No, the real problem, at least with this one, is that you can only play 1 or two player Warlords.
Warlords isn't really great unless you have four people playing. It's like having a SF2 game - that can only be played single player. It's a HUGE issue that takes the best game of the set and makes it just mediocre.
I'd rather just get the original Atari, Warlords, and 2 sets of paddles, instead of getting this half-functional set.
What, you mean only the ice over water on the North Pole will melt, and the ice over land such as Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, Russia, and such will still stay ice for some reason? Or does any water melting from that ice somehow not alter the sea level?
If it seems that easy to undermine such a concept being presented by a number of scientists, then you may want to reconsider whether you're taking everything into account.
When something floats in water, it does so because it's less dense. Obvious, right? So how much water does the floating object displace? The object displaces a volume of water that weighs the same amount as that object.
So what happens with ice? As ice is less dense due to containing air, it floats. Melt that ice, and the volume will decrease, but the water level won't change because the amount of water displaced is exactly equal to the amount contained in the ice displacing the water.
The reason the water level goes down in a glass full of ice is because, in that case, there's more ice than there is water to displace, so the situation is different.
Glad to see him mention the desire for an X-Com remake. I still don't understand why they don't do something like this - surely it would sell well with all the people who loved it the first time around, and would love to see it redone even better.
Remove the bugs that never got fixed (the difficulty bug, for example, or the base defense missions with sealed off sections). Enhance it in GOOD ways (ie not making it real-time or some inanity like that), with even the options to play it with all the enhancements off, making it just a fancier looking and bug-free version of the original, and you'd make many gamers happy.
I'm still suprised we haven't had enough fans of the game get together and code up a freeware clone of the game.
Wait a second, I think I've heard that before... in the article. Where they said they've already implented a "That's Interesting" button. It keeps the last, what was it, 30 or so minutes in short-term memory, and if you press the button, it commits it to a more permament storage.
Seriously, though, with the way storage is getting larger and larger for cheaper and cheaper, it shouldn't be long before marking as something only marks it so it stands out, and everything stays recorded, so it can be kept indefinitely. After all, keeping track of everything you see could be useful at certain times, like after you hear about the child abduction that happened in the mall parking lot right around the time you were there - you might be able to scan the recordings and find something helpful.
And that's without considering what image processing (more advanced than what's stated in the article) could do in the future.
How much of one's life is wasted just waiting for public transit?
On average, much less than the amount of time wasted sitting in stopped traffic on the extremely overcrowded expressways in most American cities.
For regularly made trips, such as to and from work, if there is decent public transportation, it can often SAVE time to take the public transit instead of dealing with the horrors of traffic. It's not that hard to adapt your routine to be at the station in time without really standing around waiting for long periods.
I would absolutely love a rail system heading out from Seattle proper and going right by the Microsoft campus. I just moved out here after getting a job at MS, and right now I'm living nearby (apt on Lake Samm) so I don't have to deal with much of a commute.
Later on, I'd love to be able to move into Seattle. With things as they are now, I'll probably be focusing on finding a place on a good bus route to the campus. 520 is an unpleasant place during rush hour. (Though I still laugh when people talk about how bad it is, coming from Chicago, where there weren't just traffic slowdowns at rush hour, but pretty much from 6 am to 11 pm)
A train would be a wonderful thing to have. And it might help slow down the sprawl that I can already tell is significantly affecting the area. I don't want it to end up with miles and miles of endless suburbs.
Not to go the "Real gamers played on..." route, but people like me raised on cartridge game systems still don't quite match up to the true original console gamers - who owned consoles that didn't have cartridges. The original Odyssey. Atari's Video Pinball or Stunt Cycle consoles. Those are TRUE OG systems. At least I can say I've played the two Atari ones.
Actually the "problem" here is the idea that installation should be an end user task. Which is an idea which Microsoft appears to have invented.
So, who's task should installation be? Especially on personal computers? Should each purchase of software come with a charge for someone from the store to come out and install the software?
