I got the parent info from the Winners page. If you read near the end of each paragraph it'll say "The daughter of" or "The son of" and will mention Dr or Drs, if the parents have their Ph.D.
I think it would be hard to argue that genetics played a point in how smart they are. I think in terms of hardware, what really did it was their upbringing. If when they were younger (prior to puberty) they were challenged and encouraged to seek knowledge, think, and explore, its likely their brain was wired more for that kind of stuff (reasoning and logic). Genetics may play some part, but I believe the environment will win out in the end.
I think its rather interesting to note that 6 out of the 10 students have parents with Doctorate level degrees. The school they go to likely has very little to do with their excellence. It's more likely their parents encouraged them to seek out knowledge.
I have a number of questions (doubt I could think of them all now or put them here). I'm curious about WU's program and research with BCI. I'm a Junior Undergrad Psych major thats looking at Neuroscience for Graduate school and in paticular I'm interested in any work with BCI. I was wondering if the research you all do strictly focused on finding results for use with prosthetics or for more regular use (ie: Maybe simply for the fact that BCIs are cool and have a lot of cool potential if we ever figure out the "neuron code")? A problem with a lot of the BCI research is it only looks to apply the technology to cases where someone is disabled in some form or fashion.
I hadn't realized WU was doing any BCI research. I only knew of UCLA who has a program in "Neural Engineering."
Links to programs/labs/etc, either at WU or else where would be cool.
I've been thinking about something for awhile and since this is sort of on topic here I'll pose the question.
Are shorter lifespans favored in natural selection?
Some of the information I've looked at tells of dinosaurs living to be a well over 100 years old and many reptiles alive today have very prolonged life spans compared to mammals. Also when you take into account some of the mechanisms that cause "aging," it leaves me wondering why there have been no signs of change toward extended lifespans of any mammalian species (by breeding out these mechanisms so to speak).
I have considered many possibilities why this might be and the top two I've come to are increased genepool diversity and the fact that longer lifespans would create a heavier pull on resources (food and shelter).
Incorrect, Mortal Strike is 31, but Deathwish is a 21 point talent. You'll be able to pick it up and still have most of your new talent points left over.
I've noticed theres been a lack of mention for the sheer stupidity in Blizz's new talent points. Maybe some people don't realize it but if you play WoW enough you might realize that PvP is completely BROKE now. While I don't feel like explaining it in depth I will put it as simple as possible.
The inclusion of 10 new talent points allows for all classes to now go 30/31 into 2 trees of their choice. As a warlock I can now get Soul Link and also pick up Ruin (check mentioned references for info on these) and still have 9 points to spare to put somewhere. That means I will have a ton more damage from crits on top of longer surviability.
Warriors will be able to get Mortal Strike and Deathwish, which essentially makes them death carrying a huge weapon to anyone not in plate.
Rogues will be able to go Seal Fate and something of their choosing, my friend pointed out that he can do Seal Fate/Hemo which makes it so he can generate Combo points in a matter of seconds. Allowing for a constant stream of damage.
The new talents might seem appealing and cool to some but I hope everyone hasn't quickly dismissed the old talents we have right now. The game is nearly perfectly balanced as it stands. The difference between a balanced class and a broken class right now is anywhere from 1-3 extra talent points, and that is what Blizz is going to be giving everyone out there. And since weapons and armour are going to be scaling in the coming future it only means that the those chunk of talents that boost all around, are just going to become stronger.
The game is going to enter another long trudge where Blizz spends months upon months to fix the mistake of giving characters 10 extra talent points.
You defiantly have a good grasp of the problem, but I would suspect that since you work in the industry. Let me pose a question then pertaining to graphics.
Do you think graphics will ever hit a ceiling? There has to be some cut off point where its not possible to take graphics furhter because it just costs too much and that gamers can't justify paying say $70 bucks or more for a game thats another number in a series.
If we could ever reverse the industry and revert back to earlier graphics that wern't that bad, then we could go back to making interesting games.
