds and if you want your bot to be emotional then make sure to remember who angered you lately and prefer this player and play some additional samples just to make sure he knows the bot is pissed off:).
One of the most complex parts is the trading. We did several approaches to this and i guess if we'd had more time we would have tried some more. Transfering the communication of a table game to computers is close to impossible. You just won't get that feeling when playing against bots. It's not so much which resources the bot needs, but more of a problem like when to stop trading or when to push the player some more in hope to get another resource. Some problems: In real life people talk at the same time (which sounds horrible in a computer game - you have to do it serial) or stop trading by just looking someone into the eyes or at theire gestures. These are elements which can't be simulated in a computer game (actually we did insert some shortcuts for "stop bothering me" and "make faster" in the first patch).
Besides the basic rules we inserted some more scenarios which all had different game rules and needed other strategies, but once the basic catan ai did work it was not difficult to adapt it. To make things a little harder for the poor AI we also gave each bot a different personality which had to take care that his reactions (and the animations) did fit those of a few friends sitting around a table.
After the projekt i was not too happy with the results of the ai. It was a fun game for someone new to catan, but experienced players could beat the ai without much problems. If i just would have had a little more time... (once more i guess that anyone in the game industry has heard or said this sometimes).
An interesting fun fact: Teuber did himself complete a whole AI which did not play bad just using an excel sheet! You typed in the dice result and your move in a column and using some heavy magic the sheet displayed the answering move of the bots in another column. Most impressing thing i've ever seen done in excel.
But just for a while. MS will start even harder securing the sources in the future. The fixes for security leaks will be there sooner and a lot people are not interested in cracking but in getting a more secure system, so MS will get hints about security for free. So the bugs which are in the source will be fixed soon and the whole system be more safe for a while (till the next leak *g*).
I'm surprised this did not happen sooner (if it did happen now at all).
If the story is true, i'm not so convinced about that yet.
Probably some more worms will come out within the first weeks. But in the long run MS might finally learn the value of bugs getting shallow by lots of eyes looking at the source. I don't think companies will suddenly start to copy the source and using it themself - the fear of getting caught will be too high. As much as MS will dislike this, i think the users will have more advantages in the long run (and maybe this is even not soo bad as MS will think it is).
Agreed. I learned programming that way, but i have to admit that university did teach me a lot about algorithms wich helped a lot to understand what i was doing and even more - what i did in stupid ways.
And each time i had to learn a new programming language, first thing i did was sit down and write a small game. Just a fun way to get familar with new languages, even if those games usually did suck:)
While i won't argue that it might not be exactly real science (whatever that is) he seems to do in AI, i think he at least CAN show a program where he'd implemented his ideas - that's rather unusual (you might even call it un-scientific). And about his ideas, mhm, yes a lot speculation - but good enough specalution for me to get the book. I read his last Book and it did not use proofs, samples, etc... it really is speculation, but on a high level and with very good argumentation. AI is no field there anyone is really in the know, so currently it's just nice to read books of someone who does speculate - but does so very intelligently. If i had to reduce his last book to one sentence it would be "Life can only exist within a surrounding" a simple but very strong idea imho.
I'd probably read the new books, simple because his last one was great. Creatures was great for the reason which you called "no clever hacks used". In most modern games you get a lot of really good graphics - which don't have any meaning. You could use a singlecolored polygon for nearly anything without losing any game depth (the game would get worse - but you would not lose any information about the way to play the game). Creatures worked the other way round - the graphics (which were nice but technically outdated) just helped you to understand what was going on within the game. I think once the "my 3D is bigger than yours" hype starts to slow down - this will be the way games do advance. Btw. The Sims did slightly go in the same direction - but did not catch up yet.
Maybe another problem of AI in games are the release dates. AI is always finished last (the reason is simple - it's hard to finish the ai when the game ain't finished yet). Adaptive AI needs a system as basis which can already play the game - so the reason why it's usually not done might also simple be the reason that no team wants to wait some more weaks for the AI to increase some more, when it's already able to play:)
AI has advanced in several fields within games, but there are some reasons why learning AI is usually not used.