Looking at software installation as an end-user task is the only way it can be done when it is the end-user's computer and the end-user's software and such. Because there is nobody else to do it. Remember, Linux has come from the unix side, where there are system administrators that do all the important setup stuff. Windows, on the other hand, comes from the home computer perspective, where the users are also consumers. If you don't make it easy to use and setup, people won't use it and won't buy it, and the company wastes money.
So, when you're working with a team on, say, the other side of the continent, just going down to the racketball court together could be a tad tough. Sure, the company can fly one team out to the other's site to all play racquetball, but that could be a bit expensive to do so.
I felt the article was describing how such techonology could be used to help people who are not in close physical proximity still find ways to bond together as a team - not as a stand in for people actually going and doing such activities together.
Though well done games might be more interesting then a simple game of racquetball, that's not really an issue at this point it time, it appears.
I still have Sid Meier's Civilization, SimEarth, SimAnt, A-Train, and Ultima VI - all with the original disks (5 1/4" in most cases, with homemade 3 1/2" copies in the box), instructions, and boxes. Ultima VI has the cloth map still (with a cigarette burn in it since my father couldn't be bothered to be careful), though the used copy I bought didn't have the rune stone in it.
It also wasn't that long ago that I threw out mint-condition boxes for most of my Atari Jaguar stuff - console, cd drive, about 18 games and such cause I knew I wasn't going to give the stuff away or sell it - at least any time soon enough to make the obnoxiousness of hauling it around the country worthwhile.
Re:Inevitable Evolution of Explosive Growth
on
The Law of Disassembly
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
There are already tiny self-replicating things out there in the wild.
They're called bacteria. Amazingly, they've been around and evolving for billions of years. Yet, somehow, the planet has not already become grey goo (or black goo, or blue goo, or green goo, or what-goo-have-you). They're subject to all the various evolutionary pressures that you speculate would influence nanomachines.
If grey goo were as likely as some alarmists have predicted, then I'd think it would have already have occured. The fact that it hasn't implies that there are some big obstacles to reaching the point that some replicating item could turn everything around it into copies of itself.
To put it simply, I don't believe grey goo is something to worry about. A replicator accidentally being created with the ability to turn everything into identical copies just seems too unlikely. Now, perhaps black goo - deliberate creation of such a replicator - might be something to worry about. After all, I'd think it would take deliberate work to even have the possibility of such a replicator.
The rare cards go for a quite a price in some cases. I have single cards worth over $10
$10? Somewhere at home I have a little box that contains a Library of Alexandria, 4 Mana Drains, and a Time Walk. (My Mox Sapphire disappeared during a pro tour qualifier a few years ago)
Yes, very bad form following up your own posts, but I actually managed to do some hunting, and have found exactly what I was looking for!
It was the Mathemagician, made by APF. Wow, it brings back memories. Doubt it would hold a kid's attention nowadays, but I think it definitely helped me get really good at basic math from a really young age.
Perhaps, while we're discussing old electronics, someone can identify one for me.
It looked like a large calculator - a one line red LED segment display, a number pad and mathematical operators and such. The display and keys were the bottom 1/2 or so of the device, the top half just having artwork on it. It could work as a simple calculator, but that wasn't the main purpose of it.
It had a number of mathematical games in it. A few basic ones, then there were six overlays that went over the top. You selected a game, and the overlay would cover some of the display, leaving holes for information for the games. For example, I remember game #6 being some sort of moon landing like game - you'd select a number for thrust power, and the game would update the display with fuel remaining and distance and such.
There was also a football game, #5 I think, and others that I can't recall.
I remember playing with that quite a bit. I have no clue whatever happened to it.
For the longest time, I couldn't recall if I had actually seen a Discman like that, or if I had created it entirely in my head. After all, who would make a CD player where the disc stuck out and could be bumped or cut someone?
