I just spent the last 10 years, since I was forced to switch from WriteNow, learning to make fair looking documents in that horrible piece of shit that is WORD*. Now I have to learn an entirely new twisted form of "simplified" WORD to get things to look right? Kill me, please. And from the screens, it appears MS has gone even further down the road of giant, screen-space-wasting icons...
One thing I will give MS credit for, is the ability to make their GUIs look like their old GUIs (so my XP machine looks a lot like Windows 98 to the casual observer). Maybe there is a "look like that crappy old version of Word that you're used to" option. That would be ok.
* Please don't suggest I switch programs and use something like Quark, InDesign, or a free and better WP program. I am forced by the tyranny of standards to use Word.
Wouldn't F4I merely be civilly liable to Sony, if they used stolen code, and indemnified Sony against that? If distributing the rootkit was a criminal offense, it would be the people who put the rootkit on the CD who'd be more liable. Like, *writing* a virus isn't an offense (that I know of), but distributing it is.
Anyway, it's interesting to see how this all plays out, but we need to remember who the real perpetrator is --> The person who bought a CELINE DION CD IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's like that SNL Weekend Update sketch where they discussed a car that blows up when the radio is switched from FM to AM, and the company spokesman says "well... they deserved it."
It seemed to take a few tries from AOL with Trillian -- yesterday they just told me I could add them, and today they did it for me. I actually don't really care -- having a YellowPages bot may be more convenient in the long run than having to start a web client, use google or try to find a yellow pages client, etc.
Plus, conversing with a corporate bot feels very Philp K. Dick sci-fi in a way, especially when the movie bot wanted to play Hang-Man.
I don't know nothing about nothing, but I know when you make a screengrab from a dev kit, you're just dumping the contents of Video RAM. The technical process is as follows: "Hey Computer, you know that frame buffer you're about to draw to the screen? Just write the contents to this file. Thanks, you're a peach."
It's more likely there is no easy way to dump the video RAM yet on the 360 dev hardware, or the guys at Bungie who wanted to show the pictures couldn't find someone to do it for them, since they were all busy getting the game ready.
They're not saying "ID is reasonable, so our god exists" (what you accurately describe as heresy), they're saying "Our god exists, so ID is reasonable." The causality is reversed, or at least that's my perception of it.
I appreciate your point for sure, but in the most recent article I read about ID, the former is exactly the point the ID proponent was trying to make -- more or less it was "We need to show people that ID exists, so they will therefore realize that god exists." Obviously the ID movement probably has a lot of people with divergent opinions and it isn't a monolithic whole, but that was the basis of my argument.
I guess one of the reasons ID bugs me is because it *does* on the surface seem sort of reasonable, especially if you already accept the notion of god, and given the improbability of something as complex as the eye, or the reproductive cycle of some ten-host parasite, evolving purely through random mutations and Darwinian natural selection. But on further analysis ID falls apart (at least as far as I can see), and I think it gives a bad name to anyone who's trying to reconcile science and theology for the general public.
Ah well, my "god is just some kid playing SimCity with the multiverse" theology is probably just as heretical...
The problem with ID, which even the Vatican can See (haha... secret pun for Catholics) is that ID is retarded. It says things are so improbable, god's aiding the design of them is the only explanation, or at least a reasonable explanation.
What's improbable is the average mind having any conception of the amount of time life has been evolving on earth, and how totally possible, given the apparent forces for local self-organization that exist in the universe (if you doubt this, go do some alife experiments on your own), that things like the eye, etc. came to to be.
Anyway, I said this in a recent post, so sorry to repeat myself, but the whole point of Christianity is that you take god's existence ON FAITH. You don't look for or invent proof. ID is basically blashphemy to the very religion it tries to push.
I remember some kid asking about creationism at my Catholic high school, in Biology. The teacher (not a priest but a deeply debout Catholic -- who nonetheless swore a blue streak at all times) responded: "you can talk about that shit in theology. In Biology we talk about facts, and evolution is a fact... it's no more a theory than the theory of gravity." It was pretty funny.
The Christians were killed not so much for worshipping Jesus, but for refusing to worship and/or acknowledge the Roman dieties at the same time. They were very intrastringent about their monothesism, which upset the Romans, who were all about everyone paricipating in detailed rituals to appease their gods, so the Christians really pissed them off (before they took over the entire Empire).
ID doesn't argue that evolution doesn't happen; it argues that some elements that "evolved" were so improbably they must have been intelligently designed. Like, God was like "man it would sure be cool if the eye existed," and sort of slightly intervened to enable the "guided evolution" of the eye.
That's a fine conjecture, but it doesn't seem any more fine to me than "dude you have no clue how long a million years is, never mind tens or hundreds of millions, and given your total lack of perspective about time, it's not surprising that the eye seems like it never could have evolved on its own to you. To others, it doesn't seem weird at all, and doesn't suggest the existence of ID."
