My wife and I love these.
While it isn't cooperative, you can pick up PS1 versions of YDKJ games for 5 bucks, and they are a blast but don't require both players to have similar hand eye skills (although the Jack Attacks might be an exception.)
It has always seemed to me that the DNA sequence is like compiled code. So, when will someone invent the DNA disassembler so we can look at the "source code."
and a red herring. As a film buff and former filmmaker I bought into the "non-linear storytelling" hype that was coming from various projects that purported to combine the best of hollywood and games, but all fell flat. Michael Crichton was a huge booster for this concept for a while. Several crappy games later I don't hear much from him about this anymore. Anyone want to fire up "Trespasser?" Didn't think so.
The basic problem is that compelling storytelling requires the storyteller to be in control. The more you add interactivity, the less good the storytelling.
It's like trying to combine the best of democracy with the best of totalitarianism.
I'm a bit surprised that the late Julian Simon, professor and "Cornucopian," didn't predict he would never die. He would have been as correct as any other of his predictions until the exact moment of his death.
The problem with this kind of convenient optimism is the following:
Let's say you are a frog who lives in a pond. One day a weed blows into the pond. This weed is very successful and doubles in size every day. As it does so it strangles the all the other life wherever it has grown in the pond. But you don't mind because as the first few days go by, most of the pond is weed free. Even when the pond is half full of weeds you've still got plenty of space. The problem comes the day after pond is half full.
While it is true that a lot of doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialize, most famously the "Club of Rome" report in the seventies which predicted running out of oil ludicrously soon, it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now.
Wow things have changed. College was where I LEARNED about vacuums. We had this zillion horse power central vacuum system that had vacuum outlets all over the dorm. Ostensibly you were supposed to get a hose and connect it to the outlet and clean your room.
What was better was to have a friend hold open the port while you held the roll of toilet paper between your fingers. The thing would suck down the entire roll, as it unrolled, in about 5 seconds.
As a rural broadband have-not in a sparsely populated and terrible line-of-sight area, I see little hope from the kinds of solutions discussed here.
On the other hand, what about all the wild-eyed plans we see here every few months for things like high altitude balloons over major cities covering 500K sq miles? Or what about all the LEOS companies that seem to have died? Are any of these types of projects still going forward?
This smells like urban folklore. For one thing, given the one-dot-per-line restriction, how do you make "pacman-type characters?" I don't remember any long thin wiggly lines in pacman.
I have to agree, I found Snow Crash and Diamond Age hard to put down, but Cryptonomicon hard to pick back up.
I actually abandoned it about 3/4 of the way through, finding it, as you said, just too long for the content and a little silly.
One of my biggest complaints about SnowCrash and Diamond Age is that he starts with great characters and premises and then crashes them into these global apocalyptic endings that are a bit ludicrous.
But can it play MP3s
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Perhaps in ten years they will have figured out how to make playing MMORPGs less like working at a really boring job interspersed with waiting in huge lines.
"I'll don my asbestos pants now." That won't be necessary.
Basically Adventure and RPGs share enough in common to sit under the same heading in a game taxonomy, but there are enough differences that that they certainly require their own sub-genre classifications.
Classic adventure: Zorks, Grim Fandango, etc. NWN may have modules with no combat, but they are certainly not what the game was primarily intended for or the producers would not have spent so much time on the underlying leveling/monster menagerie/combat systems.
I don't think I'm saying anything particularly radical here. Most game sites differentiate between adventures and RPGs in their own navigation, for example.
You are talking about a role playing game. It really isn't the genre under discussion.
In a classic adventure game you don't "make a character", you don't improve your character's stats in the D&D way, and you generally don't slay things by force of arms, you do it instead by puzzle solving.
There are isolated exceptions to these, but not all together.
In action games you can cover up a bad or missing story by great graphics and gameplay. Adventure gaes are pretty much entirely about the story, and writing a good one is HARD. Not many people can do it, just like not many can write a good movie script.
But the real kicker is that even if you write and produce a great one, the market isn't blockbuster-sized, so companies aren't as interested in funding.
Tim Shaffer (sp?) is about the best writer (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) and he moved on to his own company and a platformer game for XBox. (doublefine.com)
What I'm bitching about is that that actually is a pretty long way around to go to get an MP3 out of the AAC. If what you describe is legal, why not just allow "Save As MP3"?
