Depends how high level the command parsing is. If I can say 'factory group 5, build anti-air and patrol', or 'attack squad 3, assault location Bravo now, and retreat in 2 minutes' - the kind of thing that I'd be able to request of a human ally, then it would be good. But that's not so much voice recognition, as natural language parsing, and that's a whole different situation.
One of the most interesting places for natural language parsing was muds, a while back.
Whilst of limited scope, various LP muds out there (Nanvaent springs to mind) had some really quite impressive capability to parse sentences, and determine objects and operations from it.
Recognising voice is easier than it's ever been, but I've never seen the advantage to shouting 'open' at a door, as opposed to pressing the 'open' button. The trick is taking 'Computer, please give me a graph of the house price in the UK against the average salary over the last 10 years' - whether it's spoken, or typed - and then turning that into the desired outcome.
I have to say, Google's doing quite well as some of the 'natural queries', but we still have a very long way to go before 'star trek' style voice command computers are a reality.
It can 'not make economic sense' to hire a defense lawyer, simply on the basis that the cost of fighting the case might well be higher than the settlement.
You don't actually need to travel though - one bit of space is much like another, if you find a bit you like then you can just set up there and never have to go more than a few jumps from your base.
Yes, if you want to go to the other side of the galaxy to see if the rocks are basically the same, then you'll spend time travelling (much less than used to be the case, but still). I think that's good. It makes some places feel like 'home'.
I disagree on it being simplistic. I find I think of EVE as more of a strategy game than any of the other MMOs out there - your fighting is about what resources you can bring to bear, how good your logistics are (refitting/swapping ships), your chain of command (fleet commander and generally how your fleet react), morale and just plain knowing in advance how things work.
Pressing F1-F8 and hoping loses fights.
Now I appreciate that's not what everyone's looking for. I know lots of people who never really got to grips with the idea, and were annoyed that they couldn't 'steer' or 'aim'. I'm ok with that though - I'd rather have MMOs that catered to different tastes, than to have 50 WOW clones.
Although, I'd agree on PvE. It's... well, getting better, but it's a far cry from the single player experience in other games. Again, I also don't mind that. If I want to play an FPS, I go play an FPS and don't complain that EVE doesn't do it:).
I think EVE is still an excellent example of a Massively Multiplayer, PvP, RTS. In space, kinda (realistic space physics is a bad idea). With just enough versatility that you can 'come in' by another route, and see if you like the temperature of the water.
But there will always be people who don't like PvPing. There will always be people who don't like gambling (Ship losses are significant in EVE, and each time you PvP in it you are gambling that you won't lose it).
I think it's as much because 'swords and sorcery' is a much better established paradigm - you can much more easily have a character in a fantasy MMO be 'meaningful'. In a Sci-Fi context, you have some extremely high power weaponry, relatively speaking (I don't care how awesome conan was, he cannot compete with an ICBM, or a dude with a 2 mile range sniper rifle). Fantasy... well, you get to fight people face to face, or at short range. You get to fight fair, because there's not really a tactical or strategic disadvantage to squaring off on a battlefield.
Modern or futuristic weapons on the other hand, are... too powerful, and people too squishy.
I have hopes of WOD:MMO, as a future/modern setting, but I can well see why fantasy is just so popular.
EVE is a very different game too, in that it's adversarial. Your 'average' game player, doesn't appreciate the PvP mindset, and would rather have a fun and fluffy ride where no one gets hurt (Even in things like FPS, and you 'kill' other players, the price for losing is negligable). In EVE, you gain by trampling on other people, and it's _not_ fair, at a fundamental level. That attracts a different kind of person, and presents a different style of game.
it's a cluster, certainly. But for innovative... actually, your sarcasm is wasted. There's not many places where you need the kind of real time concurrancy that an MMO does. And... that's mostly why EVE is the only one to do it on a serious level.
Friends I like chatting to. I have several acquaintances though, that I don't enjoy chatting to. Therefore getting a summary of their life in a readable text format quite neatly allows you to be a real git and abort their attempts to talk to you face to face.
A web 'broadcast' isn't implicitly a bad thing - I mean, there may be more people interested about a baby being born. So you'd ring around the people who would obviously care, and post on a blog for those who might be interested. Works for me, just fine.
Problem is one of using the right tool for a job - a blog (or twitter) is not a substitute for real time, acknowledged communication, any more than it's a good idea to email me to let me know my mail server is down.
The danger of password policies is that more is not necessarily better.
Where I currently work, the policy is letter count, no dictionary words, and must include a number or 'special' character.
It also requires that it be changed ever 30 days, and starts notifying you the last two weeks.
Also, there's not much in the way of 'single sign on' despite having an active directory, and thus I have somewhere in the region of 10 different accounts, for various things with various privileges.
