Given the way that People With Money (and have read/watched a lot of SF) and are re-energising at least the concept of space flight, along with the various X-Prizes...
...What I'd like to see is a laser-tag style battle between an X-Wing and a Starfury.
Like, actually, up there.
You know that it will happen, at some point.
I'm pretty sure I know which would win, but hey, it would still be cool to watch!
In fact, the state of said cat is completely indeterminate. No-one can say if the cat is face up, face down, spinning or still, unless there is someone else in the room to observe it.
Taking out the actual gameplay, and the more technical details of how many shadows there are, etc., I think one of the main differences is in variety.
D3 is probably the best implementation so far of dark and twisty passages (be they made of metal or stone). HL2 is the best implementation of lit and twisty passages AND outdoor city/suburbscapes AND fast vehicles.
Far Cry arguably does outdoors better.
UT2004 definitely does vehicles better (think Onslaught).
HL2 does the combination of all three - they are all done individually better elsewhere, but not in combination.
I have to put a word in for the attention to detail, though I know that that is an artefact of the use of the engine rather than the engine itself. It is so immersive that you don't notice most of the detail as the scenery goes by, but it is still there, in the moments when you stop to take a breath.
The primary difference must lie in the Physics, however. Source was designed with a very open physics model in mind. D3's feels like an add-on.
I'd expect that future games derived from Source will be more varied in gameplay than those derived from D3.
Both, however, will look stunning (with the right design team).
A friend of mine (who can hack BGP - respect!) had to do military service back in Italy - so he devoured the Rule Book.
Within weeks he had his unit all wearing beards.
He arrested a senior member of the army who came back to the base too late after a night out.
And the best bit: In the army one's transport to and from home each weekend is paid for. He lives the other side of Europe from Italy, so they offered to fly him. But no - the rules state that it had to be by train (which takes what, a day? a day and a half?) so he ended up spending just a couple of days a week in Italy...
They sent him home soon afterwards. Nicely. Permanently.
Give this guy a system (of whatever kind) and he'll do scary scary things...
Remember, Tolkein wrote this whole saga (and all the backstory) to invent a mythological background to English history. He and C.S Lewis had discussed the Norse sagas and other European myths that gave character to other European cultures which they though lacking in British (as in Isles) cultures.
For them, Beowulf, Arthur and Cuchulain didn't match up to the fables of Odin and Thor and all the rest.
If you look at his work in this light, it is perfectly acceptible for someone else to take the underlying themes and tell them in their own way. Just look at the proliferation of works on Gawain, The Green Knight, Arthur, Merlin and so on that have proliferated over the years. Especially from the 10th to 12th century, where the underlying stories were moulded into new myths about the Knights Templar.
If his works *are* to be seen as myth (albeit invented) it is only to be expected that others will reinterpret these stories in a different way.
All that said, I found the Jackson films to be a marvellous telling of the themes in the books, though (understandibly, for length) you need the extended editions to get his full version of the telling.
As many other have repeatedly said, books and film are two very different media. Whilst I haven't heard it, I'm told the BBC radio version of LOTR is also brilliant. I for one am joyous to know that there are many different types of media that tell the same myths in such a brilliant way.
Having won two Hugo awards (which you accepted in considerable style, especially the first!) do you think that they should be extended to include a specific category for graphic novels (or their constituent comics)?
PS. If I got the number wrong, I do so in the tradition of Spider Robinson!
I remember playing the Aliens mod for Doom with the lights out and the volume up - I don't want to give away why (find it and try it yourself) but I was sweating in terror by the end of the first level. Come level 2, I screamed out loud "There's NO Effing WAY I'm going DOWN THERE!" - a couple of my friends tried it with exactly the same results, same scream at the same time... Gives me the creeps to even remember it even though it was years ago...
The other one was Aliens vs Predator 1, which I played at work, at night, in the board room on a wall projector with surround sound... I played as the Marine, and I lasted 10 minutes before running out of the room for the sanity of my colleagues working late next door.
(They only lasted 5 minutes before fleeing!)
My heart is thumping even typing this...
EdinBear.
As the old Perl adage states, "There's more than one way to do it"... If you consider the various options as being different levels of complexity and control, it really does depend on the likely technology that your target audience has, and their technical ability (all of which has already been mentioned).
I'd say that by far the simplest option is HTTP - I'm assuming that your server is Unix-like, so we're talking Apache, which most distros have as default (or easily installed). FTP is also easily available, but introduces security and authentication issues.
