Maybe I exaggerate a bit by saying Many but surely its at least more than one order of magnitude. 3D is much harder to build decent artwork for, harder to program for, and harder to find the bugs in than 2d. Even for new, original GBA games like Pokemon. I haven't seen any actual numbers--but it seems to be the received view in the industry that 2d was way cheaper than 3d.
Though there are few examples of 2d games being made on the home consoles (some of which are absolutely incredible) even more significant are the vast sums of money being made by 2d games in the portable (game boy, cell phone, pda) markets. 2d isn't just still alive, it's the next big thing.
Sony Playstation is the system that allowed the dinosaurs to exist. The number of video game players greatly expanded, but the games were fantastically more expensive to produce, approaching the costs of the most expensive hollywood movies. Because they were so vastly expensive, video game companies insisted on conservatism--stick only with what has worked before. Make sequels to our hit games. Make ripoffs of the other guy's hit games. After all, we can't waste tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on untested content. The Playstation era was the Age of Expensive, Slow, Dinosaurs.
But what Dinosaur lovers like Mr. Bateman have missed is that while marketing and financial planners love conservatism, video game players DESPISE it. That's why a gaming magazine has to apologize for recommending a game that is more of the same--because there is no market on earth that values change and novelty as much as video game players! Which is why, ironically, the risk averse nature of video game production has caused the vast majority of new commercial video game projects to lose money! Every developer tries to remake last year's best selling game, and act surprised when no one wants to buy their almost-but-not-quite-as-good-as-Doom-3 video game.
So very many games spend so much money on gorgeous graphics and production value that they have no hope of getting that money back without being on the top 10 list of video game sales. To cite the lack of originality as proof that originality is not needed is ignoring the fact that so many video game companies have been really bad at making money lately.
Yet the age of dinosaurs is ending. Cell phone games, PDA games, Game Boy Advance, and even web-based games are the new mass extinction event. It can be cheap to make video games again. Despite the Game Cube not doing so hot, Nintendo is still one of the most profitable video game companies because its so damn easy to make money selling 2D game boy advance games that cost many orders of magnitude less to write than home console/PC games.
I dunno, this makes me wonder, has there ever been a user interface invention that would NOT have been invented were it not for software patent protection of user interfaces, by apple or anyone else? If Apple wasn't allowed to patent their developments, does anyone actually think they'd give up on creating new products and designs?
Whoops, that's what I get for thinking too hard. I was like "man I'm not even going to bother typing in a common word like 'There' it's not gonna work" so I tried "multiplayer game There" or something and I didn't detect any useful pattern in the results.
From the article:
Uru is more akin to the casual online social experimentation offered by games like "The Sims Online" or "There" than the frenzied dragon-slaying addiction that fuels fans of "EverQuest" and its kin.
How the heck am I supposed to google for "There"? Has anyone ever heard of this title?
1. Due to differences in the case definitions being used at a national level, probable cases are reported by all countries except the United States of America, which is reporting suspected cases under investigation.
The problem with this kind of comment is that as stupid as Slashdot's April's Fools, complaining about this kind of stupidity is generally regarded as stupid seven fold, and complaining about this complaining, as you have done, is stupid seventy and seven fold.
Which makes me stupid seven hundred seventy and seven fold. Whoops.
You make accusations of sexual repression, but it is you who seem to be experiencing much anguish at everyone not engaging in the kind of discourse you prefer.
Is this related to something from your childhood?
So I saw the movie and never got around to reading the book--the movie seemed obviously satirical, fairly amusing, particularly relevant today. Was the book also supposed to be satire?
Seriously though, if you want foreign workers to demand a higher pay, abolish H1B visas and other such bureaucracies. Give a green card to anyone who comes to work in America. This way, without the noose of H1 visa, foreign workers will also demand a higher pay as per free market dictates.
If you read more carefully, I think this is what most of the posts here are saying--they aren't complaining about competing with foreign born workers as they are complaining about competing with indentured labor.
Never, ever make cross-country unemployment rate comparisons. They all have different Labor bureaucracies, with different metrics for computing the unemployment rate to match various political objectives. At an even deeper level, what it means to be "unemployed" in Europe is associated with a lot more government benefits to lessen the pain than the analagous state in America.
That's pretty good, but be aware that now you're not only claiming simulated intelligence has the same consciousness as fleshy-carbon based intelligence, you're also claiming that simulated reality is the same as "normal" reality--that my dreams are just as real as the physical world, or that reality inside The Matrix is just as real as reality outside.
