Considering all the Myst-Clones that The Adventure Company have released from European developers, I would be thrilled to see them take on a project of this magnitude. There really hasn't been a decent adventure game since The Longest Journey and Syberia, but they've got sequels in development so there's hope yet.
-To better accomidate the casual player market, there will only be one car model. It will come in 196 colors, but they will all have the same handling and radio station. -The "New and Improved" physics engine will allow players to jump their car over a mile. Crashing into a fence, however, will still ruin your ride. -There will approximately 600 blocks to explore, each one requiring a 30 second loading delay. -To avoid the "What do I do next?" question, the mission system will be replaced with a multiple choice plotline which will feature the same exact missions but one path will always lead through a vent./still bitter about DX:IW
Actually, the textures for both the PC and X-Box versions are low-quality downsamples. Thankfully some rather talented fans have taken it upon themselves to fix Ion Storm's mess.
"or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed."
My co-worker had a blown up dilbert strip on his cube wall, about how well qualified MCSE's were to provide tech support...the middle box had the now-infamous quote:
>> the one that recognizes the most freedom >> with the least amount of >> interpersonal conflicts.
>That sounds good, but why is that moral code >preferable to, say, "I get what I want when I >want it"? How do we judge between differing >moral codes?
Hence the "Least amount of Interpersonal Conflicts" clause.
You can have whatever you want, as long as it doesn't already belong to someone else. For larger communities (Countries) there should be a clause to avoid a Tragedy of the Commons (e.g You can only have as many brides as the ratio of women/men allows)
I would also make it illegal to have your cellphone turned on in a movie theater, but that one can be negotiable if the movie sucks.
While there may be ways to see the results of God's work, I take every interpretation of such with a couple tons of Salt. See: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson for good examples of 17th Century organized Religion vs. the emerging scientific community.
How do we decicde which is the better moral code? Easy -- the one that recognizes the most freedom with the least amount of interpersonal conflicts. My hatred of brussel sprouts should in no way prevent you from enjoying them, but your desire to shoot at random pedestrians definately causes a conflict of interest with their desires.
As a society, there just needs to be an agreement e.g. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face, and while a valiant effort, most religious creeds are hardly that. Making the basis for a "Free" nation's code of laws on a 2000 year Fantasy novel is hardly an agreeable solution.
>Hm. How do you understand God >- I mean, how do you get to know more about Him?
I thought the very concept of God was that he was "Unknowable." Putting your faith in Men in Funny Hats being able to accomplish this feat kind of turns Organized Religion into a charade at best. Ooh look at me, I can tell you what God wants because I have the biggest hat!
>That sounds like a good basis for making >decisions. But why is it better than "I want >what I want when I want it!"? In other words... >how can we judge between differing moral codes? >Are all moral codes equally valid?
I think the only moral code that is universally valid goes something like "Do unto others..." For everything else, there's circumstance and situation to consider. If I'm being attacked by an ax-wielding maniac, "Thout shalt not kill" gets quickly forgotten.
...Uniformity of hardware is key to maintaining a sane corporate IT infrastructure. If every department has their own standard, it's impossible to troubleshoot Gateways, IBMs, Dells, HPs, and frankenbeasts in an 8-hour day. x86 legacy aside, there are too many variations in quality and configuration even across "compatible" systems to reliably troubleshoot issues on a daily basis.
I especially like Dell and IBM's basic troubleshooting kits. They seem to be pretty decent at working on a variety of their own machines, so one disk will support the Dimensions, Optiplexes, and Latitudes I see on a daily basis.
For more in-depth toubleshooting, a good DOS boot disk with Partition Magic is a good first step. For Win2k machines, the System Rescue CD is vital. Especially when you need to bood from a CD (no floppy workstations), mount the NTFS partition, try to fix it, and if you fail you can mount a samba drive and backup your data all without multiple reboots.
Just out of experience, it sounds like the crash may have corrupted the partition table, causing the drive to look outside the physical drive geometry for data. This would cause the read heads to try to force themselves off-platter (odd clunking noises), as well as delay the OS until the hardware reports an error.
