I've had it running now for a while, and I can't say how much better it feels to have a local, powerful search engine at my beck and call, personally...
Plus, it solved the 'endless bookmark menu' problem too, since instead of bookmarking, I get the site spidered by SWISH++, and all my future searches give me what I need... sweet!
I also have had a bit of a cyborg habit in my world travels, and have had pretty much every PDA-style gadget under the sun, 3 times over, but I have to say that my little stack of well-worn moleskines gives me more pride than anything else, and if I have to leave anything behind for my grandkids, it'll be those little books... and -no- computer shit.
Amazing, isn't it? Such a simple little device, yet it (the moleskine) has really proven to be far more effective than anything Sony can provide, when it comes to making worthwhile travel heirlooms... maybe thats the point: that these have been everywhere, and survived, and will continue to be used/useful even in places where power and light and cleanliness and dry air are not available, and the Clie will certainly be bust...
Was it just me, or did anyone else get that "WHOA!" stomach-sinking feeling from that curvature pic?
I bet that transition stage at the top of the curve is one -hell- of a ride. When those wings move around and suddenly you're faced back -at- the ground, and coming down... wow. I bet that is one hell of a rush.
Hope I get a chance to ride this thing in my life time! You figure it'll be available for 'normal public' within 5 to 10 years time, maybe... ?
They're like, the rocket company that comes out of nowhere, with the coolest launch platform hardware of any (bar perhaps Baikonur, I still get chills when I watch the Russkies roll one out...) launch service provider anywhere.
If I were richer and hadn't spent so much on servicing my frickin' sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads last month, I'd probably be buying up all the used oil platforms and gunged-out CDC-ribbon'ed cruise ships, set it all up on some newly formed oceanic shelf out in International Waters territory, and start my own damn rocket company... only, now that SeaLaunch have already done it, it sorta steals a little of the panache of the whole thing, ya know?
I dunno about that. I know a few video game companies that style themselves on using the "Hollywood Studio" model for producing games... each project has a director, 'film crew', modellers/animators, etc.
Personally I can't see much difference between the production realities of a movie studio and a game company. Games are just interactive movies, or more precisely, non-linear stories on screen...
So I don't think you can really say there's any 'absorption' going on. In my opinion, there isn't any difference between "Old Hollywood" and "New Hollywood"... games companies are just 'hollywood', revised, version 3.0...
You're an idiot and don't know what the hell you're talking about.
What is it about people and their willingness to just drop insults on perfect strangers?
Personally, I find this habit, particularly in what could be an enlightening conversation about the poor, technology, and Linux to be utterly despicable.
It is attitudes like this that let the U.S. get away with waging criminal war, you know... this "you are an idiot" crutch that so many un-critical thinkers are capable of leaning on...
In my opinion, it is street bigotry, and the world needs a hell of a lot less of that right now.
No man deserves to be labelled an idiot by another. Don't do it. Its just plain rude. Your parents sucked at raising you!
I don't get it... where do people sell there slashdot UID's?
I've been on since chips and dips, and would've gotten an even lower UID if I hadn't gone to lunch early on the day CmdrTaco turned on the public registrations, but I don't consider that a low UID is a sign of anything other than 'devotion to Slashdot', and that can tell you enough about a post to give you what you need to either a) communicate more, or b) flee!
There's hope we'll discover intelligent life in Washington, as long as we avoid those who call themselves "intelligence" for reasons of maintaining their cover.
yeah, you know it... there is hope, even if there is not much else...
Okay. Say I'm 15. I've got a UID 4123723. Someone else has a UID like, say "458". This low-number UID, while not necessarily an indicator of 'age', simply was created at a time much, much, much earlier in slashdot's history.
As far as I know, there aren't any less-than-3-digit UID's being created these days - yes, they can be bartered, yes a 12 year old might've bought one from EBay - but generally, a low ID means 'longer term/. user'...