I didn't read the article but here is my take on it.
The reason hypnosis is good in this instance is you place people in an fMRI or on an EEG and have them experience "deja vu" via hypnosis and measure it.
Hypnosis isn't explaining the deja vu its only acting as the trigger, its the read outs from machines measuring the brain that are explaining it in detail.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason this hasn't happened is probably because most of Congress is weighted on the Republican side. If Congress was heavy Democrat then you could very well bet there would be investigations going on.
But I imagine the politics of the situation are far worse than party weight in Congress. Listening to the news and reading, I've heard a lot of talk about how even the Republican party is spliting up because of Bush's policies. Even if say half the Republicans in Congress didn't approve of Bush's actions they still wouldn't raise their voice against him and ask for an investigation. The reason being that if the do so, and find a lot of wrong doing (and most likely they would), all that would come of this is Justice and paint the Republican party in an even worse light than they already are.
As a result, come next election the Republican party would lose strength in Congress because of the actions of Bush. When it comes down to it, I don't believe the mass public would see the Republican party as multiple different cells with split views, they'd just lump every Repub. into the same group as Bush, and even the Republicans that assisted in the investigation would catch flak for their "good-merit."
This is of course all speculation. Not to mention I don't know what it takes to start a "congressional investigation" but I would assume it'd take a majority vote in favor of the investigation, to start it.
Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters' -- a twist on hipsters
Actually I don't think of "hip" when I hear that name. If you ask me they got the name from "hub" as in a center point for many connections and a way for directing connections out in other directions. Which makes sense for a social networking site, but the fact that Wal-Mart isn't allowing users to contact each other pretty much just means theres no "outgoing" really. How is this social networking again, if you can't talk to other people?
Nerves don't transmit electricity per say, the transmission happens through a progression of chemicals being dumped from an axon and a in flux of ions from outside coming in which cause a similar reaction down the line at another membrane gate on the axon. Its an elctrochemical reaction that carries the signal in a axon.
(My biology is a little rusty, so maybe someone can better explain it.)
As I mentioned in a reply above, EVE reminds me of "UO in Space" (pre-Ren) after hearing peoples comments on the game. I think the reason why the game never got interesting in the trial was due to the fact that two weeks really isn't enough time to really get in depth, in my opinion. It just barely brushes the surface in multiple areas. It introduces the concepts of trading, building, training, and fighting, and thats about it.
I suppose the 2 week trial that I messed around with a few years ago doesn't really do the game justice enough.
Based on the replies, the things I found very dull (mining, trading, building, etc), seem to gain more depth the longer you play the game. The 2 week trial just barely allowed the player to brush the surface of the game. Based on the replies, the way people place EVE reminds me a lot of UO (old UO, pre-Renaissance), it is just the setting is different.
And from being a fan of UO, I can understand it everyone says the game caters to a different crowd. Its not a game for the EQ-style item hunting player and end game raiding. Shoot, the game even has the high-risk factor of being killed that UO had.
Maybe one day they'll open planetary exploration on EVE and add even more depth to the game.
I'm not trying to troll, but maybe someone can help me by explaining what is so "incredible" about EVE? I played it once back when a trial was opened to the public and had trouble finding anything very interesting about the game. The game was large in the sense you could go many places, but it was constant flying back and forth. I never got far enough to do PvP, but I can't imagine it being heart stopping. Outside of fighting, you were stuck trading, mining, and building.
Is this just one of those games that caters to a group of players that are into the space war & trading style games, instead of fantasy style (WoW, et al.)? And this group of players just happens to be decently large and prevalent where I browse?
I can't agree with you more. I'm currently a junior in Psychology and plan on heading into grad school. The professors I've talked to have mentioned a lot of things you say here. "It takes a certain kind of person to be able to stay half way sane when they start tackling their Ph.D;" not to mention the right reasons, like you mentioned.