To me, the most irritating part of ID is people want to use it a "proof" that god exists, when the whole deal with god -- at least as I was taught -- is that there is no proof, and no need for proof. That's why it's called "faith."
Democrats were afraid to comepete on a level playing field. Uh! Republicans have lots of money, they could register more websites than us! More proof that politicians on both sides of the aisle can be morons.
Anyone who remembers the old, abandoned Google catalog project will recall that the auto-page turning frequently broke, leaving scanned versions of ripped and smashed pages.
Hopefully they'll at least scan the rare books by hand.
Wait... you're saying that SCO is trying to drain IBM's coffers? I mean, I know IBM is a scrappy little underdog and SCO is a major, public, corporation, but I'm guessing IBM will be able to hang in there a little longer...
I bought all the accessories for a mini (monitor, PS/2 to USB mouse and keyboard converter, etc), but I never bought the mini (yet anyway). But, for a living room coputer, isn't a laptop with wireless the ultimate solution, unless you're doing some media center thing? Frankly, even then, I'd like to be able to google and imdb stuff on one screen, while watching another.
It's hard to apple-to-apples compare quality of life. Like, yes, if I lived outside the bay area, I wouldn't live in a slum (although I'd probably still want to live in an old falling down house), but having, like, every one of my friends be in technology is something that might not happen if I worked in Michigan, say.
Otherwise, I'd be able to make a problem statement like...the room is dark. And, then the switch/wiring/bulb would be the computer and I'd be programming when I turned it on/off. My house has a whole network of these:P
But, at its most basic, that's exactly true! Light bulbs are even vaccum tubes! But obviously I see what you mean;0
If you wanted to, you could have better graphics capability on your PC today than Xbox 360 will when it comes out. But since TVs are not getting any better than HDTV at 1024p, there's really diminishing returns for Xbox 360s to have better graphics. That's why a 360 costs less than a good PC videocard.
But consoles are indeed like fine wine or cheese. While PC game makers have to keep chasing new hardware and compatability standards -- and typically shipping games aimed more to a LCD than to the bleeding edge -- console game makers can work on totally exploiting the system, so that games do indeed get better looking as the life of a console goes on -- more polygons onscreen, faster drawing times, etc. The better graphics that fat PCs can display are typically limited to higher resolution textures or filtering effects, not more polygons than a scrub PC. So, do the games look better, or just cleaner? I don't know, and I'm sure its a matter of preference, but Halo 1 on a TV actually looks "better" to me than Counter Strike or Battlefield on a fat PC, where things are so high res that all I can really notice is how repetitive the textures are.
If you don't want to play old games, great, but in much the same way old books aren't necessarily worse than new books, some old games are still fun -- even on PC (StarCraft, anyone?) I'm not really sure how the fact that your back catalog sucks is evidence of a good thing.
Finally, yes, much of the console graphics technology is driven and derived from work which is seen first on PC -- especially if you're talking about the Xbox. Thank you for buying $500 videocards every year to "keep up" and subsidizing my $50/year videogame console!
...and the console is viable for 4-5 years, AND the games typically look, run, and play *better* the longer you own the console (as developers exploit the console better).
Still, PCs are great machines. For coding console games. [duck]
It's a single-problem solving analog computer of the classic, pre-Turing sense. They used to have all kinds of crap like this for solving various problems. Easier (at the time) (and probably cooler) than a book filled with lists. Not a Turing complete machine by any sense... more like the ABC device that people are always claiming was the "first computer," than an ENIAC.
Testing usually is a way into production, not programming (not that that doesn't ever happen, of course).
Generally speaking, this article is not that accurate, as are most "salary surverys," where people typically respond with what they *should* be making, not what they do make. Also, he didn't note how long it takes (years -- your whole career, if you're *successful*) to get from the starting salary to the final salary. Nor did he note the salary disparity between developers and publishers. People who work at independent developers typically make less, but have more freedom and input into what they do, versus being "animator 957" or whatever, so it's a tradeoff.
Also, I didn't like the outmoded description of "marketing stiffs" or the cheap shot about producers: "...someone who's merely making schedules, managing the talent, and dealing with the annoying marketing stiffs." Yeah, that sounds easy, huh? Maybe he should try it! Obviously I came from the production side, and I would have liked to see some description of the differences in jobs between different types of producers, but I guess it was just a quick overall survery and not an in-depth thing.
