Nah...I'm talking about real VoIP (not the shit they're pushing as such...which is more akin to 'telephone with an IP adress' as opposed to actual voice over IP (complete with buddy lists, conference channels etc, all done over a network/IP so there are no costs involved [except if you're still on dialup]).
Just a mic on your pc and some software, no gateways to the telco's exchange.
Turning pages or clicking a button to get to the next screen with the hand you're already holding your PDA with; the PDA wins every time.
As for why I re-read Asimov's robot series on my IIIc palmpilot when I'd already bought the books years ago (and still have them)? Because a colour PDA beats a book when reading for pleasure. Also, I can now carry ten books with me (I read 'em through each other; sometimes I feel like Julius Ceasar, sometimes like some Faulkner and sometimes hard SF) without having to carry a big ass bag.
Now if only the latest Gibson book was available online... . I'll tell you what's gonna happen: I'll download it from an illegal source to read it, and then buy it once it comes out in paperback in a couple of months.
Get a colour screen and ytou'll be surprised how much true black and white ease the reading experience. My IIIc does it for me...even though a bigger, higherrez screen wouldn't go amiss:)
First one being PDF. The single most obtuse and stupid format to read from. The only thing good about pdf (and the single reason it is used) is because it prints to exactly the same format on paper, cross platform (what you see on the screen is what you get on paper). But pdf itself is the single format I hate reading from most; bad refresh when going from page to page, no real full screen mode and a host of other reasons make pdf only suitable for printing, not actual reading.
Then there's the fact that you have to pay the exact samer amount for an e-book as for a normal book. This is rediculous. Cheaper distribution and no physical object mean a much cheaper price. If it's just a dollar cheaper (or even [and I swear I've seen this quite often] mopre expensive than dead tree!) it's a bad deal for me, since I can just as easily get the deadtree version.
Anyway, it's the last point which keeps ebooks from taking off. Sell me less (e instead of tree) for cheaper and I'll buy. Do anything else and I'll laugh at you.
As for acedemic books; well, I'd love it if I could get all my mechanical engineering books in electronic format. I'd buy a tablet pc and be done with all the ahssle of taking the dead weights with me. Ebooks are searchable, and that is one thing which is so important for academia that I can't beleive dedicated bookreaders haven't been introduced yet, preferably black/white (not monochrome, just real white) with memory storage and an open infrastructure compatible with losta formats and a paperback sized screen.
One, the tech is already there. It's been around for a while now, too; realtime voice masking is not only possible, but has been and is done.
Secondly, so what if the voice doesn't match up to the character? For those really bothered, they can use voicemasking tech, and the rest can just use that imagination which worked fine in tabletop games (and many other parts of life).
I mean, come on! Now you're reading text, for chissakes! How much doesn't that break down the suspension of disbelief the guy is talking about? Even if the tech wasn't entirely up to the task (which it is), even rudimentary voice would be better than reading text off the screen. Anyway, the discrepancy between avatar and voice not only is something you have to deal with in real life, but it's something so trivial that if it does break your suspension of disbelief, it isn't that strong to begin with.
Then again, maybe the fact that you can be heard (and can hear others) will enable a more courteous environment, and more roleplaying in that environment.
First off, if voice does get implemented it will happen by someone who has thought about it...there'll be a circle arouind your character beyond which you won't be able to hear anything (common sense against overcrowding and it mimics RL a bit too; anything beyond that could well be typing only (or in a futuristic setting 1-1 voicecomms over a telephonelike device).
Not only that, but I type things wrong much, much more often than I say things wrong...I hardly ever do the latter unless I'm drunk! And furthermore, voice allows for strategic planning in a battle, which typing doesn't.
Lessee; your first point isn't neccessarily true: there are numerous ways of incorporating voice, some of them available for free, some which will have to be paid for. True, the company will probably write it themselves, but they don't need to. Not only that, but it's something which has been done before and is documented if you go to the correct sites. Your second point however is true...but nearly everyone who plays computer games has had at least some secondary school education. Not only that, but you can near enough devide game players into a couple of groups: those who speak english, those who speak mandarin, those who speak korean and those who speak japanese. Not only that, but the last three also speak a bit of english (seeing as that's considered 'cool' over there [don't ask me why, but it is]). Third point; well from personal experience I'd say that someone who doesn't speak clearly will be asked to turn off his filter (which btw does work pretty good in realtime....voicemasks not working right is just another piece of FUD by the writer). If he/she/it still can't be heard, well, he'll have to type! A bad voice is just as bad as someone who can't spell or types way too slow...with about the same rate of occurence, I'd wager. As for fourth, I had no idea that all MMORPG's had to log everything their clients typed! Somehow I don't really believe that, but I will do some research...it's like saying telephone companies have to doe that, or ISP's. I rather think that game companies will be treated like common carriers (like ISP's and telco's are) in regards to that kind of thing; I really don't think they'd have to log all speach.