To someone who got here just yesterday, rightly or wrongly so, this means that the low-UID has a 'bit more experience with slashdot'. Whether this ought to translate into respect or revulsion, I do not know... but either way, a low UID means _something_ about the longevity of the account.
Or it just means that they took their time signing up
Please explain to me how a low slashdot user ID means that someone took their time signing up?
I'll say it again: Using a slashdot UID to judge someone's opinion is foolishness. Sometimes I wonder why I still hang around this place...
I won't disagree with you here on the foolishness part, but, particularly in light of the latter part of your comment, I would like to state that there are an infinite number of ways a person can be foolish...
If you're 16 years old, and you've only had access to a computer for 4 years, and you see someone with a low ID on/., this means that you're probably looking at someone whose own personal experience with computing in general is older than yours./. is what, 8 years old now (I can't remember)... to a fairly large demographic of web-browsing public (teenagers), thats a farkin' long time ago... half of some peoples' lives.
So, yeah. Not that I think low UID's are something you should be proud of or anything, but keep in mind that we all do take for granted, sometimes, just how lucky we were to have witnessed such massive changes in the computer industry. For some people, there have only always been web browsers and Internet connections... "for most of their lives"...
... welcome our THC overlords, and would like to remind them that as a qualified potsmoker, I've done my fair share of THC propagation in the world...;)
I'm saying that this divide between "artists" and "programmers" is crap.
I wouldn't say there isn't a divide, but I do concur with you that there is an "Art" to programming, and many/most programmers do instinctively have a creative impulse (except for those COBOL guys, that is...)
But in the gaming industry, in general (and this may just be one of those arguments nobody wins because everyone is using generalities) there is a definite technological-obsession factor that appears to be detracting from true artistic sensibilities.
Was the "creatively sapping environment" at Game Systems Robots caused by the coders refusing to program anything new, or the management refusing to bankroll anything that wasn't a sequel?
Too often, the Programmer Technocratic Elite are given a mandate from "Artists" to do things, only to react with "Can't Technically Be Done", or "Artists Steal CPU Clock Cycle" arguments. The times when true genius has been obvious have been, in my observation, when a programmer thinks "yeah, artistically, that is a cool model/object to implement, even if its freakin' hard", and then goes ahead and works out a good, solid, technical solution to the problem.
But this difficult blend of Art vs. Technology is tricky to manage, and so we end up with many game companies adopting policies of 'Programmers Set the Tools for the Artists" -> "Artists may Only Do what the Programmer allows", and in my not-so-humble opinion, this often results in utter dreck.
Entropy happens in the Art world, it is the muse and the enemy.
Programmers, generally, have a difficult time with entropy, artistically, I have found... they either use it to justify not going the extra mile to find a technical solution, or they end up doing nothing but attempting to defeat entropy.
Programmers are a kind of Artist. No question about it. But they're also capable of being just as anti-art, as well. Its a fine line, and I really would not say its black and white.
Do you really think they'd be doing this if it wasn't want the company wanted?
Who cares what the fucking company wants, what do the literate, art-appreciating, educated and non-culturally-ignorant game players want? Do we really need more run-around-and-shoot-things, Rat In a Cage style 'level designers' pumping out what only amounts to "Pretty Trap^H^H^H^HWaste of Time" style products?
Yes, in fact, most game companies I've had personal experience with (a few, some quite well known) have been creatively sapping environments. God help me if I ever have to work with Game Systems Robots ever again. But nobody is saying that 'all games companies are filled with programmers like that'.
It wouldn't hurt to have a little more culture through the business world, full stop.
Can't disagree with you there, at all. In fact, I agree with you 100%, citizen.
At the Linux Audio Developers conference this year in Karlsruhe, Paul Davis showed us quite a few commercial VST plugins running under Linux, some with copy protection also running. Kontakt, for example, ran great!
But regardless, cross-platform sound-generating plugins are cool. (Except for the.DLL part, eww...)
I think all games are works of art, and I don't think Crawford is saying otherwise.