Thanks to this web site, I know now that the memory I had of seeing one running at a Highland Appliance store (back before they imploded) actually occured...
Yeah, it is unfortunate it was't done in a secure version of MAME, so that we could be sure that it was done at 100% speed and all that. It is still incredible what was done there.
There are a lot of replays showing various games finished on one credit that were done on non-cheatable MAMEs also. Or marathon sessions of Gauntlet. Or Pac-Man played to the split key. It's a great site.
Now I just need to play some more Rampage and get the top score for the main romset - was so close last time...
As far as I am concerned, they can start offering e-mail, or whatever. They can become as much of a portal as they want.
Just don't destroy the simplicity of their search engine's front page by tacking on all sorts of ads and images and text. The bare-bones website they offer up for searches is so much more efficient and, I feel, better for serving the purpose of what Google primarily is - a high quality search engine.
If they start tacking all sorts of crap to it, they'll become just like everyone else, and lose their uniqueness. It'll still be a high quality search engine, but without stand-out packaging.
I'd suspect you're already aware of this, but for people who love any of the bullet and enemy insane shooters, there is something you absolutely just HAVE to watch.
Go to The MAME Action Replay Page, download the MAME replay of the top DoDonPachi score (world version, I believe), and watch the playback.
The guy does things that you'd swear were impossible for a human being to do. The dodging of bullets is superhuman. Let's just say that you get to watch someone complete BOTH loops of the game - on a single man. Of course, then a super-boss comes out, and even the amazing player who recorded that game can't survive the times where the entire screen is literally (as in the proper use of that word) covered by various shots.
Watching it made me feel like I should give up gaming for the rest of my life because I suck horribly compared to that guy.
Wow, I'd love to have that set of paddles! I went out and purchased an old 2600 and a number of games, though getting Warlords and the two sets of paddles for four-player action was my goal. I never did manage to find a second set of paddles, though, as it seems they're in rather short supply. So I've never been able to get the four-player Warlords action going on.
You were not the only one. I remember having a Sears Telegames unit also, but ours was purchased due to the fact that our original Atari VCS (wasn't called the 2600 at the time) unit - and I mean original, all six switches on the front, matte black sticker instead of gloss - had issues and had stopped working all that well, mainly due to a bad power switch IIRC.
I also remember one game available through Sears that I don't think was released by anyone else. At least, I never saw it anywhere else. "Stellar Track", which was just a version of the old, traditional strategy Star Trek-like game where you warped around sectors and quadrants to destroy X ships in Y days and all that fun stuff.
I have to admit, the Quake soundtrack was very well done. The game was significantly scarier to me when I started playing with the soundtrack - I had to turn it off a few times, as it creeped me out quite a bit.
I still have fond memories of Wipeout XL's soundtrack, which went really well. I also really liked the soundtrack for N2O Nitrous Oxide. The game was a trippy shooter, and having a soundtrack that was entirely The Crystal Method went along with it extremely well - I think it made the game better.
Tempest 2000, while not licensed, also had a wonderful soundtrack - I found the soundtrack CD that came with the Jag CD to be a nice bonus, with some of the techno on there really cool. My favorite track off of there wasn't even included in the game.
Just because something is hyped, doesn't mean it's good. Just because something makes a lot of money, doesn't mean it's good.
And just because you happen to dislike something, doesn't mean it's bad. Just because I don't like beer doesn't mean all beer completely sucks.
Why do geeky/nerdy types enjoy that swill? Alcoholism maybe? Cheap, tastless pathetic garbage they can get drunk on? Who cares. It makes them happy, much like a balloon makes my 3-year-old happy.
So, what would you call the guy who owns the car I passed by on the road once? The Honda Civic that was all riced out - and had painted elvish on the side, and had a license plate that read "NAZGUL 9". That was just... wrong...
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No, the real problem, at least with this one, is that you can only play 1 or two player Warlords.
