I hardly think the two are related. Flying cars require major infrastructure changes, regulation, massive safety overhauls, etc. Wearable computers are pretty much just missing a really good input device. You can build one yourself right now with existing optics if you'd like. It is a reality, its just not commonplace. Can't say the same for flying cars outside of a few dubious prototypes.
I agree. I think we're just a decade or so off from the whole "wearable" computer thing being commonplace. Maybe small finger sensors for replicating a virtual keyboard & mouse, and slim formfactor glasses for displaying a virtual screen. I'd say the input tech is here already, and the glasses will probably come around a bit slower. Then the actual CPU can really go pocket sized and smaller. If all you need is the processor (everything else is wireless except maybe a cable for charging), you're only limited by the amount of space the electronics themselves need. And if you think it won't happen because people won't like wearing headsets and the like, just take a look at how fast the borg-like cell headpiece has become a common fashion accessory. Goggles that double as shades or the like aren't that big a stretch.
Wait, you're saying its more useful than the 360, which pretty much does everything the AppleTV does as a secondary feature. Hopefully the AppleTV will "also play games" as well as the Xbox "also streams video" to be worth $300.
The thing is, more power makes a platform easier to program for. I personally haven't used the Wii devkits before, but from what I hear this guy's discription is pretty accurate "two GC's stuck together" indeed. And there's nothing wrong with that given their focus isn't graphics. The thing is, why is Nintendo automatically labeled "enabler of innovation"? If anything MS and Sony are at least trying to open up their platforms to non-industry developers (more so on MS's part with XNA). By making their platforms more accessable to indy developers, and making it easier for the non-Carmacks of the world to put out something professional looking, MS and Sony are tapping into a source of talent and creativity that frankly it seems Nintendo could care less about.
Some states in the US have those laws (NJ I think has a no driving in the passing lane) and I believe some countries in Europe (Germany?) have similar legislation.
Re:Mod parent up. Blenders UI sucks balls.
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New Blender Released
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· Score: 3, Funny
The UI is obviously just a ploy to sell those cool cardboard keyboard overlays like they used to have for WP and Word for DOS. Making UIs really complicated and keyboard based is actually a value-addon for open source software:)
Mods are on crack - this is actual interesting discussion.
There's too much we don't know aobut infant vision to mess with the brains early development - although who knows what stuff like television is already doing to us. However, I think it would be better to have these for overlays and such - where it mixes both the incoming light and anything being fed in from the connection. SVGA seems a little low resolution wise - don't forget this is your whole field of vision. You'd want probably 4-5 times that at least to resolve floating screens and such in front of you.
Don't forget to add those aural implants for Dolby 600 channel sound!
Its legal, but it ain't a hundred percent legal. I mean, you just can't walk into a library, pull a CD off the wall, and start copying. They want you to copy in certain ways from certain sites.
It breaks down like this - its legal to download it, legal to listen to it, and if you pay the fee, legal to copy it. Its illegal to sell it, but get this - it doesn't matter because if they send you a C&D its illegal for them to search your computer - thats a right the RIAA in Canada doesn't have.
if I go to a party and people are playing video games, thats a pretty lame ass party.
Think about it - a lot of us are "closet nerds" or maybe those who aren't 24/7 all about being a geek. I personally don't have a group of friends (locally) into gaming, its something I pretty much do on my own. So, given that, where's my option to play other people? For a lot of games, the best modes are multiplayer, so for me they need to be online to really be any fun.
The biggest problem today is matchmaking and group cohesion. Cliche as it is, I've had some of the most fun online playing Halo 2 with a group of friends I don't live around anymore. Having the couch system is great, as we are in continuous contact before, during, and after the game, and navigating around is a group experience. Being able to easily play with your friends and keeping you in contact and together throughout the game is a lot of fun. Another, more limited experience I've had is playing multiplayer games with the xbox live 360 chat channel. That lets you play with one other person and stay in constant contact with them. The same goes for playing Battlefield 2 as a squad with teamspeak. I'm not a MMORPGer, but I'd imagine doing dungeons with a party that has voice connect is a comparable experience.
So multiplayer online can suck, but it can also be almost as rich as having someone in the same room playing the game if its done right.
