Hmm, somehow there's been a timewarp here... that ooks like a comment from this timeframe. Back when DirectX3 was current and people were talking about Fahrenheit (remember that?!), as in that older-than-Lou-Rawls link you provided. Maybe I've been sucked into a beta test of Slashdot Classics(tm) by mistake.
They wanted bigger ad sizes to make advertisements that look even more convincingly like Windoze dialog boxes. You and I laugh at these things, but one person I met doesn't visit shockwave.com because when they went there, "a message box said there was a problem with my browser."
People point to all the best games from 5 - 10 years ago and compare them to the hundreds of really mediocre games on the shelves today. What they seem to forget is that 5 - 10 years ago there were also hundreds of really mediocre games for every good game.
I believe this is cheekily termed "cultural necrophilia." I think the real problem is that at some point everyone gets disengaged from current music, games, movies and so on, and people long for the stuff that really hooked them. But people making this stuff are heavily influenced by what's out there, what's successful, what everyone else is into, what they like right now, and so on. Therefore things drift in and out of the mainstream to and from specialist realms or obscurity. And when people become disconnected from what's out there, they tend to make not-entirely-informed pronouncements about how terrible things are these days. Frequently, it's because things have changed too fast for them to adapt to. I haven't read the article (like that was ever a requirement) and probably won't, so maybe this isn't relevant at all, but I can't resist quoting one of the classics of philosophy here...
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm 'with' isn't 'it,' and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!" -- Abe "Grampa" Simpson
11. No game development team shall have more than TWO members.
This was one of the things that Scavenger did that I thought was very interesting. Of course, they also did a lot of things with their accounting that were interesting too, but that's another story. Anyway, at a time (early-to-mid 90's) when teams were growing larger and larger, they went with several teams of one programmer and one artist. Like many things about the long-gone developer, it has a seductive quality but many practical problems. Still would love to give it a go, but I think it would have to be a Game Boy Advance project these days...
I would love to find out what the heck was up with Scavenger. What a story that must be.
I know I've ended up telling just about anyone I know who plays FPSs about OMM's crate article -- it's sardonic gaming gold!
Anyway, I heard that Half-Life guys originally designed the game so there was nothing useful in any of the game's crates. But you could still smash them, of course -- you've got a crowbar, after all, and it's kind of fun. When they play-tested the game, they noticed that the testers methodically destroyed each and every crate. They became increasingly perturbed that their expected goody wasn't there, but still, they smashed each one throughout the game in the hope that there would eventually be something, anything there. So the designers ended up putting some useful stuff in the crates, which of course just exacerbates the situation.
Warning: The preceding anecdote may be apocryphal, I don't know.
It's only reasonable to use "irregardless" as a one-word synonym of "somewhat conscientious." It's logical, and after all English is nothing if not adaptable. As for me, even though I sometimes ignore correct usage, at least I always write irregardless of semantic meaning.
Hotline is a little tricky to describe or download for a brief tryout. Briefly, it's a mini-BBS system designed for the Internet. I found out about it from a Salon article a while back, which I recommend (both parts, in fact).
Lookin' good there! I've always appreciated Google's focus on utility, and I think that Deja News was a kindred soul that got corrupted by the dark side (you know, that whole dot-com... thing.) Can't wait to see what the future brings... it's like a dream come true!
Hmm, where did this list of things Microsoft finds disappointing about Sun come from? Must be from Festivus[?] -- seems like the "Airing of Grievances" is really catching on!
More like:
"Overconfident investors, whom the entire commercial Internet is funded by"
since that's where pretty much all the money has come from. Some of it got turned into advertising, some of it went to support the hugely unprofitable businesses being advertised, and so on. As long as the money kept rolling in, who needed to worry about this kind of stuff?
The first few generations of PDAs didn't get too far. Companies nonetheless kept working on it. As we now know, it was only when the Pilot series caught on that PDAs in general took off. I believe the internet appliance (IA) market is in a similar state, but with more serious interest lined up for hardware (now that the wannabe Internet startups like Netpliance are being wiped off the board).
Sony has an interesting twist on the theme, although obvious in retrospect -- the entertainment-focused IA. Nice display, speakers, Memory Stick support. It's reminiscent of the original compact Mac -- a system that sits on a regular desk, table or counter without dominating it. And cute (even in beige). As for the market response, we'll see. I think the monthly access charge and the "can I run AOL on it" issues will be tough to overcome.
Maybe the IA never will take off. But PDAs were an item with only fringe popularity, close to being written off back in '96. Sometimes it takes a few years of refinement to get things right.
The abandonware folks are saying the period of time should be shorter for software since it disappears so quickly (and loses commercial value equally as fast).