One of the hardest problem is doing leveldesign for an unpredictable AI. Hell, it's hard enough to do leveldesign for those unpredictable players already:). When you give up control over the AI behaviour (and you have to let loose control somewhat when you allow your bots to learn), it's very hard to tell in advance if the bots will learn behaviour which will advance the fun for the gamer. Maybe the AI will learn to use moves which make it harder to kill, but just look stupid (duck-jumping instead of running to be faster p.e.).
It's just preferable to make your AI as good as possible from the beginning and once it's getting hard enough to finetune theire level for a good game (making it more stupid is always easy!).
AI has nevertheless advanced within the last years. Don't let yourself confuse by the bad AI which are still released much too often (those will never vanish). But maybe the advances are not so obvious like in 3D graphics. Good designers hide the weaknesses of the AI since years, so except the obvious bugs you could often not see what was missing in older games. AI in 3D was the first big step. AI in 3D where bots can roam whole levels was another. Then came the Levels with stairs and other more complicated geometry (taking care of roofs is hard!). By now bots start taking cover behind simple objects and more complicated cover-finding algorithms are in the work. Physics makes it harder once more (even thought i don't know if any games do really handle that well yet - they certainly will in the future). Also group behaviour has increased very much within the last years. Pathfinding nearly ain't a topic anymore, some bots don't even need waypoints anymore but use polygon meshes instead.
I'd say AI is getting better about at the same level as the gaming worlds are getting more complex. Maybe it would already be possible to make bots which seem more intelligent in a game with reduced world-size and simpler geometry. I guess it'll be possible to do a quite good AI for a sims-like game (how about some intelligent pets? I'd wish this company would release the script language). Some years ago creatures did just that - nice graphics, but technically they were years behind, but advanced AI (even learning!). Unfortunatly complex worlds seem to be more in demand currently.
Maybe it's because RMS is a programmer - software does not mean the same thing to non-programmers. I learned to value free software after my last company f*cked up. I proposed to make our software free sometimes, because we did live from hardware mainly and not software, but with no success. After the company did vanish i tried to buy back my sources - but i could not afford the price because one of our former investors could just simple outbid me. So i lost two years of hard work - and the guy who bought it won't do much with it because this ain't some trivial work where he just can put some new guys to it. He would not even had lost much, if i'd also got some rights - i mainly wanted the test-tools and would not even been interested in doing competing work. Losing some of the best work i've done so far - that's hard. RSM might have other reasons - but since than i just love the part that free software ultimatly gives you the right to your own work!
Similar for me. My current boss seems ok, and i had some that weren't. One of the worst examples was a boss which tried our new game in the release-week for the first time - lost against the ai and forced the programmers to make it easier, even thought everyone told him it was too weak already. I had sort of a sad smile on each article in a game magazine where they wondered about the weak ai:(. Thought last i heard of him was that he'd sold the company for enough money, so obviously he wasn't an idiot - just no good boss.
No a side which tries to act as independant media should not close, because of such a topic. While most of us certainly don't like Software patents (and it's fine for each of us to close our own sides), this still is not a black/white affair like rassism, rape or similar ethical problems. A newssite should (and this one does) report about the topic, it can even have some bias which sort of articles it will publish, but on a such a topic it should not take such a unambigous stand. I'd prefer to hear both sides on software-patents and i wouldn't trust a newssite to give me any good counter-arguments even if they'd exist, after it had closed down to protest.
It would be about as easy as to stop smoking - yeah i know cigarettes are evil - i still buy a new package each day.
Mhm, but maybe i can sue Blizzard one day for not telling me that they sell addicting stuff.Hm, and the long sleepless nights caused be theire products were certainly bad for my health, there should be some millions in there for me:)
Usually companies care about that. I can't imagine SCO getting back in Unix-business after what they do currently. Even hardcore soloris, bsd, etc.. fans are mostly horrified by the current actions of SCO. It's like they are storming out of the room and slamming the door. Unix was SCO's main business, it's hard to imagine this will do them any good if they really intend to continue doing this.