Exactly! I actually think the graphics on the Wii are _too_ flashy! All those polygons are detracting from my gameplay experience, when really they could satisfy me with simple cubes and squares to represent the players. Why not have Wario be a cube with a W on it, Link a green pyramid with an L, etc. And now seeing as they aren't going to have one of the industry standard engines on the Wii, well, we should probably reduce the expected level of graphics requirements that gamers want since getting anywhere will be that much harder....
Ok, I can't continue with that. But seriously, just because it doesn't have the "leading edge in graphics" doesn't mean it has no graphics, or is going to get along with stick figures. Its more powerful than the Gamecube, and the cube had some pretty nice looking games last generation, at least on par with the Xbox and PS2, and in many cases (personal opinion, of course), exceeded them. And yes, yes, the Wii is all about gameplay and not graphics, BUT getting to at least the bar set by the last gen is hard enough - the bar is only going to get higher. Line up a late gen PS1 game next to a late gen PS2 game (or N64 to GameCube). Its a pretty big difference. How do you get to that bar and possibly surpass it while still having lots of resources to focus on the gameplay? By having someone else do the work of course! That's where engines like Unreal come in - they do all the fancy shading techniques so you don't have to. You have extra costs in the terms of artists, but in your average shop the realities of the situation are artists and art techs are cheap, graphics engineers are not. Its a shame they're losing Unreal, which is a great engine. I don't know if Unreal2 is on the Wii, but it seems likely given the similarities to the GameCube.
To sum up: gameplay for graphics was a trade-off made by Nintendo to reduce costs for the system. Its not quite the same for gamedevs - you don't magically get a game thats more fun by firing all your graphics engineers and hiring 2x more designers. You still make models, textures, build sets, etc. Its at least as much work as it was last-gen. BUT those tasks can be done in parallel, and having the code partly done for you gets them completed faster.
Apples and oranges. The environment around the PS2 is much much different than PS3. Look at what the PS2 had to face in the Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube. There wasn't much difference in game quality, so the PS2 wasn't surpassed by anyone. There wasn't much difference in gametypes (Wii), so you could treat the systems as equals. The Gamecube was cheaper, but not by half. Factor in PS2 locking in GTAIII, GTIV, FFX all in the same year, and you've got a slam dunk. There was no stopping the PS2, so the bottom line: why cut the price when you're selling like hotcakes? You never really know how much they were making off each one, but given that they didn't need to chop the price down, why bother? In this case, they'll continue to lose money on each system but the price can come down faster. There's also the component cost: DVD wasn't super commonplace in 1999, but it wasn't brand new either. It had been out a few years and definately wasn't as new as Blu-Ray. The initial price drops in components as adoption speeds up are much higher than later on the lifetime of a technology in terms of percenteges. So given that, I can definately see the price coming down a lot faster than PS2.
I guess it is someone's opinion whether they feel screwed over, but I still fail to see how Sony setting the price high on their next console is screwing over previous customers. Its not like they're disabling your PS2s and _making_ you buy their expensive new console to play your old games. People with monopolies do screw you over with pricing - I'd definately see your point if you were talking about Microsoft losing out to Linux or something, but at the point where you can say "No thanks, I'll get a Wii or 360 or upgrade my PC for the newest and greatest games" I don't see how they've treated you unfairly. But to each his own I guess.
I think the point here is that both stations control all three areas - content, broadcast, and receivers. Look at your television:
Content producers make the stations - so you either have advertising models (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc) or pay for models - (pay per view, HBO, Showtime, etc)
Middle-men take the various content signals and consolidate them to their network - cable providers, direct TV, phone companies, and now things like Apple TV. Lockouts are put in place by the middlemen to only recieve the channels you're privledged to - HBO but not Showtime, some PPV, etc.
Receivers - This is now either done via the middle-men or now through open standards (CableCard) through your own box (Think Tivo or roll your own computer methods).