Warlords isn't really great unless you have four people playing. It's like having a SF2 game - that can only be played single player. It's a HUGE issue that takes the best game of the set and makes it just mediocre.
I'd rather just get the original Atari, Warlords, and 2 sets of paddles, instead of getting this half-functional set.
What, you mean only the ice over water on the North Pole will melt, and the ice over land such as Antarctica, Greenland, Canada, Russia, and such will still stay ice for some reason? Or does any water melting from that ice somehow not alter the sea level?
If it seems that easy to undermine such a concept being presented by a number of scientists, then you may want to reconsider whether you're taking everything into account.
To answer both of your questions...
When something floats in water, it does so because it's less dense. Obvious, right? So how much water does the floating object displace? The object displaces a volume of water that weighs the same amount as that object.
So what happens with ice? As ice is less dense due to containing air, it floats. Melt that ice, and the volume will decrease, but the water level won't change because the amount of water displaced is exactly equal to the amount contained in the ice displacing the water.
The reason the water level goes down in a glass full of ice is because, in that case, there's more ice than there is water to displace, so the situation is different.
Glad to see him mention the desire for an X-Com remake. I still don't understand why they don't do something like this - surely it would sell well with all the people who loved it the first time around, and would love to see it redone even better.
Remove the bugs that never got fixed (the difficulty bug, for example, or the base defense missions with sealed off sections). Enhance it in GOOD ways (ie not making it real-time or some inanity like that), with even the options to play it with all the enhancements off, making it just a fancier looking and bug-free version of the original, and you'd make many gamers happy.
I'm still suprised we haven't had enough fans of the game get together and code up a freeware clone of the game.
Wow, what a great idea.
Wait a second, I think I've heard that before... in the article. Where they said they've already implented a "That's Interesting" button. It keeps the last, what was it, 30 or so minutes in short-term memory, and if you press the button, it commits it to a more permament storage.
Seriously, though, with the way storage is getting larger and larger for cheaper and cheaper, it shouldn't be long before marking as something only marks it so it stands out, and everything stays recorded, so it can be kept indefinitely. After all, keeping track of everything you see could be useful at certain times, like after you hear about the child abduction that happened in the mall parking lot right around the time you were there - you might be able to scan the recordings and find something helpful.
And that's without considering what image processing (more advanced than what's stated in the article) could do in the future.
How much of one's life is wasted just waiting for public transit?
On average, much less than the amount of time wasted sitting in stopped traffic on the extremely overcrowded expressways in most American cities.
For regularly made trips, such as to and from work, if there is decent public transportation, it can often SAVE time to take the public transit instead of dealing with the horrors of traffic. It's not that hard to adapt your routine to be at the station in time without really standing around waiting for long periods.
I would absolutely love a rail system heading out from Seattle proper and going right by the Microsoft campus. I just moved out here after getting a job at MS, and right now I'm living nearby (apt on Lake Samm) so I don't have to deal with much of a commute.
Later on, I'd love to be able to move into Seattle. With things as they are now, I'll probably be focusing on finding a place on a good bus route to the campus. 520 is an unpleasant place during rush hour. (Though I still laugh when people talk about how bad it is, coming from Chicago, where there weren't just traffic slowdowns at rush hour, but pretty much from 6 am to 11 pm)
A train would be a wonderful thing to have. And it might help slow down the sprawl that I can already tell is significantly affecting the area. I don't want it to end up with miles and miles of endless suburbs.
Not to go the "Real gamers played on..." route, but people like me raised on cartridge game systems still don't quite match up to the true original console gamers - who owned consoles that didn't have cartridges. The original Odyssey. Atari's Video Pinball or Stunt Cycle consoles. Those are TRUE OG systems. At least I can say I've played the two Atari ones.
Still need to buy a Stunt Cycle someday...
Actually the "problem" here is the idea that installation should be an end user task. Which is an idea which Microsoft appears to have invented.
So, who's task should installation be? Especially on personal computers? Should each purchase of software come with a charge for someone from the store to come out and install the software?