I won't use the service either. Believe it or not, I really, really want a legal Napster with songs that I can pay for, but this isn't it.
With a CD I purchase, I can rip a song, and use it on any device I own and convert it to any format, all LEGALLY, as long as I don't give it to someone else.
I consider music services, at least at this price level, that don't provide the same flexibility to be broken.
I know there are a lot of things you can do within the limits set, but not enough to ensure future compatibility or multi-device compatibility.
I have four computers now, by the way, and who knows how many more in the future. Only one is a Mac, but I'd like music on all of them.
You're a troll. He's asking a specific question. Keep your simplistic and holier-than-thou assumptions about whether or not his young relatives spend enough time away from the computer to yourself.
Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air now.
Sized fit in with my home stereo with a hard disk, remote control, and TV interface for playlists and control?
Where OS X "Finding" really falls down...
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The Open/Save dialogs.
Under Win2K I can do the following in the open/save dialogs:
* Customize my view style (icon, list, etc) * Filter visible files by my own criteria * Directly manipulate (move, rename, delete, etc) * Right click to do things like compress the file before choosing it * Sort by other than name * type first letter to jump to file * quickly see where in the hierarchy I am all at once
These are not trivial features but they would be trivial for Apple to implement.
Too confusing for the neophyte? Give us an expert mode, please.
The essential problem with 3D UIs
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 1
If you go to a restaurant you have a lovely 2D interface to the food called a menu. All the pertinent information about the food is there, and you can pick very quickly between items as well as easily point them out to your date.
Now imagine the wonderful next generation 3D menu:
1. Place your table on a large lazy susan 2. Get 30 waiters to stand in a circle just outside the radius of the lazy susan. 3. Give each waiter a placard with one dish listed on it 4. Now use a joystick or something to rotate the table so you can look at each waiter in turn
Slashdot Mirror
My wife and I love these. While it isn't cooperative, you can pick up PS1 versions of YDKJ games for 5 bucks, and they are a blast but don't require both players to have similar hand eye skills (although the Jack Attacks might be an exception.)
I think the point is to start off a discussion, since the discussions are often more interesting than the news item in the first place.
It has always seemed to me that the DNA sequence is like compiled code. So, when will someone invent the DNA disassembler so we can look at the "source code."
...
What would that look like?
main John_Smith()
{
eyes() = blue();
}
and a red herring. As a film buff and former filmmaker I bought into the "non-linear storytelling" hype that was coming from various projects that purported to combine the best of hollywood and games, but all fell flat. Michael Crichton was a huge booster for this concept for a while. Several crappy games later I don't hear much from him about this anymore. Anyone want to fire up "Trespasser?" Didn't think so.
The basic problem is that compelling storytelling requires the storyteller to be in control. The more you add interactivity, the less good the storytelling.
It's like trying to combine the best of democracy with the best of totalitarianism.
I'm a bit surprised that the late Julian Simon, professor and "Cornucopian," didn't predict he would never die. He would have been as correct as any other of his predictions until the exact moment of his death.
The problem with this kind of convenient optimism is the following:
Let's say you are a frog who lives in a pond. One day a weed blows into the pond. This weed is very successful and doubles in size every day. As it does so it strangles the all the other life wherever it has grown in the pond. But you don't mind because as the first few days go by, most of the pond is weed free. Even when the pond is half full of weeds you've still got plenty of space. The problem comes the day after pond is half full.
While it is true that a lot of doom-and-gloom predictions have failed to materialize, most famously the "Club of Rome" report in the seventies which predicted running out of oil ludicrously soon, it is silly to ignore the clear signs of environmental and social degradation simply because we've been fine up until now.
Wow things have changed. College was where I LEARNED about vacuums. We had this zillion horse power central vacuum system that had vacuum outlets all over the dorm. Ostensibly you were supposed to get a hose and connect it to the outlet and clean your room. What was better was to have a friend hold open the port while you held the roll of toilet paper between your fingers. The thing would suck down the entire roll, as it unrolled, in about 5 seconds.
MacPlaymate 2
or
Virtual Valerie 2003
abetted by the corporations who stand to lose the most from the dilution of value of internet information, no less.
Maybe someone like google can come up with a signal-to-noise map of the internet, or rating for each particular meme, sort of like a weather map.
As a rural broadband have-not in a sparsely populated and terrible line-of-sight area, I see little hope from the kinds of solutions discussed here.