So yes, right now the sattelite providers are a vertical monopoly. They control everything from content to receivers, and its no wonder a lot of consumers have not wanted to make the choice between Oprah and Stern. You could say the same thing about Sony & Blue Ray, with them controlling movies, the medium (middle-men) and the receivers. These kinds of monopolies eliminate choice and hinder innovation and competition, which is what the anti-trust laws are all about. If the sattelite companies backed off and just provided the network, letting someone else rent bandwidth from them, they may find that to be a better business model, as more people would buy cheap receivers and try out different pricing plans from different content providers that suited just them (they want Stern but no Oprah but they do want Rush, both the talking head and the band. Ok, maybe that's not a real person but you get the idea;)
A good CS program will have theoretical courses on CS topics: OS, compilers, concurrency, graphics, etc etc. Once one of the text books has a specific tech of the day or "Programming in" in the title, you might as well pack it in and get an associates IT degree. Learning how to program has very little place in a CS program. Its like construction skills in an architecture school - you have to know about it, maybe even how to do some of it to truly master your area of expertise, but that's not what your at school for.
Please, its a compliment: Who would you rather trust your system with? The clean-shaven guy from ITT Tech who knows how to install Windows and that's pretty much it? Or the bearded overweight dude from his mom's basement from whom Linus stole the original source code (or so he claims?) Bearded dude for the win!
I'm not sure why you find astronomy and the fruit of a palm tree compatible, but I'll be sure to bring some when my D&D group/LUG/WoW clan go watch this comet.
Redundant? Redundant? How could someone with an ALL YOUR BASE signature be redundant?!? That's so fresh and hip that the poster in question had a really good shot of posting something worth while to the conversation, like pointing out something everyone else glossed over and understood to be a mistake to make himself look smarter.
I posted to another reply about this, but I dont' think you're entirely correct when you say it doesn't affect us when others are boosting. It does affect those who want to play the game and get thrown in with a bunch of boosters. Its another form of griefing, and you might not realize right away that's what is going on. It also hurts the community as a whole, since more hardcore players might not stick around if the leaderboards and "bragging rights" are dominated by cheaters. Keeping an online game community healthy is very hard to do, and eliminating cheaters is one of those things.
And like I said in my other post, I agree that in a team game you should play with your friends...on the same team. GoW should have a halo-style party system where you link up with your friends and then join a game. Provided you're on the same team, boosting becomes a non-issue.
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I hardly think the two are related. Flying cars require major infrastructure changes, regulation, massive safety overhauls, etc. Wearable computers are pretty much just missing a really good input device. You can build one yourself right now with existing optics if you'd like. It is a reality, its just not commonplace. Can't say the same for flying cars outside of a few dubious prototypes.
I agree. I think we're just a decade or so off from the whole "wearable" computer thing being commonplace. Maybe small finger sensors for replicating a virtual keyboard & mouse, and slim formfactor glasses for displaying a virtual screen. I'd say the input tech is here already, and the glasses will probably come around a bit slower. Then the actual CPU can really go pocket sized and smaller. If all you need is the processor (everything else is wireless except maybe a cable for charging), you're only limited by the amount of space the electronics themselves need. And if you think it won't happen because people won't like wearing headsets and the like, just take a look at how fast the borg-like cell headpiece has become a common fashion accessory. Goggles that double as shades or the like aren't that big a stretch.
Wait, you're saying its more useful than the 360, which pretty much does everything the AppleTV does as a secondary feature. Hopefully the AppleTV will "also play games" as well as the Xbox "also streams video" to be worth $300.
Yeah, its a real shame you can't express your snide, asshole comment in color!
The thing is, more power makes a platform easier to program for. I personally haven't used the Wii devkits before, but from what I hear this guy's discription is pretty accurate "two GC's stuck together" indeed. And there's nothing wrong with that given their focus isn't graphics. The thing is, why is Nintendo automatically labeled "enabler of innovation"? If anything MS and Sony are at least trying to open up their platforms to non-industry developers (more so on MS's part with XNA). By making their platforms more accessable to indy developers, and making it easier for the non-Carmacks of the world to put out something professional looking, MS and Sony are tapping into a source of talent and creativity that frankly it seems Nintendo could care less about.
Some states in the US have those laws (NJ I think has a no driving in the passing lane) and I believe some countries in Europe (Germany?) have similar legislation.
The UI is obviously just a ploy to sell those cool cardboard keyboard overlays like they used to have for WP and Word for DOS. Making UIs really complicated and keyboard based is actually a value-addon for open source software :)
Mods are on crack - this is actual interesting discussion.
There's too much we don't know aobut infant vision to mess with the brains early development - although who knows what stuff like television is already doing to us. However, I think it would be better to have these for overlays and such - where it mixes both the incoming light and anything being fed in from the connection. SVGA seems a little low resolution wise - don't forget this is your whole field of vision. You'd want probably 4-5 times that at least to resolve floating screens and such in front of you.