Anyway, IMHO the reality of making games today is a far cry from the shots he takes in the article. If there is an "us versus them" relationship between marketing and development -- or between any develoment disciple (art and engineering, design and production, production and art, etc), your game's sales, sequel potential, and eventually your career are going to suffer. Good teams work together and while there's always friction, it's the job of the discipline leads -- and that worthless producer -- to minimize it. That's not to say there aren't bad marketing people, or irritating artists, or incompetent producers, all of whom suck and make everyone's life difficult, but there shouldn't be this default adversarial relationship there.
There are giant classes of unprotected speech. For instance, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, sending out mail advertising ponzi schemes, all kinds of fraud, etc. Typically obscenity, which by definition is that which has neither artistic merit or political merit, is not protected. Of course, obscenity is usually defined at the local level, but for a while, in the 1950s, some SCOTUS decision meant there were whole closes of "photo magzines" that contained photo techniques... and hella pictures of naked chicks, constitutionally protected.
I heard -- but it may just be wishful thinking -- that it was in fact THE SAME PRODUCTION COMPANY who created both the Alien Autopsy, and the Alien Autopsy: Debunked shows.
That all said, to be fair, Fox News is not the same thing as Fox the TV network in general.
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One thing I will give MS credit for, is the ability to make their GUIs look like their old GUIs (so my XP machine looks a lot like Windows 98 to the casual observer). Maybe there is a "look like that crappy old version of Word that you're used to" option. That would be ok.
* Please don't suggest I switch programs and use something like Quark, InDesign, or a free and better WP program. I am forced by the tyranny of standards to use Word.
Anyway, it's interesting to see how this all plays out, but we need to remember who the real perpetrator is --> The person who bought a CELINE DION CD IN THE FIRST PLACE. It's like that SNL Weekend Update sketch where they discussed a car that blows up when the radio is switched from FM to AM, and the company spokesman says "well... they deserved it."
Plus, conversing with a corporate bot feels very Philp K. Dick sci-fi in a way, especially when the movie bot wanted to play Hang-Man.
I don't know nothing about nothing, but I know when you make a screengrab from a dev kit, you're just dumping the contents of Video RAM. The technical process is as follows: "Hey Computer, you know that frame buffer you're about to draw to the screen? Just write the contents to this file. Thanks, you're a peach." It's more likely there is no easy way to dump the video RAM yet on the 360 dev hardware, or the guys at Bungie who wanted to show the pictures couldn't find someone to do it for them, since they were all busy getting the game ready.
Don't count on it. Standards endure as this somewhat apocryphal tale demonstrates.
I appreciate your point for sure, but in the most recent article I read about ID, the former is exactly the point the ID proponent was trying to make -- more or less it was "We need to show people that ID exists, so they will therefore realize that god exists." Obviously the ID movement probably has a lot of people with divergent opinions and it isn't a monolithic whole, but that was the basis of my argument.
I guess one of the reasons ID bugs me is because it *does* on the surface seem sort of reasonable, especially if you already accept the notion of god, and given the improbability of something as complex as the eye, or the reproductive cycle of some ten-host parasite, evolving purely through random mutations and Darwinian natural selection. But on further analysis ID falls apart (at least as far as I can see), and I think it gives a bad name to anyone who's trying to reconcile science and theology for the general public.
Ah well, my "god is just some kid playing SimCity with the multiverse" theology is probably just as heretical...
What's improbable is the average mind having any conception of the amount of time life has been evolving on earth, and how totally possible, given the apparent forces for local self-organization that exist in the universe (if you doubt this, go do some alife experiments on your own), that things like the eye, etc. came to to be.
Anyway, I said this in a recent post, so sorry to repeat myself, but the whole point of Christianity is that you take god's existence ON FAITH. You don't look for or invent proof. ID is basically blashphemy to the very religion it tries to push.
I remember some kid asking about creationism at my Catholic high school, in Biology. The teacher (not a priest but a deeply debout Catholic -- who nonetheless swore a blue streak at all times) responded: "you can talk about that shit in theology. In Biology we talk about facts, and evolution is a fact... it's no more a theory than the theory of gravity." It was pretty funny.
The Christians were killed not so much for worshipping Jesus, but for refusing to worship and/or acknowledge the Roman dieties at the same time. They were very intrastringent about their monothesism, which upset the Romans, who were all about everyone paricipating in detailed rituals to appease their gods, so the Christians really pissed them off (before they took over the entire Empire).
That's a fine conjecture, but it doesn't seem any more fine to me than "dude you have no clue how long a million years is, never mind tens or hundreds of millions, and given your total lack of perspective about time, it's not surprising that the eye seems like it never could have evolved on its own to you. To others, it doesn't seem weird at all, and doesn't suggest the existence of ID."
To me, the most irritating part of ID is people want to use it a "proof" that god exists, when the whole deal with god -- at least as I was taught -- is that there is no proof, and no need for proof. That's why it's called "faith."