Hm, i did my last voting in dortmund (germany). It's not done with paper&pencil there anymore, but it's a digital voting system by now. And i found my voting experience slightly interesting:
There were two people in the row before me and both were having problems using the new system. Maybe it's the panic of computer-illerate people which does arise as soon as they are put in front of a screen. The first person did just seem to be unsure with the instructions and needed several questions to the voting observers until she was sure enough which buttons she should press. The next one had accidently pressed the wrong button and tried to correct it (you could hear the beeps whenever someone pressed a button - don't worry, they all did sound the same so you could not find out by the sound what they did vote). The vote observes automatically started to give him hints in voice which made clear that they had to do this the whole day.
I've asked them if a lot people have problems with this voting system and they agreed, that they had to help out people the whole day. So while the counting of the voices is eased a lot the voting itself seemed to be a lot more difficult for some people (actually i found it quite easy, but maybe it's because i'm used to computers). Out of curiosity i also asked what would happen to the votes if someone would switch-off the power, they laughed but didn't know what would be the result (i guess it's saved in flash or something like what - but i still can't tell you for sure).
And i also still do not know what happens to my vote inside the machine, it's guaranteed that you can check afterward the number of voters with the number of votes which were made (because every voter is also registered by giving a piece of paper to the observers, so the voters can be counted afterwards), but the source of the machine (not just code but also how the mechanics do work) should absolutly be open in a democracie!
Slashdot Mirror
Just getting in a closer relation to Wikipedia is a good idea for google even without any plans to get some sort of control on the wikipedia project.
I noted recently, as wikipedia has reached a level of maturity where you can mostly rely on the information you get there, it's replacing (at least for myself) google as the no.1 query engine for some sort of information i need. Usually i use Wikipedia now for single word queries where i already know exactly what i'm looking for, while i use google for queries where i just have a few words relating to the searchtopic and have to open X result sites to find out which site will offer, or get me any closer, to the needed information. So basicly wikipedia is getting a serious competitor to google offering parts of the same product (information), even surpassing google for specific queries.
Once google offers to help the wikipedia project in seemingly altrustic ways it will a) Polish up it's company image. b) Send a message to it's investors that it keeps it's finger on the best information gathering technologie which is evolving and another message that they can fight MS on a second field now (encarta). c) Face less resistance from the community if they take further steps in working even closer together with wikipedia. d) Besides beeing fairly good known to some people (expecially on slashdot), wikipedia is currently still an underdog in the public perception, but one with very good chances of becoming a hot star. Always a good idea to stay in close contact to stars.
An example for c): Think of a wiki-button on google's mainsite, which maybe will only be available for queries where they already checked if wiki has some information about the searched topic. Doing that now would kill wiki because it could not handle the traffic and would get them a lot of bad press. But once they offer to pay for the traffic (which is quite cheap for them), it would seem fair to most of the people.
As wiki is a free projekt, certainly other companies could do the same thing, but in business it always pays of to be the first.
The big question now is if this will be a good or bad for wikipedia. Some points are obvious:
1. Wiki will have better bandwith and less financial troubles.
2. Googlelabs could probably help improving the quality of wikipedia
3. Despise some fears here i guess this will help keeping wikipedia adfree (as shown above google will profit from that deal without the need of doing ads directly on wikipages)
Also some obvious bad point:
1. The content of the wiki information would be kept on servers owned by a single company. Even when google is perceived as a nice company and other wikiservers would still exists, this is bad as it gives a single company more control of another information portal. Once wikipedia gains more public perception the bandwith and server needs can (not must) make wikipedia dependant on google.
2. Once a big company gets involved the usual vultures will smell the money. Expect wikispammers soon... (we all know that it would be hard to fight, for example, wiki-edit-scripts which work like ddos-attacks).
Despise the good points i'd prefer if wikipedia could stay independant. The best way would be if enough people would recognice wiki's worth by donating money to it.
Sounds like a serious addiction, but don't worry - i'm sure there's someone out there who can help you.
I'm also in the EU and most game companies here are working exactly that way! Well here you're mostly shamed into doing overhours and not forced - but it leads to the same thing. And you usually earn less in this industry in the EU...
That's exactly what i do usually. Small games, Tic Tac Toe has even been one of them. Other games i did where Space Invaders (with circles attacking-didn't do sprites), Backgammon, a worm game, a wizard of war clone (that one took me longer than expected), mastermind (that was too short). Programming small games is great for learning something new, as you can usually put in the things you like to learn. You can use Graphics, Sound, Menüs, Fileoperations, Inputdevices, Parsers and so on.