Its just that, as works of art, most games pay no attention to the fact that they are a piece of art, and consequently the artistic value of such gargantuan projects is spent, pretty fast.
Averall there is a lot of art/music in the games, and some of that is not of bad quality.
Well, you know, lets not get into debates on the issue of the subjectivity of 'quality'... even though thats pretty much what this article is about.
The time continuum has us in its grips. Art is the only hope. Games, or at least the 'general standard of games, generally' are pretty poor art, so far...
There are plenty of people out there designing and writing games who are both creative artists and decent engineers and programmers.
Sure. But there are plenty of un-creative, overly technically obsessed, keeping-up-with-the-chipset-joneses-driven game 'designers' out there as well, pumping out boring dreck with their warezed 3DSMax installs, re-used Half Life engines, and 'games == war' mindset.
It wouldn't hurt to have a little more Shakespeare or Chancer in this Modern Literary Front... Just because you may not understand some of the real concepts behind what this author is proposing... and yeah, frankly, the Two Cultures problem just still has not been addressed properly in the game industry.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno, I think SWISH++ does a pretty good job ...
...
... sweet!
I've had it running now for a while, and I can't say how much better it feels to have a local, powerful search engine at my beck and call, personally
Plus, it solved the 'endless bookmark menu' problem too, since instead of bookmarking, I get the site spidered by SWISH++, and all my future searches give me what I need
I also have had a bit of a cyborg habit in my world travels, and have had pretty much every PDA-style gadget under the sun, 3 times over, but I have to say that my little stack of well-worn moleskines gives me more pride than anything else, and if I have to leave anything behind for my grandkids, it'll be those little books ... and -no- computer shit.
... maybe thats the point: that these have been everywhere, and survived, and will continue to be used/useful even in places where power and light and cleanliness and dry air are not available, and the Clie will certainly be bust...
Amazing, isn't it? Such a simple little device, yet it (the moleskine) has really proven to be far more effective than anything Sony can provide, when it comes to making worthwhile travel heirlooms
Was it just me, or did anyone else get that "WHOA!" stomach-sinking feeling from that curvature pic?
... wow. I bet that is one hell of a rush.
... ?
I bet that transition stage at the top of the curve is one -hell- of a ride. When those wings move around and suddenly you're faced back -at- the ground, and coming down
Hope I get a chance to ride this thing in my life time! You figure it'll be available for 'normal public' within 5 to 10 years time, maybe
Lets see them make Oil out of Soylent Green! Yeah baby, now THERE is some compassion ...
What I'm saying is that the integration is not all it is claimed to be and the life cycle and lack of upgrades also stink.
Good integration means not having to upgrade.
They're like, the rocket company that comes out of nowhere, with the coolest launch platform hardware of any (bar perhaps Baikonur, I still get chills when I watch the Russkies roll one out...) launch service provider anywhere.
... only, now that SeaLaunch have already done it, it sorta steals a little of the panache of the whole thing, ya know?
If I were richer and hadn't spent so much on servicing my frickin' sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads last month, I'd probably be buying up all the used oil platforms and gunged-out CDC-ribbon'ed cruise ships, set it all up on some newly formed oceanic shelf out in International Waters territory, and start my own damn rocket company
Rockets!!!
I dunno about that. I know a few video game companies that style themselves on using the "Hollywood Studio" model for producing games ... each project has a director, 'film crew', modellers/animators, etc.
... games companies are just 'hollywood', revised, version 3.0 ...
Personally I can't see much difference between the production realities of a movie studio and a game company. Games are just interactive movies, or more precisely, non-linear stories on screen...
So I don't think you can really say there's any 'absorption' going on. In my opinion, there isn't any difference between "Old Hollywood" and "New Hollywood"
Reality fuckers.
The U.S. lost the war on Terrorism already. 2 years ago. Its old news.
I vote that we call this future of U.S. "statehood" the "neoconian" period...
You're an idiot and don't know what the hell you're talking about.
