Yes, but it is implied. The complexity of the aviation industry provides plenty of depth for flight simulators, for example.
Is story important in puzzle games?
Puzzle games tend to not have characters, either, except for Myst, for example, which has a fairly well-developed story.
sports game
Sports games fall into the same category as real-time simulations (in fact, that's exactly what sports games are).
Games are not typically linear pieces of narrative, i.e. stories. Games are pieces of entertainment.
This seems to say that entertainment is for those people with only a brain stem and no cerebrum. This type of entertainment tends to get really boring after a short while.
Chess...Tetris
Chess goes in with puzzles, too. So, we can split gaming into three categories: puzzles (i.e., time sinks and mind sinks), first-person shooters (i.e., kill and kill some more), and interactive novels (really good ones are still rare in the gaming realm).
The basics of python are drop-dead easy to learn. Easier than C, Bourne shell, Perl, etc. I looked at python's documentation for a few minutes and was suprised at how simple it is. Competing with Visual Basic really isn't a stretch, as long as the drool-proof IDEs for retarded programmers come along.
And our DVD players will have to dial home to ask for permission every time we want to watch a DVD.
No, no DVD player of mine will every be networked. The movie industry isn't really all that important, anyway, so if they want to fuck with me, then they can go to hell. I haven't paid full price for a movie theater ticket in years, and avoiding Blockbuster's new stock of DVDs isn't much harder. Entertainment is cheap, and it is easy to find. Movies are just a drop in the entertainment bucket.
This is why labour supports minimum wage, even though it puts many companies out of business.
The minimum wage is a joke. It is all short-term gain, while driving inflation in the long run. The primary effect of the minimum wage is creating artificially high unemployment rates among the truly poor (if a homeless person had the choice between earning $20 a week or zero...).
It's arguably easier to write, say, King's Quest now than it would have been 20 years ago,
Yes, but King's Quest didn't require a 1GHz CPU and 100MB of RAM to run smoothly. Between Flash-based ads and those crappy chain e-mails from friends, my CPU is really getting tired.
No it won't be the next jaw dropping engine that will command everyone's respect but that's not really the point, the point is as long as you have enough basic intelligence to learn an API and can manage to glue several of them together the open source world is plenty willing to fill in the gaps of your knowledge.
This is one area where Java is way underrated. Just between the 2D and Midi APIs, there is a lot of gaming potential there. I haven't looked at Java3D, so I'm not sure about mega-real-time-worlds, but perhaps it could work there, too.
"To quote John Carmack: Story in games is like story in porn movies, you expect it to be there, but it's really not that important."
For Doom, sure, but in every other important genre, he's wrong. Too many games are like they are designed for teenagers who are flunking out of literature classes. The dialog, the characters, everything is just awful.
It means I'm further taxed for the fact that schools don't teach a lick about personal finance and responsibility. It gives people a false sense of security (oh, the government will take care of me, sure it will). With the government is so far into debt and another recession hits, we'll see just how secure Social Security really is.
Check out the gamespy contest and see Mike Tyson's Punch-Out beat Madden 2004 a game that is not only hugely popular but also 16 years newer.
I still consider the first Final Fantasy on the NES to be the best one in that series. I still have fond memories of Zelda, too. How about Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64? Doom is timeless. These games really do rank with modern titles, because so many of the whiz-bang 3D girls with big titties games are unimaginative and have zero replay value (fake big titties on empty characters just don't entertain for long). One other thing, Link from Zelda had 1000 times the character development of most modern games, and that's pretty sad (yay, Link got the blue ring!). Perhaps, the NES wasn't powerful enough to spoil it with the developers going overboard. I remember Final Fantasy 8's characters simply reminded me of people I didn't like in high school (that game was like watching some sort of teen angst sit com).
I downloaded a C++ program recently that worked only with GCC 3.3.2! How they managed that, I have no idea, but it sucks because I wanted to play around with Sun's CC to compare it with GCC. It also forced me to upgrade from GCC 3.2.2 (less than a year old!).