Some software does, some doesn't. It's worth pointing out that people are still buying the "arcade classics" collections -- games which were considered "abandonware" five years back. I can easily see this trend continuing, with games of the past and present being packaged for purchase in an easily accessible, readily playable digital library form. Much the same idea as the classic film networks we have here in American cable TV, though of course not as mainstream (yet). As we've seen with Napster, once some variety of piracy goes far enough mainstream, a business motive develops, and the rights owners will usually find a way to work out the legal issues and develop the market.
In fact, I think games are among the most value-retaining works. How many people would you find paying hundreds of dollars for a dedicated Lotus 1-2-3 or The Print Shop 1.0 terminal, compared to a Robotron or Centipede machine?
The demand for scarce older games, such as the Infocom games, suggests an opportunity for re-issue. It's hard to imagine that there's a significant demand yet insignificant commercial value for anything as easily distributable and generally support-free as game software.
I just love how "Funny" comments get moderated higher than the "Insightful" ones, even with the same score. Really shows you where Slashdot's priorities are.
Do you not find them very funny, or are you uncomfortable with Slashdot embracing humor? Personally, I would prefer if the comments were mostly funny and occasionally there were a bit of counterpunch or a background fact slipped in for variety. You know, if there were an option to sort by moderation status, we could both get our wish. I could see only things moderated as Funny by default and you could similarly exclude those comments.
Drawing analogies between software and physical objects is incredibly stupid. Don't do it.
Hmm, I wish I were as "incredibly stupid" about software as some of the authors who have compared a piece of software to a car. Remember folks, as annoying a fact it is, analogies are always imperfect.
I believe that would be freedline, from Tom Christiansen came up with. For those not familiar, Tom is a perl deity as well as a frequent RMS, err, debate partner of note. Better to make your point with code than flames, it seems.;^)
I became dead spooked of the Pasadena Freeway after having that off-ramp experience at a time when I was just getting comfortable driving on freeways. I've only braved the onramps a few times, which are in fact the automotive equivalent of Russian roulette. Part of the reason for this is that the Pasadena is the first freeway opened in the LA area -- cars didn't have as much zip at the time. It's truly a roadway best experienced in a passenger's seat, if not a simulator.
Speaking of the Pasadena area, it would be truly great to see a well-detailed Quake or Unreal map of the Gamble House, a local Arts and Crafts masterpiece. Or Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. You can find books of photos from the Gamble House, even see a video tour of Fallingwater, but being able to walk around like you would in a FPS would be the next-best thing to being there.
The flaw, I think, is that you can have non-copylefted front ends to gcc's RTL backend, or vice versa. As in the GIMP plugin controversy, the GNU project and RMS in particular and would be loath to allow such things. The gcc/proprietary-software combination would result in funky Franken-compilers -- that's right, compilers that look like they've been written by Al Franken. No, I mean you get into some very sticky licensing issues. Sources say that RTL has been in some respects deliberately obfuscated to prevent this. By "sources say," I mean that I think I heard this somewhere or something.
As it seems, yet again, the fault lies not in our code, but in our licenses.
In
Vedic culture, the honorific 'Sri'
or 'Shree', meaning 'True' is bestowed
upon great men and women, usually
spiritual gurus. (For example, Sri
Aurobindo). In European culture,
the title 'Sir' is bestowed on great
men as a recognition of merit and
service. (Sir Isaac Newton). Now,
Extreme Computing bestows the honorary
title 'Cy' to those great souls
who are leading the way into our
techno future. Those brave men and
women who, resistant to the jeering
purists strive with all their power
to higher and higher echelons of
techno integration.
Our
"techno future"? "Techno
integration"? What kind of
crap is this? People are taping
mp3 players to their skull, big
whoopdy doo. It doesn't mean they're
a cyborg, it means they shouldn't
be trusted with any more tape.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, somehow there's been a timewarp here... that ooks like a comment from this timeframe. Back when DirectX3 was current and people were talking about Fahrenheit (remember that?!), as in that older-than-Lou-Rawls link you provided. Maybe I've been sucked into a beta test of Slashdot Classics(tm) by mistake.
They wanted bigger ad sizes to make advertisements that look even more convincingly like Windoze dialog boxes. You and I laugh at these things, but one person I met doesn't visit shockwave.com because when they went there, "a message box said there was a problem with my browser."
I believe this is cheekily termed "cultural necrophilia." I think the real problem is that at some point everyone gets disengaged from current music, games, movies and so on, and people long for the stuff that really hooked them. But people making this stuff are heavily influenced by what's out there, what's successful, what everyone else is into, what they like right now, and so on. Therefore things drift in and out of the mainstream to and from specialist realms or obscurity. And when people become disconnected from what's out there, they tend to make not-entirely-informed pronouncements about how terrible things are these days. Frequently, it's because things have changed too fast for them to adapt to. I haven't read the article (like that was ever a requirement) and probably won't, so maybe this isn't relevant at all, but I can't resist quoting one of the classics of philosophy here...