... this "you are an idiot" crutch that so many un-critical thinkers are capable of leaning on ...
What is it about people and their willingness to just drop insults on perfect strangers?
Personally, I find this habit, particularly in what could be an enlightening conversation about the poor, technology, and Linux to be utterly despicable.
It is attitudes like this that let the U.S. get away with waging criminal war, you know
In my opinion, it is street bigotry, and the world needs a hell of a lot less of that right now.
No man deserves to be labelled an idiot by another. Don't do it. Its just plain rude. Your parents sucked at raising you!
I don't get it ... where do people sell there slashdot UID's?
I've been on since chips and dips, and would've gotten an even lower UID if I hadn't gone to lunch early on the day CmdrTaco turned on the public registrations, but I don't consider that a low UID is a sign of anything other than 'devotion to Slashdot', and that can tell you enough about a post to give you what you need to either a) communicate more, or b) flee!
heh heh. okay, you win. good round!
... there is hope, even if there is not much else ...
There's hope we'll discover intelligent life in Washington, as long as we avoid those who call themselves "intelligence" for reasons of maintaining their cover.
yeah, you know it
How do you determine age from a UID?
/. user' ...
... but either way, a low UID means _something_ about the longevity of the account.
Okay. Say I'm 15. I've got a UID 4123723. Someone else has a UID like, say "458". This low-number UID, while not necessarily an indicator of 'age', simply was created at a time much, much, much earlier in slashdot's history.
As far as I know, there aren't any less-than-3-digit UID's being created these days - yes, they can be bartered, yes a 12 year old might've bought one from EBay - but generally, a low ID means 'longer term
To someone who got here just yesterday, rightly or wrongly so, this means that the low-UID has a 'bit more experience with slashdot'. Whether this ought to translate into respect or revulsion, I do not know
Or it just means that they took their time signing up
...
Please explain to me how a low slashdot user ID means that someone took their time signing up?
I'll say it again: Using a slashdot UID to judge someone's opinion is foolishness. Sometimes I wonder why I still hang around this place...
I won't disagree with you here on the foolishness part, but, particularly in light of the latter part of your comment, I would like to state that there are an infinite number of ways a person can be foolish
But an UID is a poor way of determining that.
/., this means that you're probably looking at someone whose own personal experience with computing in general is older than yours. /. is what, 8 years old now (I can't remember) ... to a fairly large demographic of web-browsing public (teenagers), thats a farkin' long time ago ... half of some peoples' lives.
... "for most of their lives" ...
Untrue.
If you're 16 years old, and you've only had access to a computer for 4 years, and you see someone with a low ID on
So, yeah. Not that I think low UID's are something you should be proud of or anything, but keep in mind that we all do take for granted, sometimes, just how lucky we were to have witnessed such massive changes in the computer industry. For some people, there have only always been web browsers and Internet connections
this sort of shit that nearly killed UNIX in the 1980s
... but Linux, 'embedded', doesn't have to stay UNIX. At all.
Duh, hello, ignorance.
The reason that shit 'nearly killed UNIX' in the 80's was because everyone (the vendors) were making their own Unix.
In this case, its irrelevant: Linux is free, the base technology is out there, you and your competitors all have the same, even, level playing field.
I see nothing wrong at all with fragmentation and propagation of the Linux kernel into whatever devices can support it. GREAT!
If UNIX wants to stay UNIX, however, then thats another thing
... welcome our THC overlords, and would like to remind them that as a qualified potsmoker, I've done my fair share of THC propagation in the world ... ;)
I'm saying that this divide between "artists" and "programmers" is crap.
... they either use it to justify not going the extra mile to find a technical solution, or they end up doing nothing but attempting to defeat entropy.
I wouldn't say there isn't a divide, but I do concur with you that there is an "Art" to programming, and many/most programmers do instinctively have a creative impulse (except for those COBOL guys, that is...)