With cost currently running away in the game industry, small companies will either supply niche markets (which are already very small) or they have to reduce theire costs by working together. Open Source is perfect for that.
Open source engines are not yet on the same level like the Doom Engine, but i can see no reason why they shouldn't mature like other os-libs did. What is left is content (which was mentioned several times already). My guess is that within the next years open source will come up with new solutions. For example AI which can extract animation and geometry data from webcammovies, basic texture libraries which are parameterized (make this skin darker, add some pimples). Also i guess that open source games will concentrate more on ideas which will capture players for a long time (simulations don't get outdated that fast).
Seeing TMBG was my first big concert i was at. Great to see they are now one of the bands fighting for a future that does not feel completly weird. I still think of music as something to have fun, to relax to enjoy, to be impressed by the artists - not of something that's only about money and comercial things.
There's been this service described in that book from John Brunner where people just could call and say whatever they wanted. The service guaranted only a single thing: someone would listen. Maybe something similar is the reason why people do write here: They hope someone will read it. Sort of a modern prayer ;-)
Yes it really is a very good introduction. Unfortunatly last time i checked it, it wasn't up-to-date and it's not possible to follow the steps through as descriped with the current version of blender. Maybe someone did update it by now (some weeks ago since i tried it) - i really hope so.
First of all, there IS a settlers game for windows out there, since more than 4 years. It's was done by funatics development in strong cooperation with Klaus Teuber (the creator of catan). There's also a version of this game for the PS1 (which does not use the same AI) and some more versions for the Settlers Card Game and for Settlers in Space (i actually don't know if it's called exactly like this in english). I've done the AI for the PC Version, but many ideas for it where also contributed by Teuber. I'm not going to do an ad - i've stopped working for that company several years ago ;)
:).
... (once more i guess that anyone in the game industry has heard or said this sometimes).
It was a hard projekt to do, but i wouldn't blame it so much on rules which are to difficult to play for AI, but more on the usual factors which happen a lot in game development. Like me not beeing very experienced at this time, very tight schedules (first project of a new company - you're not allowed to miss many milestones in such a situation) and some more problems which would probably sound familiar to anyone in this industry (like doing a peer-to-peer network solution and still trying to synchronice the game and the bots).
The basic high-level strategies are mostly getting the longest road, getting the most knights, or winning by building the most settlements and cities. Then there are a rules how to complete this goals and to check if they can be completed. At the lowest level are the ratings for individual building positions, which are mostly influenced by the amount of resources you can reach by them, by harbours or other special points (in other scenarios than the basic one) and by the danger of someone else reaching them first (or the need to reach them to block someone else). A set of rules for which resources are most useful for the player is needed (different strategies need different resouce distributions and certainly it's also important too see what others do already own, to find out which resources will be rare).
The setting of the raiders is easy - check the resourceneeds and if you want your bot to be emotional then make sure to remember who angered you lately and prefer this player and play some additional samples just to make sure he knows the bot is pissed off
One of the most complex parts is the trading. We did several approaches to this and i guess if we'd had more time we would have tried some more. Transfering the communication of a table game to computers is close to impossible. You just won't get that feeling when playing against bots. It's not so much which resources the bot needs, but more of a problem like when to stop trading or when to push the player some more in hope to get another resource. Some problems: In real life people talk at the same time (which sounds horrible in a computer game - you have to do it serial) or stop trading by just looking someone into the eyes or at theire gestures. These are elements which can't be simulated in a computer game (actually we did insert some shortcuts for "stop bothering me" and "make faster" in the first patch).
Besides the basic rules we inserted some more scenarios which all had different game rules and needed other strategies, but once the basic catan ai did work it was not difficult to adapt it. To make things a little harder for the poor AI we also gave each bot a different personality which had to take care that his reactions (and the animations) did fit those of a few friends sitting around a table.
After the projekt i was not too happy with the results of the ai. It was a fun game for someone new to catan, but experienced players could beat the ai without much problems. If i just would have had a little more time
An interesting fun fact: Teuber did himself complete a whole AI which did not play bad just using an excel sheet! You typed in the dice result and your move in a column and using some heavy magic the sheet displayed the answering move of the bots in another column. Most impressing thing i've ever seen done in excel.