Reformatting the disk is a good fix, but sometimes it may be too late if the hardware gets damaged. If you experience *any* further issues with the drive, I'd be ready to replace it at a moment's notice.
I've had too many machines come back to me a few days later with identical problems after reformatting, and RMA'ing a replacement was the only sure-fire way of making sure it didn't recur.
Plus all humanity is stuck on one planet. That's bad! There are numerous things which could wipe out the entire race. But put humans on other worlds, and you begin to ensure the race has a future.
What would we call it? I dunno...the acronym for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Planets" probably won't go over very well.
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 1
Wow, that looks *exactly* like an AIM chat log;)
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Language of the Future in literature has always interested me, so I'm curious to see some examples of her literary "mutiliations and grotesqueries."
The greatest books that ever used altered/mutated language as metaphors for the state of humanity were 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Something about "Ultraviolence" and "Doubleplusungood" strikes just how society has evolved.
What if Lucas had released a ten-minute "demo" of The Phantom Menace halfway through the editing process. Not a commercial -- an actual example of some of his "ideas" for the movie. A couple scenes with JarJar, a couple "Yippes!" and a midichlorian quote or two. Can you imagine what kind of feedback he would have received on how to make a better movie?
Granted the movie made a zillion dollars thanks to fanbois who went to see it ten times even though they hated it. That's no way to judge the quality of a movie. I look back at the dissapointment it was, and wonder if a few helpful hints would have helped save the soul of the franchise.
However, this points out exactly what's *wrong* when developers don't listen to their audience. Certain elements of a game are removable and yet the core of the game remains the same. If you remove too *many* of these elements, it ceases to be any more then another average game with a "II" at the end.
There were elements to the original Deus Ex that made it *Deus Ex*. Some of these elements, like the skill system, could have been removed and yet kept the familiarity of the game intact. However, if you take stock of everything that was removed:
-Ammo Types (if you use it up in your flamethrower, your bolt caster is useless) -Skill System (5 biomods at any time does not a customization feature make) -Inventory Management (you can hold twelve flamethrowers or twelve knives) -Interface (designed for a controller, breaks all UI rules for KB+Mouse interface on the *PC* edition) -Locational Damage (Headshots are gone, shoot someone in the foot five times and they're *dead*) -Stealth (bad news from full game land: no stealth to speak of) -Game Length (15 hours seems average, granted with multiple story paths it will take longer, but alot will be replaying the same areas over and over) -Sluggish Play (you can blame current hardware-- DX played the same way--but comeon, give us some options to turn *off* some stuff) -Retarded save system that gives *no* useful info -Braindead AI (show a guard his buddy's corpse, he won't flinch...but don't you dare *throw* it at him!) -Unrealistic Physics (not as generic as DX, but using a garbage can to play basketball?! And you can't walk through a room without knocking all the furniture over)
The best points of the game, the story, are carefully presented and make for an interesting time. It's a good thing they didn't simplify *everything*, or else you might as well have made another Doom clone.
Internal Vs. External Customers
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 1
As someone who does "IT" for a living, the main difference that people (especially marketdroids) don't *get* about IT is that it is primarily a service for INTERNAL customers (ie, employees) and not for EXTERNAL customers (ie, the people who buy your company's stuff). IT is, and increasingly so, a highly integrated part of the daily life of your company's internal customers -- their employees. Everything from punching clocks first thing in the morning, to checking the compnay's current stock price, to research on your competitors is done through IT these days. Your IT is what makes one intelligent data miner the equivalent of ten offline bean-counters. Your IT is what puts your CEO in ten cities a week, raising morale and selling investers on the future of your company and pulling up the value of your options.
Your IT will not make your product look glamerous; it will not regrow your (external) customer's hair or make their wives beautiful again. Your IT will not be the main point in any product you try to sell, from baked beans with bacon to databases with GUIs. Having IT for the sake of IT will not be the reason your company sells more.
And the article makes this point--IT is "irrelevant" because it will not help you gain more (external)customers. IT is a common resource that your competitors can use as well. This is correct, but so utterly wrong I want to vomit.