If you have control of your clients, then SFTP is a good, secure solution, but takes more setting up and introduces some bandwith issues.
You have to decide what level of service is most appropriate, and how much effort and time you have spare to put it in place.
As I remember (from my mid 90s Internet Cafe NetManager days) the.us TLD was split up into States, so you have.ny.us and.ca.us... At the time I thought it an "unusual" way to split up the TLD, since most of the up-and-coming domains were not limited to any one State...
I don't know of any other Country TLD which was split up geographically...
When we hear the word "Challenger" it brings up images of disaster, just as much as the Russian word "Chernobyl" does. Now we have a new word to add to the canon - "Columbia".
What now for Discovery and Atlantis?
ESA's Rosetta mission has been seriously delayed by the recent Ariane 5 failure... The ISS programme was already under budgetary stress, and given the undoubted grounding of the remaining shuttles...
SF was right. The future of manned space flight belongs to the Chinese...
Thanks to everyone that commented - very enlightening...
I'll clarify a few points about myself:
I see myself remaining in SysAdmin - it's a skill that can be applied to just about any field, though having a knowledge/interest in that field will always be useful.
The main field that come up is bioinformatics (sp?) - there is a lot of movement in this over here (Scotland) but I don't have any background in it...
The second main theme has been Astronomy - Woof! - I'm jealous of those who have been involved in JPL and NASA - it might not have been perfect, but the challenge and the interest... I'm doing an Astronomy course with the Open University (not a degree, just a sequence of open courses) to fill the science in to what has been a lay interest up till now.
Money is not a prime concern - I'm fortunate that I can live reasonably well on much less than what corporate IT pays - so I'm looking for a role that pays just enough but has that added extra - satisfaction.
I'm 35 now, and I've learned enough about myself to know what I'm good at, and how I learn new things. I *like* enabling other people do good stuff - science, research, learning; whatever - I work best as part of the engine of support, letting other people do the hard stuff!
Slashdot Mirror
Like, actually, up there.
You know that it will happen, at some point.
I'm pretty sure I know which would win, but hey, it would still be cool to watch!
In fact, the state of said cat is completely indeterminate. No-one can say if the cat is face up, face down, spinning or still, unless there is someone else in the room to observe it.
Some of them I'd completely forgotten about too. Ahhh.... Nostalgia for 30somethings...
Here's my list - all 30
100 Finger Frights
99 Fuzzy Felt
98 Pocketeers
95 Quicksilver Maze
93 Rubik's Cube
92 Zoids/Transformers
91 Electronic Project/Chemistry set
90 Mastermind
81 Merlin
79 Viewmaster
77 Uncle Remus kits
70 Tonka truck
68 Perfection
65 Spud Gun
51 A radio controlled car
48 Silly Putty
43 Slime
42 Cadbury's Chocolate Machine
40 Game and Watch
37 Cluedo
36 Battling Tops
35 Spirograph
28 Magic Rocks
27 Shaker Maker
16 Tasco Telescope
8 Sea Monkeys
5 Airfix Model Plane
4 Top Trumps
2 A computer
1 A bike
I'd bring back the Battling Tops - they were they best!
EdinBear ! x
D3 is probably the best implementation so far of dark and twisty passages (be they made of metal or stone). HL2 is the best implementation of lit and twisty passages AND outdoor city/suburbscapes AND fast vehicles.
Far Cry arguably does outdoors better.
UT2004 definitely does vehicles better (think Onslaught).
HL2 does the combination of all three - they are all done individually better elsewhere, but not in combination.
I have to put a word in for the attention to detail, though I know that that is an artefact of the use of the engine rather than the engine itself. It is so immersive that you don't notice most of the detail as the scenery goes by, but it is still there, in the moments when you stop to take a breath.
The primary difference must lie in the Physics, however. Source was designed with a very open physics model in mind. D3's feels like an add-on.
I'd expect that future games derived from Source will be more varied in gameplay than those derived from D3.
Both, however, will look stunning (with the right design team).
EB ! x
Within weeks he had his unit all wearing beards.
He arrested a senior member of the army who came back to the base too late after a night out.
And the best bit: In the army one's transport to and from home each weekend is paid for. He lives the other side of Europe from Italy, so they offered to fly him. But no - the rules state that it had to be by train (which takes what, a day? a day and a half?) so he ended up spending just a couple of days a week in Italy...