After a decade and a half of C++, it seems they are always only 98% implemented (and everyone has a different remaining 2%).
Conversely, you can "simulate" inheritance, polymorphism, etc. in procedural languages as well.
AARRRGGGH! The nightmares, you brought back so many nightmares! Must end pain...now....(sound of chair being kicked out)...(silence)
Seriously, anyone who has hand-programmed "classes" in C must be taken outside and abused severely. They sure are a neat idea, but make troubleshooting a sick joke and a big waste of time. C has structures, please, everyone, please leave it at that!
All the troubles with printing under UNIX have convinced me that my next printer will be a full-blown Postscript printer. They're under $300, now (good ones, too), so it isn't even worth fighting with cheap-ass printers any more and fudging around with ghostscript and cursing over margins and wasted reams of gibberish.
Postscript: cat file.ps >/dev/lp0 (user relaxes with a beer...aaah).
That would be news to the vast majority of businesses out there -- who do NOT compete solely on price.
Commodity goods do compete solely on price. A nut is a nut is a nut. Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. sell nuts really really well. If there is a live person--any person--behind the cash register, they'll sell that nut.
Professional services seekers, however, always are best to avoid the lowest bidder. For example, don't go to the cheapest auto body shop in town, nor the cheapest eye surgeon, nor the cheapest house foundation contractor, etc.
If you pay close attention to movies and TV shows, Apple has amazing amounts of product placement. If a forensics cop is doing something cool, it's probably on a Power Mac. That glowing apple is everywhere, too--very subtle.
no one should have to stop to read man pages or html docs unless they are doing the most esoteric things with an app.
There is still one problem domain where this level of usability won't occur for a long time: 3D modeling. The best-of-breed apps, such as Pro/ENGINEER, Blender, etc., will always require some initial training, due to the abstract concepts of meshes, constructive solids, design for manufacturing, and so forth.
I agree with ESR about setting up printers (one place where UNIX is a real PITA), but the Anut Tillie arguments can only go up to a certain level before raw domain complexity takes over. While printers might have been cutting edge 20 or 30 years ago, it is definitely suprising just how little progress has been made (e.g., why does UNIX still care so much about daisy wheels?!?).
It is managed by politicians. It has returns worse than most bank accounts. Sure, I pay into it my whole life (several percent of my income) to get back only a few measly thousand dollars per year. What Social Security really is is a forced bed-mattress savings account for people too uneducated to live within their means.
The tax code is so complex with exclusions, credits, and allowances for all sorts of favored groups of people that it is disgusting. Congress uses the IRS to screw with the economy to get votes in their districts. Quite perverse.
That's why no government program ever works, and why we live in a squalid, impoverished anarchy.
One thing I have to argue, here. Most government programs really are failures. Social Security, for example, is a total disaster (I don't even include it in my retirement plans). The patent office is a joke. John Ashcroft is a joke. Many defense projects are simply to funnel money to favored districts. The war on drugs is the worst thing since Prohibition. So-called free trade is not equitable. The IRS is the most politically abused organization on the planet. Subsidies and minimum wages only screw up inflation and allow people to live in denial. Schools are underfunded. Roads go unrepaird. The postal service is sort of a diamond in the rough, comparatively.
Corporations aren't people. They shouldn't get the same rights.
Agreed, however if corporate welfare ends, all the other political warm and fuzzy welfare programs should end, too. There is no justice in a world of stealing from one person to give it to another.
I read Nader's issues page earlier today, and, while the Libertarians would have to really be open-minded about this, Nader is at least a step away from the current oligarcy and generally a step towards real improvement.
The good things about Nader's platform are ending the war on drugs, ending overseas military dominance, reducing corruption, reducing pork projects, and supporting equitible education.
The debatable things about Nader's platform are nationalized health care, "living wage" (whatever that is), and a more aggresively progressive income tax.