The fact is it's your INTERNAL CUSTOMERS--PEOPLE--which will be the difference. They need all the tools that you can provide. If this means a dual-monitor setup on a quad Xeon P4 then by all means, spend on it. You will need the best to compete with the best, and I'll wager dollars to donuts that the company selling similar widgets down the street isn't going to hold back if they can get any advantage, technological or other.
If you want a sports analogy, the bottom line is that IT is that extra inch of padding that helps your goalie make the save, that helps your pitcher get an extra MPH on his fastball, and gives your point guard the confidence to sink it from the foul line. It is no replacement for skill, determination, intelligence and hard work. Any company that uses it as a crutch or a baloon to tie their hopes of success on, deserves to be left in the dust.
...but anyone using Windows NT, 2000, or XP will be immediately guilty just by having an unreleased movie *anywhere* on their hard drive.
Oh, you didn't realize that *ALL* drives are automatically shared and accessable by mapping to \\IP ADDRESS\[DRIVE]$ Oh sure, you need an administrator level account and password, but everyone uses ID:administrator PW:password anyway.
The only problem with "pay-per-work" artists is that Crappy artists and Good artists would receive the same wage. I would be able to record 60 minutes of my toilet flushing, have the best record producer and engineers make an album out of it, and make the same amount of money as Brittney Spears. Who decides what art is?
And seriously, how can we compare the sound of my toilet flushing to....oh wait, never mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering all the Myst-Clones that The Adventure Company have released from European developers, I would be thrilled to see them take on a project of this magnitude. There really hasn't been a decent adventure game since The Longest Journey and Syberia, but they've got sequels in development so there's hope yet.
New lead designer Harvey Smith, of Deus Ex: Invisible War fame, has announced some changes to the GTA format.
/still bitter about DX:IW
-To better accomidate the casual player market, there will only be one car model. It will come in 196 colors, but they will all have the same handling and radio station.
-The "New and Improved" physics engine will allow players to jump their car over a mile. Crashing into a fence, however, will still ruin your ride.
-There will approximately 600 blocks to explore, each one requiring a 30 second loading delay.
-To avoid the "What do I do next?" question, the mission system will be replaced with a multiple choice plotline which will feature the same exact missions but one path will always lead through a vent.
with nice textures,
Actually, the textures for both the PC and X-Box versions are low-quality downsamples. Thankfully some rather talented fans have taken it upon themselves to fix Ion Storm's mess.
Click here for an example of some of the changes that were made.
There's also an active community on Ion Storm's own message forums. The main website is here.
"or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed."
My co-worker had a blown up dilbert strip on his cube wall, about how well qualified MCSE's were to provide tech support...the middle box had the now-infamous quote:
"I SUMMON THE VAST POWER OF CERTICIATION!"
Why does this quote bring that one to mind?
>> the one that recognizes the most freedom
>> with the least amount of
>> interpersonal conflicts.
>That sounds good, but why is that moral code
>preferable to, say, "I get what I want when I
>want it"? How do we judge between differing
>moral codes?
Hence the "Least amount of Interpersonal Conflicts" clause.
You can have whatever you want, as long as it doesn't already belong to someone else. For larger communities (Countries) there should be a clause to avoid a Tragedy of the Commons (e.g You can only have as many brides as the ratio of women/men allows)
I would also make it illegal to have your cellphone turned on in a movie theater, but that one can be negotiable if the movie sucks.
They're hardly lost ... they're about to become everyone's new favorite Elevator Muzak.
While there may be ways to see the results of God's work, I take every interpretation of such with a couple tons of Salt. See: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson for good examples of 17th Century organized Religion vs. the emerging scientific community.
How do we decicde which is the better moral code? Easy -- the one that recognizes the most freedom with the least amount of interpersonal conflicts. My hatred of brussel sprouts should in no way prevent you from enjoying them, but your desire to shoot at random pedestrians definately causes a conflict of interest with their desires.