Don't forget to add those aural implants for Dolby 600 channel sound!
Sorry, I was going more for the joke and less for correctness, and couldn't think of anything to rhyme with pedantic nerd.
If this increases the rate of showering among our protest communities, I'm all for it!
Its legal, but it ain't a hundred percent legal. I mean, you just can't walk into a library, pull a CD off the wall, and start copying. They want you to copy in certain ways from certain sites. It breaks down like this - its legal to download it, legal to listen to it, and if you pay the fee, legal to copy it. Its illegal to sell it, but get this - it doesn't matter because if they send you a C&D its illegal for them to search your computer - thats a right the RIAA in Canada doesn't have.
if I go to a party and people are playing video games, thats a pretty lame ass party.
Think about it - a lot of us are "closet nerds" or maybe those who aren't 24/7 all about being a geek. I personally don't have a group of friends (locally) into gaming, its something I pretty much do on my own. So, given that, where's my option to play other people? For a lot of games, the best modes are multiplayer, so for me they need to be online to really be any fun.
The biggest problem today is matchmaking and group cohesion. Cliche as it is, I've had some of the most fun online playing Halo 2 with a group of friends I don't live around anymore. Having the couch system is great, as we are in continuous contact before, during, and after the game, and navigating around is a group experience. Being able to easily play with your friends and keeping you in contact and together throughout the game is a lot of fun. Another, more limited experience I've had is playing multiplayer games with the xbox live 360 chat channel. That lets you play with one other person and stay in constant contact with them. The same goes for playing Battlefield 2 as a squad with teamspeak. I'm not a MMORPGer, but I'd imagine doing dungeons with a party that has voice connect is a comparable experience.
So multiplayer online can suck, but it can also be almost as rich as having someone in the same room playing the game if its done right.
Exactly! I actually think the graphics on the Wii are _too_ flashy! All those polygons are detracting from my gameplay experience, when really they could satisfy me with simple cubes and squares to represent the players. Why not have Wario be a cube with a W on it, Link a green pyramid with an L, etc. And now seeing as they aren't going to have one of the industry standard engines on the Wii, well, we should probably reduce the expected level of graphics requirements that gamers want since getting anywhere will be that much harder. ...
Ok, I can't continue with that. But seriously, just because it doesn't have the "leading edge in graphics" doesn't mean it has no graphics, or is going to get along with stick figures. Its more powerful than the Gamecube, and the cube had some pretty nice looking games last generation, at least on par with the Xbox and PS2, and in many cases (personal opinion, of course), exceeded them. And yes, yes, the Wii is all about gameplay and not graphics, BUT getting to at least the bar set by the last gen is hard enough - the bar is only going to get higher. Line up a late gen PS1 game next to a late gen PS2 game (or N64 to GameCube). Its a pretty big difference. How do you get to that bar and possibly surpass it while still having lots of resources to focus on the gameplay? By having someone else do the work of course! That's where engines like Unreal come in - they do all the fancy shading techniques so you don't have to. You have extra costs in the terms of artists, but in your average shop the realities of the situation are artists and art techs are cheap, graphics engineers are not. Its a shame they're losing Unreal, which is a great engine. I don't know if Unreal2 is on the Wii, but it seems likely given the similarities to the GameCube.
To sum up: gameplay for graphics was a trade-off made by Nintendo to reduce costs for the system. Its not quite the same for gamedevs - you don't magically get a game thats more fun by firing all your graphics engineers and hiring 2x more designers. You still make models, textures, build sets, etc. Its at least as much work as it was last-gen. BUT those tasks can be done in parallel, and having the code partly done for you gets them completed faster.
Apples and oranges. The environment around the PS2 is much much different than PS3. Look at what the PS2 had to face in the Dreamcast, Xbox, Gamecube. There wasn't much difference in game quality, so the PS2 wasn't surpassed by anyone. There wasn't much difference in gametypes (Wii), so you could treat the systems as equals. The Gamecube was cheaper, but not by half. Factor in PS2 locking in GTAIII, GTIV, FFX all in the same year, and you've got a slam dunk. There was no stopping the PS2, so the bottom line: why cut the price when you're selling like hotcakes? You never really know how much they were making off each one, but given that they didn't need to chop the price down, why bother? In this case, they'll continue to lose money on each system but the price can come down faster. There's also the component cost: DVD wasn't super commonplace in 1999, but it wasn't brand new either. It had been out a few years and definately wasn't as new as Blu-Ray. The initial price drops in components as adoption speeds up are much higher than later on the lifetime of a technology in terms of percenteges. So given that, I can definately see the price coming down a lot faster than PS2.