You really did hit the nail on the head by for why I want to go to graduate school. Grad school is another hurdle in my opinion, like undergraduate school. I view what happens in graduate school as the "frontlines to gaining knowledge." If everyone has some sort of role in the world in what they do, then researchers are the creators of knowledge and warriors against ignorance. But really, you can't do research and be looked as something serioues until you have a piece of paper(Ph.D) that says you were chewed up by current members of the academic community and spit back out, and actually walked away from it.
I'd say Graduate school sounds a lot like a playground with new toys constantly being build, but with landmines placed in the sand. Defiantly stressful.
While they will probably still release some of their big titles for the PS3 and Xbox360. I have a hunch that they will lack all the "bells and whistles" that the Wii will carry. Remember that PS3's control is a poor knock off of all the Wii can do.
Perhaps young children would like nintendo and its unique "active" style, but i doubt you will find many frat boys looking to play on a "childrens*" system where they have to jump around in a un-cool manner.
It is just speculation, but I think Nintendo is trying to change that image. Nintendo wants to show people that their console and the games released for it, are not "child things." I also imagine that if more game developers and publishers come to the Wii than the PS3, people won't be calling the Wii a "small kids only" machine.
And as far as who plays Madden? I think the people who play range across all ages. From teens all the way to grown ups that are fans of football. If EA's claims of "innovation" are true, we may see them turning the Wii-mote into an interactive controller as well, instead of pressing a button and moving the joystick to point in the direction to punt or throw. Now you just make a motion with the Wii-mote like you are throwing the football. The faster you move the more force and since the Wii can "see" the mote in 3D space, it can also figure direction and all. The PS3 doesn't have this degree of interaction.
I also imagine that at first, people will laugh and joke about how they don't want to do that much work with playing a game--"you mean I have to pretend I'm really throwing?"--I think if they try it out they will be hooked. Remember that when it comes to games, immersion is a big factor, the more immersed you are in a game the more fun you have (unless they botch the gameplay).
This is just what I think. We won't know till later I guess.
> So far though, the biggest hurdle is that, at present, the computer interface is mainly read-only.
While this paticular system of controling an arm is read-only. There have been results in other are that arn't read-only.
I don't have a link, but I recall very clearly that they've started to make a lot of progress with hooking up a camera to a subjects head and placing electrodes on/in the visual cortex and then feeding images captured by the camera into the person brain, allowing blind people to see again (though not nearly as good as what the eyes can do but defiantly a great step).
And maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but under normal circumstances (inside the US) you can't cut open a persons head and start experimenting on the brain, as cool as that would be. Even if the subject consents to the procedure I seem to recall that its not legal in the US. Under other circumstances like medical issues, this can be done. Which might be why its possible to work on those that are impaired in some way. I'm not 100% sure on this though, so maybe someone can inform me on the policy.
This is likely to be one of the first blows to Sony's PS3. While I know the vast majority of/.ers arn't fans of EA, the public tends to say otherwise. Their flagship title, Madden, will bring a lot of people to the Wii. I figure in the coming future we'll see a lot more announcements like this.
The real people that are going to determine if the PS3 "wins" or the Wii "wins" are the develops/publishers. Whatever system they decide to release on most is the one that everyone is going to flock to because they want those games.
While I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Britannica. Theres a lot that makes it hard to see Britannica as a better source. Their layout is one qualm of mine. Wikipedia's simple layout makes it easy to find what you want. When I use Britannica though, I always feel like I'm trudging around in a mess that was just thrown together, not to mention the ads. It has gotten better than it was in the past but the layout still has much to be desired in my eyes.
And by far the thing that makes Wikipedia better (and can gimp it) is the fact that you can create an article on everything. I can find information on some very obscure things. You probably won't ever see an entry in Britannica about Slashdot, or information about the "run-on" jokes used here (ie:welcoming overlords, beowulf clusters, soviet russia, etc.) They'd probably say its not worth mentioning since its not important, but thats not true. It's information, its something thats there, the fact that its not noteworthy in their eyes is what makes them sub-par to Wikipedia.