But in the gaming industry, in general (and this may just be one of those arguments nobody wins because everyone is using generalities) there is a definite technological-obsession factor that appears to be detracting from true artistic sensibilities.
Was the "creatively sapping environment" at Game Systems Robots caused by the coders refusing to program anything new, or the management refusing to bankroll anything that wasn't a sequel?
Too often, the Programmer Technocratic Elite are given a mandate from "Artists" to do things, only to react with "Can't Technically Be Done", or "Artists Steal CPU Clock Cycle" arguments. The times when true genius has been obvious have been, in my observation, when a programmer thinks "yeah, artistically, that is a cool model/object to implement, even if its freakin' hard", and then goes ahead and works out a good, solid, technical solution to the problem.
But this difficult blend of Art vs. Technology is tricky to manage, and so we end up with many game companies adopting policies of 'Programmers Set the Tools for the Artists" -> "Artists may Only Do what the Programmer allows", and in my not-so-humble opinion, this often results in utter dreck.
Entropy happens in the Art world, it is the muse and the enemy.
Programmers, generally, have a difficult time with entropy, artistically, I have found
Programmers are a kind of Artist. No question about it. But they're also capable of being just as anti-art, as well. Its a fine line, and I really would not say its black and white.
(Jeff Minter for President!!!)
Religion is a human invention, and as such means different things to different people. To many people, it means the things you disavow.
Religion is where old Science goes to die.
Do you really think they'd be doing this if it wasn't want the company wanted?
Who cares what the fucking company wants, what do the literate, art-appreciating, educated and non-culturally-ignorant game players want? Do we really need more run-around-and-shoot-things, Rat In a Cage style 'level designers' pumping out what only amounts to "Pretty Trap^H^H^H^HWaste of Time" style products?
Yes, in fact, most game companies I've had personal experience with (a few, some quite well known) have been creatively sapping environments. God help me if I ever have to work with Game Systems Robots ever again. But nobody is saying that 'all games companies are filled with programmers like that'.
It wouldn't hurt to have a little more culture through the business world, full stop.
Can't disagree with you there, at all. In fact, I agree with you 100%, citizen.
... is that there are thousands and thousands of free ones.
.DLL part, eww...)
At the Linux Audio Developers conference this year in Karlsruhe, Paul Davis showed us quite a few commercial VST plugins running under Linux, some with copy protection also running. Kontakt, for example, ran great!
But regardless, cross-platform sound-generating plugins are cool. (Except for the
First there are games which are work of art,
... even though thats pretty much what this article is about.
...
I think all games are works of art, and I don't think Crawford is saying otherwise.
Its just that, as works of art, most games pay no attention to the fact that they are a piece of art, and consequently the artistic value of such gargantuan projects is spent, pretty fast.
Averall there is a lot of art/music in the games, and some of that is not of bad quality.
Well, you know, lets not get into debates on the issue of the subjectivity of 'quality'
The time continuum has us in its grips. Art is the only hope. Games, or at least the 'general standard of games, generally' are pretty poor art, so far
There are plenty of people out there designing and writing games who are both creative artists and decent engineers and programmers.
... Just because you may not understand some of the real concepts behind what this author is proposing ... and yeah, frankly, the Two Cultures problem just still has not been addressed properly in the game industry.
Sure. But there are plenty of un-creative, overly technically obsessed, keeping-up-with-the-chipset-joneses-driven game 'designers' out there as well, pumping out boring dreck with their warezed 3DSMax installs, re-used Half Life engines, and 'games == war' mindset.
It wouldn't hurt to have a little more Shakespeare or Chancer in this Modern Literary Front
Think otherwise? Give an example?
He's a witch, can we burn him!
...
/. is rapidly devolving into a Fascists paradise.
How do you know he's a witch?
He looks like one
Sheesh.
Moleskine
Can't be beat. I'm on my 6th moleskine, 3rd global circuit.
Source code as an advertisement for hardware?
...
Succinct. It is 'language', after all, maybe it belongs in the 'language' department