This almost inevitably leads to 'password exhaustion' - 10 new passwords every two weeks is near impossible to remember or keep on choosing stuff that's I know is 'good'. I can handle 8 random character passwords, and have done in the past, provided I get a sensible duration on cycling it. So I get to choose now - choose a 'good' password, fail to remember it and resort to post-it-note backup. Or choose a mediocre password that's within a dictionary attack domain, that I can remember.
Regulation of Investigatory powers bill requires the subject to disclose encryption keys.
Alternatively, "Attempting to pervert the course of justice". I believe that's what they used to stitch up people with speed trap detectors, and I can't see why you couldn't put forth the rational argument that software 'designed' to interfere with police operations counts. (e.g. your virus checker, spotting a police trojan)
More likely they'll do exactly the same thing but cite the Prevention of Terrorism act. That way they can keep you locked up for a few weeks without having to even charge you. Nor do they actually need to know you have a screwdriver, they just might have suspicion that you 'looked a bit like a terrorist'. So much the better if you make it _easy_ for them to find something to charge you with.
Not at all - low hanging fruit may be gone, but 'sloppy' implementations of IT systems are widespread and rife. I do IT for an 'outsource support' provider - many of our customers are in a position where revisiting their IT systems and working practices around them will provide massive dividends.
Whether they will or not, is another matter - I suspect it's much more likely that they're going to keep their heads down, and work to 'lowest common denominator' IT services.
The problem isn't one of how many more sales you get, but one of how many more sales you get in return for the extra time/effort you spend building in portability.
I mean, Windows is the safe bet. Linux/Mac... well, you _will_ get some more sales - some will be dual booting, but some won't. But that's not the issue - what is the issue is how much it'll cost you in additional effort to do a Mac/Linux release - it's pretty much guaranteed there will be _some_ code tweaking needed, and _some_ additional bugs/support requirements. So it comes down to a question of whether the market is big enough to make that worthwhile, given that... well, at the very least Linux users tend to be tech savvy enough to dual boot.
I think that it's getting there - there's gradually getting to be a large enough market of people prepared to pay money for their stuff, that it's worth it. Which I guess would be the point of the article.
He played what's IMO the best Massively multiplayer PvP game out there, and in doing so neither interacted with anyone, nor PvPed. His review was an accurate one, provided you realise he's only talking about 5% of the game.
Special title? Well, no more than 'President' or 'Prime Minister' who are, after all, people who could afford to take a step out of real life to 'play politics' and are almost certainly pretty bent political hacks.
A monarch is a person who's been educated from birth, and has had plenty of time to think about role, responsibility and necessary education.
They also have tenure of a sorts, which means they can afford to take a long view - most major shifts in a country don't really start to take effect for years anyway.
It's not actually much worse than the current perversions of a democracy that various other countries seem to run - a 4 yearly popularity contest where you're trying to buy the maximum number of voters with a minimal amount of investment. It's about as much a question of birthright as a monarchy is too - your 'average working man' rarely has enough money to afford the luxury of spending years campaigning and polticiking, and dropping large amounts of cash on the political campaign. (OK, so they can sell out to someone rich and get funding as a result but that's not much different).
*shrug*. The reason a monarchy _still_ works quite well, is because you still typically have an elected government, but you have a person who's a representative of the country's interest in the long term as well.
It bothers me somewhat that the release of this game includes 'exclusive units'. Game, Play, Amazon each have their own 'exclusive unit' unlock code. (Death's Head Hussars, USS Constitution, Dahomey Amazons respectively). The Special Forces edition also includes unlock codes for 6 other exclusive units (HMS Victory, Rogers Rangers, Ottoman Organ Gun, Ghoorkas, Corso Terrestre Guerillas, Bulkeley's Regiment).
I think that bothers me somewhat. It's only in the campaign, but none the less seems... well, somewhat cheap. Especially given that basically you'll be paying more for the extra units. But being such a fanboy as I am, I'll go for the special forces edition, and try to figure out which of the 3 'pre-order specials' I'd rather have.
But I'm not sure I like this trend in games towards 'special editions'.
I did have a few slightly messy 'bridge' fights, or 'water crossing' fights, but you're mostly right - the computer player was far happier to sit over on the other side waiting for you to emerge from the chokepoint than to chokepoint you and slap you silly like it should. Of course, bridge defenses shouldn't actually work all that well with adequate archer support - longbow were an excellent counter to the 'sit and wait for the opponent to arrive' tactic, as you got to soften them up massively before you charged.
My biggest problem with the diplomacy is how it was virtually impossible to maintain an alliance with someone. I mean, I know it's total war and all, but having a few trade partners would be nice. Backstabbing someone when they're on a 'crushninate' campaign is just plain foolhardy too. There were a couple of occasions where a backstab would net my opponent a region, and there I consider it 'reasonable'.