When Britannica starts to gather information about everything, not just typical entries, maybe then they'll start having a fighting chance in my opinion. It's just unfortunate that academy hold Wikipedia in low respect because of its nature (Open), maybe with some of the changes I've heard (Seperate, "Peer reviewed"-type wiki), things will change.
I'm curious, is there an email by which people can drop Google a line and leave comments, questions, or suggestions [to take legal action]? May not be needed at all, but hey, I just want to give them a heads up that some people think they should tackle this hairy gorrila(Ebay/Paypal).
The wheel gets reinvented so much because it has a low risk factor value. Graphics are what keep raising the developing costs for a game, I think it costs millions these days to be able to get a game out the door that meets the "standard" of a good game with good graphics. And since people want games with better and better graphics, I figure either companies have to cut costs somewhere or raise the cost of a game. I blame the general public for the state that games are in.
Its because of the high development costs that publishers are only willing to foot the bill for a game they are sure will produce revenue. Read, a sequal, or a flagship title. Gods only know what HD Graphics are going to do to development costs in the next generation games.
Ya one of the lead desginers are gone but if you check the Programmers two (Patrick Wyatt, Mike O'Brien) went to ArenaNet, and three (Gage R. Galinger, Robert Huebner, Dan Liebgold) left for other companies besides ArenaNet. That leaves about 3 or 4 people left in programming. Also two of the producers (Bill Roper, James Phinney) are gone as well, one went to ArenaNet (James). Also the person in charge of the Campaign editor for Starcraft, Jeff Strain, he's at ArenaNet now as well. It also seems they lost all their Battle.net programmers for Starcraft as well, but I don't know if thats nearly as important.
And as far as artists go, I never really bothered to check how many artists remained. The art was good in Starcraft, but what I recall being the best was the gameplay.
Assuming they ever do get around to making a follow up, I don't expect it to be very good. Why?
Take a look at the original Starcraft team, here. You can follow the names and see where many of them are now. For the most part though, many of the top designers and programmers from the original Starcraft are gone. Where did they go? Guild Wars, or more specifically, they founded ArenaNet.
And if there is something I have learned about games. If the original team behind a game is gone and a new team tries to pick up the game, the results arn't typically very pretty.
So don't expect much. I'm not.
No I don't believe any of it has anything to do with freedom. There are still in fact ESRB ratings on the actual game content. An MMO would be rated AO if it was possible to get completely nude and show genetalia, it'd still mention though that gaming experience would vary because of other players. There may not be "collluding" (I oringally read that as "collision with bluenosses), but there will still be that struggle between developers and publishers. Developers want that great game while the Publishers want a return on profit (Correct me if I'm wrong, but Publishers usually foot the inital development cost of a game for the developer, but expect a return on the profit of the game that they publish).
As far as laws and moving the servers. Picture this. Lets say Blizz included something in WoW that the Chinese govt. didn't like. The game is in China now, after all. Sure Blizz could move the servers for the Chinese out of China, but then all China has to do is firewall all connections to Blizz's servers, making it near impossible for the people in China to play the game. So essentially it is still possible to block/censor MMOs.
No, the reason why MMO's are so profitable (for the time being), is because they are still new to many people and different from single-player games. MMOs have the potential to be limitless in the amount of content provided (both actual game content and content that players might create), where as the single-player game is limited by whats on the disc. This is speaking in the present, of course, I would imagine that in the next decade at least, even single player games will have some option for increasing content, but even then I still don't see many companies going that route. I think for many companies it just makes more sense to create another title--a sequal--and release that instead of uploading new content. If the uploading sceme is more profitable though, companies will go that route, instead of releasing a new sequal. Valve has taken a step in the direction of uploading and adding on new single player content with HL2:Ep1.
Slashdot Mirror
I got the parent info from the Winners page. If you read near the end of each paragraph it'll say "The daughter of" or "The son of" and will mention Dr or Drs, if the parents have their Ph.D.