They sent him home soon afterwards. Nicely. Permanently.
Give this guy a system (of whatever kind) and he'll do scary scary things...
For them, Beowulf, Arthur and Cuchulain didn't match up to the fables of Odin and Thor and all the rest.
If you look at his work in this light, it is perfectly acceptible for someone else to take the underlying themes and tell them in their own way. Just look at the proliferation of works on Gawain, The Green Knight, Arthur, Merlin and so on that have proliferated over the years. Especially from the 10th to 12th century, where the underlying stories were moulded into new myths about the Knights Templar.
If his works *are* to be seen as myth (albeit invented) it is only to be expected that others will reinterpret these stories in a different way.
All that said, I found the Jackson films to be a marvellous telling of the themes in the books, though (understandibly, for length) you need the extended editions to get his full version of the telling.
As many other have repeatedly said, books and film are two very different media. Whilst I haven't heard it, I'm told the BBC radio version of LOTR is also brilliant. I for one am joyous to know that there are many different types of media that tell the same myths in such a brilliant way.
S
Having won two Hugo awards (which you accepted in considerable style, especially the first!) do you think that they should be extended to include a specific category for graphic novels (or their constituent comics)?
PS. If I got the number wrong, I do so in the tradition of Spider Robinson!
I remember playing the Aliens mod for Doom with the lights out and the volume up - I don't want to give away why (find it and try it yourself) but I was sweating in terror by the end of the first level. Come level 2, I screamed out loud "There's NO Effing WAY I'm going DOWN THERE!" - a couple of my friends tried it with exactly the same results, same scream at the same time... Gives me the creeps to even remember it even though it was years ago... The other one was Aliens vs Predator 1, which I played at work, at night, in the board room on a wall projector with surround sound... I played as the Marine, and I lasted 10 minutes before running out of the room for the sanity of my colleagues working late next door. (They only lasted 5 minutes before fleeing!) My heart is thumping even typing this... EdinBear.
As the old Perl adage states, "There's more than one way to do it"... If you consider the various options as being different levels of complexity and control, it really does depend on the likely technology that your target audience has, and their technical ability (all of which has already been mentioned).
I'd say that by far the simplest option is HTTP - I'm assuming that your server is Unix-like, so we're talking Apache, which most distros have as default (or easily installed). FTP is also easily available, but introduces security and authentication issues.
If you have control of your clients, then SFTP is a good, secure solution, but takes more setting up and introduces some bandwith issues.
You have to decide what level of service is most appropriate, and how much effort and time you have spare to put it in place.
S.
As I remember (from my mid 90s Internet Cafe NetManager days) the .us TLD was split up into States, so you have .ny.us and .ca.us... At the time I thought it an "unusual" way to split up the TLD, since most of the up-and-coming domains were not limited to any one State...
I don't know of any other Country TLD which was split up geographically...
S.
When we hear the word "Challenger" it brings up images of disaster, just as much as the Russian word "Chernobyl" does. Now we have a new word to add to the canon - "Columbia".
What now for Discovery and Atlantis?
ESA's Rosetta mission has been seriously delayed by the recent Ariane 5 failure... The ISS programme was already under budgetary stress, and given the undoubted grounding of the remaining shuttles...
SF was right. The future of manned space flight belongs to the Chinese...
S.
Thanks to everyone that commented - very enlightening...
I'll clarify a few points about myself:
I see myself remaining in SysAdmin - it's a skill that can be applied to just about any field, though having a knowledge/interest in that field will always be useful.
The main field that come up is bioinformatics (sp?) - there is a lot of movement in this over here (Scotland) but I don't have any background in it...
The second main theme has been Astronomy - Woof! - I'm jealous of those who have been involved in JPL and NASA - it might not have been perfect, but the challenge and the interest... I'm doing an Astronomy course with the Open University (not a degree, just a sequence of open courses) to fill the science in to what has been a lay interest up till now.
Money is not a prime concern - I'm fortunate that I can live reasonably well on much less than what corporate IT pays - so I'm looking for a role that pays just enough but has that added extra - satisfaction.
I'm 35 now, and I've learned enough about myself to know what I'm good at, and how I learn new things. I *like* enabling other people do good stuff - science, research, learning; whatever - I work best as part of the engine of support, letting other people do the hard stuff!
Anyway, thanks again - it's an interesting read!
Regards all,
Seumas.