On the other side of the argument, when meterologists simulate a rain storm in a computer, does anyone get wet?
Stolen from Searle.
Re:True with a caveat - Biodiesel (proper format)
on
A Hydrogen-Based Economy
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best.
Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car?
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best.
Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car?
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
The article talks about collecting all of the manure with machines--so I don't think there's any "ranch" here, unless you mean the mechanical barn with cow after cow stuck in a stall with a chute from the cow's rear to the methane oven.
Re:'Because We Can' good enough reason?
on
The Space Elevator
·
· Score: 1
A more reasonable fear would be collsion with an asteroid or really any other mass extinction event. Could happen at any time, current technology only tracks some of them. The child in you might object that the chances of such a thing striking is millions to one, so you have more to worry about from lighting. The obvious difference from lightning, though, is that the lighting bolt has a million to one chance of killing YOU, while the asteroid has a million to one chance of killing EVERYONE.
You might complain that nuclear war is more likely and we need to solve those problems first, but I observe that government spending on the nuclear war problem is what created the nuclear war problem in the first place--freeing up more money to spend by eliminating new space technology only makes intentional planetwide destruction more likely.
The marginal cost doesn't just need to be non-zero, it needs to be greater that the cost in time/worry in deciding if downloading file X is worth the bandwidth hit. With the number of times one uses the internet (any internet) and no real way of figuring out how much bandwidth one uses, the cost of deciding the rational usage of bandwidth is likely greater than the savings to the service provider generated by such rational usage. If this is true, the rational thing for the university to do is eliminate or at least raise the bandwidth cap and spread out costs over all students, like nearly all other American universities.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I exaggerate a bit by saying Many but surely its at least more than one order of magnitude. 3D is much harder to build decent artwork for, harder to program for, and harder to find the bugs in than 2d. Even for new, original GBA games like Pokemon. I haven't seen any actual numbers--but it seems to be the received view in the industry that 2d was way cheaper than 3d.
Though there are few examples of 2d games being made on the home consoles (some of which are absolutely incredible) even more significant are the vast sums of money being made by 2d games in the portable (game boy, cell phone, pda) markets. 2d isn't just still alive, it's the next big thing.
But what Dinosaur lovers like Mr. Bateman have missed is that while marketing and financial planners love conservatism, video game players DESPISE it. That's why a gaming magazine has to apologize for recommending a game that is more of the same--because there is no market on earth that values change and novelty as much as video game players! Which is why, ironically, the risk averse nature of video game production has caused the vast majority of new commercial video game projects to lose money! Every developer tries to remake last year's best selling game, and act surprised when no one wants to buy their almost-but-not-quite-as-good-as-Doom-3 video game.
So very many games spend so much money on gorgeous graphics and production value that they have no hope of getting that money back without being on the top 10 list of video game sales. To cite the lack of originality as proof that originality is not needed is ignoring the fact that so many video game companies have been really bad at making money lately.
Yet the age of dinosaurs is ending. Cell phone games, PDA games, Game Boy Advance, and even web-based games are the new mass extinction event. It can be cheap to make video games again. Despite the Game Cube not doing so hot, Nintendo is still one of the most profitable video game companies because its so damn easy to make money selling 2D game boy advance games that cost many orders of magnitude less to write than home console/PC games.
I dunno, this makes me wonder, has there ever been a user interface invention that would NOT have been invented were it not for software patent protection of user interfaces, by apple or anyone else? If Apple wasn't allowed to patent their developments, does anyone actually think they'd give up on creating new products and designs?
I get the dunce cap for today!
From the article: Uru is more akin to the casual online social experimentation offered by games like "The Sims Online" or "There" than the frenzied dragon-slaying addiction that fuels fans of "EverQuest" and its kin. How the heck am I supposed to google for "There"? Has anyone ever heard of this title?
U R A NATURALISTIC FALLACY SUX0R UR BRANE IS 0WN3D BY DAVID HUME
Whoops, looks like j1mmy has condemned his country to the next round of regime change.
1. Due to differences in the case definitions being used at a national level, probable cases are reported by all countries except the United States of America, which is reporting suspected cases under investigation.
Every November in America we celebrate our right to vote on ELECTRON DAY!!!!!1
And you didn't even get my point backwards--you've just got some unrelated point way in the outfield totally unrelated to my point.