I think it would be hard to argue that genetics played a point in how smart they are. I think in terms of hardware, what really did it was their upbringing. If when they were younger (prior to puberty) they were challenged and encouraged to seek knowledge, think, and explore, its likely their brain was wired more for that kind of stuff (reasoning and logic). Genetics may play some part, but I believe the environment will win out in the end.
I think its rather interesting to note that 6 out of the 10 students have parents with Doctorate level degrees. The school they go to likely has very little to do with their excellence. It's more likely their parents encouraged them to seek out knowledge.
Off topic I suppose.
Oh yeah, anyone have any questions?
I have a number of questions (doubt I could think of them all now or put them here). I'm curious about WU's program and research with BCI. I'm a Junior Undergrad Psych major thats looking at Neuroscience for Graduate school and in paticular I'm interested in any work with BCI. I was wondering if the research you all do strictly focused on finding results for use with prosthetics or for more regular use (ie: Maybe simply for the fact that BCIs are cool and have a lot of cool potential if we ever figure out the "neuron code")? A problem with a lot of the BCI research is it only looks to apply the technology to cases where someone is disabled in some form or fashion.
I hadn't realized WU was doing any BCI research. I only knew of UCLA who has a program in "Neural Engineering."
Links to programs/labs/etc, either at WU or else where would be cool.
Thanks
I've been thinking about something for awhile and since this is sort of on topic here I'll pose the question.
Are shorter lifespans favored in natural selection?
Some of the information I've looked at tells of dinosaurs living to be a well over 100 years old and many reptiles alive today have very prolonged life spans compared to mammals. Also when you take into account some of the mechanisms that cause "aging," it leaves me wondering why there have been no signs of change toward extended lifespans of any mammalian species (by breeding out these mechanisms so to speak).
I have considered many possibilities why this might be and the top two I've come to are increased genepool diversity and the fact that longer lifespans would create a heavier pull on resources (food and shelter).
Incorrect, Mortal Strike is 31, but Deathwish is a 21 point talent. You'll be able to pick it up and still have most of your new talent points left over.
I've noticed theres been a lack of mention for the sheer stupidity in Blizz's new talent points. Maybe some people don't realize it but if you play WoW enough you might realize that PvP is completely BROKE now. While I don't feel like explaining it in depth I will put it as simple as possible.
The inclusion of 10 new talent points allows for all classes to now go 30/31 into 2 trees of their choice. As a warlock I can now get Soul Link and also pick up Ruin (check mentioned references for info on these) and still have 9 points to spare to put somewhere. That means I will have a ton more damage from crits on top of longer surviability.
Warriors will be able to get Mortal Strike and Deathwish, which essentially makes them death carrying a huge weapon to anyone not in plate.
Rogues will be able to go Seal Fate and something of their choosing, my friend pointed out that he can do Seal Fate/Hemo which makes it so he can generate Combo points in a matter of seconds. Allowing for a constant stream of damage.
The new talents might seem appealing and cool to some but I hope everyone hasn't quickly dismissed the old talents we have right now. The game is nearly perfectly balanced as it stands. The difference between a balanced class and a broken class right now is anywhere from 1-3 extra talent points, and that is what Blizz is going to be giving everyone out there. And since weapons and armour are going to be scaling in the coming future it only means that the those chunk of talents that boost all around, are just going to become stronger.
The game is going to enter another long trudge where Blizz spends months upon months to fix the mistake of giving characters 10 extra talent points.
Just my 2 cents and some insight.
You defiantly have a good grasp of the problem, but I would suspect that since you work in the industry. Let me pose a question then pertaining to graphics.
Do you think graphics will ever hit a ceiling? There has to be some cut off point where its not possible to take graphics furhter because it just costs too much and that gamers can't justify paying say $70 bucks or more for a game thats another number in a series.
If we could ever reverse the industry and revert back to earlier graphics that wern't that bad, then we could go back to making interesting games.
I didn't read the article but here is my take on it.