I don't mind fighting around castle walls, or wouldn't if it weren't for just how irritating the pope got with 'cease thy charge Or Else'. I ended up making sure that every army carried a full complement of spies with it, to bundle into the citadels, and open the gates, as that was far quicker than laying siege for 10 years, or trundling around with a large enough complement of siege weaponry to punch through each of the tiers of walls.
It also meant that you got to keep the defenses intact, which was always rather nice.
Not to mention that a 'withdraw' counted as a 'loss' even if all you were trying to do was driveby, smash a wall, kill some of the garrison and come back to do an 'inner' wall next time.
Which was a shame really, as the siege engines were kinda fun. There's something very cathartic about a row of trebuchets unleashing flaming death. (Although not quite as much fun in previous TW games, where there was a 'follow projectile' option, that was just plain awesome)
I've not seen many good 'navy' combat games. There's a few that are sort of fun, but mostly their 'sea' units are basically 'land' units that go on water. (Supreme Commander naval forces springs to mind. Although I suppose it does have submerged/unsubmerged/shore bombardment mechanics).
I'm hoping that Empire Total War will implement 'full' naval combat and include things like wind direction, changing sail and gun facing. In my opinion they have quite a good track record of making 'maneuver' combat relevant, but having cavalry hitting an infantry unit in the flanks isn't quite in the same realm as a ship which can't actually turn on the spot.
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Depends how high level the command parsing is. If I can say 'factory group 5, build anti-air and patrol', or 'attack squad 3, assault location Bravo now, and retreat in 2 minutes' - the kind of thing that I'd be able to request of a human ally, then it would be good. But that's not so much voice recognition, as natural language parsing, and that's a whole different situation.
Whilst of limited scope, various LP muds out there (Nanvaent springs to mind) had some really quite impressive capability to parse sentences, and determine objects and operations from it.
Recognising voice is easier than it's ever been, but I've never seen the advantage to shouting 'open' at a door, as opposed to pressing the 'open' button. The trick is taking 'Computer, please give me a graph of the house price in the UK against the average salary over the last 10 years' - whether it's spoken, or typed - and then turning that into the desired outcome.
I have to say, Google's doing quite well as some of the 'natural queries', but we still have a very long way to go before 'star trek' style voice command computers are a reality.
It can 'not make economic sense' to hire a defense lawyer, simply on the basis that the cost of fighting the case might well be higher than the settlement.
Yes, if you want to go to the other side of the galaxy to see if the rocks are basically the same, then you'll spend time travelling (much less than used to be the case, but still). I think that's good. It makes some places feel like 'home'.
Pressing F1-F8 and hoping loses fights.
Now I appreciate that's not what everyone's looking for. I know lots of people who never really got to grips with the idea, and were annoyed that they couldn't 'steer' or 'aim'. I'm ok with that though - I'd rather have MMOs that catered to different tastes, than to have 50 WOW clones.
Although, I'd agree on PvE. It's... well, getting better, but it's a far cry from the single player experience in other games. Again, I also don't mind that. If I want to play an FPS, I go play an FPS and don't complain that EVE doesn't do it :).
I think EVE is still an excellent example of a Massively Multiplayer, PvP, RTS. In space, kinda (realistic space physics is a bad idea). With just enough versatility that you can 'come in' by another route, and see if you like the temperature of the water.
But there will always be people who don't like PvPing. There will always be people who don't like gambling (Ship losses are significant in EVE, and each time you PvP in it you are gambling that you won't lose it).
Modern or futuristic weapons on the other hand, are ... too powerful, and people too squishy.
I have hopes of WOD:MMO, as a future/modern setting, but I can well see why fantasy is just so popular.
EVE is a very different game too, in that it's adversarial. Your 'average' game player, doesn't appreciate the PvP mindset, and would rather have a fun and fluffy ride where no one gets hurt (Even in things like FPS, and you 'kill' other players, the price for losing is negligable). In EVE, you gain by trampling on other people, and it's _not_ fair, at a fundamental level. That attracts a different kind of person, and presents a different style of game.
it's a cluster, certainly. But for innovative... actually, your sarcasm is wasted. There's not many places where you need the kind of real time concurrancy that an MMO does. And... that's mostly why EVE is the only one to do it on a serious level.
Friends I like chatting to. I have several acquaintances though, that I don't enjoy chatting to. Therefore getting a summary of their life in a readable text format quite neatly allows you to be a real git and abort their attempts to talk to you face to face.
Problem is one of using the right tool for a job - a blog (or twitter) is not a substitute for real time, acknowledged communication, any more than it's a good idea to email me to let me know my mail server is down.
I feel that's about as apt.
Google Internet.