No basis in supply and demand? Are you high? Demand is so high they can stkick you for a game you don't even want and you're happy to pay it!
Am I the only one who wonders if supply shortages, not Microsoft evilness, are behind the short launch supply?
Democrats were afraid to comepete on a level playing field. Uh! Republicans have lots of money, they could register more websites than us! More proof that politicians on both sides of the aisle can be morons.
Hopefully they'll at least scan the rare books by hand.
Wait... you're saying that SCO is trying to drain IBM's coffers? I mean, I know IBM is a scrappy little underdog and SCO is a major, public, corporation, but I'm guessing IBM will be able to hang in there a little longer...
They did. Next year the prize will be $100K each. -Chris
I bought all the accessories for a mini (monitor, PS/2 to USB mouse and keyboard converter, etc), but I never bought the mini (yet anyway). But, for a living room coputer, isn't a laptop with wireless the ultimate solution, unless you're doing some media center thing? Frankly, even then, I'd like to be able to google and imdb stuff on one screen, while watching another.
It's hard to apple-to-apples compare quality of life. Like, yes, if I lived outside the bay area, I wouldn't live in a slum (although I'd probably still want to live in an old falling down house), but having, like, every one of my friends be in technology is something that might not happen if I worked in Michigan, say.
But, at its most basic, that's exactly true! Light bulbs are even vaccum tubes! But obviously I see what you mean ;0
But consoles are indeed like fine wine or cheese. While PC game makers have to keep chasing new hardware and compatability standards -- and typically shipping games aimed more to a LCD than to the bleeding edge -- console game makers can work on totally exploiting the system, so that games do indeed get better looking as the life of a console goes on -- more polygons onscreen, faster drawing times, etc. The better graphics that fat PCs can display are typically limited to higher resolution textures or filtering effects, not more polygons than a scrub PC. So, do the games look better, or just cleaner? I don't know, and I'm sure its a matter of preference, but Halo 1 on a TV actually looks "better" to me than Counter Strike or Battlefield on a fat PC, where things are so high res that all I can really notice is how repetitive the textures are.
If you don't want to play old games, great, but in much the same way old books aren't necessarily worse than new books, some old games are still fun -- even on PC (StarCraft, anyone?) I'm not really sure how the fact that your back catalog sucks is evidence of a good thing.
Finally, yes, much of the console graphics technology is driven and derived from work which is seen first on PC -- especially if you're talking about the Xbox. Thank you for buying $500 videocards every year to "keep up" and subsidizing my $50/year videogame console!
Still, PCs are great machines. For coding console games. [duck]
As of 11:38PDT, I can now reach google, etc. again. Things are better now in the SF Bay area.
It's a single-problem solving analog computer of the classic, pre-Turing sense. They used to have all kinds of crap like this for solving various problems. Easier (at the time) (and probably cooler) than a book filled with lists. Not a Turing complete machine by any sense... more like the ABC device that people are always claiming was the "first computer," than an ENIAC.
Generally speaking, this article is not that accurate, as are most "salary surverys," where people typically respond with what they *should* be making, not what they do make. Also, he didn't note how long it takes (years -- your whole career, if you're *successful*) to get from the starting salary to the final salary. Nor did he note the salary disparity between developers and publishers. People who work at independent developers typically make less, but have more freedom and input into what they do, versus being "animator 957" or whatever, so it's a tradeoff.
Also, I didn't like the outmoded description of "marketing stiffs" or the cheap shot about producers: "...someone who's merely making schedules, managing the talent, and dealing with the annoying marketing stiffs." Yeah, that sounds easy, huh? Maybe he should try it! Obviously I came from the production side, and I would have liked to see some description of the differences in jobs between different types of producers, but I guess it was just a quick overall survery and not an in-depth thing.
Anyway, IMHO the reality of making games today is a far cry from the shots he takes in the article. If there is an "us versus them" relationship between marketing and development -- or between any develoment disciple (art and engineering, design and production, production and art, etc), your game's sales, sequel potential, and eventually your career are going to suffer. Good teams work together and while there's always friction, it's the job of the discipline leads -- and that worthless producer -- to minimize it. That's not to say there aren't bad marketing people, or irritating artists, or incompetent producers, all of whom suck and make everyone's life difficult, but there shouldn't be this default adversarial relationship there.
There are giant classes of unprotected speech. For instance, shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, sending out mail advertising ponzi schemes, all kinds of fraud, etc. Typically obscenity, which by definition is that which has neither artistic merit or political merit, is not protected. Of course, obscenity is usually defined at the local level, but for a while, in the 1950s, some SCOTUS decision meant there were whole closes of "photo magzines" that contained photo techniques... and hella pictures of naked chicks, constitutionally protected.
That all said, to be fair, Fox News is not the same thing as Fox the TV network in general.