The reason hypnosis is good in this instance is you place people in an fMRI or on an EEG and have them experience "deja vu" via hypnosis and measure it.
Hypnosis isn't explaining the deja vu its only acting as the trigger, its the read outs from machines measuring the brain that are explaining it in detail.
You'd think Congress would be investigating
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason this hasn't happened is probably because most of Congress is weighted on the Republican side. If Congress was heavy Democrat then you could very well bet there would be investigations going on.
But I imagine the politics of the situation are far worse than party weight in Congress. Listening to the news and reading, I've heard a lot of talk about how even the Republican party is spliting up because of Bush's policies. Even if say half the Republicans in Congress didn't approve of Bush's actions they still wouldn't raise their voice against him and ask for an investigation. The reason being that if the do so, and find a lot of wrong doing (and most likely they would), all that would come of this is Justice and paint the Republican party in an even worse light than they already are.
As a result, come next election the Republican party would lose strength in Congress because of the actions of Bush. When it comes down to it, I don't believe the mass public would see the Republican party as multiple different cells with split views, they'd just lump every Repub. into the same group as Bush, and even the Republicans that assisted in the investigation would catch flak for their "good-merit."
This is of course all speculation. Not to mention I don't know what it takes to start a "congressional investigation" but I would assume it'd take a majority vote in favor of the investigation, to start it.
Little digging around and I find this on Wikipedia (Pulled up the 1840 page and looked under "literature").
Democracy in America (De la démocratie en Amérique) by Alexis de Tocqueville I assume thats who you were refering to.
Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters' -- a twist on hipsters
Actually I don't think of "hip" when I hear that name. If you ask me they got the name from "hub" as in a center point for many connections and a way for directing connections out in other directions. Which makes sense for a social networking site, but the fact that Wal-Mart isn't allowing users to contact each other pretty much just means theres no "outgoing" really. How is this social networking again, if you can't talk to other people?
Nerves don't transmit electricity per say, the transmission happens through a progression of chemicals being dumped from an axon and a in flux of ions from outside coming in which cause a similar reaction down the line at another membrane gate on the axon. Its an elctrochemical reaction that carries the signal in a axon.
(My biology is a little rusty, so maybe someone can better explain it.)
As I mentioned in a reply above, EVE reminds me of "UO in Space" (pre-Ren) after hearing peoples comments on the game. I think the reason why the game never got interesting in the trial was due to the fact that two weeks really isn't enough time to really get in depth, in my opinion. It just barely brushes the surface in multiple areas. It introduces the concepts of trading, building, training, and fighting, and thats about it.
:)
UO in Space, that has a nice ring to it.
I suppose the 2 week trial that I messed around with a few years ago doesn't really do the game justice enough.
Based on the replies, the things I found very dull (mining, trading, building, etc), seem to gain more depth the longer you play the game. The 2 week trial just barely allowed the player to brush the surface of the game. Based on the replies, the way people place EVE reminds me a lot of UO (old UO, pre-Renaissance), it is just the setting is different.
And from being a fan of UO, I can understand it everyone says the game caters to a different crowd. Its not a game for the EQ-style item hunting player and end game raiding. Shoot, the game even has the high-risk factor of being killed that UO had.
Maybe one day they'll open planetary exploration on EVE and add even more depth to the game.
I'm not trying to troll, but maybe someone can help me by explaining what is so "incredible" about EVE? I played it once back when a trial was opened to the public and had trouble finding anything very interesting about the game. The game was large in the sense you could go many places, but it was constant flying back and forth. I never got far enough to do PvP, but I can't imagine it being heart stopping. Outside of fighting, you were stuck trading, mining, and building.
Is this just one of those games that caters to a group of players that are into the space war & trading style games, instead of fantasy style (WoW, et al.)? And this group of players just happens to be decently large and prevalent where I browse?
I can't agree with you more. I'm currently a junior in Psychology and plan on heading into grad school. The professors I've talked to have mentioned a lot of things you say here. "It takes a certain kind of person to be able to stay half way sane when they start tackling their Ph.D;" not to mention the right reasons, like you mentioned.