As a society, there just needs to be an agreement e.g. Your right to swing your fist ends at my face, and while a valiant effort, most religious creeds are hardly that. Making the basis for a "Free" nation's code of laws on a 2000 year Fantasy novel is hardly an agreeable solution.
>Hm. How do you understand God
>- I mean, how do you get to know more about Him?
I thought the very concept of God was that he was "Unknowable." Putting your faith in Men in Funny Hats being able to accomplish this feat kind of turns Organized Religion into a charade at best. Ooh look at me, I can tell you what God wants because I have the biggest hat!
>That sounds like a good basis for making
>decisions. But why is it better than "I want
>what I want when I want it!"? In other words...
>how can we judge between differing moral codes?
>Are all moral codes equally valid?
I think the only moral code that is universally valid goes something like "Do unto others..." For everything else, there's circumstance and situation to consider. If I'm being attacked by an ax-wielding maniac, "Thout shalt not kill" gets quickly forgotten.
Man...I may be cheap, but Viva!?
That's just wrong!
Two sheets of bounty with a little Pledge sprayed between makes an excellent, cheap replacement for those damn swifter rags.
Hardware: The part of the computer that you can kick.
Software: The part of the computer that can kick you.
...Uniformity of hardware is key to maintaining a sane corporate IT infrastructure. If every department has their own standard, it's impossible to troubleshoot Gateways, IBMs, Dells, HPs, and frankenbeasts in an 8-hour day. x86 legacy aside, there are too many variations in quality and configuration even across "compatible" systems to reliably troubleshoot issues on a daily basis.
I especially like Dell and IBM's basic troubleshooting kits. They seem to be pretty decent at working on a variety of their own machines, so one disk will support the Dimensions, Optiplexes, and Latitudes I see on a daily basis.
For more in-depth toubleshooting, a good DOS boot disk with Partition Magic is a good first step. For Win2k machines, the System Rescue CD is vital. Especially when you need to bood from a CD (no floppy workstations), mount the NTFS partition, try to fix it, and if you fail you can mount a samba drive and backup your data all without multiple reboots.
Just out of experience, it sounds like the crash may have corrupted the partition table, causing the drive to look outside the physical drive geometry for data. This would cause the read heads to try to force themselves off-platter (odd clunking noises), as well as delay the OS until the hardware reports an error.
Reformatting the disk is a good fix, but sometimes it may be too late if the hardware gets damaged. If you experience *any* further issues with the drive, I'd be ready to replace it at a moment's notice.
I've had too many machines come back to me a few days later with identical problems after reformatting, and RMA'ing a replacement was the only sure-fire way of making sure it didn't recur.
It's about time we got a damn apology for that mess! My god, he might as well have let Lucas direct Revolutions!
I had the same problem with the DIVX encodes. Download the QT .MOV's and the sound should be much better.
Plus all humanity is stuck on one planet. That's bad! There are numerous things which could wipe out the entire race. But put humans on other worlds, and you begin to ensure the race has a future.
What would we call it? I dunno...the acronym for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Planets" probably won't go over very well.
Two words ... "Martian Idol"
God I love Fox!
What about 'Actress you quite liked in Pitch Black'?
Wow, that looks *exactly* like an AIM chat log ;)
Language of the Future in literature has always interested me, so I'm curious to see some examples of her literary "mutiliations and grotesqueries."
The greatest books that ever used altered/mutated language as metaphors for the state of humanity were 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Something about "Ultraviolence" and "Doubleplusungood" strikes just how society has evolved.
How does this compare?
What if Lucas had released a ten-minute "demo" of The Phantom Menace halfway through the editing process. Not a commercial -- an actual example of some of his "ideas" for the movie. A couple scenes with JarJar, a couple "Yippes!" and a midichlorian quote or two. Can you imagine what kind of feedback he would have received on how to make a better movie?
Granted the movie made a zillion dollars thanks to fanbois who went to see it ten times even though they hated it. That's no way to judge the quality of a movie. I look back at the dissapointment it was, and wonder if a few helpful hints would have helped save the soul of the franchise.