I guess it is someone's opinion whether they feel screwed over, but I still fail to see how Sony setting the price high on their next console is screwing over previous customers. Its not like they're disabling your PS2s and _making_ you buy their expensive new console to play your old games. People with monopolies do screw you over with pricing - I'd definately see your point if you were talking about Microsoft losing out to Linux or something, but at the point where you can say "No thanks, I'll get a Wii or 360 or upgrade my PC for the newest and greatest games" I don't see how they've treated you unfairly. But to each his own I guess.
I'm sorry, how is Sony making a video game console and selling it for a high price unfair or unjust to you?
That's why DirectTV has gone under...wait...
;)
I think the point here is that both stations control all three areas - content, broadcast, and receivers. Look at your television:
Content producers make the stations - so you either have advertising models (NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc) or pay for models - (pay per view, HBO, Showtime, etc)
Middle-men take the various content signals and consolidate them to their network - cable providers, direct TV, phone companies, and now things like Apple TV. Lockouts are put in place by the middlemen to only recieve the channels you're privledged to - HBO but not Showtime, some PPV, etc.
Receivers - This is now either done via the middle-men or now through open standards (CableCard) through your own box (Think Tivo or roll your own computer methods).
So yes, right now the sattelite providers are a vertical monopoly. They control everything from content to receivers, and its no wonder a lot of consumers have not wanted to make the choice between Oprah and Stern. You could say the same thing about Sony & Blue Ray, with them controlling movies, the medium (middle-men) and the receivers. These kinds of monopolies eliminate choice and hinder innovation and competition, which is what the anti-trust laws are all about. If the sattelite companies backed off and just provided the network, letting someone else rent bandwidth from them, they may find that to be a better business model, as more people would buy cheap receivers and try out different pricing plans from different content providers that suited just them (they want Stern but no Oprah but they do want Rush, both the talking head and the band. Ok, maybe that's not a real person but you get the idea
Politicians have had to do this for years to keep us from figuring out if they're lying or not.
A good CS program will have theoretical courses on CS topics: OS, compilers, concurrency, graphics, etc etc. Once one of the text books has a specific tech of the day or "Programming in" in the title, you might as well pack it in and get an associates IT degree. Learning how to program has very little place in a CS program. Its like construction skills in an architecture school - you have to know about it, maybe even how to do some of it to truly master your area of expertise, but that's not what your at school for.
And I'm guessing you probably should steal a razor. :)
Please, its a compliment: Who would you rather trust your system with? The clean-shaven guy from ITT Tech who knows how to install Windows and that's pretty much it? Or the bearded overweight dude from his mom's basement from whom Linus stole the original source code (or so he claims?) Bearded dude for the win!
Sure, for cars. But a lot of people want to use GPS maps out in the woods, on a boat, or other places where Cingular or Wi-Fi isn't.
I'm not sure why you find astronomy and the fruit of a palm tree compatible, but I'll be sure to bring some when my D&D group/LUG/WoW clan go watch this comet.
Redundant? Redundant? How could someone with an ALL YOUR BASE signature be redundant?!? That's so fresh and hip that the poster in question had a really good shot of posting something worth while to the conversation, like pointing out something everyone else glossed over and understood to be a mistake to make himself look smarter.
I posted to another reply about this, but I dont' think you're entirely correct when you say it doesn't affect us when others are boosting. It does affect those who want to play the game and get thrown in with a bunch of boosters. Its another form of griefing, and you might not realize right away that's what is going on. It also hurts the community as a whole, since more hardcore players might not stick around if the leaderboards and "bragging rights" are dominated by cheaters. Keeping an online game community healthy is very hard to do, and eliminating cheaters is one of those things.
And like I said in my other post, I agree that in a team game you should play with your friends...on the same team. GoW should have a halo-style party system where you link up with your friends and then join a game. Provided you're on the same team, boosting becomes a non-issue.