You really did hit the nail on the head by for why I want to go to graduate school. Grad school is another hurdle in my opinion, like undergraduate school. I view what happens in graduate school as the "frontlines to gaining knowledge." If everyone has some sort of role in the world in what they do, then researchers are the creators of knowledge and warriors against ignorance. But really, you can't do research and be looked as something serioues until you have a piece of paper(Ph.D) that says you were chewed up by current members of the academic community and spit back out, and actually walked away from it.
I'd say Graduate school sounds a lot like a playground with new toys constantly being build, but with landmines placed in the sand. Defiantly stressful.
While they will probably still release some of their big titles for the PS3 and Xbox360. I have a hunch that they will lack all the "bells and whistles" that the Wii will carry. Remember that PS3's control is a poor knock off of all the Wii can do.
Perhaps young children would like nintendo and its unique "active" style, but i doubt you will find many frat boys looking to play on a "childrens*" system where they have to jump around in a un-cool manner.
It is just speculation, but I think Nintendo is trying to change that image. Nintendo wants to show people that their console and the games released for it, are not "child things." I also imagine that if more game developers and publishers come to the Wii than the PS3, people won't be calling the Wii a "small kids only" machine.
And as far as who plays Madden? I think the people who play range across all ages. From teens all the way to grown ups that are fans of football. If EA's claims of "innovation" are true, we may see them turning the Wii-mote into an interactive controller as well, instead of pressing a button and moving the joystick to point in the direction to punt or throw. Now you just make a motion with the Wii-mote like you are throwing the football. The faster you move the more force and since the Wii can "see" the mote in 3D space, it can also figure direction and all. The PS3 doesn't have this degree of interaction.
I also imagine that at first, people will laugh and joke about how they don't want to do that much work with playing a game--"you mean I have to pretend I'm really throwing?"--I think if they try it out they will be hooked. Remember that when it comes to games, immersion is a big factor, the more immersed you are in a game the more fun you have (unless they botch the gameplay).
This is just what I think. We won't know till later I guess.
> So far though, the biggest hurdle is that, at present, the computer interface is mainly read-only.
While this paticular system of controling an arm is read-only. There have been results in other are that arn't read-only.
I don't have a link, but I recall very clearly that they've started to make a lot of progress with hooking up a camera to a subjects head and placing electrodes on/in the visual cortex and then feeding images captured by the camera into the person brain, allowing blind people to see again (though not nearly as good as what the eyes can do but defiantly a great step).
And maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but under normal circumstances (inside the US) you can't cut open a persons head and start experimenting on the brain, as cool as that would be. Even if the subject consents to the procedure I seem to recall that its not legal in the US. Under other circumstances like medical issues, this can be done. Which might be why its possible to work on those that are impaired in some way. I'm not 100% sure on this though, so maybe someone can inform me on the policy.
This is likely to be one of the first blows to Sony's PS3. While I know the vast majority of /.ers arn't fans of EA, the public tends to say otherwise. Their flagship title, Madden, will bring a lot of people to the Wii. I figure in the coming future we'll see a lot more announcements like this.
The real people that are going to determine if the PS3 "wins" or the Wii "wins" are the develops/publishers. Whatever system they decide to release on most is the one that everyone is going to flock to because they want those games.
While I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Britannica. Theres a lot that makes it hard to see Britannica as a better source. Their layout is one qualm of mine. Wikipedia's simple layout makes it easy to find what you want. When I use Britannica though, I always feel like I'm trudging around in a mess that was just thrown together, not to mention the ads. It has gotten better than it was in the past but the layout still has much to be desired in my eyes.
And by far the thing that makes Wikipedia better (and can gimp it) is the fact that you can create an article on everything. I can find information on some very obscure things. You probably won't ever see an entry in Britannica about Slashdot, or information about the "run-on" jokes used here (ie:welcoming overlords, beowulf clusters, soviet russia, etc.) They'd probably say its not worth mentioning since its not important, but thats not true. It's information, its something thats there, the fact that its not noteworthy in their eyes is what makes them sub-par to Wikipedia.