Looking at software installation as an end-user task is the only way it can be done when it is the end-user's computer and the end-user's software and such. Because there is nobody else to do it. Remember, Linux has come from the unix side, where there are system administrators that do all the important setup stuff. Windows, on the other hand, comes from the home computer perspective, where the users are also consumers. If you don't make it easy to use and setup, people won't use it and won't buy it, and the company wastes money.
So, when you're working with a team on, say, the other side of the continent, just going down to the racketball court together could be a tad tough. Sure, the company can fly one team out to the other's site to all play racquetball, but that could be a bit expensive to do so.
I felt the article was describing how such techonology could be used to help people who are not in close physical proximity still find ways to bond together as a team - not as a stand in for people actually going and doing such activities together.
Though well done games might be more interesting then a simple game of racquetball, that's not really an issue at this point it time, it appears.
I still have Sid Meier's Civilization, SimEarth, SimAnt, A-Train, and Ultima VI - all with the original disks (5 1/4" in most cases, with homemade 3 1/2" copies in the box), instructions, and boxes. Ultima VI has the cloth map still (with a cigarette burn in it since my father couldn't be bothered to be careful), though the used copy I bought didn't have the rune stone in it.
It also wasn't that long ago that I threw out mint-condition boxes for most of my Atari Jaguar stuff - console, cd drive, about 18 games and such cause I knew I wasn't going to give the stuff away or sell it - at least any time soon enough to make the obnoxiousness of hauling it around the country worthwhile.
There are already tiny self-replicating things out there in the wild.
They're called bacteria. Amazingly, they've been around and evolving for billions of years. Yet, somehow, the planet has not already become grey goo (or black goo, or blue goo, or green goo, or what-goo-have-you). They're subject to all the various evolutionary pressures that you speculate would influence nanomachines.
If grey goo were as likely as some alarmists have predicted, then I'd think it would have already have occured. The fact that it hasn't implies that there are some big obstacles to reaching the point that some replicating item could turn everything around it into copies of itself.
To put it simply, I don't believe grey goo is something to worry about. A replicator accidentally being created with the ability to turn everything into identical copies just seems too unlikely. Now, perhaps black goo - deliberate creation of such a replicator - might be something to worry about. After all, I'd think it would take deliberate work to even have the possibility of such a replicator.
The rare cards go for a quite a price in some cases. I have single cards worth over $10
:)
$10? Somewhere at home I have a little box that contains a Library of Alexandria, 4 Mana Drains, and a Time Walk. (My Mox Sapphire disappeared during a pro tour qualifier a few years ago)
$10? Pshaw.
Yes, very bad form following up your own posts, but I actually managed to do some hunting, and have found exactly what I was looking for!
It was the Mathemagician, made by APF. Wow, it brings back memories. Doubt it would hold a kid's attention nowadays, but I think it definitely helped me get really good at basic math from a really young age.
Perhaps, while we're discussing old electronics, someone can identify one for me.
It looked like a large calculator - a one line red LED segment display, a number pad and mathematical operators and such. The display and keys were the bottom 1/2 or so of the device, the top half just having artwork on it. It could work as a simple calculator, but that wasn't the main purpose of it.
It had a number of mathematical games in it. A few basic ones, then there were six overlays that went over the top. You selected a game, and the overlay would cover some of the display, leaving holes for information for the games. For example, I remember game #6 being some sort of moon landing like game - you'd select a number for thrust power, and the game would update the display with fuel remaining and distance and such.
There was also a football game, #5 I think, and others that I can't recall.
I remember playing with that quite a bit. I have no clue whatever happened to it.
For the longest time, I couldn't recall if I had actually seen a Discman like that, or if I had created it entirely in my head. After all, who would make a CD player where the disc stuck out and could be bumped or cut someone?
Thanks to this web site, I know now that the memory I had of seeing one running at a Highland Appliance store (back before they imploded) actually occured...