I am forming the opinion that Nader's pros outweigh his cons, and he would be a good step towards healing some of the current problems in politics. Also, it is highly unlikely that nationalized health care can really be made a reality, as it has failed to pass more than once already and even Mr. Greenspan is apprehensive about the government's current social burdens (e.g., social security + baby boomers).
Probably the biggest thing going for Nader is his appearance of real integrity without being a corporate pushover (and blatant bigot) like Bush nor is he a con-artist like uber-rich Kerry.
His half-human half-wario empathic abilities give him awareness of a hidden third dimension in SMB. He is able to step outside of the 2D world we all see and nearly-instantaneously jump to the princess' chamber.
Really, it is so simple that you should have thought a bit before posting.
Actually, you get sent to DLL Hell. You would get out after three turns, but a "chance" upgrade failed and the whole game blue screened.
Re:Good luck finding cheap internal modems
on
Micro ATX and Linux?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You get what you pay for...
Very true. After getting burned a couple of times, especially by that Rockwell nonsense, I have absolutely no qualms about spending $80 on a new modem.
I now have a gorgeous external Hayes modem, and it works everywhere (UNIX, Linux, Windows) and is very nicely programmable with good documentation and has an internal CPU. No winmodem bullshit, all I need is a serial port.
The government's fallacy here is one of direction. The government can recognize marriage in tax forms, for example, because it is very common. However, the government really does not have the right to limit marriage. What the government really should do is recognize groups of people who choose to become a family. The definition of a family can range anywhere from a single lone human to communes of dozens, whether or not they are actually related. What good ol' Georgy boy wants to do is regulate and limit human culture in the USA based on his own narrow bigoted views. The fact that he has the support of the Bible Belt proves only the "tyranny of the majority".
All the third parties should band together, and simply get one person who sucks less than Bush or Kerry on to the ticket. If they can get a third-party president into office, then they can worry about their differences later. I suppose Nader could be this person, as he has chosen to run Independent this year.
Slashdot Mirror
Is story important in RTS games?
Yes, but it is implied. The complexity of the aviation industry provides plenty of depth for flight simulators, for example.
Is story important in puzzle games?
Puzzle games tend to not have characters, either, except for Myst, for example, which has a fairly well-developed story.
sports game
Sports games fall into the same category as real-time simulations (in fact, that's exactly what sports games are).
Games are not typically linear pieces of narrative, i.e. stories. Games are pieces of entertainment.
This seems to say that entertainment is for those people with only a brain stem and no cerebrum. This type of entertainment tends to get really boring after a short while.
Chess...Tetris
Chess goes in with puzzles, too. So, we can split gaming into three categories: puzzles (i.e., time sinks and mind sinks), first-person shooters (i.e., kill and kill some more), and interactive novels (really good ones are still rare in the gaming realm).
You mean Java VM + J2SE + J2EE vs. .Nyet.
BTW, Microsoft sucks.
The basics of python are drop-dead easy to learn. Easier than C, Bourne shell, Perl, etc. I looked at python's documentation for a few minutes and was suprised at how simple it is. Competing with Visual Basic really isn't a stretch, as long as the drool-proof IDEs for retarded programmers come along.
And our DVD players will have to dial home to ask for permission every time we want to watch a DVD.
No, no DVD player of mine will every be networked. The movie industry isn't really all that important, anyway, so if they want to fuck with me, then they can go to hell. I haven't paid full price for a movie theater ticket in years, and avoiding Blockbuster's new stock of DVDs isn't much harder. Entertainment is cheap, and it is easy to find. Movies are just a drop in the entertainment bucket.
This is why labour supports minimum wage, even though it puts many companies out of business.
The minimum wage is a joke. It is all short-term gain, while driving inflation in the long run. The primary effect of the minimum wage is creating artificially high unemployment rates among the truly poor (if a homeless person had the choice between earning $20 a week or zero...).
a complete piece of software that doesn't need any programming at all
Between Blender and Gimp, I think this is in our future.