On the other hand, what about all the wild-eyed plans we see here every few months for things like high altitude balloons over major cities covering 500K sq miles? Or what about all the LEOS companies that seem to have died? Are any of these types of projects still going forward?
This smells like urban folklore. For one thing, given the one-dot-per-line restriction, how do you make "pacman-type characters?" I don't remember any long thin wiggly lines in pacman.
I have to agree, I found Snow Crash and Diamond Age hard to put down, but Cryptonomicon hard to pick back up.
I actually abandoned it about 3/4 of the way through, finding it, as you said, just too long for the content and a little silly.
One of my biggest complaints about SnowCrash and Diamond Age is that he starts with great characters and premises and then crashes them into these global apocalyptic endings that are a bit ludicrous.
from your wireless network? If so, I'll take it.
Perhaps in ten years they will have figured out how to make playing MMORPGs less like working at a really boring job interspersed with waiting in huge lines.
What is the feasibility of putting broadband down along power lines rights of way and using wireless for the last mile problem?
"I'll don my asbestos pants now."
That won't be necessary.
Basically Adventure and RPGs share enough in common to sit under the same heading in a game taxonomy, but there are enough differences that that they certainly require their own sub-genre classifications.
Classic adventure: Zorks, Grim Fandango, etc. NWN may have modules with no combat, but they are certainly not what the game was primarily intended for or the producers would not have spent so much time on the underlying leveling/monster menagerie/combat systems.
I don't think I'm saying anything particularly radical here. Most game sites differentiate between adventures and RPGs in their own navigation, for example.
You are talking about a role playing game. It really isn't the genre under discussion.
In a classic adventure game you don't "make a character", you don't improve your character's stats in the D&D way, and you generally don't slay things by force of arms, you do it instead by puzzle solving.
There are isolated exceptions to these, but not all together.
In action games you can cover up a bad or missing story by great graphics and gameplay. Adventure gaes are pretty much entirely about the story, and writing a good one is HARD. Not many people can do it, just like not many can write a good movie script.
But the real kicker is that even if you write and produce a great one, the market isn't blockbuster-sized, so companies aren't as interested in funding.
Tim Shaffer (sp?) is about the best writer (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle) and he moved on to his own company and a platformer game for XBox. (doublefine.com)
What I'm bitching about is that that actually is a pretty long way around to go to get an MP3 out of the AAC. If what you describe is legal, why not just allow "Save As MP3"?
I won't use the service either. Believe it or not, I really, really want a legal Napster with songs that I can pay for, but this isn't it.
With a CD I purchase, I can rip a song, and use it on any device I own and convert it to any format, all LEGALLY, as long as I don't give it to someone else.
I consider music services, at least at this price level, that don't provide the same flexibility to be broken.
I know there are a lot of things you can do within the limits set, but not enough to ensure future compatibility or multi-device compatibility.
I have four computers now, by the way, and who knows how many more in the future. Only one is a Mac, but I'd like music on all of them.
Maybe because Edward Furlong is a talent and charisma vacuum?!?
Jeez, I loved T2, but every time I revisit it I rediscover what bad casting Furlong was.
I think the word you were looking for is "plethora." The opposite of dearth.
You're a troll. He's asking a specific question. Keep your simplistic and holier-than-thou assumptions about whether or not his young relatives spend enough time away from the computer to yourself. Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air now.
Sized fit in with my home stereo with a hard disk, remote control, and TV interface for playlists and control?
The Open/Save dialogs.
Under Win2K I can do the following in the open/save dialogs:
* Customize my view style (icon, list, etc)
* Filter visible files by my own criteria
* Directly manipulate (move, rename, delete, etc)
* Right click to do things like compress the file before choosing it
* Sort by other than name
* type first letter to jump to file
* quickly see where in the hierarchy I am all at once
These are not trivial features but they would be trivial for Apple to implement.
Too confusing for the neophyte? Give us an expert mode, please.
If you go to a restaurant you have a lovely 2D interface to the food called a menu. All the pertinent information about the food is there, and you can pick very quickly between items as well as easily point them out to your date.
Now imagine the wonderful next generation 3D menu:
1. Place your table on a large lazy susan
2. Get 30 waiters to stand in a circle just outside the radius of the lazy susan.
3. Give each waiter a placard with one dish listed on it
4. Now use a joystick or something to rotate the table so you can look at each waiter in turn
Voila! Super 3D restaurant user interface.
I'll take the menu.