Anyway, personally I think voice is something which will mature the market; not oly does it make strategy more interesting (no-one types in the commands to flank another party on the left and tells the healer to go with them in the middle of combat...but they can tell them that!), but it makes roleplaying much mor3e interesting as well!
He, and everyone else who is against voicechat in games, just don't get what voice really means. Their argument always goes: 'it will break your suspension of disbelief'.
It won't, and I have proof: everyone who has ever played a tabletop roleplaying game knows what I'm talking about. If a voice is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief, it wasn't very strong to begin with.
Not only that, but voice filters can (and will) make you sound like a troll (:) ).
The only halfway valid argument he makes is the 'difficulty' of having to deal with two streams of communication, text and voice. And the only people who can't cope with that aren't too bright; we've all had school here where you read and write down what the teacher has written on the blackboard/while you're listening to his lecture/!
Fact is that voice is just the best/fastest comm system available. The only problem it does have, which mister whiskers didn't even address, is that sometimes people don't speak the common carrier language well enough...in which case they might have to type, thereby communicating slower than others. Which means they'll either learn better english (or mandarin, whatever) or go adventuring with people who speak the same language.
And as for abuse; even a basic personal kick/ban system will take care of that.
In short: the guy might know his MUD's, but I think he should have stayed there.
Now add Wifi support, and you can have free mobile phone services!
After that, add a hundred geeks per city who buy a 500 wifi-station, and you have a mobile phone which works for free and has usefull coverage in the city you live! All you need the telco's for then is as ISP's, nothing more.
Think of the money saved and the change in the way we think of communication...
Man, I was twelve when I realised that Zeno's paradox wasn't a paradox at all; sure, you have to travel all those half-distances, but you do that at increasing speeds, with the limits reaching 'unlimited' speed for an infintessimle distance (space-time being so closely linked means that you don't break the speed of light over supersmall distances [no v>c at the planck lenght]...granularity at work).
All this guy did was say 'hey, this zero thingy, which was a mathematical construct to begin with, doesn't exist for ranges of time!'.
Wow...I could have impressed Wheeler at the age of 12...whoop-dee-do.
Engineers care deeply about accuracy; the main thing is that they only care up to the accuracy needed for a particular problem, not some kind of absolute accuracy.
see my posts slightly higher up; wireless energy can build up static charge which might combust those flamable gasses; that's why wireless isn't used and 'they' prefer optical lines to electrical wires where possible.
I've seen this mentioned before, but this kind of wireless can be dangerous in some of such environments and is therefore rarely used; optical wiring is much better, as that doesn't send out energy all over the place, maybe creating a build up somewhere and accidentally setting alight that huge-ass canister of flamable gas/liquid you're monitoring.
Of course, for monitoring water or the electricity meter, this would work...just don't expect to see it in a refinery.
Hey, that's my idea, you insensitive clod! I've been thinking of such a movable computer identity for a while now (only not wireless...I was thinking USB/Flash too:))
I'd also include cookies, autocompletes, shortcut lists for different programs, mouse pointers, changed defaults/settings (guess 'themes' covers those last two), all in one big zip file with a little xml file pointing to the files in different directories in that zip file.
It shouldn't be too hard to program, and I can see this being deployed in universities/schools/etc quite handily.
The point is this; it takes a second or two to do something when clicking through menus...it takes less than a second to use the keyboard shortcut.
Now in any app, there's functions you use a lot. In 3d those would be things like switching from a smoothed+shaded view to a faceted view. Or showing and hiding the edges of a model (or centering the model on your viewscreen, or changing views, or bringing up the selection box, or changing tools [selection, translation, rotation, scaling] or any of many more).
These are tools you use many times each minute. The time saved by using keyboard shortcuts can amount to hours each week (let alone the fact that quickly switching from hidden edges to showing the edges helps the creative process, which is otherwise interrupted by having to go through menus).
So what it breaks down to is this; the most common actions should be the fastest to activate, whereas the more complex should be easily identified, easily accessible and have an intuitive workflow. While Blender does have shortcuts, it just doesn't have the workflow. Maya, as you say, does.