However, this points out exactly what's *wrong* when developers don't listen to their audience. Certain elements of a game are removable and yet the core of the game remains the same. If you remove too *many* of these elements, it ceases to be any more then another average game with a "II" at the end.
There were elements to the original Deus Ex that made it *Deus Ex*. Some of these elements, like the skill system, could have been removed and yet kept the familiarity of the game intact. However, if you take stock of everything that was removed:
-Ammo Types (if you use it up in your flamethrower, your bolt caster is useless)
-Skill System (5 biomods at any time does not a customization feature make)
-Inventory Management (you can hold twelve flamethrowers or twelve knives)
-Interface (designed for a controller, breaks all UI rules for KB+Mouse interface on the *PC* edition)
-Locational Damage (Headshots are gone, shoot someone in the foot five times and they're *dead*)
-Stealth (bad news from full game land: no stealth to speak of)
-Game Length (15 hours seems average, granted with multiple story paths it will take longer, but alot will be replaying the same areas over and over)
-Sluggish Play (you can blame current hardware-- DX played the same way--but comeon, give us some options to turn *off* some stuff)
-Retarded save system that gives *no* useful info
-Braindead AI (show a guard his buddy's corpse, he won't flinch...but don't you dare *throw* it at him!)
-Unrealistic Physics (not as generic as DX, but using a garbage can to play basketball?! And you can't walk through a room without knocking all the furniture over)
The best points of the game, the story, are carefully presented and make for an interesting time. It's a good thing they didn't simplify *everything*, or else you might as well have made another Doom clone.
As someone who does "IT" for a living, the main difference that people (especially marketdroids) don't *get* about IT is that it is primarily a service for INTERNAL customers (ie, employees) and not for EXTERNAL customers (ie, the people who buy your company's stuff). IT is, and increasingly so, a highly integrated part of the daily life of your company's internal customers -- their employees. Everything from punching clocks first thing in the morning, to checking the compnay's current stock price, to research on your competitors is done through IT these days. Your IT is what makes one intelligent data miner the equivalent of ten offline bean-counters. Your IT is what puts your CEO in ten cities a week, raising morale and selling investers on the future of your company and pulling up the value of your options.
Your IT will not make your product look glamerous; it will not regrow your (external) customer's hair or make their wives beautiful again. Your IT will not be the main point in any product you try to sell, from baked beans with bacon to databases with GUIs. Having IT for the sake of IT will not be the reason your company sells more.
And the article makes this point--IT is "irrelevant" because it will not help you gain more (external)customers. IT is a common resource that your competitors can use as well. This is correct, but so utterly wrong I want to vomit.
The fact is it's your INTERNAL CUSTOMERS--PEOPLE--which will be the difference. They need all the tools that you can provide. If this means a dual-monitor setup on a quad Xeon P4 then by all means, spend on it. You will need the best to compete with the best, and I'll wager dollars to donuts that the company selling similar widgets down the street isn't going to hold back if they can get any advantage, technological or other.
If you want a sports analogy, the bottom line is that IT is that extra inch of padding that helps your goalie make the save, that helps your pitcher get an extra MPH on his fastball, and gives your point guard the confidence to sink it from the foul line. It is no replacement for skill, determination, intelligence and hard work. Any company that uses it as a crutch or a baloon to tie their hopes of success on, deserves to be left in the dust.
Invest in IT. Invest in your people. Not hype.
...but anyone using Windows NT, 2000, or XP will be immediately guilty just by having an unreleased movie *anywhere* on their hard drive.
Oh, you didn't realize that *ALL* drives are automatically shared and accessable by mapping to \\IP ADDRESS\[DRIVE]$ Oh sure, you need an administrator level account and password, but everyone uses ID:administrator PW:password anyway.
Ignorance is no defense (from ignorance!)
The only problem with "pay-per-work" artists is that Crappy artists and Good artists would receive the same wage. I would be able to record 60 minutes of my toilet flushing, have the best record producer and engineers make an album out of it, and make the same amount of money as Brittney Spears. Who decides what art is?
And seriously, how can we compare the sound of my toilet flushing to....oh wait, never mind.