Yeah, it is unfortunate it was't done in a secure version of MAME, so that we could be sure that it was done at 100% speed and all that. It is still incredible what was done there.
There are a lot of replays showing various games finished on one credit that were done on non-cheatable MAMEs also. Or marathon sessions of Gauntlet. Or Pac-Man played to the split key. It's a great site.
Now I just need to play some more Rampage and get the top score for the main romset - was so close last time...
As far as I am concerned, they can start offering e-mail, or whatever. They can become as much of a portal as they want.
Just don't destroy the simplicity of their search engine's front page by tacking on all sorts of ads and images and text. The bare-bones website they offer up for searches is so much more efficient and, I feel, better for serving the purpose of what Google primarily is - a high quality search engine.
If they start tacking all sorts of crap to it, they'll become just like everyone else, and lose their uniqueness. It'll still be a high quality search engine, but without stand-out packaging.
I'd suspect you're already aware of this, but for people who love any of the bullet and enemy insane shooters, there is something you absolutely just HAVE to watch.
Go to The MAME Action Replay Page, download the MAME replay of the top DoDonPachi score (world version, I believe), and watch the playback.
The guy does things that you'd swear were impossible for a human being to do. The dodging of bullets is superhuman. Let's just say that you get to watch someone complete BOTH loops of the game - on a single man. Of course, then a super-boss comes out, and even the amazing player who recorded that game can't survive the times where the entire screen is literally (as in the proper use of that word) covered by various shots.
Watching it made me feel like I should give up gaming for the rest of my life because I suck horribly compared to that guy.
Wow, I'd love to have that set of paddles! I went out and purchased an old 2600 and a number of games, though getting Warlords and the two sets of paddles for four-player action was my goal. I never did manage to find a second set of paddles, though, as it seems they're in rather short supply. So I've never been able to get the four-player Warlords action going on.
You were not the only one. I remember having a Sears Telegames unit also, but ours was purchased due to the fact that our original Atari VCS (wasn't called the 2600 at the time) unit - and I mean original, all six switches on the front, matte black sticker instead of gloss - had issues and had stopped working all that well, mainly due to a bad power switch IIRC.
I also remember one game available through Sears that I don't think was released by anyone else. At least, I never saw it anywhere else. "Stellar Track", which was just a version of the old, traditional strategy Star Trek-like game where you warped around sectors and quadrants to destroy X ships in Y days and all that fun stuff.
It would be cheaper to just get a pair of Cobalt Flux platforms, and hook that up to a PC with Stepmania, or even a PS2 with DDR MAX/DDR MAX 2.
Though a full-sized DDR machine would be cool as hell to have!
I have to admit, the Quake soundtrack was very well done. The game was significantly scarier to me when I started playing with the soundtrack - I had to turn it off a few times, as it creeped me out quite a bit.
I still have fond memories of Wipeout XL's soundtrack, which went really well. I also really liked the soundtrack for N2O Nitrous Oxide. The game was a trippy shooter, and having a soundtrack that was entirely The Crystal Method went along with it extremely well - I think it made the game better.
Tempest 2000, while not licensed, also had a wonderful soundtrack - I found the soundtrack CD that came with the Jag CD to be a nice bonus, with some of the techno on there really cool. My favorite track off of there wasn't even included in the game.
Just because something is hyped, doesn't mean it's good. Just because something makes a lot of money, doesn't mean it's good.
And just because you happen to dislike something, doesn't mean it's bad. Just because I don't like beer doesn't mean all beer completely sucks.
Why do geeky/nerdy types enjoy that swill? Alcoholism maybe? Cheap, tastless pathetic garbage they can get drunk on? Who cares. It makes them happy, much like a balloon makes my 3-year-old happy.
So, what would you call the guy who owns the car I passed by on the road once? The Honda Civic that was all riced out - and had painted elvish on the side, and had a license plate that read "NAZGUL 9". That was just... wrong...