And as for repositioning your hands...that prevents RSI:)
Shit! I read an article (or is that manifesto) he wrote about assasination politics! Used some methode of doubly encrypted public key encryption to ensure privacy....was a clever idea, well thought out but morally just as wrong as the politicians you'd want to use it against.
You didn't read the article well enough: they wanted to put up random possible 'plots' (not things they where certain of being planned in progress by terrorists, not just plausible events, but stuff which is unlikely to downright rediculous) and then have random people bet on what will happen.
And then expect to gain 'intelligence' that way.
If you still don't get why this can't work, look at a casino, at the roulette table.
"Put another way, actually do it for a living an you'll find out why it is that way."
Trust me; if you do, you'll very soon buy maya, 3dsmax or softimage 3d/xsi.
Blenders UI sucks. It is not a sportscar, or if it is, it's been sitting under a midden in the garden for 10 years. The only possible reason you say Blender has a good UI is because you haven't used it to really make something.
Trust me; there's a reason why you don't see Blender in production environments. And there's also a reason why the Blender developers have put the fixing of their UI as a priority for future versions. Stop defending something even the makers see as broken.
Sorry, but that way lies obstruction of screen space...and that is something you juct can't do; 3d needs all the screen you have (preferrably multiple monitors...or even better multiple beamers:)).
Also, to become truly proficient in any app, it's a prerequisite that you learn the keyboard shortcuts; if you don't, you cannot be considered proficient. You're also much to slow at using the app if you don't use shortcuts...and if you've ever been in a production environment, you'll know that you need every second you can spare.
Yeah, I can use maya, 3dsmax and softimage (and also lightwave, but I hate the UI and the whole modal thing puts me off). Blender's UI still sucks. Live with it. Why do you think people (ie the dev's) are now considering Blenders UI to be an issue they must fix? Please stop trying to defend something which even it's developers know to be crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah...I'm talking about real VoIP (not the shit they're pushing as such...which is more akin to 'telephone with an IP adress' as opposed to actual voice over IP (complete with buddy lists, conference channels etc, all done over a network/IP so there are no costs involved [except if you're still on dialup]).
Just a mic on your pc and some software, no gateways to the telco's exchange.
What about IM:V; Instant Messaging: Voice.
"So you think interpersonal communication is an addiction rather than a basic human need?"
What's the difference?
Turning pages or clicking a button to get to the next screen with the hand you're already holding your PDA with; the PDA wins every time.
As for why I re-read Asimov's robot series on my IIIc palmpilot when I'd already bought the books years ago (and still have them)? Because a colour PDA beats a book when reading for pleasure. Also, I can now carry ten books with me (I read 'em through each other; sometimes I feel like Julius Ceasar, sometimes like some Faulkner and sometimes hard SF) without having to carry a big ass bag.
Now if only the latest Gibson book was available online... . I'll tell you what's gonna happen: I'll download it from an illegal source to read it, and then buy it once it comes out in paperback in a couple of months.
Get a colour screen and ytou'll be surprised how much true black and white ease the reading experience. My IIIc does it for me...even though a bigger, higherrez screen wouldn't go amiss :)
No demand? That's because of a number of reasons.
First one being PDF. The single most obtuse and stupid format to read from. The only thing good about pdf (and the single reason it is used) is because it prints to exactly the same format on paper, cross platform (what you see on the screen is what you get on paper). But pdf itself is the single format I hate reading from most; bad refresh when going from page to page, no real full screen mode and a host of other reasons make pdf only suitable for printing, not actual reading.
Then there's the fact that you have to pay the exact samer amount for an e-book as for a normal book. This is rediculous. Cheaper distribution and no physical object mean a much cheaper price. If it's just a dollar cheaper (or even [and I swear I've seen this quite often] mopre expensive than dead tree!) it's a bad deal for me, since I can just as easily get the deadtree version.
Anyway, it's the last point which keeps ebooks from taking off. Sell me less (e instead of tree) for cheaper and I'll buy. Do anything else and I'll laugh at you.
As for acedemic books; well, I'd love it if I could get all my mechanical engineering books in electronic format. I'd buy a tablet pc and be done with all the ahssle of taking the dead weights with me. Ebooks are searchable, and that is one thing which is so important for academia that I can't beleive dedicated bookreaders haven't been introduced yet, preferably black/white (not monochrome, just real white) with memory storage and an open infrastructure compatible with losta formats and a paperback sized screen.