The problem with this kind of comment is that as stupid as Slashdot's April's Fools, complaining about this kind of stupidity is generally regarded as stupid seven fold, and complaining about this complaining, as you have done, is stupid seventy and seven fold. Which makes me stupid seven hundred seventy and seven fold. Whoops.
You make accusations of sexual repression, but it is you who seem to be experiencing much anguish at everyone not engaging in the kind of discourse you prefer. Is this related to something from your childhood?
Obviously that is too slow for light. April Fools!
So I saw the movie and never got around to reading the book--the movie seemed obviously satirical, fairly amusing, particularly relevant today. Was the book also supposed to be satire?
Seriously though, if you want foreign workers to demand a higher pay, abolish H1B visas and other such bureaucracies. Give a green card to anyone who comes to work in America. This way, without the noose of H1 visa, foreign workers will also demand a higher pay as per free market dictates. If you read more carefully, I think this is what most of the posts here are saying--they aren't complaining about competing with foreign born workers as they are complaining about competing with indentured labor.
Never, ever make cross-country unemployment rate comparisons. They all have different Labor bureaucracies, with different metrics for computing the unemployment rate to match various political objectives. At an even deeper level, what it means to be "unemployed" in Europe is associated with a lot more government benefits to lessen the pain than the analagous state in America.
That's pretty good, but be aware that now you're not only claiming simulated intelligence has the same consciousness as fleshy-carbon based intelligence, you're also claiming that simulated reality is the same as "normal" reality--that my dreams are just as real as the physical world, or that reality inside The Matrix is just as real as reality outside.
On the other side of the argument, when meterologists simulate a rain storm in a computer, does anyone get wet? Stolen from Searle.
Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car?
The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down.
Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
This is a BIG problem because really hydrogen is then a more efficient battery, a delivery vehicle for electric. An inefficient one at best. Other than putting a nuclear reactor in my car, or electrifying all of our highways like bumper cars, or some not-invented-yet super-battery, what do you have in mind as a more efficient delivery vehicle for getting electricity into my car? The only way to evaluate is to look at the fuel cycle. Biodiesel offers the best, most direct fuel cycle. You grow it, you harvest it, you turn it into oil using a press. You mix it up with some ethanol and you got biodiesel from nothing more than grain alcohol and veggie oil. Then, you burn it... its cleaner than gas, biodegradable, yada, yada. That plus the fact that you're growing it helps clean the air. Plany soybeans near the highway... or in the middle of it. Oh, and it doesn't cost trillion of dollars either. Its already available at public pumps. And I can actually buy a car with performance that burns it for the same price. Oh, and I can find somebody that can fix it too. If it breaks down. Okay, I've looked at a number of studies I googled over the past half hour or something--and though there was lots of studies of biomass usage, endorsing its energy efficiency and effects on CO2 levels, but what the studies don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling on is How much food production capability would be displaced by biodiesel, ethanol whatever if we tried to switch to a mostly biomass economy. The waste oil from French fries (er...I guess The Man wants me to call them Freedom Fries now or something) only takes us so far--if you want to do biodiesel as The Solution To Our Energy Problem are we all going to have to go on a serious diet or what?
Great, instead of Oil War with Arabia we can have H-War with Canadia.
The article talks about collecting all of the manure with machines--so I don't think there's any "ranch" here, unless you mean the mechanical barn with cow after cow stuck in a stall with a chute from the cow's rear to the methane oven.
A more reasonable fear would be collsion with an asteroid or really any other mass extinction event. Could happen at any time, current technology only tracks some of them. The child in you might object that the chances of such a thing striking is millions to one, so you have more to worry about from lighting. The obvious difference from lightning, though, is that the lighting bolt has a million to one chance of killing YOU, while the asteroid has a million to one chance of killing EVERYONE. You might complain that nuclear war is more likely and we need to solve those problems first, but I observe that government spending on the nuclear war problem is what created the nuclear war problem in the first place--freeing up more money to spend by eliminating new space technology only makes intentional planetwide destruction more likely.
The marginal cost doesn't just need to be non-zero, it needs to be greater that the cost in time/worry in deciding if downloading file X is worth the bandwidth hit. With the number of times one uses the internet (any internet) and no real way of figuring out how much bandwidth one uses, the cost of deciding the rational usage of bandwidth is likely greater than the savings to the service provider generated by such rational usage. If this is true, the rational thing for the university to do is eliminate or at least raise the bandwidth cap and spread out costs over all students, like nearly all other American universities.