It's arguably easier to write, say, King's Quest now than it would have been 20 years ago,
Yes, but King's Quest didn't require a 1GHz CPU and 100MB of RAM to run smoothly. Between Flash-based ads and those crappy chain e-mails from friends, my CPU is really getting tired.
No it won't be the next jaw dropping engine that will command everyone's respect but that's not really the point, the point is as long as you have enough basic intelligence to learn an API and can manage to glue several of them together the open source world is plenty willing to fill in the gaps of your knowledge.
This is one area where Java is way underrated. Just between the 2D and Midi APIs, there is a lot of gaming potential there. I haven't looked at Java3D, so I'm not sure about mega-real-time-worlds, but perhaps it could work there, too.
"To quote John Carmack: Story in games is like story in porn movies, you expect it to be there, but it's really not that important."
For Doom, sure, but in every other important genre, he's wrong. Too many games are like they are designed for teenagers who are flunking out of literature classes. The dialog, the characters, everything is just awful.
It means I'm further taxed for the fact that schools don't teach a lick about personal finance and responsibility. It gives people a false sense of security (oh, the government will take care of me, sure it will). With the government is so far into debt and another recession hits, we'll see just how secure Social Security really is.
Check out the gamespy contest and see Mike Tyson's Punch-Out beat Madden 2004 a game that is not only hugely popular but also 16 years newer.
I still consider the first Final Fantasy on the NES to be the best one in that series. I still have fond memories of Zelda, too. How about Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64? Doom is timeless. These games really do rank with modern titles, because so many of the whiz-bang 3D girls with big titties games are unimaginative and have zero replay value (fake big titties on empty characters just don't entertain for long). One other thing, Link from Zelda had 1000 times the character development of most modern games, and that's pretty sad (yay, Link got the blue ring!). Perhaps, the NES wasn't powerful enough to spoil it with the developers going overboard. I remember Final Fantasy 8's characters simply reminded me of people I didn't like in high school (that game was like watching some sort of teen angst sit com).
You mean there are other compilers besides gcc?
I downloaded a C++ program recently that worked only with GCC 3.3.2! How they managed that, I have no idea, but it sucks because I wanted to play around with Sun's CC to compare it with GCC. It also forced me to upgrade from GCC 3.2.2 (less than a year old!).
After a decade and a half of C++, it seems they are always only 98% implemented (and everyone has a different remaining 2%).
Conversely, you can "simulate" inheritance, polymorphism, etc. in procedural languages as well.
AARRRGGGH! The nightmares, you brought back so many nightmares! Must end pain...now....(sound of chair being kicked out)...(silence)
Seriously, anyone who has hand-programmed "classes" in C must be taken outside and abused severely. They sure are a neat idea, but make troubleshooting a sick joke and a big waste of time. C has structures, please, everyone, please leave it at that!
All the troubles with printing under UNIX have convinced me that my next printer will be a full-blown Postscript printer. They're under $300, now (good ones, too), so it isn't even worth fighting with cheap-ass printers any more and fudging around with ghostscript and cursing over margins and wasted reams of gibberish.
Postscript: cat file.ps >
That would be news to the vast majority of businesses out there -- who do NOT compete solely on price.
Commodity goods do compete solely on price. A nut is a nut is a nut. Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. sell nuts really really well. If there is a live person--any person--behind the cash register, they'll sell that nut.
Professional services seekers, however, always are best to avoid the lowest bidder. For example, don't go to the cheapest auto body shop in town, nor the cheapest eye surgeon, nor the cheapest house foundation contractor, etc.
If you pay close attention to movies and TV shows, Apple has amazing amounts of product placement. If a forensics cop is doing something cool, it's probably on a Power Mac. That glowing apple is everywhere, too--very subtle.
no one should have to stop to read man pages or html docs unless they are doing the most esoteric things with an app.
There is still one problem domain where this level of usability won't occur for a long time: 3D modeling. The best-of-breed apps, such as Pro/ENGINEER, Blender, etc., will always require some initial training, due to the abstract concepts of meshes, constructive solids, design for manufacturing, and so forth.