Oh well, who listens to me...?
I still disagree with his point, for two reasons.
One, the tech is already there. It's been around for a while now, too; realtime voice masking is not only possible, but has been and is done.
Secondly, so what if the voice doesn't match up to the character? For those really bothered, they can use voicemasking tech, and the rest can just use that imagination which worked fine in tabletop games (and many other parts of life).
I mean, come on! Now you're reading text, for chissakes! How much doesn't that break down the suspension of disbelief the guy is talking about? Even if the tech wasn't entirely up to the task (which it is), even rudimentary voice would be better than reading text off the screen.
Anyway, the discrepancy between avatar and voice not only is something you have to deal with in real life, but it's something so trivial that if it does break your suspension of disbelief, it isn't that strong to begin with.
Then again, maybe the fact that you can be heard (and can hear others) will enable a more courteous environment, and more roleplaying in that environment.
First off, if voice does get implemented it will happen by someone who has thought about it...there'll be a circle arouind your character beyond which you won't be able to hear anything (common sense against overcrowding and it mimics RL a bit too; anything beyond that could well be typing only (or in a futuristic setting 1-1 voicecomms over a telephonelike device).
Not only that, but I type things wrong much, much more often than I say things wrong...I hardly ever do the latter unless I'm drunk! And furthermore, voice allows for strategic planning in a battle, which typing doesn't.
Lessee; your first point isn't neccessarily true: there are numerous ways of incorporating voice, some of them available for free, some which will have to be paid for. True, the company will probably write it themselves, but they don't need to. Not only that, but it's something which has been done before and is documented if you go to the correct sites.
Your second point however is true...but nearly everyone who plays computer games has had at least some secondary school education. Not only that, but you can near enough devide game players into a couple of groups: those who speak english, those who speak mandarin, those who speak korean and those who speak japanese. Not only that, but the last three also speak a bit of english (seeing as that's considered 'cool' over there [don't ask me why, but it is]).
Third point; well from personal experience I'd say that someone who doesn't speak clearly will be asked to turn off his filter (which btw does work pretty good in realtime....voicemasks not working right is just another piece of FUD by the writer). If he/she/it still can't be heard, well, he'll have to type! A bad voice is just as bad as someone who can't spell or types way too slow...with about the same rate of occurence, I'd wager.
As for fourth, I had no idea that all MMORPG's had to log everything their clients typed! Somehow I don't really believe that, but I will do some research...it's like saying telephone companies have to doe that, or ISP's. I rather think that game companies will be treated like common carriers (like ISP's and telco's are) in regards to that kind of thing; I really don't think they'd have to log all speach.
Anyway, personally I think voice is something which will mature the market; not oly does it make strategy more interesting (no-one types in the commands to flank another party on the left and tells the healer to go with them in the middle of combat...but they can tell them that!), but it makes roleplaying much mor3e interesting as well!
What a helpfull comment. Care to comment on the actual content of my comment instead of who posted it?
He, and everyone else who is against voicechat in games, just don't get what voice really means. Their argument always goes: 'it will break your suspension of disbelief'.
:) ).
/while you're listening to his lecture/!
It won't, and I have proof: everyone who has ever played a tabletop roleplaying game knows what I'm talking about. If a voice is enough to destroy your suspension of disbelief, it wasn't very strong to begin with.
Not only that, but voice filters can (and will) make you sound like a troll (
The only halfway valid argument he makes is the 'difficulty' of having to deal with two streams of communication, text and voice. And the only people who can't cope with that aren't too bright; we've all had school here where you read and write down what the teacher has written on the blackboard
Fact is that voice is just the best/fastest comm system available. The only problem it does have, which mister whiskers didn't even address, is that sometimes people don't speak the common carrier language well enough...in which case they might have to type, thereby communicating slower than others.
Which means they'll either learn better english (or mandarin, whatever) or go adventuring with people who speak the same language.
And as for abuse; even a basic personal kick/ban system will take care of that.
In short: the guy might know his MUD's, but I think he should have stayed there.
That because they follow the old dictum:
"Keep death off the roads...drive on the pavement!"
Now add Wifi support, and you can have free mobile phone services!
After that, add a hundred geeks per city who buy a 500 wifi-station, and you have a mobile phone which works for free and has usefull coverage in the city you live! All you need the telco's for then is as ISP's, nothing more.