But just for a while. MS will start even harder securing the sources in the future. The fixes for security leaks will be there sooner and a lot people are not interested in cracking but in getting a more secure system, so MS will get hints about security for free. So the bugs which are in the source will be fixed soon and the whole system be more safe for a while (till the next leak *g*).
I'm surprised this did not happen sooner (if it did happen now at all).
If the story is true, i'm not so convinced about that yet.
Probably some more worms will come out within the first weeks. But in the long run MS might finally learn the value of bugs getting shallow by lots of eyes looking at the source. I don't think companies will suddenly start to copy the source and using it themself - the fear of getting caught will be too high. As much as MS will dislike this, i think the users will have more advantages in the long run (and maybe this is even not soo bad as MS will think it is).
Agreed. I learned programming that way, but i have to admit that university did teach me a lot about algorithms wich helped a lot to understand what i was doing and even more - what i did in stupid ways.
:)
And each time i had to learn a new programming language, first thing i did was sit down and write a small game. Just a fun way to get familar with new languages, even if those games usually did suck
oh - but look at the original picture for that:/ Colored Map_hi-res.jpg
http://www.esa.int/export/externals/images
Resolution is 12.5 meters per pixel. Just count the pixel and you know the size.
While i won't argue that it might not be exactly real science (whatever that is) he seems to do in AI, i think he at least CAN show a program where he'd implemented his ideas - that's rather unusual (you might even call it un-scientific). And about his ideas, mhm, yes a lot speculation - but good enough specalution for me to get the book. I read his last Book and it did not use proofs, samples, etc... it really is speculation, but on a high level and with very good argumentation. AI is no field there anyone is really in the know, so currently it's just nice to read books of someone who does speculate - but does so very intelligently. If i had to reduce his last book to one sentence it would be "Life can only exist within a surrounding" a simple but very strong idea imho.
I'd probably read the new books, simple because his last one was great. Creatures was great for the reason which you called "no clever hacks used". In most modern games you get a lot of really good graphics - which don't have any meaning. You could use a singlecolored polygon for nearly anything without losing any game depth (the game would get worse - but you would not lose any information about the way to play the game). Creatures worked the other way round - the graphics (which were nice but technically outdated) just helped you to understand what was going on within the game. I think once the "my 3D is bigger than yours" hype starts to slow down - this will be the way games do advance. Btw. The Sims did slightly go in the same direction - but did not catch up yet.
Maybe another problem of AI in games are the release dates. AI is always finished last (the reason is simple - it's hard to finish the ai when the game ain't finished yet). Adaptive AI needs a system as basis which can already play the game - so the reason why it's usually not done might also simple be the reason that no team wants to wait some more weaks for the AI to increase some more, when it's already able to play :)
AI has advanced in several fields within games, but there are some reasons why learning AI is usually not used.
:). When you give up control over the AI behaviour (and you have to let loose control somewhat when you allow your bots to learn), it's very hard to tell in advance if the bots will learn behaviour which will advance the fun for the gamer. Maybe the AI will learn to use moves which make it harder to kill, but just look stupid (duck-jumping instead of running to be faster p.e.).
One of the hardest problem is doing leveldesign for an unpredictable AI. Hell, it's hard enough to do leveldesign for those unpredictable players already
It's just preferable to make your AI as good as possible from the beginning and once it's getting hard enough to finetune theire level for a good game (making it more stupid is always easy!).
AI has nevertheless advanced within the last years. Don't let yourself confuse by the bad AI which are still released much too often (those will never vanish). But maybe the advances are not so obvious like in 3D graphics. Good designers hide the weaknesses of the AI since years, so except the obvious bugs you could often not see what was missing in older games. AI in 3D was the first big step. AI in 3D where bots can roam whole levels was another. Then came the Levels with stairs and other more complicated geometry (taking care of roofs is hard!). By now bots start taking cover behind simple objects and more complicated cover-finding algorithms are in the work. Physics makes it harder once more (even thought i don't know if any games do really handle that well yet - they certainly will in the future). Also group behaviour has increased very much within the last years. Pathfinding nearly ain't a topic anymore, some bots don't even need waypoints anymore but use polygon meshes instead.