When Britannica starts to gather information about everything, not just typical entries, maybe then they'll start having a fighting chance in my opinion. It's just unfortunate that academy hold Wikipedia in low respect because of its nature (Open), maybe with some of the changes I've heard (Seperate, "Peer reviewed"-type wiki), things will change.
I'm curious, is there an email by which people can drop Google a line and leave comments, questions, or suggestions [to take legal action]? May not be needed at all, but hey, I just want to give them a heads up that some people think they should tackle this hairy gorrila(Ebay/Paypal).
The wheel gets reinvented so much because it has a low risk factor value. Graphics are what keep raising the developing costs for a game, I think it costs millions these days to be able to get a game out the door that meets the "standard" of a good game with good graphics. And since people want games with better and better graphics, I figure either companies have to cut costs somewhere or raise the cost of a game. I blame the general public for the state that games are in.
Its because of the high development costs that publishers are only willing to foot the bill for a game they are sure will produce revenue. Read, a sequal, or a flagship title. Gods only know what HD Graphics are going to do to development costs in the next generation games.
Ya one of the lead desginers are gone but if you check the Programmers two (Patrick Wyatt, Mike O'Brien) went to ArenaNet, and three (Gage R. Galinger, Robert Huebner, Dan Liebgold) left for other companies besides ArenaNet. That leaves about 3 or 4 people left in programming. Also two of the producers (Bill Roper, James Phinney) are gone as well, one went to ArenaNet (James). Also the person in charge of the Campaign editor for Starcraft, Jeff Strain, he's at ArenaNet now as well. It also seems they lost all their Battle.net programmers for Starcraft as well, but I don't know if thats nearly as important.
And as far as artists go, I never really bothered to check how many artists remained. The art was good in Starcraft, but what I recall being the best was the gameplay.
Assuming they ever do get around to making a follow up, I don't expect it to be very good. Why?
Take a look at the original Starcraft team, here. You can follow the names and see where many of them are now. For the most part though, many of the top designers and programmers from the original Starcraft are gone. Where did they go? Guild Wars, or more specifically, they founded ArenaNet.
And if there is something I have learned about games. If the original team behind a game is gone and a new team tries to pick up the game, the results arn't typically very pretty. So don't expect much. I'm not.
No I don't believe any of it has anything to do with freedom. There are still in fact ESRB ratings on the actual game content. An MMO would be rated AO if it was possible to get completely nude and show genetalia, it'd still mention though that gaming experience would vary because of other players. There may not be "collluding" (I oringally read that as "collision with bluenosses), but there will still be that struggle between developers and publishers. Developers want that great game while the Publishers want a return on profit (Correct me if I'm wrong, but Publishers usually foot the inital development cost of a game for the developer, but expect a return on the profit of the game that they publish).
As far as laws and moving the servers. Picture this. Lets say Blizz included something in WoW that the Chinese govt. didn't like. The game is in China now, after all. Sure Blizz could move the servers for the Chinese out of China, but then all China has to do is firewall all connections to Blizz's servers, making it near impossible for the people in China to play the game. So essentially it is still possible to block/censor MMOs.
No, the reason why MMO's are so profitable (for the time being), is because they are still new to many people and different from single-player games. MMOs have the potential to be limitless in the amount of content provided (both actual game content and content that players might create), where as the single-player game is limited by whats on the disc. This is speaking in the present, of course, I would imagine that in the next decade at least, even single player games will have some option for increasing content, but even then I still don't see many companies going that route. I think for many companies it just makes more sense to create another title--a sequal--and release that instead of uploading new content. If the uploading sceme is more profitable though, companies will go that route, instead of releasing a new sequal. Valve has taken a step in the direction of uploading and adding on new single player content with HL2:Ep1.