Think of the money saved and the change in the way we think of communication...
Man, I was twelve when I realised that Zeno's paradox wasn't a paradox at all; sure, you have to travel all those half-distances, but you do that at increasing speeds, with the limits reaching 'unlimited' speed for an infintessimle distance (space-time being so closely linked means that you don't break the speed of light over supersmall distances [no v>c at the planck lenght]...granularity at work).
All this guy did was say 'hey, this zero thingy, which was a mathematical construct to begin with, doesn't exist for ranges of time!'.
Wow...I could have impressed Wheeler at the age of 12...whoop-dee-do.
Engineers care deeply about accuracy; the main thing is that they only care up to the accuracy needed for a particular problem, not some kind of absolute accuracy.
see my posts slightly higher up; wireless energy can build up static charge which might combust those flamable gasses; that's why wireless isn't used and 'they' prefer optical lines to electrical wires where possible.
I've seen this mentioned before, but this kind of wireless can be dangerous in some of such environments and is therefore rarely used; optical wiring is much better, as that doesn't send out energy all over the place, maybe creating a build up somewhere and accidentally setting alight that huge-ass canister of flamable gas/liquid you're monitoring.
Of course, for monitoring water or the electricity meter, this would work...just don't expect to see it in a refinery.
Hey, that's my idea, you insensitive clod! I've been thinking of such a movable computer identity for a while now (only not wireless...I was thinking USB/Flash too :))
:)
I'd also include cookies, autocompletes, shortcut lists for different programs, mouse pointers, changed defaults/settings (guess 'themes' covers those last two), all in one big zip file with a little xml file pointing to the files in different directories in that zip file.
It shouldn't be too hard to program, and I can see this being deployed in universities/schools/etc quite handily.
Anyway, great minds think alike
The point is this; it takes a second or two to do something when clicking through menus...it takes less than a second to use the keyboard shortcut.
:)
Now in any app, there's functions you use a lot. In 3d those would be things like switching from a smoothed+shaded view to a faceted view. Or showing and hiding the edges of a model (or centering the model on your viewscreen, or changing views, or bringing up the selection box, or changing tools [selection, translation, rotation, scaling] or any of many more).
These are tools you use many times each minute. The time saved by using keyboard shortcuts can amount to hours each week (let alone the fact that quickly switching from hidden edges to showing the edges helps the creative process, which is otherwise interrupted by having to go through menus).
So what it breaks down to is this; the most common actions should be the fastest to activate, whereas the more complex should be easily identified, easily accessible and have an intuitive workflow. While Blender does have shortcuts, it just doesn't have the workflow. Maya, as you say, does.
And as for repositioning your hands...that prevents RSI
Shit! I read an article (or is that manifesto) he wrote about assasination politics! Used some methode of doubly encrypted public key encryption to ensure privacy....was a clever idea, well thought out but morally just as wrong as the politicians you'd want to use it against.
You didn't read the article well enough: they wanted to put up random possible 'plots' (not things they where certain of being planned in progress by terrorists, not just plausible events, but stuff which is unlikely to downright rediculous) and then have random people bet on what will happen.
And then expect to gain 'intelligence' that way.
If you still don't get why this can't work, look at a casino, at the roulette table.
"Put another way, actually do it for a living an you'll find out why it is that way."
Trust me; if you do, you'll very soon buy maya, 3dsmax or softimage 3d/xsi.
Blenders UI sucks. It is not a sportscar, or if it is, it's been sitting under a midden in the garden for 10 years. The only possible reason you say Blender has a good UI is because you haven't used it to really make something.
Trust me; there's a reason why you don't see Blender in production environments. And there's also a reason why the Blender developers have put the fixing of their UI as a priority for future versions. Stop defending something even the makers see as broken.
Sorry, but that way lies obstruction of screen space...and that is something you juct can't do; 3d needs all the screen you have (preferrably multiple monitors...or even better multiple beamers :)).
Also, to become truly proficient in any app, it's a prerequisite that you learn the keyboard shortcuts; if you don't, you cannot be considered proficient. You're also much to slow at using the app if you don't use shortcuts...and if you've ever been in a production environment, you'll know that you need every second you can spare.
Yeah, I can use maya, 3dsmax and softimage (and also lightwave, but I hate the UI and the whole modal thing puts me off). Blender's UI still sucks. Live with it. Why do you think people (ie the dev's) are now considering Blenders UI to be an issue they must fix? Please stop trying to defend something which even it's developers know to be crap.