The safe and fluffy internet, that's shielding you and your loved ones from the bad people out there. Where only 'safe' websites will be accessible.
Where I currently work, the policy is letter count, no dictionary words, and must include a number or 'special' character.
It also requires that it be changed ever 30 days, and starts notifying you the last two weeks.
Also, there's not much in the way of 'single sign on' despite having an active directory, and thus I have somewhere in the region of 10 different accounts, for various things with various privileges.
This almost inevitably leads to 'password exhaustion' - 10 new passwords every two weeks is near impossible to remember or keep on choosing stuff that's I know is 'good'. I can handle 8 random character passwords, and have done in the past, provided I get a sensible duration on cycling it. So I get to choose now - choose a 'good' password, fail to remember it and resort to post-it-note backup. Or choose a mediocre password that's within a dictionary attack domain, that I can remember.
In all fairness though, that tutorial is a good introduction to the game - if you don't get along with it, you won't enjoy EVE.
But hey, I'm wondering if these guys are recruiting - if power corrupts, then it's better to be on the right end of it, after all...
Alternatively, "Attempting to pervert the course of justice". I believe that's what they used to stitch up people with speed trap detectors, and I can't see why you couldn't put forth the rational argument that software 'designed' to interfere with police operations counts. (e.g. your virus checker, spotting a police trojan)
More likely they'll do exactly the same thing but cite the Prevention of Terrorism act. That way they can keep you locked up for a few weeks without having to even charge you. Nor do they actually need to know you have a screwdriver, they just might have suspicion that you 'looked a bit like a terrorist'. So much the better if you make it _easy_ for them to find something to charge you with.
Whether they will or not, is another matter - I suspect it's much more likely that they're going to keep their heads down, and work to 'lowest common denominator' IT services.
I mean, Windows is the safe bet. Linux/Mac... well, you _will_ get some more sales - some will be dual booting, but some won't. But that's not the issue - what is the issue is how much it'll cost you in additional effort to do a Mac/Linux release - it's pretty much guaranteed there will be _some_ code tweaking needed, and _some_ additional bugs/support requirements. So it comes down to a question of whether the market is big enough to make that worthwhile, given that ... well, at the very least Linux users tend to be tech savvy enough to dual boot.
I think that it's getting there - there's gradually getting to be a large enough market of people prepared to pay money for their stuff, that it's worth it. Which I guess would be the point of the article.
He played what's IMO the best Massively multiplayer PvP game out there, and in doing so neither interacted with anyone, nor PvPed. His review was an accurate one, provided you realise he's only talking about 5% of the game.
A monarch is a person who's been educated from birth, and has had plenty of time to think about role, responsibility and necessary education.
They also have tenure of a sorts, which means they can afford to take a long view - most major shifts in a country don't really start to take effect for years anyway.
It's not actually much worse than the current perversions of a democracy that various other countries seem to run - a 4 yearly popularity contest where you're trying to buy the maximum number of voters with a minimal amount of investment. It's about as much a question of birthright as a monarchy is too - your 'average working man' rarely has enough money to afford the luxury of spending years campaigning and polticiking, and dropping large amounts of cash on the political campaign. (OK, so they can sell out to someone rich and get funding as a result but that's not much different).
*shrug*. The reason a monarchy _still_ works quite well, is because you still typically have an elected government, but you have a person who's a representative of the country's interest in the long term as well.
I think that bothers me somewhat. It's only in the campaign, but none the less seems... well, somewhat cheap. Especially given that basically you'll be paying more for the extra units. But being such a fanboy as I am, I'll go for the special forces edition, and try to figure out which of the 3 'pre-order specials' I'd rather have.
But I'm not sure I like this trend in games towards 'special editions'.
My biggest problem with the diplomacy is how it was virtually impossible to maintain an alliance with someone. I mean, I know it's total war and all, but having a few trade partners would be nice. Backstabbing someone when they're on a 'crushninate' campaign is just plain foolhardy too. There were a couple of occasions where a backstab would net my opponent a region, and there I consider it 'reasonable'.
It also meant that you got to keep the defenses intact, which was always rather nice.
Not to mention that a 'withdraw' counted as a 'loss' even if all you were trying to do was driveby, smash a wall, kill some of the garrison and come back to do an 'inner' wall next time.
Which was a shame really, as the siege engines were kinda fun. There's something very cathartic about a row of trebuchets unleashing flaming death. (Although not quite as much fun in previous TW games, where there was a 'follow projectile' option, that was just plain awesome)
I'm hoping that Empire Total War will implement 'full' naval combat and include things like wind direction, changing sail and gun facing. In my opinion they have quite a good track record of making 'maneuver' combat relevant, but having cavalry hitting an infantry unit in the flanks isn't quite in the same realm as a ship which can't actually turn on the spot.