"I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm 'with' isn't 'it,' and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!" -- Abe "Grampa" Simpson
This was one of the things that Scavenger did that I thought was very interesting. Of course, they also did a lot of things with their accounting that were interesting too, but that's another story. Anyway, at a time (early-to-mid 90's) when teams were growing larger and larger, they went with several teams of one programmer and one artist. Like many things about the long-gone developer, it has a seductive quality but many practical problems. Still would love to give it a go, but I think it would have to be a Game Boy Advance project these days...
I would love to find out what the heck was up with Scavenger. What a story that must be.
Anyway, I heard that Half-Life guys originally designed the game so there was nothing useful in any of the game's crates. But you could still smash them, of course -- you've got a crowbar, after all, and it's kind of fun. When they play-tested the game, they noticed that the testers methodically destroyed each and every crate. They became increasingly perturbed that their expected goody wasn't there, but still, they smashed each one throughout the game in the hope that there would eventually be something, anything there. So the designers ended up putting some useful stuff in the crates, which of course just exacerbates the situation.
Warning: The preceding anecdote may be apocryphal, I don't know.
It's only reasonable to use "irregardless" as a one-word synonym of "somewhat conscientious." It's logical, and after all English is nothing if not adaptable. As for me, even though I sometimes ignore correct usage, at least I always write irregardless of semantic meaning.
"Insert coin. Avoid missing ball for high score."
Hotline is a little tricky to describe or download for a brief tryout. Briefly, it's a mini-BBS system designed for the Internet. I found out about it from a Salon article a while back, which I recommend (both parts, in fact).
Lookin' good there! I've always appreciated Google's focus on utility, and I think that Deja News was a kindred soul that got corrupted by the dark side (you know, that whole dot-com... thing.) Can't wait to see what the future brings... it's like a dream come true!
Hmm, where did this list of things Microsoft finds disappointing about Sun come from? Must be from Festivus[?] -- seems like the "Airing of Grievances" is really catching on!
More like: "Overconfident investors, whom the entire commercial Internet is funded by" since that's where pretty much all the money has come from. Some of it got turned into advertising, some of it went to support the hugely unprofitable businesses being advertised, and so on. As long as the money kept rolling in, who needed to worry about this kind of stuff?
Sony has an interesting twist on the theme, although obvious in retrospect -- the entertainment-focused IA. Nice display, speakers, Memory Stick support. It's reminiscent of the original compact Mac -- a system that sits on a regular desk, table or counter without dominating it. And cute (even in beige). As for the market response, we'll see. I think the monthly access charge and the "can I run AOL on it" issues will be tough to overcome.
Maybe the IA never will take off. But PDAs were an item with only fringe popularity, close to being written off back in '96. Sometimes it takes a few years of refinement to get things right.
This is why 98% of U.S. commuters favor public transportation for others.
The first pretentious art house video game? Moondust, for God's sake. On the Commodore 64.
Some software does, some doesn't. It's worth pointing out that people are still buying the "arcade classics" collections -- games which were considered "abandonware" five years back. I can easily see this trend continuing, with games of the past and present being packaged for purchase in an easily accessible, readily playable digital library form. Much the same idea as the classic film networks we have here in American cable TV, though of course not as mainstream (yet). As we've seen with Napster, once some variety of piracy goes far enough mainstream, a business motive develops, and the rights owners will usually find a way to work out the legal issues and develop the market.
In fact, I think games are among the most value-retaining works. How many people would you find paying hundreds of dollars for a dedicated Lotus 1-2-3 or The Print Shop 1.0 terminal, compared to a Robotron or Centipede machine?
The demand for scarce older games, such as the Infocom games, suggests an opportunity for re-issue. It's hard to imagine that there's a significant demand yet insignificant commercial value for anything as easily distributable and generally support-free as game software.
They're great! Why so touchy? Paul McCready is a legend, that's all.
Everyone who's read Archimedes' Revenge knows that approval voting is the civilized way to vote.
Nope, just you. I mean, come on, I thought everyone knew that -- what do they teach you at school there? =^) <-- note
I believe that would be freedline, from Tom Christiansen came up with. For those not familiar, Tom is a perl deity as well as a frequent RMS, err, debate partner of note. Better to make your point with code than flames, it seems. ;^)
Speaking of the Pasadena area, it would be truly great to see a well-detailed Quake or Unreal map of the Gamble House, a local Arts and Crafts masterpiece. Or Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. You can find books of photos from the Gamble House, even see a video tour of Fallingwater, but being able to walk around like you would in a FPS would be the next-best thing to being there.
As it seems, yet again, the fault lies not in our code, but in our licenses.
Awful Link of the Day: Extreme Computing - The Cyborgs (thanks David) - The title claims, "The future is now." If the future is hundreds of graduate students wearing pounds of wires and hunks of metal on their head, I might as well shoot myself now.
Our "techno future"? "Techno integration"? What kind of crap is this? People are taping mp3 players to their skull, big whoopdy doo. It doesn't mean they're a cyborg, it means they shouldn't be trusted with any more tape.