I agree with ESR about setting up printers (one place where UNIX is a real PITA), but the Anut Tillie arguments can only go up to a certain level before raw domain complexity takes over. While printers might have been cutting edge 20 or 30 years ago, it is definitely suprising just how little progress has been made (e.g., why does UNIX still care so much about daisy wheels?!?).
Where's the disaster?
It is managed by politicians. It has returns worse than most bank accounts. Sure, I pay into it my whole life (several percent of my income) to get back only a few measly thousand dollars per year. What Social Security really is is a forced bed-mattress savings account for people too uneducated to live within their means.
The tax code is so complex with exclusions, credits, and allowances for all sorts of favored groups of people that it is disgusting. Congress uses the IRS to screw with the economy to get votes in their districts. Quite perverse.
That's why no government program ever works, and why we live in a squalid, impoverished anarchy.
One thing I have to argue, here. Most government programs really are failures. Social Security, for example, is a total disaster (I don't even include it in my retirement plans). The patent office is a joke. John Ashcroft is a joke. Many defense projects are simply to funnel money to favored districts. The war on drugs is the worst thing since Prohibition. So-called free trade is not equitable. The IRS is the most politically abused organization on the planet. Subsidies and minimum wages only screw up inflation and allow people to live in denial. Schools are underfunded. Roads go unrepaird. The postal service is sort of a diamond in the rough, comparatively.
Corporations aren't people. They shouldn't get the same rights.
Agreed, however if corporate welfare ends, all the other political warm and fuzzy welfare programs should end, too. There is no justice in a world of stealing from one person to give it to another.
I read Nader's issues page earlier today, and, while the Libertarians would have to really be open-minded about this, Nader is at least a step away from the current oligarcy and generally a step towards real improvement.
The good things about Nader's platform are ending the war on drugs, ending overseas military dominance, reducing corruption, reducing pork projects, and supporting equitible education.
The debatable things about Nader's platform are nationalized health care, "living wage" (whatever that is), and a more aggresively progressive income tax.
I am forming the opinion that Nader's pros outweigh his cons, and he would be a good step towards healing some of the current problems in politics. Also, it is highly unlikely that nationalized health care can really be made a reality, as it has failed to pass more than once already and even Mr. Greenspan is apprehensive about the government's current social burdens (e.g., social security + baby boomers).
Probably the biggest thing going for Nader is his appearance of real integrity without being a corporate pushover (and blatant bigot) like Bush nor is he a con-artist like uber-rich Kerry.
His half-human half-wario empathic abilities give him awareness of a hidden third dimension in SMB. He is able to step outside of the 2D world we all see and nearly-instantaneously jump to the princess' chamber.
Really, it is so simple that you should have thought a bit before posting.
Actually, you get sent to DLL Hell. You would get out after three turns, but a "chance" upgrade failed and the whole game blue screened.
You get what you pay for...
Very true. After getting burned a couple of times, especially by that Rockwell nonsense, I have absolutely no qualms about spending $80 on a new modem.
I now have a gorgeous external Hayes modem, and it works everywhere (UNIX, Linux, Windows) and is very nicely programmable with good documentation and has an internal CPU. No winmodem bullshit, all I need is a serial port.
The government's fallacy here is one of direction. The government can recognize marriage in tax forms, for example, because it is very common. However, the government really does not have the right to limit marriage. What the government really should do is recognize groups of people who choose to become a family. The definition of a family can range anywhere from a single lone human to communes of dozens, whether or not they are actually related. What good ol' Georgy boy wants to do is regulate and limit human culture in the USA based on his own narrow bigoted views. The fact that he has the support of the Bible Belt proves only the "tyranny of the majority".
All the third parties should band together, and simply get one person who sucks less than Bush or Kerry on to the ticket. If they can get a third-party president into office, then they can worry about their differences later. I suppose Nader could be this person, as he has chosen to run Independent this year.