I'd say AI is getting better about at the same level as the gaming worlds are getting more complex. Maybe it would already be possible to make bots which seem more intelligent in a game with reduced world-size and simpler geometry. I guess it'll be possible to do a quite good AI for a sims-like game (how about some intelligent pets? I'd wish this company would release the script language). Some years ago creatures did just that - nice graphics, but technically they were years behind, but advanced AI (even learning!). Unfortunatly complex worlds seem to be more in demand currently.
Maybe it's because RMS is a programmer - software does not mean the same thing to non-programmers. I learned to value free software after my last company f*cked up. I proposed to make our software free sometimes, because we did live from hardware mainly and not software, but with no success. After the company did vanish i tried to buy back my sources - but i could not afford the price because one of our former investors could just simple outbid me. So i lost two years of hard work - and the guy who bought it won't do much with it because this ain't some trivial work where he just can put some new guys to it. He would not even had lost much, if i'd also got some rights - i mainly wanted the test-tools and would not even been interested in doing competing work. Losing some of the best work i've done so far - that's hard. RSM might have other reasons - but since than i just love the part that free software ultimatly gives you the right to your own work!
Similar for me. My current boss seems ok, and i had some that weren't. One of the worst examples was a boss which tried our new game in the release-week for the first time - lost against the ai and forced the programmers to make it easier, even thought everyone told him it was too weak already. I had sort of a sad smile on each article in a game magazine where they wondered about the weak ai :(. Thought last i heard of him was that he'd sold the company for enough money, so obviously he wasn't an idiot - just no good boss.
No a side which tries to act as independant media should not close, because of such a topic. While most of us certainly don't like Software patents (and it's fine for each of us to close our own sides), this still is not a black/white affair like rassism, rape or similar ethical problems. A newssite should (and this one does) report about the topic, it can even have some bias which sort of articles it will publish, but on a such a topic it should not take such a unambigous stand. I'd prefer to hear both sides on software-patents and i wouldn't trust a newssite to give me any good counter-arguments even if they'd exist, after it had closed down to protest.
Not so simple i am addicted :(
.Hm, and the long sleepless nights caused be theire products were certainly bad for my health, there should be some millions in there for me :)
It would be about as easy as to stop smoking - yeah i know cigarettes are evil - i still buy a new package each day.
Mhm, but maybe i can sue Blizzard one day for not telling me that they sell addicting stuff
Usually companies care about that. I can't imagine SCO getting back in Unix-business after what they do currently. Even hardcore soloris, bsd, etc.. fans are mostly horrified by the current actions of SCO. It's like they are storming out of the room and slamming the door. Unix was SCO's main business, it's hard to imagine this will do them any good if they really intend to continue doing this.
our laws are wrong. I mean does really anyone believe linus tried to steal patents?
Hm, i did my last voting in dortmund (germany). It's not done with paper&pencil there anymore, but it's a digital voting system by now. And i found my voting experience slightly interesting:
There were two people in the row before me and both were having problems using the new system. Maybe it's the panic of computer-illerate people which does arise as soon as they are put in front of a screen. The first person did just seem to be unsure with the instructions and needed several questions to the voting observers until she was sure enough which buttons she should press. The next one had accidently pressed the wrong button and tried to correct it (you could hear the beeps whenever someone pressed a button - don't worry, they all did sound the same so you could not find out by the sound what they did vote). The vote observes automatically started to give him hints in voice which made clear that they had to do this the whole day.
I've asked them if a lot people have problems with this voting system and they agreed, that they had to help out people the whole day. So while the counting of the voices is eased a lot the voting itself seemed to be a lot more difficult for some people (actually i found it quite easy, but maybe it's because i'm used to computers). Out of curiosity i also asked what would happen to the votes if someone would switch-off the power, they laughed but didn't know what would be the result (i guess it's saved in flash or something like what - but i still can't tell you for sure).
And i also still do not know what happens to my vote inside the machine, it's guaranteed that you can check afterward the number of voters with the number of votes which were made (because every voter is also registered by giving a piece of paper to the observers, so the voters can be counted afterwards), but the source of the machine (not just code but also how the mechanics do work) should absolutly be open in a democracie!